SOR CSB/Agency Community Forum: Understanding and Sharing Data on Tue 4/19 at 11am ET

The OMNI and DBHDS Teams invite you to join in our second CSB/Agency Treatment Community Forum, and our first of 2022. Per popular request, we will provide the opportunity for a facilitated discussion on understanding and sharing your data.

The Forum is Tuesday, April 19th from 11am-noon ET. Please click here to register for the Forum.

OMNI will provide a very quick refresher on the various reports and data sets we produce for DBHDS and for your agency. Much of the data in these reports comes from the GPRA and from your quarterly survey responses. We'll also briefly review the VASIS (Virginia Social Indicator Study) Dashboard. This is an informal forum during which all can hear from each other about how to use and share data to tell a story. We'll learn from each other, ask questions, and share existing best practices.

We also plan to spotlight a couple agencies who successfully use data to inform their teams, community, funders, and stakeholders.

Questions? Reach out to us at SORSupport@omni.org. See you in the Forum!

Kudos to Planning District 1

In 2022, we have been sharing some shout-outs about CSBs or Agencies that are doing well with their intakes, follow-ups, engaging and supporting clients, and/or those that demonstrate a "spirit of inquiry" when engaging with our TA Team on GPRA administration issues.

 This month, we'd like to send some kudos out to Planning District 1 (PD1) for their steady intake GPRA numbers and for increasing their follow-up interview rate over time (now at 62%). They also successfully leverage contingency management funds and incentives to better-engage their clients and encourage them to participate, especially in the follow-up interview GPRA. Great work, PD1 team!

Reporting & Correcting Duplicate Follow-ups and Other GPRA Issues

The OMNI TA Team routinely monitors the GPRA data for several issues, including cases where surveys -- especially follow-ups -- may have been duplicated. When we identify issues, our team reaches out to the main Point of Contact at your CSB for clarification and decisions. To lighten all of our workloads (including yours), we have put into place some tools and tips to help us all identify and correct issues sooner and more seamlessly.

• First, the TA Request form on the SOR website has a choice in the dropdown of reasons for contacting us: "Need to change something in a GPRA".

  • Please use the form and this choice right away if you know that you or someone at your CSB has mistakenly entered a duplicate GPRA or other information that we will need to adjust.

  • Or, use it as soon as you have discovered a correction or issue on the weekly tracking sheet in Dropbox (e.g., incorrect interview date, incorrect birthday, duplicate, etc.).

• Another way to help prevent duplicate GPRA follow-ups from being submitted is to regularly review the weekly tracking sheet that we post to Dropbox. There you might spot incorrect dates as-entered, or even duplicated GPRAs themselves, as we indicate "possible duplicate" in the notes column. When you spot these, please contact us as soon as possible to resolve the issue, using the TA Request form.

  • Note: The weekly tracking sheets also identify the follow-up window which is intended to help prevent CSBs from completing follow-ups that are too early or too late. Remember, the "6-month" follow up window falls between month 6 and month 9 after the intake interview date.

  • If you do not yet have access to your CSB's Dropbox folder, please use the TA Request form on the SOR website to request access.

• A number of CSBs have set up internal tracking systems in tandem with the tracking sheets. These systems may help eliminate duplication or completions outside the follow-up window from taking place. If you would like to explore some options that might support or improve your internal tracking and GPRA review process, please contact us at SORSupport@omni.org. Page 2 of this resource has great ideas for you as well, in this regard.

SOR II Year 2 Quarter 1 SOR Progress Report

We are excited to share the new SOR II quarterly progress report for Quarter 1 (October to December 2021). This report focuses on SOR prevention, treatment, and recovery evaluation activities for the state in Quarter 1 and includes data from quarterly surveys, GPRAs, and PBPS. You can find the report linked here or on the Reports page of the SOR Support website.

Thank you for your hard work as we start this year of SOR II! We hope this report helps highlight Virginia's work across the grant. Please let us know if you have any questions or feedback.

Updated Quarterly Survey Tracking Sheet - Error Fixed!

We wanted to let you know we found some errors in the Quarterly Survey Tracking Sheets that we initially posted. If you are actively using it, please download the new sheets and move the data you had recorded over. If you haven't been using them, you can still download them and start!

