Attend an Acentra Health MESC session to hear from industry leaders

Acentra Health is thrilled to announce that we will be attending the much-awaited 2023 Medicaid Enterprise Systems Conference. Join us for some exhilarating sessions with industry leaders and take your agency’s strategies to the next level. Gain valuable insights about fellow agency’s lessons learned, the benefits of strong partnerships, and innovative outreach tactics.

What You Need to Know

  • Mark your calendars and take part in our three impactful sessions – additional details listed below.
  • Make sure to swing by our booth #425 to meet our incredible team and experience the cutting-edge solutions offered by Acentra Health.
  • Don’t miss out on the opportunity to schedule a personalized demo with our experts to see how Acentra Health can revolutionize your organization’s strategy.

Session Schedule

Wednesday, August 23 @ 8:00am – 9:00am | Equal Access, Equal Care: Arizona Deploys Data & Technology to Bridge the Digital Divide in Heath Equity

The COVID-19 pandemic uncovered significant gaps in data and technology within underserved populations, resulting in an inadequate understanding of health equity. The vital role that digital technology plays in health equity is to provide visibility into the whole-person view, for a comprehensive and holistic profile of the individual. Leveraging digital technology to improve health equity is at the forefront of Arizona’s priorities. In this session, learn from Arizona stakeholders the data-driven digital initiatives that are moving the needle to address health equity in the state.

 Speakers:

  • Anthony Flot, Chief Technology Officer, Arizona Healthcare Cost Containment System
  • Kristen Challacombe, Deputy Director for Business Operations, Arizona Healthcare Cost Containment System
  • Dr. Ryan Bosch, President, Founder, and Chief Health Information Officer, Socially Determined
  • Dan Lippert, Chief Information Officer, Arizona Healthcare Cost Containment System
  • Nilay Patel, Senior Vice President of Implementations, Acentra Health
  • Verlon Johnson, Chief Strategy Officer, Acentra Health

Wednesday, August 23 @ 1:00pm – 2:00pm | Arizona’s Momentum & Lockstep Multi-Partner Approach to Delivering High Performance during PHE Unwinding & Beyond

In this session, the state and its partners will share information on the complexities, overall experience, lessons learned, considerations, and the coordinated strategy behind the PHE unwind for both member and provider processes – on the way to achieving successful outcomes. The session will highlight how the state continues implementing improvements and measurable results that will have an impact well beyond the end of the unwind.

Speakers:

  • Dan Lippert, Arizona Healthcare Cost Containment System, Chief Information Officer
  • Kristen Challacombe, Arizona Healthcare Cost Containment System, Deputy Director for Business Operations
  • Danielle Klayman, Health & Public Service Delivery Lead, Accenture
  • Nilay Patel, Acentra Health, Senior Vice President of Implementations
  • Verlon Johnson, Chief Strategy Officer, Acentra Health

 Thursday, August 24 @ 9:30am – 10:30am | Creating a Rapidly Responding, Flexible Mechanism for Oregonians During a Public Health Emergency & Beyond

Activities in Oregon during the PHE included discharge planning support to overloaded hospitals, management of Decompression Units, assessments, and placement services for APD clients, and COVID vaccination outreach campaigns. Additional activities Oregon participated in were driven by principles of social and environmental justice and included identifying individuals at high risk for poor health outcomes during a climatic emergency or wildfire smoke exposure. We will review the principles of equity, social justice, and environmental justice and how those principles were used to equitably serve Oregonians during the PHE and discuss lessons learned on how Oregon improved operational baselines for future-state readiness and its success with rapid implementation of a statewide response.

Speakers:

  • Joshua Thompson, Oregon Health Authority, Medicaid FFS Operations
  • Susan Baker, Acentra Health, Senior Vice President of Operations
  • Rae Bauman, Acentra Health, Executive Director
  • Verlon Johnson, Chief Strategy Officer, Acentra Health



CNSI at State HIT Summit 2023 in Baltimore

Connect and Learn from CNSI Clients and Subject Matter Experts at These Educational Sessions

 

 

Roundtable: Public Health Emergency Waiver Unwinding – Lessons Learned From Early Adoption

Tuesday, March 7, 1:30 p.m.

