AMCHP 2006 ANNUAL CONFERENCE
EARLY CHILDHOOD: BUILDING THE FOUNDATION FOR LIFELONG HEALTH
March 4-8, 2006
CHRIS DYKTON: Thank you, Cassie. It’s always like Christmas for me, ‘cause it’s like I always get to talk first at the beginning of AMCHP. It’s like--it’s really quite special. And it’s always great because, even though we’re going to talk about a boring thing called “Information Systems Technology”, I get a chance to see you all and get to see new faces, and to see old friends from many, many years.
So think of this as an informal discussion about the information system. I’m going to go through it and we’re going to look at the dummy site that we’ll be showing in learning labs that you’ll be able to play with over the next couple days on Monday and Tuesday. But let me introduce myself for those of you that don’t know me. I’m Christopher Dykton. I’m a Maternal-Child Health Specialist with the Science Applications International Corporation, or SAIC. We’re the team that supports the Maternal Child Heath Bureau, for both the Title V Information System, which we’re going to concentrate and talk about today, as well as the discretionary grant information system.
I’m the face of Title V to many of you, but I’m not the only one. There’s a whole team of us that work on this. And I’d like to introduce my boss, who’s the project manager, Stephanie Olson, up here, and I’d also like to introduce a new face. E.J. Tom is joining us, as junior analyst on the team, and, E. J., wave. You’re going to hear him and talk to him over the next few, six months or so. And E. J. has a big advantage over me. He has a deep voice. I’m a tenor, and he is a bass. So he’s much more soothing. I get excited, but he will calm you down no matter what happens.
That being said let me ask a couple questions. How many people are here for the first time, for the skills building session? Let me see those hands back there. So this is brand new. How many--have you ever been in the Information System? If you have, put your hand up. Okay, so there’s a number of newbies here. How many of you have seen this thing more than you’d like to know? I see you back there, Mr. Atlanta.
The reason I ask that is because I’m going to start with changes to the system right off the bat. We‘re going to talk about what is in the system for the Title V Information System. But returning to the intramural reporting. Then we’re going to talk about the new guidance and what’s in store for Title V. We’re going to talk about some of the enhancements, some of the changes that you’ve recommended, as well as the project officers, as well as MCHB, as well as thoughts that occurred to people that e-mailed about improvements. Because every year we go through an assessment. After you submit your final revised application in September, there’s a great deal of activity that occurs between that time and now. About looking at the system, seeing what worked, what didn’t work, what can we change in the next few months. We gather those requirements, the programmers go in the system, adjust it. We test it internally, then it goes out to beta testing out in the field, and then we, hopefully, have it all ready for the next go around. It’s strange to think that--it just seems like yesterday when we were doing this before, and now we’re doing it again. But there’s a lot of activity that occurs when the system is down, is not open. But we’re going to talk about some of those enhancements that you’ve recommended. We’re going to review--and this is really important for those of you who are new--the system’s key points, just general information on it. And we’re going to talk about dates and accessing the 2007 application.
Last year was the big special year, the year that the 5-year needs assessment was submitted and there were a lot of changes that occurred last year for the way the system operated. There were different requirements. You had to provide the state needs assessment. You had to define the new priority needs. You had to define new State Performance Measures. Forms not required in past years were required last year. And the narrative was written anew. It was an e-mail--the narrative wasn’t e-mail, but the needs assessment was. And functioning in most of TBIF’s remained the same. But we are now going back to the way the system worked about 2 years ago, and that’s--we return to the interim year reporting. And this will continue over the next few years.
Form 14, which is where you identify your priority needs, will be pre-populated with those that you provided last year. The 2006-2010 State Performance Measures defined last year are the ones in this application, and the ones that were the older State Performance Measures, are retired. You will not see them in this version. The sections of the narrative are pre-populated with last year’s narrative. And you can attach an update to the needs assessment in this version. So these are the kind of standard operating rules for the interim year of reporting that many of you that worked on it 2 years ago, should recognize, or at least it should sound familiar.
