This technical assistance video will focus on completing the Risk Management Systems
portion of the FTCA application.
We begin here on the main application page.
You can see that the application is broken down by sections here as well as text stating
whether the application has not yet been started, whether it’s in progress, or if it’s complete
there would be green letters here stating that it’s a complete.
All sections of the application must be complete in order to submit the application, so in
order to complete the section of the application on Risk Management Systems look for the section
on Risk Management Systems and click on ‘Update.’
Now before you begin completing the Risk Management Systems portion of the application make sure
that you have your policies with you on diagnostic test tracking, on patient referral tracking
and on hospitalization tracking because you’re going to need to attach those to the application.
In addition you should also review HRSA’s most recent program assistance letter on calendar
year 2013 FTCA requirements, which is Program Assistance Letter 2012-02 and is available
on the HRSA FTCA website.
So we’re here on the application page.
Now this part of the application is pretty straightforward.
For most questions you have the option whether to click ‘Yes’ or ‘No.’
If you do conduct the practice that’s being addressed in the question you would use your
mouse to click ‘Yes.’
If you do not conduct that practice or have that particular policy in place you would
use your mouse to click ‘No.’
So for example, the first question asks whether your organization conducts periodic assessments
to identify, prevent and monitor malpractice risk.
If you do conduct this practice click on ‘Yes,’ if you do not, click ‘No.’
Now, if you answer ‘No’ to a question you will need to type in an explanation for
why you do not have that particular policy or practice in place.
The application includes these comment sections here where you have an opportunity to type
in free text to explain why you gave a particular response.
You do not need to fill in the comment section for any questions you answer ‘Yes’ to;
however, the comment section is still available if you enter ‘Yes’ and you can enter comments
if you would like to.
So for this first question, say for example you do not conduct assessments to identify,
prevent and monitor malpractice risk but you are in the process of implementing this practice,
you would need to click ‘No’ since they are not currently in place, and in the comment
section you can enter in an explanation here.
Now you have a maximum of 4,000 characters that you can use when typing into these text
boxes.
Now this will update here so this will let you know how many characters that you have
remaining in this message here at the top of the text box.
In addition, you want to make sure that you do not copy and paste from any heavily-formatted
documents.
If you do need to copy and paste from another document double check when you finish completing
this section of the application to make sure that all information has been entered and
that there are no formatting issues.
If you’re looking at the application questions and you realize that you don’t have a particular
policy or practice in place you can view the supplementary training videos we have available,
such as Risk Management Systems Supplemental Information and ECRI Institute Resources that
provide risk management recommendations and point you to sample policies and other resources
that can help.
These supplementary videos are available along with this video on both the ECRI Institute
Clinical Risk Management website and the HRSA FTCA website.
So we’ll move on, and question two is the only question in this section of the application
that is not a ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ response.
For this question you will need to type in free text the policies and procedures you
have in place regarding the appropriate supervision of clinical and non-clinical staff.
So we’re just going to type in ‘To enter your procedures here.’
So again the message here will update to let you know how many characters you have remaining,
you want to check to make sure the formatting is correct and then we can move on to question
three.
Question three consists of multiple questions.
You will need to enter ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ regarding whether your medical records policies
address privacy, such as compliance with HIPAA privacy and security regulations, completeness
of medical record documents and archiving procedures.
You need to answer each one of these question, and again enter any explanation for any ‘No’
answers.
So we’re going to click on ‘Yes’ for each of these questions.
We’ll move on to question three, part B, which asks ‘Medical records are periodically
reviewed to determine quality, completeness and legibility.’
I’m going to click on ‘Yes,’ and move on to question four.
So we’ll click on ‘Yes’ to verify that we have policies and procedures that address
triage, walk-in patients, telephone triage and no-show appointments.
Moving on to question five.
Question five asks whether there are clinical protocols that define appropriate treatment
for diagnostic procedures for selected medical conditions.
Now before we complete this question in the application I’m going to click down to the
bottom of the application page and click on ‘Save.’
