HomeMy WebLinkAbout20032567.tiff STATE OF COLORADO
COLORADO DEPARTMENT OF HUMAN SERVICES AND
COLORADO DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH CARE POLICY&FINANCING ��pE COQ
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Colorado Benefits Management System �� ' ,t
455 Sherman Street,Suite 390 * e G'� ♦*
Denver,Colorado 80203
Phone( (720)570-5233 i 7
FAR: 1720)570-5202
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August 18, 2003
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Dear State Legislators,County Commissioners and County Directors of Human Services:
We are communicating with you on behalf of the Colorado Benefits Management System (CBMS)
Executive Oversight Committee. As you are probably aware,the Colorado Benefits Management System
project is in the final months prior to going live in April 2004. We wish to thank you for your
engagement in the project and for your county social services' management and staff efforts. While the
issues are not easy, without the excellent assistance and problem solving efforts of the counties,
implementing this system would.not be possible.
You are probably hearing that this stage is where the workload on your county staff is most concentrated.
Your staff will have a significant workload attached to converting their paper records and correcting
information from the legacy systems for entry into the Colorado Benefits Management System.
Workload issues include:
• Ensuring that the existing data in the legacy computer systems is complete
• Gathering client data that is not available in Legacy systems that is necessary to complete the
client/case information in CBMS.
The State is taking measures to mitigate the impacts of the data conversion but there remains a significant
workload on the counties. The State is also taking measures to extend the time available to counties for
the data conversion activities by allowing cases to be updated with the client data that is not available in
Legacy systems over several months after the system is live, thus spreading the workload over an
increased amount of time.
While CBMS does not have specific budget requirements of the counties per se, this workload is not
insignificant, varies by county, and must be accomplished on time. The workload will be intense over the
next months before April 2004 and for a period of time after the system goes live. As such, there is a
one-time resource commitment necessary. We will continue to work toward ways to minimize the impact
to the extent possible.
The State continues to work to identify additional things we may do to support the counties. On August
5, 2003, the departments submitted a request to the General Assembly that we be permitted to earn
additional federal funds without the loss of State matching dollars for the purpose of addressing three
areas of impact: backlogged Medicaid caseload at the CHP+ site; Medicaid-related systems changes; and
the largest portion of the request, county conversion and implementation workload. Over time, the
project has focused on how to assist the counties through what is clearly a material workload. Attachment
A contains mitigation actions taken to date. The majority of this information has already been presented
to both the County Commissioners and Directors.
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Our Mission is to Design and Deliver Quality Human Services that Improve the Safety and Independence of the People of
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We are aware of briefing materials presented to the directors by county representatives on July 21
(Pueblo, Colorado), July 28 (Grand Junction, Colorado) and August 1 (Broomfield, Colorado). The
briefing materials contained numerous factual errors that appear to have shaped, at least in part, county
decisions as to whether or not to support the project. We will be formally responding to the leading
concerns outlined.
We are aware that the county representatives have indicated the conversion activities would require $28.8
million to accomplish. There is effectively half a fiscal year available in which to spend this $28.8
million. This analysis then, would suggest that if the average annual cost of staff and their operating
expenses were estimated at $45,000 each, and we needed them for 6 months (or half the full year cost),
there would be a need for 1,280 staff to accomplish the data conversion and implementation activities.
This is not a reasonable estimate of the workload impact.
For those who have seen the demonstration of performing eligibility determinations within CBMS, a case
has been run through all of the steps necessary to determine eligibility within a thirty-minute period. The
thirty-minute time required included the time needed to describe to the audience each step in the process.
The county representatives suggest the time required will be on the order of 2.5 hours.
Despite the State's mitigation work and extensive efforts to inform the counties, several counties'
commissioners have communicated to the State their lack of support for proceeding with the .
implementation of CBMS (as documented by CSSDA on Friday, August 8, 2003). Denver's former
Mayor,Wellington Web,is on record supporting going forward with CBMS.
Because of the frequency of well-intentioned but often incorrect information and the need to be timely,
with this letter we are kicking off a newsletter that will go to each of you at least once a month but more
frequently as needed. The objective of the letter will be to address frequently asked questions, such as the
project's approach to converting data. We hope that through the wide distribution and frequent
publication,we will be able to address your concerns in a timely fashion. Please do not hesitate to contact
us.
We invite you to visit the CBMS website found at www.cbms.state.co.us. The website contains extensive
information including such things as project background, history, status and activities. The tab called
"Data Sheets"speaks directly to the data conversion requirements mentioned above.