So we’re going to talk about what that means. We’re going to kind of refresh on that and then move on. One of the things that’s important is to talk about the needs assessment. The recommendation from Cassie and from--about the needs assessment is that you can provide an update to section 2c, the needs assessment summary this year about any changes that have occurred since the needs assessment rather than providing the needs assessment proper. Now if you want to provide the whole needs assessment proper, that’s fine. But it’s Section 2c that’s the one that’s really important to make sure it’s provided this year. Again, there’s a size limit on attachments, which is 4 megabytes, so if you have a lot of graphics and so forth, it might be a little larger. Some of you had some problems last year even e-mailing it in, because some of them were very large. So if you run into that problem, contact the HRSA call center, and we’ll find a way in which we can get that document. But if you’re only providing the attachment that’s just Section 2c, it shouldn’t be that large and this should not be a problem.
The narrative. The length limitations for the narrative sections have increased by 10 percent. And on the series of slides that you have the last page gives you a breakdown of those numbers, of what they are for each of the sections. Again, like always, there are 3,000 characters each for the past accomplishments, current activities and future plans for your Performance Measures. That’s both state and National. The narrative text fields are pre-populated with a text except for the 2 new sections, health status--health systems capacity indicators, rather, and the Health Status Indicators, as well as Performance Measures are never pre-populated. Remember that this year the reason that the text is pre-populated is a reminder that it’s there for you to update, and that when you provide updates to that text, you begin an update with a slash 2007 slash. And then you end an update with a double-slash 2007 double-slash. What that will do in the HTML copy of the narrative is it will be italicized. And then the copy going to the reviewers it’s not only italicized but it’s also bolded. It makes it much easier to analyze the updates to the narrative from last year.
But the functioning of most CVI’s remains the same. The registration process is still the same as it was. Many of you--the MCH directors and Children’s Special Health Care needs Directors a couple of weeks ago got an e-mail asking for a list of users from your state. And many of those are in. We’ve got about 32, I think. States have provided their user lists, so if you’re one of the states who haven’t submitted yet, by all means please get that to us. The financial forms operate the same. The program administrative forms operate the same. PM’s operate the same. Everything else is operating the same.
But let’s talk about what is new, because of the guidance, and what’s in store for TBIS.
There are 2 new National Performance Measures and they were developed, and 2 were moved elsewhere within the block grant application. National Performance Measure 14 and 15 are brand new. Fourteen is dealing with overweight/obesity. It’s dealing with percentage of children receiving WIC service with a BMI index at or above 85th percentile. And National Performance Measure 15 is dealing with women who smoke during the last 3 months of pregnancy.
Now what happened to the old ones? Fourteen, the old fourteen, which was dealing with Medicaid-eligible children, who received a service, has been moved to a Health Systems Capacity Indicator. And it’s known as 7-A. The old National Performance Measure 15 is being captured with a Health Status Indicator 02-A. So that information is still within--and that data and information is still being collected within the system itself, but they’ve moved to different sections and so we still have a total of 18 National Performance Measures.
National Performance Measure 11’s been revised. And the time frame for Measurement has changed from the previous guidance. And this is percentage of mothers who breastfeed. It was at hospital discharge, and is now going to be at 6 months of age.
So what does this mean in terms of reporting? For these new National Performance Measures in the system, what Cassie is advising is that you provide baseline indicator data for 2005. And this gives a context for the objectives that are developed against these measures. If you just provide the objectives on the measure, it may be unclear how you came to that trend that you say you’re trying to reach with the objectives.
You’re going to provide those objectives for 2006 through 2010 and you will have a discussion on these new Performance Measures about past, present and future, just like any of the other National Performance Measures. And what was in place in 2005, maybe there was nothing for your state on these new ones, but you will discuss the fact that that is indeed the case for you. You can talk about the current activities, and you’ll list any activities in place for this year in figure 4-A. Then you’ll talk about the future plans. This is the beginning of collection of this data. Data before 2004, since these did not exist, as National Performance Measures, are not entered. In other words, you do not have to enter anything older, or go back and try to provide a history of data leading up to this point, which makes sense, How can you provide something that you weren’t collecting?