Now you’ll notice after I clicked on ‘Save’ that we have these red error messages here.
Now these error messages appear when we haven’t completed all of the questions of the application.
So a good way to double check to make sure that you complete all questions in the application
is to click on ‘Save’ and then look to see if you have any of these red error messages
here.
Now you can click on the actual error and it will take you right to that section of
the application where the error appears.
So this is simply because we did not answer that question of the application so we’ll
click on ‘Yes’ to answer the question and move on to question six.
Now for question six in addition to clicking on ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ for whether you have
these tracking systems, you’re also going to need to attach your policies for referral
tracking, hospitalization tracking and diagnostic tracking.
Now for previous applications you needed to attach four separate policies here.
You needed to attach one for referral tracking, hospitalization tracking and you also needed
to attach separate policies for x-ray tracking and lab tracking.
For the calendar year 2013 application you’ll notice that x-ray tracking and lab result
tracking have been combined into one section for diagnostic tracking, so you’ll only
need to attach three separate policies for this question of the application for the 2013
calendar year application.
So we’re going to click on ‘Yes’ to verify that we have these policies in place.
Now, for the second part we’re going to click on ‘Attach’ to attach the policies.
Now this takes us to a separate page.
Types of documents that are supported by this application are listed here under ‘Documents,’
and to attach our policies we’re going to click ‘Browse,’ and find the document
on our computer.
Now, for these policies you want to make sure that the name of the document matches the
policy, so this document is titled ‘Diagnostic Test Tracking Policy.’
It’s a clear title to let the reviewer know what this policy is covering.
So you also need to note in this description section here, you’ll want to provide a description
of your policy, so type in a description here.
So now we’re going to click ‘Attach Document’ to attach that policy.
You’ll notice that you’ll get this green message stating that the attachment was saved
successfully and it will appear here at the bottom of the page under ‘Attached Documents.’
Now, to attach our second policy click on ‘browse.’
We’ve already attached our policy on test tracking so now we’re going to locate our
next policy on our computer, which is hospitalization tracking policy – again, make sure your
policy document has a clear title – enter in the description here and click ‘Attach
Document.’
Again, we have the message that it was saved successfully and it appears here under ‘Attached
Documents.’
Now for the third policy it’s more of the same; click ‘Attach Document’ – oh,
I’m sorry, click on ‘Browse.’
Now you’ll notice we got that error message because we clicked ‘Attach Document’ before
we clicked on ‘Browse,’ so again, a good way to double check your the application is
these error messages built in to make sure that you’re entering in the appropriate
information.
So click on our third policy for patient referral tracking.
Again, enter a description here.
Now, in these description sections you can also refer to page numbers here if there are
specific sections of the policy that you’d like the reviewer to look at.
So now we’ll click on ‘Attach Document.’
So now all three policies are attached.
You should look down here under ‘Attached Documents,’ make sure they all appear here.
Now since we’re finished we’ll click on ‘Finished Attaching.’
And we’re back on the main application page.
Now, since we’ve completed the application here on the right-hand corner under ‘Status’
it says ‘Complete.’
There are no error messages here letting us know that we need to go back to any questions.
So we’ll scroll down to the bottom of the page.
Now if we were to click on ‘Save and Continue’ that would take us right to the next section
of the application, which in this case is Quality Improvement.
We’re going to click on ‘Save’ to save the document and remain on this page.
Now over here on the left navigation bar say we didn’t want to save and continue and
go right to the next section on quality improvement, we can click on the actual section that we
want to go to here.
So say we want to move right to credentialing systems, you can click on this link for ‘Credentialing
Systems’ and that will take you right to that section of the application.
If we want to go back to the main application page click on ‘Status.’
Now we’re back on the main application page and as you’ll notice under ‘Risk Management
Systems’ it now says ‘Complete.’
If the application was not complete it would state ‘In-Progress’ here and we would
need to go back and make sure it’s completed.
Again, all sections of the application must be completed in order to submit the application
to HRSA.
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