If you have questions,please contact Michael G. Whitlock(phone: 720-570-5205).
Sincerely,
•
en einertson a in ston ammons
Execu ve Director E ecutive D ctor
Department of Health Care Department of Human Services
Policy and Financing
Cc: CBMS Executive Oversight Committee
• CBMS Conversion Process
The following is an overview of the conversion process and how data collection into the
new Colorado Benefits Management System (CBMS) is supported:
Conversion of data into CBMS occurs through a three-step process.
1. The first step is the automated conversion of up to 2,014 fields of data from the
Legacy systems. Jefferson, Denver, Fremont, and La Plata counties provided
support to the project team in identifying comparable fields/data in the Legacy
systems in relation to CBMS (also known as, "Data Mapping"). Rules were
developed for handling discrepancies between like individuals receiving multiple
services, such as different addresses. For example, the conversion process
considers the address to be different even if one service says "South" versus "S."
Counties will receive "Audit Exception" reports, which will identify
errors/discrepancies that the conversion process finds with current data. Some
counties have admitted that they have used some fields in the Legacy systems for
purposes other than the intents for those fields. Audit Exception reports may
identify discrepancies if Legacy fields are misused by specific counties.
Examples of errors that may be found in current Legacy data are items such as a
birth dates that are not valid dates or parents having"minus two" (-2) children.
To reduce the cleanup efforts for counties, the CBMS project team is correcting as
many errors as possible through the conversion programs.
2. The second step is the "Data Collector." The Data Collector (a web-based
computer program)will be used to collect information for: Long Term Care,
Vehicle, County Diversion, Burial, Real Property Detail, Life Insurance Detail,
Annuity Detail, and Other Personal Property Detail. This data is manually
collected from each applicable case and input to the Data Collector. At
conversion this information will be automatically merged with converted data into
CBMS and will supersede information that may have been converted as a result of
the first conversion step.
3. The third step is collecting data used to determine the client's eligibility that is not
available in the Legacy systems. The data collected will be manually entered into
CBMS after conversion. The process of collecting this data occurs before
conversion while the process of entering it into CBMS must occur post-conversion.
To correctly determine eligibility today, counties must collect data that is not
stored in the Legacy systems. Because CBMS is an"eligibility determination
system" (whereas the Legacy systems record eligibility results), CBMS needs this
data(along with data that does reside in the Legacy Systems) to correctly
determine eligibility and to calculate correct benefit amounts. In other words,
when the client originally applied for benefits, the data that CBMS needs should
have been collected by the technician and documented in the Legacy systems or
in the client's case file. If the county technician did not retain this information in
the client's file (to document how eligibility and the benefit amounts were
determined), then the information will have to be re-created.
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• CBMS Conversion Process
The CBMS project team created tools to support the data collection process.
• The support tools are available on-line at www.cbms.state.co.us include:
of CBMS Data Sheets—electronically in Microsoft Word.
o Data Elements Checklist— a tool to assist users in identifying the Data Sheets that
are applicable to,a case through a series of"yes/no" questions. "Yes" responses on
this document trigger the completion of the corresponding Data Sheets.
o Data Elements Collection Process— a step-by-step model for identifying and
collecting data elements unique to CBMS, for both ongoing (or OPEN) and NEW
cases.
o Data Sheets Guide—provides descriptions of the designations, fields, and
symbols used on the Data Sheets. �I
o Regional Information Exchange (RIB) Workshop #3 —This workshop was
conducted at 10 sites throughout the State. The workshop addressed the programs
and systems impacted by CBMS, the Conversion Process, Data Conversion, the
Data Collector, the,CBMS'Data Sheets, Data Cleansing Reports, and Pre-
Conversion Assistance.
o Sample State Aid to Needy Disabled (AND) Case—provides a visual
representation of the documents that must be reviewed, completed, and/or
referenced to complete the applicable Data Sheets for a given case.
o "askcbms" Data Sheets Questions - common questions about the Data Sheets with
their associated answers.
