MediSked: Interview With President, Doug Golub And Ohio Solutions Specialist, Rachel Hendrickson

MediSked is a solutions company that works with Providers, Human Services Organizations, County Boards, and governments who help people with disabilities improve their lives and achieve their fullest potential. For more than fifteen years, MediSked has been the trusted technology partner for these organizations across the country.

MediSked has been working with the DD community for 16 years. Headquartered in Rochester, New York, with a satellite office in Silver Spring, Maryland, MediSked supports clients in 39 states, including Ohio. Their solutions support providers, state and county oversight agencies, care coordination entities, and payers’ data to help them reduce costs and improve care.

MediSked’s roots are planted in direct service work, and their products and services are informed by their clients and by their decades-deep involvement in the long-term services and support industry.

What Are Some Of The Solutions MediSked Provides?

MediSked has a combination of software and consulting solutions to help identify the goals and dreams of individuals with disabilities and provide services based on plans with measurable outcomes. They also help their clients meet regulatory requirements, handle billing, and develop required reports.

They provide solutions for:

• Care Coordination and Payers
• Governments
• Providers
• Partners

Their software solutions track the status and results of the intake and eligibility process from enrollment through a lifetime of supports with customized workflows and task alerts to ensure compliance and timeliness. Their flexible, scalable solutions can be tailored to meet the processes of organizations, no matter the size.

Some of their products include:

MediSked Coordinate, a one-stop shop to enhance care management and improve the lives of the individuals. Users utilize a convenient dashboard to access client demographic and care coordination caseload information that highlights outstanding tasks by priority level along with a calendar view of the events, time, and date for upcoming tasks populated through the workflows.

MediSked Connect, which centralizes and manages information to create efficiencies across provider agencies, while maintaining a person-centered approach to services and support.

You can use it to manage core information for employees and individuals and details for services and locations in one convenient location.

MediSked Connect Exchange that integrates systems and oversees the health of the organization and population. It’s an enterprise-grade interface engine, data warehouse, and business intelligence platform designed specifically for the Human Services field. It eliminates data silos with bi-directional data sharing. A powerful interface engine supports both industry-standard and proprietary data formats, allowing you to send or receive data in real-time or at scheduled intervals.

MediSked Portal, a person-centered platform that sits on top of MediSked Connect or MediSked Coordinate and offers individuals and authorized users, transparency into their world. View the most updated version of the service or care plan and access any revisions or past copies. You can send and receive messages with the integrated care team to improve communication, and much more.

Why Did MediSked Decide To Make Software For DD Organizations?

In 2003, MediSked started as direct-support professionals who were graduate students with a technology background working hands-on with individuals to help in a variety of ways with in-home support, transportation, and job coaching. In doing this, they recognized the human services world was light-years behind in technology. They wanted to help their employer design software to improve outcomes. When they couldn’t find what they were looking for from their employer, some of them pulled together and designed a prototype that would provide what the Human Services Community needed.

Over the past 16 years, MediSked has grown significantly and now has 90 employees, and different products that serve various lines of business. They wanted the human services world to not only catch up but surpass the rest of the health and technology world in an effort to support disabled individuals and improve outcomes.

Is Your Software Like Others That Are Out There For DD Organizations?

In some ways yes, and in some way no. Over time, MediSked has found ways to complement other tools and partners. But they can do more. For example, they offer a Portal where individuals and families can have contact electronically with their service and support administrator and document what’s going on. They can also view and sign their service plans and track the progress they’re making.

The Director of the Ohio Department of Developmental Disabilities was recently notified by the Ohio Association of County Boards (OACB) that they will be putting together a state-wide systems workgroup, including MediSked, to identify systems they can use to aggregate data and store in one place. They are working to remove the siloed data collection that currently exists.

The goal is to integrate those data sources especially from the point of care. MediSked software can do this. It removes those siloed systems, integrates them and locates them in one place. Bringing this visibility and electronic communications to the process helps the individuals themselves and service providers. This is what really sets MediSked apart from other software platforms.

What Are The Benefits Of Using MediSked?

The MediSked Coordinate Care Management Platform is designed to bring all of the elements together for service boards. It eliminates gaps in care with a centralized system that saves time, improves communication, and promotes organization.

It’s designed from the perspective of the Service and Supports Administrator (SSA) with robust administrative functionality for County Boards and the different roles that they play. In Ohio, an integrated assessment “Discovery Tool” has the ability to pre-populate information to eliminate the need for manual entry and streamline efficiencies to give care managers back the time they need to spend with DD individuals.

MediSked has a user experience team that assists with design to make the software as user-friendly and helpful as possible. The first thing an SSA sees when they sign into MediSked Coordinate is a list of the people they work with, their pictures, their likes and dislikes, and more so they can really get to know them via the information that other users have captured.

People with disabilities who receive services are assessed quite a lot. Some are asked the same question over and over by different service providers. With MediSked Coordinate, this is reduced because the service and supports administrator will already have the answer to the question and know to move on to another. When it’s time to write a plan, the Discovery Tool automatically populates it.

