Evidence-Based Practices in Service Note for CSI State Reporting 

CalMHSA has received questions about the Evidence-Based Practices (EBPs) field included in the Service Note screen. This field exists for CSI State Reporting, as Specialty Mental Health Services must report any EBPs used (up to three) on a per-service basis. DMC-ODS providers must also utilize EBPs, selecting two from a list of six; the two EBPs are per provider, per service modality. CalMHSA recommends tracking this through the CalMHSA Program Meta Tagging Detail screen in the Evidence-Based Practices – DMC section. This is a multiple-select field and includes all the EBPs included in BHIN 24-001 and reflected in the DMC-ODS Intergovernmental Agreement. 

CalMHSA has posted a new protocol to clarify the difference between tracking EBPs for CSI reporting and tracking EBPs for DMC-ODS providers.  

CalMHSA continues to hear from counties that SUD must also report on EBPs used on a per-service basis and that they would like to use the Evidence Based Practices field in the Service Note screen for DMC-ODS programs. CalMHSA has not found any regulatory requirement for reporting service-by-service for DMC-ODS. CalMHSA has maintained the values in the EBP field list of options to match the CSI reporting requirements. 

During the March 19 Clinical Office Hours, two counties indicated they had already made changes to the global code for the Evidence Based Practices field in the Service Note screen. One county took the additional step of mapping “Other EBP” (CSI code 99) to any global codes they added, using the global code field “External Code 1.” Both counties indicated their belief that adding these codes should not interrupt CSI reporting.   

Due to the currently delicate nature of state reporting, including CSI reporting, CalMHSA did not believe it was worth the risk to immediately make this change across all counties but agreed to review these counties’ efforts to determine if there was any disruption in the CSI reporting process. Because CSI reporting efforts continue with very little feedback from the Department of Health Care Services, there is insufficient data to make a clear determination about the impact.  

Of note: One of the two counties indicated it has approximately 2,000 services that use one of their custom EBPs, 800 of which are in a program that reports to CSI. Of these, only 26 have been compiled for submission, and they are seeing no errors in the batch files being created.  

CalMHSA continues to track CSI reporting for these and other counties. At this time, there is no plan to add the SUD EBPs to the list until clear evidence shows that adjusting the values available will not negatively impact CSI reporting. 

Reminder for Sys Admin Users: Meeting Tomorrow  

Tomorrow, June 14, CalMHSA will host a one-hour meeting for system administrators from 10-11 a.m. The session will include help with all things SmartCare, status of committees, a discussion of how systems are updated, and an open forum for county questions. The meeting is limited to Sys Admins; registration is available on the website.     

Q1 MSPs Available for Counties to Test in QA 

The January, February and March MSPs are now available in QA for testing. The release notes are available on the Release Notes web page. CalMHSA is currently testing these MSPs in the QA environment, and we aim to have all tasks tested by June 21. 

Each county is free to test any bug fixes or new features outlined in the January, February and March release notes. We highly value your feedback during your testing, as well as your participation and teamwork as we work to get these MSPs into production. Please submit any feedback via a Helix ticket with the prefix [MSP] in the subject. 

Change in Upcoming Production Maintenance Windows 

The Production maintenance window scheduled for Monday, June 17 from 12 – 6 a.m. (PT) has changed to Tuesday, June 18 from 12 – 6 a.m. (PT). We do not expect system downtime during this window; however, there may be intermittent system slowness.

In addition, the Production maintenance window on Monday, June 24 will begin one hour earlier than usual to allow more time to apply a larger critical service pack to the county Production environments. The new maintenance window is scheduled from 11 p.m. on June 23 to 6 a.m. (PT) on June 24. Please note: We do expect system downtime during this maintenance window. 

Mobile Crisis Safety Plan Renamed for Greater Accessibility 

CalMHSA has renamed the Mobile Crisis Safety Plan to “Safety Plan,” so that it is more accessible to other clinical/medical teams that may use this document. The content of the document has not changed.  

Each county is free to test any bug fixes or new features outlined in the January, February and March release notes. We highly value your feedback during your testing, as well as your participation and teamwork as we work to get these MSPs into production. Please submit any feedback via a Helix ticket with the prefix [MSP] in the subject.  

This Week’s Production Updates 

New functionality in the EHR – and what you need to know about it – is available here.  

Upcoming Initiatives 

See the EHR Product Team’s ambitious upcoming initiatives in this list, updated weekly as products and priorities evolve — and sortable by topics like medical, clinical billing and more. 

CalMHSA EHR Initiative Report 6-13-24 v2