• Additional Support tools on-line at www.cbms.state.co.us include:
o The County Strategic Planning Implementation Group (CSPIG) and the project
team developed a prioritization worksheet that identifies which types of cases
should be completed based upon the amount of typical activity on a case and the
duration of the services. It recommends that cases with high volumes of activity
be completed near conversion to minimize the maintenance effort of the
worksheet and cases with services that will no longer be active at conversion are
to be left alone. This prioritization worksheet has been incorporated into the Data
Elements Checklist.
o The Routt County Department of Human Services developed an electronic
version of the CBMS Data Sheets that allows users to enter,print, and/or save
data on the CBMS Data Sheets. The Routt County Data Sheets contain the Data
Elements Checklist received from the CBMS project with hyperlinks to the
individual Data Sheets. Instead of printing the Checklist and checking off each
item that applies to a particular client/case, the user can just click on the hyperlink
for each applicable item. The corresponding Data Sheet will open automatically.
The user is able to either enter data directly into the fields on the Data Sheets or
make selections from the "CHOOSE ONE" drop-down menus that display the
Reference Tables linked to the individual Data Sheets.
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CBMS Conversion Process
o The County Strategic Planning Implementation Group (CSPIG), lead by
Arapahoe County, enhanced the collection of the state-provided worksheets by
providing another way of automating the CBMS Data Sheets. The advantages
they identified included: 1) the Reference Tables are incorporated into the Data
Sheets, 2) data collection is faster, 3) the number of Data Sheets required is
drastically reduced by 40% to 75% (the actual number of pages required), 4) data
' is typed rather than hand written (a great advantage when entering the data into
CBMS after conversion), and 5) information can be spell-checked. The Data
Sheets are templates that were created in WORD 2000 and work very well with
WORD 1995 or 1997.
Subsequent to the production of their automated Data Sheets, CSPIG developed a
list that they believe would reduce the number of fields for data collection for
each program area. If counties were to adopt usage of the "reduced" Data Sheets,
they would need to do so with the understanding that there would be an increased
potential for error. If upon entry into CBMS it were found that not all needed
data had been collected, then the county would have to take remedial action to
obtain the missing data.
• In addition to the support tools previously described, the CBMS project team, with
support from the County CBMS Representatives, analyzed ways to improve the data
collection. The following Change Requests were submitted but were subsequently
not approved for Implementation.
o Change Request#735, "Data Collector Expansion"
This change requested the expansion of the existing CBMS Data Collector
functionality to capture data on Non-Financial, Income, Resources, and Expenses
Data Sheets for post conversion entry. The Data Collector would not upload this
additional data into CBMS but would produce reports to facilitate accurate
manual entry into CBMS. On May 23, 2003, the State received a Detailed Design
Assessment (DDA) from EDS. It indicated that the work on CR#735 could not be
completed before December 2003 and would cost $995,899 to implement.
Because system implementation would occur within 3 —4 months after this
change request could be completed any benefit realized by doing CR#735 would
be minimal. Given the high cost and the minimal benefit that could be realized,
CR#735 was canceled on June 6, 2003.
o Change Request#736, "Automated Upload of Data into CBMS".
This change requested the load of data collected as proposed in CR#735 (Data
Collector Expansion) into CBMS as batch input, after performing minimal edits
on the collected fields (such as, making sure the numeric fields have only
numbers, etc. On May 14, 2003, the State received an order of magnitude
estimate from EDS. It indicated that the project would experience a minimum
delay of 6 months in the implementation date of CBMS and would spend between
5 and 10 million dollars to implement. Given that CBMS cannot entertain
moving the implementation date and that the remaining CBMS contingency fund
is far less than 5 million dollars, the functionality requested in CR#736 could not
be provided. Therefore, CR#736 was canceled on May 23, 2003.
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CBMS Conversion Process
• The CBMS project team enhanced the system to "freeze"the last payment made in , •
the Legacy system in CBMS for a limited period of time. Change Request #738,
"Conversion Case Program Flag,"was developed to increase the time users have to
complete entry of the data worksheets into CBMS for converted cases. On May 23,
2003, the State received a Detailed Design Assessment (DDA) from EDS for
CR#738. The project team concluded that there would be substantial benefits
realized by implementing this change request, including:
o This Change Request ensures that benefits will not be inadvertently interrupted,.
post-implementation. '
o This Change Request allows counties additional time to complete the input of the •
information in the "Data Collection Worksheets" (a.k.a., "Data Sheets").
Counties will receive a weekly report identifying the volume of converted
individuals who have not had their eligibility determination updated in the months
following implementation.
o The impact on project schedule and cost were determined to be manageable.
Therefore, the CBMS Change Control Board approved CR#738 on June 6, 2003,
at a cost to the project of$40,882.
•
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