Revised National Performance Measure 11 in TBIS, “How to Report”. You’re going to see on the National Performance Measure menu ”Retired NPN 11.” What’s being requested this year is that you report on the 2005 indicator data only. In other words, you wont provide objectives since this is being retired, but since you have been collecting and working on this National Performance Measure in the past, you’ll be able to provide the indicator data for the reporting year. This is the last year of the reporting. After this year this will be retired. It won’t be in the block grant next year and in TBIS. So treat the new National Performance Measure 11, the one at 6 months, as a new Measure. So in other words you’ll provide the baseline data for 2005 and your objectives into the future. So you’re going to have two 11’s on your menu. You’ll have 11 that concerns 6 months, and you’ll have a retired National Performance 11 at hospital discharge for breastfeeding.
The old NPN’s and TVS: how to report on these. All the data has been migrated in the system, so when you go to health systems capacity indicator 07-A, you’re going to see the old 14 data. Now it will not have objectives because it’s an indicator now, so any objectives against that in the past are stored in the system, but they won’t be displayed. And 02-A data is where the old 15 has been removed. But the old indicator data for health status indicator 02-A will be there.
There’s other revisions to language. Some language clarifications from the previous guidance. National Performance Measure 1 has had some change in the title and some definitions. Same with National Performance Measure 6.
What to do about it? The detail sheets have been revised. Please look at them. And at this point I kind of wanted to do a sidebar with the data collected for National Performance Measure 1. This one’s been problematic.
I was looking at the data on the Web site. Anyone who goes to Title V Information System for the Web reports and pulls up National Performance Measure Number 1--there’s been a lot of confusion on this one, and one of the reasons is that this is the screening measure. And in 2003 this measure had been redefined from just those screened to those confirmed--positives confirmed and those that have received follow-ups. So it changed, and a lot of states didn’t catch that. And some state are still reporting on this as if total screening, rather than those that have been confirmed, and then tracked for follow-up. It’s really important to take a look at this, and look at your data. This is something that one state had recently was--actually, Joel, you’re here. We’ve been talking about this. Just recently, we talked about it a lot, and it really--you brought to the forefront something that we needed to talk abut with everybody. So thank you. Thank you for that.
But it’s really important to look at it. Some states are still having very, very large numbers reported because they’re putting the total screens. And it’s easy to find, because once you look at that National Performance Measure, all you have to do is go to your state’s form 6 and you can see where the data is being pulled from, and you can identify it easily. If you are a state that has done that, and you need to rework the numbers on that National Performance measure, especially the ones into the past, please contact me, because you can’t go back in the system and revise old numbers. What you need to do is provide that data to me, I’ll pass it through to Cassie, Cassie’ll take a good look at it and give her approval for any kind of changes that are older like that. Again, National Performance measure 6, the detail sheet is revised, and for most of you this is from the Children’s Special Healthcare Needs Survey.
Other changes that are new in this guidance is health Systems Capacity Indicator 09-C. This was for data capacity dealing with children who are obese or overweight, has been deleted. The new NPM 14 is taking its place. And the instructions on what to discuss in the narrative for the Health Systems Capacity Indicators are clarified. Remember in the older guidance it just kind of listed what those were, without any real guidance as to what to talk about or what to address? This year, there’s clearer instructions there, about what to talk about with your Heath Systems Capacity Indicators. And this year, each one will have its own area for narrative discussion. Unlike the huge big block of 30,000 characters that you’ve had in the past, each one will allow you to discuss each of those Systems Capacity Indicators. This is a change, because oftentimes what happened, because there was no real guidance on what to write about in the last guidance for this section, people would concentrate on one of these Systems Capacity Indicators and not discuss the other ones. So this will allow you to discuss each one at least in some way. It’s not long--you’ve got 4,500 characters for each one of these, which is about a page and a half, of typing. But it allows you to address all of them.
