On
October 11th, 1996, U.S. District Court Judge Gladys Kessler
introduced her decision in
Salazar v. District of Columbia, No. 93-452 (GK), as follows:
This
case is about people -- children and adults who are sick,
poor,
and vulnerable -- for whom life, in the memorable words of poet
Langston Hughes, ain't been no crystal stair.
It
is written in the dry and bloodless language of the law -- statistics,
acronyms of agencies and bureaucratic entities, Supreme Court
case names and quotes, official governmental reports, periodicity
tables, etc.
But
let there be no forgetting the real people to whom this dry and
bloodless language gives voice: anxious, working parents who are
too poor to obtain medications or heart catheter procedures or
lead poisoning screens for their children, AIDS patients unable
to get treatment, elderly persons suffering from chronic conditions...
Behind
every fact found herein is a human face and the reality of being
poor in the richest nation on earth.
(Slip op. At 3.)
The ruling
of this 1994 class action suit and its amended remedial order
of 1999
found that the District of Columbia had not provided
the full range of HealthCheck services to a number of Medicaid-eligible
children and teens, and mandated the training
of
HealthCheck service providers.
Pursuant to
these actions, MAA is, therefore, legally obliged to "ensure
that MCOs train all (HealthCheck) providers about current requirements
for (HealthCheck)."
Accordingly,
MAA has developed the HealthCheck Manual, guidelines for a uniform
training system. The Managed Care Organizations (MCOs) have, as
part of their contracts with MAA, the responsibility to train their
providers on all components of HealthCheck including the collection
of encounter data.
The Collaborative
of Medicaid Medical Directors (CMMD) and MAA approached Georgetown
University's Bright Futures Project to develop this online curriculum
and resources.
MAA’s
goals for this Web-based HealthCheck Provider Education System
are several:
- To improve
primary care of children in the District of Columbia
- To satisfy
the requirements of HealthCheck and the Salazar court mandates
- To increase
provider skills and knowledge of HealthCheck
- To enhance
the accuracy and frequency with which providers document HealthCheck
service delivery
|