As an early adopter of unwinding from a public health emergency, Arizona has a unique perspective on the execution and project management of unwinding. In this session, the state along with CNSI, will share complexities, its overall experience, lessons learned, considerations, and strategy behind unwinding from a pandemic.

Presenters:

  • Dan Lippert, CIO, Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System (AHCCCS)
  • Marshall Wilmot, Deputy Assistant Director, Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System (AHCCCS)
  • Nilay Patel, CNSI Senior Vice President of Implementations
  • Verlon Johnson, CNSI Chief Strategy Officer

 

Workshop: Accelerating Modernization: Multi-Cloud Engagements

Monday, March 6, 1:00 p.m.

Four years ago, Washington State migrated its MMIS to the cloud. Now the cloudscape is much more diverse. Rather than settling for a single cloud, a thoughtful approach enhances operating across and between clouds. Join us to explore factors like making shared tenancies work for agencies with different data security needs, cost and performance related to moving data between clouds, and more.

Presenters:

  • Jerry Britcher, CIO, Washington State Health Care Authority (HCA)
  • John Harding, CNSI SVP of Managed Services
  • Heidi Robbins Brown, CNSI VP of Medicaid Policy and Programs



NAMD 2023




CNSI at MESC 2022




CNSI at State HIT Summit 2022 in Baltimore

Connect and Learn from CNSI Clients and Subject Matter Experts at These Educational Sessions

 

Modernizing Provider Management: Lessons Learned from the Arizona/Hawaii CMS Certification

Monday, April 18, 1:00 p.m.

CMS Modular Certification demands extensive system documentation production to meet all criteria defined in CMS’s Medicaid Enterprise Certification Toolkit (MECT), which validates that state provider enrollment modules meet applicable statutory and regulatory requirements. Join this workshop to hear from Arizona’s Medicaid program CIO about lessons learned for CMS certification, including generating the institutional will, funding, and knowhow to earn full certification and federal funding.

This workshop will include hands-on activities to address state certification readiness.

Presenters:

  • Dan Lippert, Assistant Director and CIO, Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System (AHCCCS)
  • Eugene Gabriyelov, Technical Director, Division of State Systems, CMCS/CMS
  • Nilay Patel, CNSI Senior Vice President of Implementations
  • Katie DeLorensi, CNSI Project Manager and CMS Certification Lead

 

KEYNOTE SESSION: Thriving in a Changing Medicaid Landscape

Tuesday, April 19, 8:45 a.m.

Technology presents endless opportunities to provide solutions that improve health outcomes and lower cost; simultaneously it presents new challenges. How can states ensure they are ready to meet the next evolution of Medicaid management? Join this roundtable discussion for a cross-functional set of strategies to improve your state’s health change readiness.

Panelists:

  • Vishal Chaudhry, Chief Data Officer, Washington State Health Care Authority
  • Aneesh Chopra, President of CareJourney and first U.S. Chief Technology Officer, on federal healthcare priorities
  • Kat Lawrence, Medicaid Leader for AWS State and Local Government and former Program Director for DC Integrated Health and Human Services Digital Transformation, on technology-enabled agility and policy response
  • Verlon Johnson, CNSI SVP of Corporate Strategy, MACPAC Commissioner, and former CMS Associate Consortium Administrator for Medicaid and CHIP

 

Bucking Tradition: Wyoming’s Historic 19-month MMIS Implementation

Tuesday, April 19, 1:30 p.m.

In the 51 years since the first MMIS was deployed, Wyoming has the only MMIS to be successfully implemented within 19 months of project initiation. Wyoming’s commitment to this historic timeline includes CMS certification with the new Outcomes-Based Certification (OBC) processes, further demonstrating a commitment to Wyoming residents’ whole-person health. Join this session to learn how Wyoming and their partners combined people, process, and technology to achieve this milestone, and what it means for the taxpayers, providers, and communities of Wyoming.

Presenters:

  • Jesse Springer, Medicaid Technology and Business Operations Unit Manager, Wyoming Department of Health
  • Sherry Travis, CNSI Program Director Wyoming Implementation
  • Kevin McFarling, CNSI Chief Delivery Officer & EVP

Visit us at Booth 46 or schedule a meeting here!