The Health Status Indicators are going to be reported annually, and you’re going to discuss in the narrative. Remember under the last guidance they were optional until the year of the needs assessment? Now we’re going back to the way it was even prior to that guidance, when we were reporting on the status indicators and they were called Developmental Health Status Indicators at that time.
The multi-year forms will operate like the National Performance Measures and the State Performance Measures. And the health status indicator demographic tables will have to be complete. When you’re filling those table out, with all of that data, you won’t be stopped from saving it any time. In other words, you’re not going to get an error message saying you have to finish this thing now. Especially when you get into something like miscellaneous demographics, where it’s coming from many different sources and you may not have all of them at the same time in order to start your data entry into the tables. So it was decided, and rightfully, that we’re not going to constrain you to fill out the tables partially along the way, but you will be caught in the forms status checker if things are missing. So use the form status checker to help you compete those tables.
The Heath Status Indicators, for example, in terms of the narrative, are going to have one huge text section, like the health systems capacity indicators in the past. So you will have one area here, 30,000 characters, 10 pages, to talk about the Health Status Indicators.
Enhancements: I cannot tell you how many of you talked about the save and cancel buttons at the bottom of the pages. “I can’t see it! Where is it?” And depending on how big your screen was, and if you had to scroll, it was on the left and the right. So many of you wrote in saying, “This stinks. I can never find it and I’m always forgetting and I leave the form.” They’re front and center now. They’re right in the middle. It sounds like such a simple thing, but, you know, that’s where we take our pleasures in life, to put the save and cancel right in the middle of the page a the bottom.
The view/print version: How the notes to display has changed. On the multi-year forms, they’re displayed in chronological order, descending. That sounds like such a simple thing, but it’s amazing how you want to see what the most recent note is saying about the data, not necessarily all the older notes, and they used to be not setup that way. The other thing is that for the notes, for the PM’s, and the health systems capacity indicator and Health Status Indicators, the notes are now right after the data itself. Joel, I made your day, right? This was a really important--I mean, how many of you--it drove you crazy, where you had 18 measures of all the data, and then all the notes at the bottom of all the data against all those measures, and if you wanted to read something in context you were running up and down to look at it. Now it’s going to be your data, notes, newest first, descending. Data, notes, data, notes, data, notes. Again, we take the simple pleasures. This is really--I think it’s going to make it a lot easier on the reviewers. It’s going to be a lot easier for discussion. You don’t have to have your hand in 3 different sections when you’re looking at these multi-year forms. There’s new warning messages for zero.
This seems really strange, but it’s something that needed to be tightened up, because people were using zero and meaning “n/a.” It applies to indicators, numerators, denominators values. It applies in the multi-year performance measures, Health System Capacity Indicators as well as the Health Status Indicators. If you enter a manual indicator or numerator with a zero, a pop-up will ask you to confirm the use of zero, meaning it’s “zero”, and it’s not “n/a.” It’s going to ask you. It will let you do it, but it’s going to ask you first. And you cannot put a zero as a denominator. That just is not going to be permitted. As we know, you can’t divide by zero.
Other enhancements--I guess you many not think that is an enhancement, but I do. I was like, “We got to stop this. It’s just not making any sense.” Form 15 has the technical assistance request links to the MCHTA Web site. And--Cassie, did you want to talk about that for a moment? Or do you want to come up here? Can you--
CASSIE LAUVER: Why don’t you go through and we can--I can pick up and Michelle can pick up her (inaudible).
CHRIS DYKTON: Okay. That’s great. Thank you. So you can--when you’re filling out form 15, if you want to go to the TA Web site and actually enter request for technical assistance, you’re linked from that form itself. One of the things that are important about this, is that if you leave the TVIS to go to that page, please save your data. What will happen is that a window will pop up, taking you to that page, but you could easily close the other window and lose data if you were working in it and hadn’t saved. So please save the data. Realize, too, that with two windows open like that, if you stay at the TA Web site for any length of time, you’re getting into timeout problems, so really save data before you leave the site.
