Coach of the Quarter – Carol Stone

Carol Stone, a Statistical Programming IV Analyst, is responsible for leading the Medicare Statistical Analysis Department Reports and Analysis (MSAD R&A) effort for reporting and analysis for the End-Stage Renal Disease Quality Incentive Program Data Validity and Reliability (ESRD QIP DVR) project. She expertly leads the MSAD ESRD team, seamlessly integrates into the FedPro team, and is one of the key players crucial to the success of the program. Even with these challenging responsibilities, Carol always takes time to mentor the entire team, providing insightful and detailed information. She utilizes a highly collaborative approach, always asking for others' opinions, promotes an open learning environment, and encourages others to participate in the development of the approach utilized. Carol expertly balances allowing those she is mentoring to explore different approaches while ensuring adherence to the high standards. She adeptly provides feedback, highlighting correct actions, opportunities for improvement, and alternative approaches. Because of this excellent leadership, we are excited to announce Carol Stone as our Coach of the Quarter for Division 34.

Team of the Quarter - Website Event Calendar Update Team

Palmetto GBA’s division 34 eCommerce worked with the Medicare Part A and Railroad Medicare Provider Outreach and Education (POE) teams to develop a better way to communicate educational and informational events to customers. The team chose, as part of their process, to leverage the product CVENT and its engagement platform within the Palmetto GBA website design. This new event calendar function allows users to easily register and manage their events. This is a great example of how multiple groups can collaborate to deliver world-class solutions to maintain our customer-centric focus. Congratulations on being named our Team of the Quarter for Division 34.

Team Members: Gerald Eichelberger, Carol Harper, Steven Hester, Chris James, Marlowe Leverette, Katie McLean, Derek Roberts, and David Russell

Non-Division 34 special mentions:
Medicare A Provider Education: Kalena Hammock, James Kirk, Belinda Marin, Bonnie Miller, Parker Roof, Caitlyn Russel, and Wendy Weary
RRB Provider Education: Gayle Patterson

Process Improvement of the Quarter - CMS Fraud Prevention System (FPS) Edit Monitoring Project Improvement

The Fraud Prevention System (FPS) Edits prevents potentially fraudulent transactions from occurring before payment by rejecting or denying claims before adjudication. These edit rules run daily on FPS. At the beginning of each month, additional standard reports are generated using a Statistical Analysis System (SAS) project (the Edit Monitoring Project) to validate and account for FPS edit activities in the previous month. In this improvement, each of the 27 FPS edits programs in this SAS project was revised to reduce program run time and errors in the programmer’s summary output. The revisions include significant SAS code modifications and consolidations, and standardization on the usage of data tables and fields.

Before the revision, it took an analyst two business days to run the project. The revised project executes in 175.5 minutes, resulting in a significant reduction in run time. In addition, the standardization in the revision reduces possible discrepancies between the programmer and the checker’s outputs, which in turn reduces the needed time for additional ad hoc research.

The revision has reduced the number of edits that require additional time spent on ad hoc research, program modification, and re-execution from three to zero edits each month.

Team Members: Dumbiri Powell.

Associate of the Quarter - George Boney

George Boney, a Lead Developer, is an exceptional member of the Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) team. He has a natural curiosity that helps him excel in any troubleshooting scenario. As a Scrum Master and an Agile guru, George uses his knowledge to encourage a progressive work model with the EDI team. George works well with external customers as recently evidenced by his work with National Government Services (NGS) to provide them with a simpler method to perform password changes on the Advanced Clinical Error (ACE) database accounts. These skills enable him to provide innovative solutions to the entire suite of EDI systems applications. Congratulations George on being named our Division 34 Associate of the Quarter.