Chesterfield County Public Schools

The Challenge:

When Amy first started in her role, Chesterfield was utilizing random moments in time studies, so considering a full Medicaid and Service Management solution was certainly going to cause a shift in current processes. Ultimately, Amy felt passionate that a focus on universal documentation and service tracking, regardless of Medicaid eligibility, was necessary to ensure equity for students.

Without a central repository to house all service provider records, service providers were left to maintain their own disparate systems and records to document their services. This left Chesterfield in a situation where it was difficult, if not impossible, to access the data and records to demonstrate the services students were receiving as well as the impact of those services.

Ultimately, Amy knew that implementing a new program like this would require a vendor that could provide the support and involvement needed to ensure the successful adoption of the program, which Amy strongly considered when selecting a technology partner to support Chesterfield through this transition.

The Results:

Frontline Medicaid & Service Management provided the system needed to kick off positive change in the district. The Special Education teams were seen in a new light now with data to support the services and work they were doing.

We can stand on a firm foundation of data. I think it’s helped build trust with our IEP teams that we’re not just willy-nilly dismissing or changing services or changing goals. We have the data, we can show you, we can prove it to you.”

Data

Frontline provides Amy with the data she needs to support her team.

From an admin perspective, it’s just the access to everything. There’s nothing that a provider does that I can’t look up.”

Amy’s focus on having providers document every single service has benefited the district in a number of ways.

In my mind, if you don’t write it down it didn’t happen. It has absolutely helped us maximize our reimbursement, which is obviously the most important thing in any Medicaid program, but it’s also been really beneficial in legal situations where we’ve been able to pull documentation for providers to provide to our legal team and get through that mediation or due process with less stress on the provider, without having to find or compile records.”

Accountability & Compliance

Accountability and compliance are critically important in special education programs. Knowing that there is a single source of truth for service provider records has allowed Amy and her team, as well as school and district administration, to confidently review student service records at any time, knowing they have access to the information they need.

Frontline Medicaid & Service Management has been beneficial for parents who are calling administrative teams saying, ‘I don’t think my kid is getting speech’ or ‘I don’t think my kid is getting occupational therapy.’ Especially with our itinerant staff that travel a lot, parents and teachers just think they’re not seeing kids, and we’re able to pull that information and back up and support our providers from an administrative standpoint without having to say, ‘let me check on that and get back to you.’ We’re able to immediately say, ‘Nope. They saw them on the following days. So, from a compliance and accountability standpoint, in addition to the reimbursement, it’s been hugely beneficial to us.”

Medicaid Support Manager

Frontline supports Chesterfield with a Client Success Team as well as a Medicaid Support Manager. These roles are instrumental in supporting Amy and her team. Even after years of using the system, Amy looks forward to her monthly meetings with her Medicaid Support Manager. Amy’s relationship with her Medicaid Support Manager has been instrumental in ensuring that Chesterfield is running an efficient and compliant Medicaid program that supports all children- while maximizing reimbursements.

Our Medicaid Support Manager will say ‘here are some like low-hanging fruit that you can fix like missing signatures, missing plans of care, things like that.’ It’s nice for me to be able to kind of see that. It’s nice to see the sort of things that aren’t getting claimed and why they aren’t getting cleaned and what are those exceptions.”

Each month, Amy has a pre-determined time to meet with her Medicaid Support Manager. Just knowing she has time every month to ask questions, allowed her to compile her questions and feel confident she’d be able to work through everything. The Medicaid Support Manager also does a lot of the heavy lifting to help the district maximize reimbursement and works to ensure they aren’t missing out on any of their eligible funding.

The client services team and the client managers are the most amazing people. They’re able to answer all of my questions almost immediately, which I really appreciate. Even if they don’t have the answer, they will look into it and get back to you.”

Conclusion

Shortly after working through the changes of implementing a new Medicaid & Service Management solution, the state implemented a new IEP system, which came with its own set of challenges. Amy feels strongly that they were able to weather that transition more easily than other districts because of the strong foundation of service tracking Chesterfield built with Frontline.

Frontline’s reporting is outstanding, and the data available is accurate and correct, and easily accessible. I find that that’s the biggest complaint I hear from districts that don’t use Frontline. They can’t rely on their data. It’s not accurate. We went to a new statewide IEP system so having a reliable place for data has been really useful in the last two years. Frontline’s reporting is just light years above and beyond what I’ve heard from what other people are using in the State. The data is so much more useful than just Medicaid.”