Form 16--this is really important this year. This is the state performance measure detail sheets. They’ve had the requirements tightened. Last year they were loosened up in order for everyone to define the State Performance Measures, and in some cases states were defining these rather late, or very close to July 15th, and they were very rough draft of what the State Performance Measure was going to be. You’ve undoubtedly been working towards these measures, and these have tightened up and cleaned up in your terms of your definitions, and the data you’re collecting. Please, please, look at the State Performance Measure detail sheets. This is really important, because some of them are very green. The title is defined, but there is no other real explanation in it concerning significance, concerning definitions if the numerator and denominator aren’t really clear, and what’s even more important or perhaps the most important thing, is the unit/unit type are defined on this sheet. You have to do this this year. And the reason I say that because you’re going to start providing data this year against the State Performance Measures and that unit/unit type--in other words, is there a percentage? Is it a rate per thousand? Is it a rate per ten thousand? If you do not define it on the detail sheet, once you start entering numbers on the tracking form for those measures, it doesn’t know how to calculate. The calculation is defined on the detail sheet itself, so whether it’s a scale, or whether it’s a percentage, or whether it’s a ratio, make sure it’s defined on the detail sheet, or else the data you enter in, you’ll get caught. You won’t be able to--you’ll get error messages because it’s trying to figure out a calculation that doesn’t exist. So please, look at that.
Form 1 is now checked for required fields, and the required fields are identified. Remember Form 1 is the SF424 that you, as you enter data in the financial forms, it populates form 1, and then you have to provide other key data as to point of contact. And it’s identified on Form 1. And that’s checked in the 424. I strongly encourage, in fact stress, that you use this to generate your SF424 that you print out, sign and mail, because one of the things that’s going to happen when the system shuts down is that data is going to be then sent over to Grants Management that’s on Form 1. So this data is going to be pushed into the Grants Management System, the electronic handbooks. And we’re going to provide that. So whatever’s on Form 1 is what we’re going to send to them.
Form 10 is now checked for required fields. This had been pre-populated in the past. This is the state profile. It had been pre-populated year after year after year. People stopped looking at it. And they stopped updating it. So it’s not going to be pre-populated anymore. You have to complete it each year. You’ll have access to last year’s, of course, in the application itself, and you’ll be able to then cut and paste and edit accordingly.
Form 20 and 21, the Health Status Indicators as mentioned earlier are required now. And that will be checked in the form status checker.
Enhancements: Okay, how many people had trouble making PDF’s of their documents right before July 15th last year? A lot of people did. Step back. The way made PDF’s is that you were generating them real time. In other words, you put a request in, and the database was gathering everything and making it into a PDF and then tried to send to you. The amount of activity on the server in gathering the data affected this time, the speed, the timeouts at your state level and state server site, on your server and our server, created multiple problems that created problems in making the PDF easy to get. The idea was to create this thing that happens real time and it became a point of frustration. So it looks the same in terms of the interface. I mean, you go in there and you’re going to click a button to request a PDF versus generate a PDF. You’re not actually making it at real-time.
What happens is the request goes in queue, it’s generated on the server, and then it’s posted within 10 minutes of your request. So there’s not this real-time timeout issue. When you want to go in--you put the request, you click on the request for the PDF, go work someplace else in the system, come back in, and there your PDF’s will be. And then you can just download it. It will be much easier on everybody, and it should solve the problem with getting PDF of your files. One of the biggest things that is on the table, and we’re investigating wand working on right now, is ways to generate a Word version of the narrative, with automatic paginated table of contents.
The goal is to have this capability in place by the July 15th deadline, maybe sooner, but we want to have it there, so that by the time those final PDF’s are generated, that the table of contents that everyone shares are the same. Everyone’s not generating different HTML
files with different pagination, and that makes it much easier at the time of review.
