JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. – The Missouri Commission on Autism Spectrum Disorders will hold a teleconference Friday to update its members on the drafting of a proposal to make the way they do business “monumentally streamlined.”
Kit Glover, the director of the Office of Autism Services, says that the request for proposal would create a technology system for the office that would allow it to track individual clients with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) through the office’s various practices with a web-based individual support plan with ancillary documentation. Currently, a lot of the record keeping done by the commission is still done on paper, and Glover wants to change that.
“There are huge gains in the ability to transmit information from a paper record to an electronic record,” Glover said.
The Office of Autism Services is part of the Missouri Department of Mental Health, and they have accomplished a lot since they were established in 2008, from the creation of an autism waiver to the passage of laws requiring insurance companies to cover services for families and children with ASD. They were the force behind Medicaid coverage for behavior analysis services for children up to age 21 and have growth and expansion of autism centers and university-based hospitals providing evaluation for ASD, while also increasing the number of providers in the state that specialize in treating ASD.
For this proposal request, Glover and Wendy Witcig, a deputy director with the Division of Developmental Disabilities, say they will need to collect the approval from not only state agencies, but the many local agencies they work with as well. However, they believe that the proposal will help the department be more cost-effective while enhancing the level of service.
“With the division being very mindful of state dollars and budgets there are a lot of ways in which tech can help us improve our efficiency, our effectiveness and and our jobs to monitor the services we deliver,” Witcig said.
Glover and Witcig will also speak with the commission Friday about home and community-based services available to their clients through Medicaid.
