Happenings
Division 6M Names First Quarter Award Winners
Coach of the Quarter
Brittany Sandifer
In the past three years, Brittany Sandifer, a lead auditor, has mentored four new hires to the Audit Reopening team in the Provider Audit and Reimbursement Department. She also recently began helping several veteran Reopening auditors develop mentoring skills so they can help/guide? new hires. Additionally, Brittany has developed and presented numerous trainings to the entire team. For these and many other reasons, Brittany has been named Coach of the Quarter.
Brittany holds herself and her teammates to high-quality standards and has an eye for identifying processes that need improvement. She has brought several quality issues to the attention of management and regularly leads and contributes to process improvement initiatives. Brittany is consistently supportive of her colleagues and engages with others on her team to ensure they are meeting their assignment deadlines and to discuss news information and resources.
Associate of the Month — January
Meredith Cate
Division 6M has recognized Meredith Cate, a lead auditor in Audit Appeals Reopening, as the January Associate of the Month for her exceptional dedication and initiative. She streamlined the Supplemental Security Income realignment review process, provided training to address errors and continuously improved the templates with team feedback. When a coworker was unexpectedly out, she took on additional tasks to ensure deadlines and quality initiatives were met, managing over 600 units. Meredith is known for her quick responses to inquiries, problem-solving skills and the ability to correct errors. Her efforts have significantly enhanced team efficiency and effectiveness.
Associate of the Month — March
Anjan Shakya
Anjan Shakya has been an auditor III in Audit Appeals Reopening less than one year but has already excelled above expectations and was named Associate of the Month for March. His work quality is exceptional, both accurate and extremely efficient. Of note he completed a significant project far ahead of schedule despite a very short timeline for completion. Anjan communicates clearly with reviewers and preparers and has identified numerous ways to improve efficiencies in reviewing and preparing documents and analyzing complex projects, quickly homing in on the central and most important concerns.
Team of the Quarter
Appeals – Remand Team
Team members: Takiyah Adams, Ebony Batie, Kelly Bultema, Prastuti Ghimire, Brandy Gilbert, Tammy Holmes, Cecile Huggins, Jessica Jackson, Angela Johnson, Nikki Kern, Christian Orantes, Brenda Petke, Daniel Roland
The Appeals team recently completed an additional special project reviewing and processing 365 remands, or reopened cases. The team worked diligently with providers and staff in other departments to ensure they had the latest cost report information to ensure they could meet the deadline set by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.
To increase efficiency of the reviews, the team developed a system with new templates that allowed faster processing. They also created a log in Teams to manage and monitor the status of individual reviews and the project. Their teamwork was exceptional, maintaining open lines of communication and helping one another to ensure efficiency, accuracy and no quality issues noted.
Process Improvement of the Quarter
Supplemental Security Income Settlement Template
Team members: Melita Arnold and Crystal Medley
The Division 6M Process Improvement of the Quarter was initiated and implemented by Melita Arnold and Crystal Medley. They identified a way to automate the creation of letters for Supplemental Security Income (SSI) reports for Jurisdictions J and M. Previously the letters were created manually by a person who determined the provider’s jurisdiction and then entered data into the appropriate template. Once completed, they named and saved the letter and sent it via email for review.
To automate the process, the team created a computer program that automatically pulled in data based on the provider number, determined the associated Medicare jurisdiction, completed the appropriate template with the provider information, named and saved the letter file and then created the email to send the letter for review. The process improvement reduced staff work hours and the associated cost by at least 70 percent.