So let’s just step back and this is a review for all of you, since it’s been several months. Those of you who have been in the system, and for those of you who haven’t, this is a great opportunity for an introduction. We’re going to take a look around. Remember, you access it via the Internet, save your data on the forms, and as you save the data the data is stored on the HRSA server. If you cancel or migrate out of the form without saving, you will lose your data, so be very careful, and make sure you save data on each form. Use Internet Explorer 6.0 or higher, and coordinate with your State IT department to set it up if you need to. Remember there are 30-minute timeouts, and at the 29-minute mark you get a warning that pops up, so turn off your pop-up blocker when you’re working in the Title V Information System so you get that message. This will warn you that you have one minute to respond. In general, you timeout mostly when you’re working in text so be very, very careful when you’re composing text online, because that eats up time.
Registration. You will need to register in the system. Each state’s allowed six users, and the states identify the users and send them to us. Come March 15th, for security reasons, we have to mail you, through snail mail, your user name and registration code. You’ll use that registration code to go into the system, and it allows you to then setup your own password that you can go in.
You save your data as you work, realize there are notes icons on each page to enter notes that you would like to have read with regard to the data you enter. You have instruction links. You have the guidance link all on that page as well. Remember numeric fields cannot have commas. Text fields have character limitations. Only one person from your state can access the single format at any one time, but multiple users can be in the system, just not in the same form.
Note fields aren’t pre-populated from year to year, but the historical notes associated with that form are available for you to reuse if you need to cut and paste and edit. Be careful when copying notes, because of the renumbering of some of the performance measures--the Health Systems Capacity Indicators. They’re tied to the numbering in last year’s application.
Text fields, again, remember, have character limitations. The important thing to do with regard to the narrative in the major text sections, of course, is compose this offline and use the character count in Word or Word Perfect to help you figure out how many characters you have to stay within the limits, hen cut and copy/paste into the section. Again, be very, very careful about being caught composing for a length of time without saving. Save religiously in those text area sections when you’re working in them. Otherwise what will happen is if you timeout you’ll lose what you’ve been working on, since the last save.
Don’t use bullets or other special characters in this. Remember you’re entering it into creating a HTML page, and those sometimes will translate into very strange characters. So do not use those. Hard returns do not count towards your character limit. And use the character count on the page to help monitor.
Narrative. You can provide attachments. Remember you can’t provide tables, graphs, maps within the narrative text itself. What you can do is provide an attachment to the section that illustrates what you're talking about, that it may have a table or graph or other kind of graphic. Be consistent in your naming. And the important thing, as a reminder, people have gotten really good about this, but don’t use attachments to work around the length limitations. I always love that when I see that. “See attachment”, and the narrative continues.
Data validations. The National Performance Measures from Children’s Special Health Care Needs Survey that data from 2005 will be pre-populated with the data entered last year. And then you may edit as needed.
Completing PM’s. Health Systems Capacity Indicators and HIS’s, the multi-year, remember you can provide actual or estimated data, or in lieu of data a note is acceptable for the reporting year. Beyond the reporting year, data is needed. Remember your ALCA measures are recommended but they’re optional. And important for the territories, realize that many of the PM’s, HSCI’s and HSI’s that may not apply to you, that all you have to do is write a note saying, for example, “Medicaid does not apply to us.” You don’t have to put any data in. You just put the note in.
So the dates, dates for the 2007 application and accessing it. Again, registration information is going to be sent out on the 15th, the Ides of March. April 1, we’re looking to turn on the system for everyone, and then you can go in and register and begin work. And the deadline is July 15th. The URL is printed out for you, again, if you go the MCHB’s homepage, you go to data, go to the Title V Information System. There will be a state login link that occurs that will open up on April 1, and then bookmark it, and you can go straight there. We have learning labs over the next couple days, where you can come in and actually look at the system. We’re there the whole time, 10:00 to 5:00 on Monday, and on Tuesday, we’re from 8:00 to 5:00. And you want to call the Call Center if you have any problems. You can always ask for me, or E.J. by name. We will help you. You can call there, and they’ll be trained and be ready to answer your questions.
