State workers tried to help Grimmer family
The afternoon of Dec. 5, Rachelle Grimmer walked into Laredo's Casa Blanca Road HHSC benefits office with her two children. Her stated intent was to find out why she had been denied SNAP food benefits. Within minutes, though, she pulled out a .38 caliber pistol and held an office supervisor at gunpoint while the rest of the office was evacuated. By midnight, she had freed her hostage but fatally shot her two children and herself.
What follows is an open-letter response to this tragedy written by Texas Health and Human Services Executive Commissioner Tom Suehs.
[More about Laredo tragedy]
Texas now a one-system state with completion of TIERS rollout
The weekend of Dec. 17 in Nacogdoches, HHSC converted the final Medicaid for Elderly and People with Disability cases from SAVERR to TIERS, bringing to a close a statewide conversion that started in the mid-1990s as an ambitious attempt to leverage Internet technology to make the process of determining eligibility quicker, simpler and more efficient.
[More about TIERS rollout]
Projects aim to design, equip next generation eligibility system
Modernization is a relative term, but at a minimum it reflects an organization’s desire to use technology to make improvements in how it conducts its business.
As caseloads increase and workload expands, HHSC is embarking on two modernization projects — one to design “the eligibility system of the future” and the other to provide the software and hardware local offices will need to implement the plan.
[More about eligibility system]
Medicaid managed care expansion, other changes approved
Contracts have been signed, provider networks have been established and client letters have been mailed. On March 1, Medicaid managed care expands to 174 additional Texas counties including those in the Rio Grande Valley. The spread of Medicaid managed care is just one of several changes in a waiver approved Dec. 12 by the federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS).
[More about Medicaid changes]
Project offers police insight for encounters with brain-injured individuals
Of all the burdens laid on the shoulders of men and women who serve in combat zones, some of the heaviest come after they’ve put their uniforms into storage and swapped out their weapons for laptop PCs, BabyBjörns and other tools of civilian life.
[More about brain injury project]
Briefs
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When: 2:30 p.m. to 4:30 p.m.
Central Time
Monday, Jan. 23, 2012
Where: Brown-Heatly Building Public Hearing Room, 4900 N. Lamar Blvd., Austin, TX 78751
Agenda | Contact | Handouts
Statewide access available for HHSC Stakeholder Forum
Regardless of where you’re located, your phone gives you access to the Jan. 2012 HHSC Desktop Stakeholder Forum. The desktop forum will take place from 9:30 to 11:30 a.m. Wednesday, Jan. 25. All you need to participate is a phone and email.
To sign up, fill out the online registration form by 2:30 p.m. Tuesday, Jan. 24. Before close of business on that day, we will send you an e-mail with instructions showing how to access the forum conference call and handouts of the PowerPoint presentations that will be used in the forum.
Jog Your Memory
One of the great things about the Internet is that you can access articles you read in previous editions of In Touch.
Quick Links
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