They are located on the Quarterly Survey page of our website.

For reference, OMNI has developed these Quarterly Reporting Tracking Sheets to support the data collection needed to complete the Quarterly Reporting Surveys. Please note that using this tracking sheet is NOT required, and it does not need to be submitted to OMNI at any point. If you choose to use this tracking sheet, you must also complete the online survey. This tracking sheet is not a substitution for any components of the survey.

Some useful information regarding these tracking sheets:

• There is a Recovery Tracking Sheet, focused on the questions in the Recovery Reporting Surveys. This tracking sheet includes columns for different peers to conveniently track each peer's work with clients.

• There is a Treatment Tracking Sheet, focused on the questions in the Treatment Reporting Surveys.

• Both tracking sheets have four tabs for the four quarters. The tabs include questions specific to each quarter (e.g., the quarter 4 tab includes questions asking for totals across the past year).

• This tracking sheet is completely optional to use and can be altered to align with the specific needs of your agency's tracking procedures. Please reach out to SORSupport@omni.org if you need any assistance in altering this tracking sheet to your needs.

As always, let us know if you have any questions!

Updates to the SOR Support Website!

OMNI is pleased to share that we have recently made some updates to the SOR website and have a bit of news about the VASIS dashboard to share:

• A calendar feature has been added to the website! You can find it under the Resources section. We've added some recurring dates of note (e.g. monthly progress report release dates, quarterly survey due dates) and will add special dates for trainings or events that are upcoming. We will continue to announce important trainings and dates via a website post, as well.

• We've reformatted our OMNI Staff listing section of the website to be compatible with mobile devices. More important, we've added a few new faces and bios to the list of folks on our team. We invite you to check it out!

• In 2021, we added the link to the Virginia Social Indicator Dashboard (VASIS) to our website, under Other Resources. The dashboard is a compilation of behavioral health data from agencies and organizations across the commonwealth of Virginia. The goal of the dashboard is to centralize key indicators of behavioral health and wellness to use as a resource for needs assessment, epidemiological monitoring, and planning. We are pleased to announce the most recent data updates to the dashboard for you to explore:

  • 2019 Overdose data from OCME

  • Census 2020 data

Urgent/Time-Sensitive Request from SAMSHA on FTS by COB 2/17!

DBHDS and SAMSHA have an urgent/time-sensitive request of all agencies/CSBs:

Please reply/email back the following information to SORSupport@omni.org by the end of the day on Thursday 2/17.

1. Are you distributing Fentanyl Test Strips (FTS)?

2. How many FTS/units have you distributed?

3. Do you have any outcome data on their use? (e.g., are individuals using them and avoiding overdose)

Please only have one person reply for each agency/CSB. Thank you in advance and apologies for the quick turnaround time on this request.

Kudos to Richmond Behavioral Health Authority CSB!

We recently announced that in 2022, we'll be sharing some shout-outs about CSBs or agencies that are doing well with their intakes, follow-ups, engaging and supporting clients, and/or those that demonstrate a "spirit of inquiry" when engaging with our TA Team on GPRA administration issues.

This month, we'd like to send some kudos to Richmond Behavioral Health Authority (RBHA) for their consistently strong follow-up rates and intake numbers over a long period of time. Their follow-up rate has ranged from between 70-90% over at least the past half a year, in line with the 80% grantee rate that SAMSHA aims for.

Additionally, RBHA collects ample client locator data and has dedicated staff who contact clients, incentivize GPRA surveys, and utilize their program data for internal and external stakeholders.  Having worked with multiple SAMHSA grants, they've implemented effective and efficient processes and procedures that have set them up for success. They have shared some of their best practices with the TA Team and in trainings, some of which OMNI has incorporated into our TA materials. This has the ripple effect of supporting and benefiting all agencies! Way to go!

2/8/22 GPRA Orientation & Refresher Training Recording and Slides now available!

OMNI held a one-hour GPRA Brief Orientation & Refresher Training on Tuesday February 8, 2022. This was a higher-level overview of important elements of GPRA completion. We had a great turnout, and want to thank everyone for joining!

If you were unable to attend or would like to review the training, the recording and slides are now posted to the Trainings section of our SOR Website.