What I want to do right now is--just--we’re going to take a look. Take a look at the system. For those of you who haven’t seen it--Joel, do you mind if I go in with Indiana?
So this would be the data entry page here, and you would type in your username and password, and it would take you into the system, as soon as it loads up. When you come in, you come into the main menu. And as you can see, each form is hyper-linked. Is there some way to turn out the lights a little bit? I guess not. It’s kind of hard. You’re hyper-linked to the form. You can use the view to view a version of the form. Program and administrative forms are for the most part are empty and are ready for data. Here’s an example of Form 6 for Indiana. If we look at 'view historical notes,' what that will do is it allows us to see the notes that Indiana wrote last year, if they wish to reuse them for this year. They could then copy a note, or write a note into the form itself. So we could type in note and save. And if we refresh, what you’ll notice is that the note icon changes from red to blue, indicating a note is present. As you can also see is that there are notes associated with each field of data, that you can write a note to the data itself, in that row. Looks familiar, doesn’t it?
So here we go to the National Performance Measures. Remember we talked about the new ones, the revise for National Performance Measure 11. This is the percent of mothers who breastfeed their infants at 6 months of age. And, I believe, Michelle, you’d like to--you want to finish up, and then we’ll talk about these things? Again, as you can see here, with this new measure is if you come over here, you can see you can’t enter data in for years prior to 2005, but the baseline data would be provided for 2005, and then you can provide your objectives for the next 5 years. The other thing I would like to show you is, again, we talked about that retired 11. It’s right down here, so you can report your data that you’ve been collecting for mothers who breastfeed their infants at a hospital discharge.
Let’s go and look at the narrative main menu. Looks familiar. Again, you this is where you can attach the files. But realize that we have a whole new section called Health Status Indicators. When you come over to this section, this is where you have 30,000 characters o talk about the Health Status Indicators, similar in structure to the Health Systems Capacity Indicators from the previous guidance. The Health Systems Capacity Indicators--this is where--that’s been now broken down into each of these sections for each of these Health Systems Capacity Indicators. So you can come in here, your data’s displayed, and this data is the data that’s entered in on Form 17. And then you’re able to discuss. Again, the instructions from the guidance are printed right above the form, so you’re able to remind--it reminds you what you need to focus on.
One of the things that I want to just remind everyone to really use the forms status checker to help you, I don’t know about you but when I--this is a daunting task. There is so much that goes into it, you guys worked so hard on it. The forms status checker, when you go into it, you have to update the status to see what’s still outstanding on a form that needs to be complete. It doesn’t mean that you’ve entered the right thing it just means you need to complete it, with the correct information, of course. But as you can see, you can scroll through this, and it tells you this hasn’t been started, this hasn’t been started, these things all needed, this is all needed and it’s a little daunting when you look at it right now. But as you work on it, and you update this, it keeps getting shorter and shorter and shorter. And I don’t know about you, but when I check off on a checklist, I feel good as I see it go to complete. So use this throughout the process. It reminds you of something that you may not have thought about, or you overlooked. But it also allows you to, you know, take satisfaction in the work that everyone’s doing.
Again, 20 and 21 are now on here, and as you can see there’s many things that need to be complete.
And what I’d like to last point out at this point is the print version, and show you how this has slightly changed. Here’s the rest to generate the PDF. In other words, you click here. Your request has been received. It will take about 10 minutes to generate the PDF’s. Please come back after that period to retrieve. You say “OK”. The text changes to let you know that something’s in the queue. And then when you come back, it’ll show up on here. So you close this window, and you can go continue to work. Ten minutes later you come back in and it’ll be posted there for you to download. This should probably--stop everybody from having any last minute, “Oh, I forgot to get my PDF” or “I can’t get it generated, and it’s July 15th, and things are coming down to the wire.”