CNSI & MESC 2021

CNSI is excited to be exhibiting at Booth #500, visit CNSI MESC 2021 for more information and schedule some time to speak with us during the conference! The 2021 Medicaid Enterprise Systems Community is a national conference and community for state, federal and private sector individuals to exchange ideas related to Medicaid systems and health policy affected by those systems.

8/10/2021 4:00 PM EDT CNSI Industry Session with AWS – Reimagining MMIS: Leveraging Innovations from Beyond Healthcare

Healthcare has often borrowed from and perfected best practices from other industries, from the high reliability of airline travel to the customer service secrets of top retailers. To enable the rapid pace of change driven by increased demand for healthcare services , government service leaders must find long-term flexibility, innovations and operational agility in the most cost-effective way.

In this session, experts from CNSI and Amazon Web Services (AWS) will look at trends in other industries and patterns in MMIS requirements and explore next-generation technology that may transform and disrupt this space. Attend this session to discover key success factors for creating teams and processes that can improve flexibility and lower costs for government healthcare services.

8/11/2021 4:30 PM EDT – Where Client Needs Meet Product and Service Innovation

The evolution of platform modernization doesn’t start with technology; it starts with the voice of the customer. This session will explore how Client Focus Groups and diverse advisory teams create a 360-degree perspective for health and human services innovation roadmaps.

Engagement is no longer just for consumers. MMIS users can shape their own customer experience in the quest for modularity, configurability, and Medicaid modernization. Learn from state agency leaders who are setting high expectations for involvement in their vendors’ MMIS innovation roadmap development and thereby reducing their implementation costs and risks. The panel will share best practices from customer-centric innovation around ease of implementation, scalability, claims resolution, interoperability, and cloud services.

KEY TAKE AWAYS:

  • Learn how to set appropriate expectations for involvement in innovation roadmap development, including a 360-degree view of stakeholders.
  • Understand how to better engage with vendors to drive your own customer experience and business needs – not theirs.

8/12/2021 10:00 AM EDT Social Determinants – Aligning with the New Administration’s Approach to Technology

The COVID-19 pandemic exposed long-standing inequities in our nation’s health care system. How do the Biden administration’s priorities around Medicaid coverage, value-based payments, and health equity affect how the administration will make decisions and invest in technology? States need access to more innovative technology that will continue the process of engendering trust, building health literacy, and eventually leading to better care and outcomes. This session will explore ways to use multiple data sources to address disparities in healthcare.

KEY TAKE AWAYS:

State leaders who want to understand the new administration’s goals for CMS and ONC, and their vision for delivering equitable care in a variety of settings, across the health and human services continuum.




CNSI & State Healthcare IT Connect Summit

Reimagining HHS Service Delivery in 2021 & Beyond!

The 2021 State HIT Connect Summit will provide critical insights during this transformative period, enabling public and private sector thought leaders to share ideas and benchmark implementation strategies of State Health IT Systems for 2021 and beyond.

Workshop: Securing Medicaid Data In An Interoperable World

Evolving consumer expectations and business operating models continue to drive innovation in technology. How can state health IT leaders embrace these emerging technologies and cost efficiencies without compromising security?

Panelists: Mike Jin, CIO & CISO, CNSI  Ryan Howells, Managing Partner, Leavitt Partners

 

 

Roundtable: Social Determinants – Aligning with the New Administration’s Approach to Technology

The COVID-19 pandemic exposed long-standing inequities in our nation’s health care system.  Addressing these health care disparities by focusing on social determinants of health is one of the Biden Administration’s top health care priorities.  The pandemic also reinforced the critical role providers, communities, and private businesses play in helping state, local, and federal governments in eliminating these disparities. In this session, hear more about the Biden Administration’s priorities around achieving health care equity and understand how  multiple data sources can be used to address health disparities – including the widening digital divide.

