Whitewashing the status of the NYS Early Intervention Program

In response to questions by members of the Legislature as part of the February 3, 2014 Joint Budget Hearing on the 2014‐15 Executive Budget for Health/Medicaid, the New York State Department of Health Early Intervention Program provided a progress report with the transition to the State fiscal agent.No one stopped to think that self-assessment for progress reporting might not be the most accurate measure. Perhaps the most shocking misrepresentation in the report was regarding timeliness of payment.  They report that 2013 fourth quarter mean time to payment was 14 days following claim submission.  As a mean involves calculation including all ranges of payment, reporting a number without capturing the full range of data is a an absolute statistical manipulation.  A more reasonable and reliable statistic is to look at second quarter payments, which hopefully have all been compiled and adjudicated, except for extreme outliers.  That statistic is that the mean payment time was 47 days, which is much more consistent with reality that I have experienced.I would like to congratulate the Department of Health for finding a way to report that their fourth quarter payments are happening within 14 days of billing.  It is a stunning claim and I suspect that they are hoping we have a dumbed-down legislature who all have heads swimming with common core math methodologies.  Reasonable people will understand that reporting descriptive statistics without gat...
Source: ABC Therapeutics Occupational Therapy Weblog - Category: Occupational Therapists Tags: health insurance policy Source Type: blogs