Round Up
June 2018

In this Round Up:

  • OPRA Golf Outing
  • Recent OPRA Webinars Now Available
  • Electronic Visit Verification
  • C3P(O) Graduations and National Recognition
  • DSP Rentention Calculator
  • MyHIPAA Guide Update
  • Advocates for Ohio's Future New Manager
  • Conference Speaker Proposals
  • Upcoming Events
Has your agency recently been featured locally for their hard work? We want to hear about it and include it in the next Round Up!
OPRA Golf Outing
Thank you to the over 70 golfers that came out to the Urbana Country Club last week to support the OPRA PAC! We hope everyone enjoyed the day and hope to see everyone next year! All the money raised will help ensure OPRA can continue our advocacy work on behalf of your agency, staff, and the individuals you support. You can view additional pictures from the Golf Outing by visiting the OPRA Facebook Page.
Recent OPRA Webinars
OPRA recently held two free webinars open to members and nonmembers regarding how to build a better DSPOhio provider profile and leveraging STABLE Accounts as an employee benefit. If you were not able to make the webinars, you can watch the webinars by clicking on the links below.


Electronic Visit Verification
OPRA is closely watching the evolution of Electronic Visit Verification (EVV) on both a federal and state level. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) recently released an Informational Bulletin and Frequently Asked Questions document to provide guidance to states and providers on implementing EVV. You can read the publications by clicking on the buttons to the right.

There continues to be national concern that the January 1, 2019 EVV implementation date does not allow for enough time for states to develop and properly test their EVV. In response to these national concerns and CMS' guidance documents, Senators Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) introduced a bill in the US Senate to delay the official implementation date of EVV to January 1, 2020. OPRA fully supports this bill as it gives time to answer questions around the implementation of EVV specifically in our field. We would like to thank our national partners at ANCOR for their hard work in helping to get this bill introduced. Read ANCOR's response to the bill introduction here.


Community Connections Career Partnership- Ohio Program Graduations
OPRA would like to extend a big congratulations to all of the high school students enrolled in the Community Connections Career Partnership (Ohio) (C3P(O)) Program!

Earlier this month, C3P(O) Project Manager Janice Hall and OPRA President Mark Davis attended Rushmore Academy (top right image) , Medina High School (middle right image) , Clermont Northeastern High School (bottom right image) and Franklin Heights High School (bottom left image) C3P(O) graduations.
At Rushmore Academy six students received their DSPaths Certificate of Initial Proficiency and one student receive their DSPaths Certificate of Advanced Proficiency. Three Rushmore Academy graduates have accepted positions with OPRA Member RHAM. One student at Medina County High School received their Basic Certificate, seven received their Certificate of Initial Proficiency and one student received their Certificate of Advanced Proficiency. One graduate has accepted employment with provider TLC. Five students from Clermont Northeastern High School received their Certificate of Initial Proficiency. At Franklin Heights High School, seven students received their Certificate of Initial Proficiency and eleven students received their Certificates of Advanced Proficiency.
C3P(O) National Recognition
OPRA is excited to announce that C3P(O) recently received national recognition for the programs innovative approach to developing the direct support professional workforce.

Impact: C3P(O) is a featured article in the 2018 winter/spring edition of Impact, a newsletter that "contains strategies, research, and success stories in specific focus areas related to persons with intellectual, developmental, and other disabilities" published by The University of Minnesota's Institute for Community Integration. The newsletter will be published online within the next few weeks here and hard copies are available for reading at the OPRA Office. The article gives an overview of the program and comments from a student who have participate in the program. It can be found on pages 43 and 44 of the newsletter.

Moving Mountains Award: Earlier this week OPRA and the Ohio Alliance of Direct Support Professionals (OADSP) were notified that the C3P(O) program was a recipient of the 2017-2018 Moving Mountains Award sponsored by the National Alliance of Direct Support Professionals (NADSP), ANCOR, and the University of Minnesota's Institute on Community Integration. The award " recognizes organizations using leading practices in direct support workforce development that result in improved outcomes for people with disabilities." OPRA and OADSP will receive the award this July at the Reinventing Quality Conference in Baltimore, Maryland.

For more information on C3P(O) please visit the OPRA website or email OPRA's C3P(O) Project Manager Janice Hall.
Direct Support Professionals Retention Calculator
On May 25th, OPRA staff attended a presentation by Dr. Amy Hewitt, Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota's Institute on Community Integration on the shortage of Direct Support Professionals (DSP). During the presentation, Dr. Hewitt shared a free, fillable tool agencies can use to calculate a variety of agency-specific workforce statistics. This tool may be helpful in conducting audits of your workforce retention. If your agency does not already use a tool to calculate workforce statistics, OPRA encourages providers to think about using tools like this to better understand your workforce and predict future workforce needs.

MyHIPAA Guide Update
At the recent annual conference of the Association of Professional Developmental Disability Administrators (APDDA), MyHIPAA Guide Representatives had the pleasure of hearing from administrators from facilities in Corpus Christi and San Antonio, Texas and Miami, Florida who spoke about their experiences preparing for and recovering from Hurricane Harvey and Hurricane Irma last fall. Part of building an emergency preparedness plan includes making provisions to meet the needs of residents with disabilities in the event of an evacuation. Read more at   http://hipaa.opra.org/ .


Advocates for Ohio's Future Hires New Manager
Advocates for Ohio's Future (AOF) , a large human service coalation which is co-chaired by OPRA President Mark Davis, recently hired Kelsey Bergfeld to provide leadership to AOF's legislative agenda. We are excited to see how Kelsey's experience can further strengthen the human services industry's advocacy efforts! Welcome Kelsey!

Call for Speakers for OPRA's 2018 Fall Conference and Awards Ceremony
Have you ever thought about speaking at an OPRA conference but have been too nervous to submit a proposal? Now is the time to conquer that fear! OPRA is currently accepting proposals for speaking at the Fall Conference!

There are no professional requirements to speak at our conferences. We encourage anyone with an interesting and relevant topic to the field to submit a proposal.


Upcoming OPRA Events
6/5: OPRA Finance Committee Meeting - This meeting was originally scheduled to be at Cap City Fine Diner. Cap City is temporarily closed for renovations. If you are interested in attending the meeting please email Christine Touvelle for the new meeting location.







For a full calendar of events, please visit the OPRA website.
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