2021.12.10 EQRS EDI Touchpoint Status Meeting

Production Support Process and CCSQ Support Central Video

LDO E-mail Process.vsdx

• Next couple of weeks the theme will be production support processes, process improvement
• Shamim Almamun - leads the production support across both contracts for EQRS
• Next Friday we will have a demo on the new CCSQ Support Central portal
  • This will be a new way that EDIs (any customer of EQRS) can interact with the service center 
• Diagram shows more about the production support improvement process CMS is working on between both EDIs and CMS
• CCSQ Support Central is more technology related
• It will be a web application provided by ServiceNow that the EDIs may enter a ticket and not require authentication with HARP or a ServiceNow role
• This will be a better avenue to communicate issues encountered
  • There are have been instances where issues are sent via email and then an incident case/ticket has been created, but then the subject line of that ticket has been changed when a response is being sent contributing to miscommunication and confusion on the status of an issue
• Recommendation from Howard - Need to have a clear priority or escalation procedure
  • Need to be able to escalate an issue to senior leadership/management 
  • An informal process were the EDIs may not need to jump through a lot of hoops of logging into a portal in order to get a significant serious issue resolved/addresses; should be quick and easy
  • Question from Shamim - Every time something needs to be escalated (for example Curt or Scott) do you want them to reply back to you or is it just to escalate so it becomes a higher priority?
    • Per Howard - its on a case by case basis.  Sometimes it needed to be escalated because the issue is a serious matter that needed to be brought to CMS' attention and sometimes its necessary for a reply
    • Per Shamim - currently if the issue is urgent, enter "Urgent" in the subject line of the email and it will follow an escalation process; the helpdesk will talk directly to the appropriate person to get feedback and reply back to the person sending the email
    • If it is not urgent, it will follow the regular process; per the SLA, the email with the issue needs to be read by the helpdesk
    • Ticket needs to be created and worked on and ask any questions needed to understand the issue
• Question from Kelly - The support process will end up being a consolidation (EQRS support and CMS QualityNet)? The goal is to have one helpdesk?
  • Per Shamim -  We already have one helpdesk, the helpdesk is not changing
  • Currently the helpdesk receives tickets two ways - by a call in and by email
  • Now with the new process, a person can submit a ticket themselves using the CCSQ Support Central portal
  • You will be able to search for your ticket and see the status of the ticket
  • Per Kelly, they were told to send issues to two different emails - QualityNet support at EQRS and Quality Support at CMS
    • Is there only going to be one email now?
      • Shamim is not aware of the two email addresses
      • Per Scott - If an EDI person is sending out the issue they are sending to the qnetsupport-esrd@hcqis.org email address; the email handler is replying back to the EDI person with the case number using a different email address which is from the CMS support
      • Not sure why the EDIs were told to use both email addresses
      • If sending a problem via email use qnetsupport-esrd@hcqis.org
      • If "hcqis.org" email changes to a ".gov" email, CMS will let the EDIs know
  • Question from Kelly - With the new portal, will the renal healthcare group still be able to use our automated tickets we use with out community? It will be automatically routed to the right email address? Will it still be picked up by this new process?
    • Per Scott - You can still use this email box.  The CCSQ Support Central is an addition, it's not a replacement to anything they we have already today
• Per Nathan -  Agrees with Howards recommendation regarding the need for an escalation procedure
  • Also finds useful as part of the email process is the/a notification aspect of it
    • If another EDI reports an issue, there should a process to notify all other EDIs b/c they may run into the same issue
    • Can there be a label or an indicator of some kind letting everyone know the issue is a broader industry type of ticket
    • Per Scott - CMS is working on better and more frequent proactive communication when it comes to widespread outages
    • Nathan gave credit to CMS for responding/notifying so quickly regarding the AWS outage to the EDIs.  Appreciated the email that Melissa Fieldhouse sent out.  It was the first notice within 6 hours that Nathan got the CMS email/notification.  The timeliness of the email was on point.  
    • Kelly also agreed and commented it was well done
    • Additional suggest from Howard to maybe have a distribution list of key resources from of the EDIs that email notification can be sent to even if just as an FYI
    • Per Scott, they are working on canned language.  Some communications may or may not need to go through clearance and approvals. Having canned language will help minimize the time it takes for clearance and approval especially when communications need to go out sooner than later to the EDIs
    • Per Shamin he is working with the service center in defining what is a "Known Issue".  This will allow communications to be sent out right away on issues that CMS is already aware of
    • Question from Nathan - Is the CCSQ Support Central portal a "new" portal or is it the same portal that has been around and just updated? There was a portal that was out there for the EDIs to create tickets but that was all they could do.
      • Per Shamim, this is a new portal
      • The CCSQ Support Central Portal is scheduled to be deployed to production 12/10 
      • The user will be able to created tickets, respond and see the work notes entered by either the agent or the ADO that is working the ticket
    • Question from Nathan - when we email qnetsupport-esrd@hcqis.org, we get the case number that is auto generated. Then there is a process were it converts into an incident number. That conversion time can be 1+ days and sometimes converted to the wrong group.  Will we have to go through this process of have a case number then converted to an incident number with the new portal?
      • Per Shamim - There has been an improvement on this process.  It was established the process of creating a case number and  then converting to an incident number is duplication of effort.  Some of the information was being lost.  Therefore, an incident number will not be created.  There will only be a case number to work off of.
  • Per Kathleen - Will the new process (CCSQ Support Central) generating multiple response emails? She is receiving too many emails.
    • Shamim will work with Kathleen on why the multiple emails (action item)

https://youtu.be/bS0bUGbvCr4

• There will be a demo by the HCD team of the new CCSQ Support Central portal next week
• Question from Howard - In the portal where you enter email, does it accept multiple emails?
  • This question should be asked next week during the demo
• Question from Nathan -  Is this portal expected to be used by the clinic teammates (for example - they need a patient merge, password reset, etc)?
  • Per Scott, Yes
• The qnetsupport-esrd@hcqis.org email address is NOT going away