Panelists: Verlon Johnson, SVP Corporate Strategy, CNSI  |  Heidi Robbins-Brown, VP, Medicaid Policy & Programs, CNSI  |  Dr. Ryan Bosch, Founder & President, Socially Determined  |  Penny Thompson, Healthcare Advisor, Penny Thompson Consulting

 

Educational Breakout Session: A Unique Partnership – Medicaid and Corrections

A state department of corrections partnered with a state Medicaid agency to leverage an existing health care claims processing system. This session will share how the initiative works as well as its benefits and results, including enhanced editing and reporting that improved payment accuracy and significant cost savings to the state.

Panelists: Louis McDermott, Deputy Director at Washington State Health Care Authority  |  Cathie Ott, IT Strategic Advisor at State of Washington Health Care Authority  Ronna Cole, Health Services Director, WA Department of Corrections  | Heidi Robbins-Brown, VP, Medicaid Policy & Programs, CNSI




CNSI & Women in Technology D.C.

March 25, 2021  |  3:00 – 6:00 PM ET

CNSI is proud to sponsor The Women in Technology 2021 Virtual Job Fair, connecting you in real time with recruiters from top organizations in the Washington D.C. Metro area, who are looking to hire top talent for a wide variety of roles, including STEM-based fields.

Taking place completely online, the virtual career fair allows you to explore career opportunities available to you in all areas of the field, engage directly with employers online via dynamic one-on-one text or video chats in each booth, and make new connections and broaden your network directly from your home or office via desktop, laptop, tablet or smartphone.

This is a free event for job seekers. Advanced registration is strongly encouraged to allow exhibitors to view your resume in advance.

REGISTER HERE!

Check out CNSI’s careers page for current openings!




Panel Event: Women Dominating Healthcare – The New Frontier

The next decade has been described as the most exciting for advances in Healthcare. According to Business Insider, “factors that will drive healthcare discoveries and inventions are: measuring patient success through feedback, serving marginal societies, better assessing the societal determinants of health”.  There will be a focus on Alzheimers, Cancer treatment and management, Hepatitis C, custom medication (genomics), smart antibiotics, 3D drug printing, medical tricorders and robotic medical assistants.  Our panelists are here to discuss how these items and others will affect women, especially working women in the next few years with a focus on telehealth, testing, and improving outcomes for women with a focus on wellness and wellbeing.

This panel features Verlon Johnson, the Senior Vice-President of Corporate Strategy at CNSI, a McLean, Virginia-based health IT solutions firm. A nationally recognized expert in Medicare, Medicaid, and CHIP, Verlon has over two decades of experience working in the health care policy and administration arena. Prior to coming to CNSI, Verlon held leadership positions at IBM Watson Health, at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), and at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Verlon earned a Bachelor of Science degree from Texas A&M University and a Master of Public Administration with an emphasis on Health Care Policy and Administration from Texas Tech University. She is also a Northwestern University Kellogg School of Management Executive Scholar and the recipient of many honors including the IBM Exceptional Account Director, an IBM Watson Health Lady Boss Award, and the JKF Federal Employee of the Year Award.

REGISTER HERE!




CNSI Sponsors Empty Bowls Event

CNSI is proud to be the sole Presenting Sponsor for this year’s Capital Area Food Bank Empty Bowls Event being held in Bethesda on Monday, October 31st. Local pottery artists, restaurants, businesses and the public will gather at the Capital Area Food Bank’s four Empty Bowls lunches this fall. At each lunch, about 300 guests will taste unlimited soups from local restaurants, and choose a handcrafted bowl to take home. Every $35 ticket provides 87 meals to neighbors who need our help. Last year, the Capital Area Food Bank provided 44 million pounds of food to children, seniors and families in the Washington metro area—one third of which was fruits and vegetables—through 444 food assistance partner non-profits. Tickets are available for purchase online or limited walk-in registration. For more information about the event, please visit www.capitalareafoodbank.org/empty-bowls

About the Capital Area Food Bank

The Capital Area Food Bank is the largest organization in the Washington metro area working to solve hunger and its companion problems: chronic undernutrition, heart disease and obesity. By partnering with nearly 450 community organizations in DC, Maryland and Virginia, as well as delivering food directly in hard to reach areas, the CAFB is helping 540,000 people each year get access to good, healthy food.  That’s 12 percent of our region’s mothers, fathers, sons, daughters, sisters, brothers, and grandparents.