Some Good News for the Holiday

November 24, 2020

DBHDS data on the COVID Data Dashboard for the community as reflected by CHRIS data show several interesting – positive? – trends:

• Overall mortality rate is 3.7% but for the first five months (Mid-March to Mid-August) the rate was 4.8% and it has dropped in the last 90 days to 2.6%
• Similarly the mortality rate for residential services overall is 4.6%, but dropped from 5.6% in the first five months to 3.1% in the last 90 days.  
• Without analysis these data points can not be interpreted as significant, but on the surface they certainly seem to be positive trends! 

Another positive trend is being noticed in the Rt Rate (down from 1.17 on November 14 to 1.0 today) – the recent restrictions, and more likely, the attention to the dangers of relaxing our guard which is spread across almost every media outlet, may be making a small difference.  Thanksgiving will be hard!

A second bit of news is that the application for the retainer payments is very, very easy!

• Complete the Attestation by checking yes (or “no,” but then you can go no further!).
• You do not need to have your API number to complete the application – it asks for your NPI Number.  The API number will be used only when payment is made.
• You need to know how many unique individuals were authorized of one of the specified services each month (August – December); be careful to not “double” count if someone received more than one service (see example in the FAQ), and
• You need to fill in all of the blanks – if no one was authorized for a specific month, fill in “0” in the blank.