Monthly Archives - December 2016

Texas Children’s Health Plan’s Chief Medical Officer Named ACOG President-Elect

Houston—Lisa Hollier, MD, MPH, Chief Medical Officer for Obstetrics and Gynecology for Texas Children’s Health Plan and Medical Director for The Center for Children and Women, has been selected President-elect of the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecologists to serve the May 2017-May 2018 term. She will take office at the Executive Board Meeting on May 9, 2017. Hollier is also a professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology and director of the Division of Women’s Health Policy at Baylor College of Medicine....

Texas Health Steps Checkup Documentation — Essential to Medical Records

As a Texas Health Steps (THSteps) provider you affect the lives of many young Texans. The care you provide helps prevent serious or chronic health-care problems and often helps young patients begin to develop positive lifelong health-care habits. Being a THSteps provider can be very rewarding. It can also be very challenging, especially when it comes to medical checkup documentation. Independent studies of THSteps medical checkups indicate that records were most commonly missing documentation of appropriate laboratory tests and immunizations.   THSteps...

Are you meeting access standards?

Primary care providers must be accessible to Texas Children’s Health Plan members 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Acceptable after-hours coverage includes: The office telephone is answered after-hours by an answering service that meets language requirements of the major population groups and that can contact the PCP or another designated medical practitioner. All calls answered by an answering service must be returned within 30 minutes. The office telephone is answered after normal business hours by a recording in the language of...

Provider Alert! Health Advisory Issued on Mumps Outbreaks in Texas

The Texas Department of State Health Services issued a Health Advisory on 11/30/2016 due to two outbreaks of mumps in North Central Texas. An outbreak in Dallas County involves 5 adults and a Johnson City outbreak involves 10 cases, mostly in children. Several other outbreaks have occurred in the US outside of Texas. DSHS requests that physicians "please consider mumps as a diagnosis for any patients presenting with the following symptoms, particularly those who have traveled out of the state or have...