What Are The Benefits Of Having MediSked As A Cloud-Based Solution?

It’s been an interesting evolution with MediSked. Since 2008 when the term “cloud” started popping up, people were afraid of it due to security. A lot has happened in the realm of cloud security. MediSked is on track to receive a HITRUST Certification which is a federal certification.

Storing information in the Cloud comes with both risks and rewards. MediSked has a Cloud Services and Security Team under the leadership of a Chief Information Security Officer CISO who is continually running penetration tests and audits to ensure the security of data. The Team has hundreds of controls in place to ensure they are doing everything reasonably possible to keep information secure and be transparent with their clients, so they know this.

What About Compliance With HIPAA?

MediSked has never had a HIPAA breach. However, they do have policies in place if this happens. They’ve been very careful with their practices. When HIPAA was passed in 1996, it came with original language around privacy and security. MediSked has always had a HIPAA Compliance Officer, along with policies like Business Associate Agreements to ensure this.

The HITECH Act in 2009 also added some additional clarifications around specific technologies like firewalls, audits, disaster recovery plans and more. Everyone at MediSked, as well as their clients, are part of the Security Team. MediSked also educates their clients about security because security and HIPAA protection are only as good as the weakest link.

What Is The Support Like For Clients?

Support starts before they take on a client. The MediSked team conducts in-depth discovery beforehand to capture requirements and understand what their needs are. So, once a client is on board with them, support begins with their Premier Services Team. They assist with implementation, project management, and training to help an organization transform.

For the nature of the Human Service Community the approach that works is to get to know their clients and map out their business rules, often implementing information systems. This is also an opportunity to get rid of some bad habits and inefficiencies. They look at the whole process.

Because of this, implementations can take anywhere from four to nine months depending on the size and scope of the project. Throughout that time, everything is carefully documented, and they provide weekly status reports during implementation with a project plan. The County Board or client will have their own committee that works with MediSked throughout the process.

MediSked takes a train-the-trainer approach where the client designates a lead trainer. The reason they do this is because as the vendor they know that they’re not the best folks to be telling people how to follow the policies and procedures of their organization. MediSked provides guidance and recommendations. They partner with the County Board or Provider throughout the course of implementation. MediSked documents, then helps to set up the business rules, implementation rules, loads the data, goes through the entire project plan, trains end users, and creates specific guides and cheat sheets with phone numbers of staff if needed.

When all this comes together, clients reach a point where the daily or weekly calls and training begin to reach completion. At that point, clients can always call back for follow-up support and training. They still have access to online training videos, a knowledge base and a help desk in Rochester, New York that they can call.

How Do You Handle Ongoing Training?

There’s a high turnover in the world of Human Services. During the implementation, MediSked uses a combination of Webinars and onsite training with the teams. But, in two or three years, some of the folks that took this training may no longer be there. So MediSked works with clients to “knowledge transfer” and help the client to make training part of their new-employee orientation that the County Boards hold.

They provide videos, quick guides, and training manuals so they can make them part of their regular onboarding process. It becomes a normal part of their operations. After an initial dose of heavy training and with the train-the-trainer model, the client feels comfortable handling the training of new employees.

From time to time, the client’s lead trainer leaves. When this happens, MediSked has a curriculum for this where the new trainer can visit their offices in Maryland or New York and take intensive training. Sometimes Providers or County Boards merge. When this happens, MediSked can step in and do a re-implementation and training. They use the right-sized fit for the particular need.

How Hard Is It To Switch Over To MediSked If We’re Using Another Platform?

It depends on how easy it is to get the data out of the platform you’re using. If this is difficult to do, it’s not that easy to switch. Although MediSked has different data templates to help with this.

If, on the other hand, the data is easy to export, (information about the SSAs, individuals, their plans, their goals, their contacts, their allergies, their medications, etc.) – that’s just one part of the picture. If someone is looking to switch platforms, there’s usually a reason. Often they’re happy to be doing this because the other platform isn’t working.

The world of Human Services is different than the medical-model world. And sometimes an organization will make the mistake of using a medical software platform instead of one like a MediSked platform. They’ll try to use an EMR system when it’s not the nature of what they do. MediSked is designed for Human Services professionals.

How Does Pricing Work?

There are a number of components. They bundle the initial cost that includes installation, training, data transfer and more. And then there’s an ongoing cost for support, licensing, upgrades, and updates. Their ongoing maintenance covers all the updates.

MediSked operates on an agile software development lifecycle basis due to regulations changing all the time. They perform a software release every two weeks because of this and because it’s what their clients require. It’s managed in the Cloud, so it won’t disrupt workflows. This is included in the cost. These releases are carefully designed, regression tested, and unit tested before they’re ready to go out the door.

What Counties Or Organizations Are Currently Using MediSked?

Most organizations ask that MediSked not release their names without permission. But Warren and Butler County Boards of Developmental Disabilities in Ohio published a press release about using MediSked that you can read here.

All of this supports MediSked’s goal to be the leading brand in holistic solutions that improves lives, drives efficiencies, and generates innovations for Human Services Organizations to support the community.