Still Reppin’
by Dale Carr, NAMPI Regional Representative Chair
Hello NAMPI Colleagues –
I hope this edition of the NAMPI Quarterly Newsletter finds you all doing well. As a write this article, the weather here in Missouri is still all over the map. We have had beautiful days with temperatures in the high 70’s and low 80’s, but today we were back to a high of about 45° with a strong breeze and an expected overnight low around the freezing mark. My wife and I are looking forward to a long-anticipated vacation in Hawaii this coming week and we know what to expect for weather there, but I am not sure about what will come back to! It could be 31° or 81° when we walk back out of the airport in St. Louis!
Another trip I am looking forward to later this summer is our annual NAMPI training conference, which will be at the beautiful Westin Kierland Resort in Scottsdale, AZ, from July 30th through August 2nd. I have told everyone that we have a Five Star venue; now we just need to finish putting together a Five Star conference.
The NAMPI Board and your Regional Representatives have really been leaning in and putting together a great program for this year’s conference. The call for sessions went really well and the Board had some choices to make because there were so many great submissions. The Board discussed using some of the submissions that were not selected for the annual conference as topics for our future NAMPI webinars.
The full agenda for the conference should be out soon, but I hope you and your Program Integrity teams are already making plans to attend. The conference will be available to attend in-person or virtually, but we really hope to have as many state attendees as possible attend in-person. You just can’t duplicate the in-person experience through a virtual format. There are so many best practices and other valuable information exchanged during breakfasts, lunches, breaks and after-hours activities. You also get the benefit of meeting the outstanding vendors that help sponsor the conference and spend time showing attendees the latest technology and other tools available to help increase your unit’s efficiency and productivity.
The first day of the conference, Sunday, August 30th, is a “State Attendees Only” day. If you and your team can possibly arrive before Sunday afternoon, you will be able to participate in a series of “Fraud Side Chats”. Those sessions are typically smaller and more intimate, and folks are encouraged to speak freely without CMS or other non-state PI representatives in attendance.
In Missouri, the top 10% of state employees, based on quarterly performance evaluations, are recognized with annual Professional Leadership Development Awards (PLDAs) of $1,500 which can be used almost however the employee would like to use them for professional development. I was pleasantly surprised that a number of my top performers requested to use their awards to attend this year’s NAMPI conference. We had a pretty large group of about ten team members attend last year’s conference in Baltimore, and I know the word got out to the rest of our unit about what a great training conference it was.
In conclusion, I want to thank all the NAMPI Regional Representatives and their backups for hosting regional conference calls with their states and/or U.S. territories, submitting a bunch of great suggestions for conference sessions, helping get the word out about upcoming NAMPI webinars, and really just helping our overall efforts to support NAMPI and Medicaid Program Integrity in general.
Best regards – Dale