In any case, come by. See us. It was really lonely two years ago when we did learning lab no one came, because everyone seemed to know it, but it’s been a couple of years. Come play around. Stephanie, E.J., Raj, myself will be there. If you don’t even want to do it and you just want to look over someone’s shoulder and you just want to come by to visit, please do. It’s really helpful. I strongly encourage the islands to come, and try it out if you haven’t. And especially if you want to work on those Performance Measures and Health Systems Capacity Indicators that you don’t need to complete, to just try that out. Make sure that you understand that you don’t have to put data in, that you can just write a note.
So. That is pretty much it. This is like clockwork. Every February, March, we get together and have this discussion. Thank you for your time and attention.
So, any questions, yes?
JOEL: I just wanted to mention for anybody that’s not done it, the first time that I did this, the learning labs were just incredibly useful situation because there was no stress involved, you’ve got people right there that know what they’re doing. You really (inaudible) help you. So if you haven’t done it before or you’ve only done it once, I came twice in a row, and it was really, really very helpful.
CHRIS DYKTON: Thank you, Joel. Yes?
UNKNOWN SPEAKER: How does this relate to the www.grants.gov (inaudible)?
CHRIS DYKTON: Good question. The Title V Information System stands alone in terms of the electronic handbooks, and the discretionary grant information system. And the discretionary grant data that you have for other grants. The block grant itself is not tied to that. We’ll take the data and then provide it over there. So it’s not linked. So you don’t have to register in the EHB’s to get in the Title V Information System. In terms of www.grants.gov, at this point in time we are providing the SF 424 directly over to EHB’s from here, and not going through www.grants.gov. However, I would strongly encourage and recommend that your state, if it’s not registered in www.grants.gov, do so. It’s very possible, considering how much change has been going on over the past couple of months, that at some point within the next couple months, from on high it comes down that the SF424 itself has to be submitted through www.grants.gov for the block grant. It could happen. Right now, it’s not. We don’t know it’s going to happen, but it could. If that is indeed the case, the registration processes must be complete in order to provide that. So please, get your state, or talk to the powers that be, get your authorizing official to make sure that they’re registered within www.grants.gov. So if it has to be provided through that then you’re ready to do it. Yes?
UNKNOWN SPEAKER: Once you’re in ww.grants.gov for anything, (inaudible) there then for everything, or do you have to register for each program? Because I know (inaudible).
CHRIS DYKTON: Right.
UNKNOWN SPEAKER: Does that mean, then, that we’re registered, or would we have to re-do that now with the block grant?
CHRIS DYKTON: Remember it’s the organization that’s registered, so if your organization--if the state itself is registered, and the block grant is uses that same authorizing official and goes out, you’re already in there. I know Eddie did. Any other questions? I was that good, huh? No questions. Yes?
UNKNOWN SPEAKER: Can your PowerPoint be available on the Web site?
CHRIS DYKTON: Yes. You’ll be able to download it, and it’s generally the critical highlights of the TVIS, and it will also be in AMCHP will be able to have it to download as well.
Joan? You know, I have a story. Joan and I have been talking since I was back at Georgetown, right? For years, I’ve never seen her. I never met her. This is the first time--I’ve talk to Joan for years. This is the first time I lay eyes on you. Hi, Joan.
JOAN: I hate to disappoint you with such a boring question after all that, but you said that Form 16, to (inaudible) carefully, did you just mean our new Form 16, or did you mean to change something on the National Performance Measure Form 16?
CHRIS DYKTON: I was addressing your State Performance Measures you defined last year that resulted from the needs assessment and your priority needs. Make sure that they are complete and particular have the unit/unit type in them. The National Performance Measures things you won’t edit. They’re there for your view. And so, you know, they’ll be there online for you to use, but you don’t have to change anything on those. Anybody else?
So I’m going to give this over to Cassie and Michelle. They have a couple of clarifications on things in the guidance. But otherwise, thank you. I’m sorry it’s so warm in here. I thought I was going to faint there for a second.