The event, which will host 250 hospital pharmacy directors from across the country and features industry education sessions, is held at the Hyatt Regency in Miami.

Sentry staff will visit the Reverse Expo to meet with leading hospitals and health systems participating in the conference.

To schedule a meeting with someone from Sentry at the conference, please email us at info@sentryds.com or visit us at www.SentryDS.com/contact before May 7.

Health Connect Partners (HCP) Hospital Pharmacy Conference 
May 7-9, 2012
Hyatt Regency
Miami, FL

The event, which is held at the Saratoga Hilton, is a meeting of pharmacy leaders and healthcare exhibitors from around the state and region. The topic of this year’s assembly is “Drug Therapy Across the Spectrum of Special Patient Populations.” Sentry will be at Booth #412 throughout the assembly, which includes exhibitor spotlights on Friday and Saturday.

Sentry is excited to talk with attendees about our industry-leading 340B compliance solutions designed to maximize hospital pharmacy program participation, monitor site activity, and maintain audit-ready compliance.

To schedule a time to talk with Sentry staff during the event, please email us at info@sentryds.com or visit us at www.SentryDS.com/contact before the assembly.

NYSCHP 51st Annual Assembly
Booth #412
May 4-6, 2012
Saratoga Hilton
Saratoga Springs, NY

April 12, 2012 - Sentry Data Systems is alerting customers to a revised timeline for the start of the 340B Hospital Recertification process.

The Office of Pharmacy Affairs (OPA) has announced revised dates for contacting hospital senior executives at covered entities about recertification. These hospital representatives will receive an email containing a username, password and instructions for recertifying their institution and their registered outpatient sites in the 340B drug discount program.

This timeline is based on the type of 340B entity.

• Free-standing cancer hospitals, children’s hospitals, rural referral centers (RRCs), and sole community hospitals (SCHs) should receive emails on April 20.
• Disproportionate Share Hospitals (DSH) should receive emails on April 27.
• Critical Access Hospitals (CAH) should receive emails on May 4.

OPA has indicated that these dates are subject to change. Hospitals will have three weeks to complete the recertification process, according to OPA.

Sentry urges its clients to be aware of these dates and prepare to conduct their recertification on schedule, as recertification is a requirement for continued 340B eligibility.

For more information on the 340B recertification process, please refer to our original article.

We are specifically looking for any stories or examples of how 340B enabled your entity to offer care to underserved or low-income patient populations.

A few questions to consider related to 340B success stories:

• Has the 340B program benefited your patient population through health care services that otherwise would have been reduced or removed due to cost?
• Has the 340B program given your entity the ability to continue or improve key service offerings that are of vital importance to less fortunate patients?
• Has the 340B program given your entity the financial stability needed to sustain key care services in your community?

Please contact us or communicate with your Sentry Account Manager to share any 340B success stories you have that clearly illustrate the benefits your 340B program have brought to your institution, and ultimately, your patients.

This recent update is key for your recertification process and includes specific communication dates to be aware of with details on how to be proactive in updating your CE information.

Safety Net Hospitals for Pharmaceutical Access (SNHPA) has asked for our assistance in reaching out to customers and encouraging them to address the recertification process with the utmost urgency.

We will continue to serve as a resource for you as we will issue reminders and online postings of the information we receive.

Look for a recertification e-mail from OPA

The Pharmacy Services Support Center (PSSC) has indicated that 340B hospital authorizing officials will be contacted to recertify their CE’s 340B status with the Office of Pharmacy Affairs (OPA) on either April 9 or April 23 in the form of an email directly to the entity’s authorizing executive.

OPA has said that hospitals which fail to recertify their eligibility will be removed from the program, and that this recertification process is a requirement for hospitals to maintain 340B status.

The email from OPA will contain login information and basic instructions for the authorizing official, as they need to personally recertify that their hospital and all of its registered outpatient sites are eligible for the drug discount program.

Ensure the OPA database has accurate details for your entity

Sentry is strongly encouraging its 340B clients to immediately update their information in OPA’s Covered Entity Database to provide their accurate email addresses and other contact details as a safeguard against missing this critical recertification email.

It is the responsibility of the covered entity to update its information and to accurately identify each of its child sites. Hospitals that know of changes occurring between now and April that need to be reflected in the database may submit change requests now indicating when the changes are scheduled to occur.

Understand the changes to in-house pharmacy eligibility rules

In the past, in-house or owned retail pharmacies were identified as child sites of the parent CE. Going forward, though, OPA has made it clear that stand-alone pharmacies should be dis-enrolled as covered entities and evaluated to determine whether they should be re-enrolled as ship-to sites for the hospital. This is a key distinction that CEs need to be aware of as they recertify with the goal of accuracy and continued eligibility.

Review the OPA seminar and prepare for recertification

A breakdown of the key points from a recent OPA seminar (recap available here) on recertification:

• On either April 9 or April 23, hospital officials responsible for their institution’s 340B enrollment will receive an email from OPA with the username, password, and instructions they will need to actually complete the recertification process.
  • Because these emails will be sent to the authorizing officials only, it is vital that the entity’s contact information in the OPA database is accurate and that the authorizing official or their executive assistant be on the alert to receive these important emails.
  • The email login information will only be good for one attempt, so the authorizing official must have both time and accurate information available to update and verify the hospital’s eligibility and validate the list of child sites and other eligible outpatient facilities for the entity.
• 340B recertification and change request forms must be submitted by an “authorizing official,” which OPA defines as “someone who can bind the organization to a contract, such as the CEO, CFO, COO, Executive Director, President or Vice President of the hospital.”
• OPA has posted a frequently asked questions (FAQs) document about recertification on the PSSC web site. Click here to access it.
• Another webinar on recertification will be held on a date to be determined. Questions about recertification may be sent to340b.recertification@HRSA.gov.

The conference will focus on the increased scrutiny of the 340B program from Congress and government agencies and the implications of this oversight and upcoming audits. Sentry staff are prepared to talk with conference attendees about these topics and the growing use of contract pharmacies and their importance to a successful 340B program.

As a 340B software leader with hundreds of hospital and pharmacy clients across the country, Sentry is positioned to provide both insight and direction on current 340B discussions. Please contact us to set up a time to meet with someone from the Sentry team during the conference.

Sentry is also excited to be the Grand Prize Sponsor of the Passport Program drawing for a Sony BRAVIA 46-inch HD flat screen TV. This prize will be given out at the end of the conference, and any attendees that complete the passport program will be entered in the drawing.

Stop by the Sentry booth during the event to receive a Passport stamp and learn more about how Sentry’s solutions provide compliance and savings that maintain 340B program integrity and are always audit ready.

8^th Annual 340B Coalition Winter Conference
February 29 – March 2, 2012
Hotel del Coronado
San Diego, CA

During the conference, members of the Sentry team will be available in the HIMSS Meeting Place area of Exhibit Hall G in Room MP#48.

We look forward to seeing you during HIMSS 12 and hope you are able to take advantage of these opportunities to speak with a Sentry representative about our industry leading healthcare intelligence technology solutions. Please contact us if you would like to set up an appointment to talk with us during the conference.

HIMSS 12 Annual Conference & Exhibition
February 20-24, 2012
Venetian Sands Expo Center
Exhibit Hall G, Room MP#48
Las Vegas, NV

Read the full transcript below.
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The changing role of data in healthcare

Q&A: William D. Kirsh, DO, MPH
Chief Medical Officer, Sentry Data Systems
William Kirsh has more than 20 years of medical and business experience. Kirsh is involved in the development of Sentry’s products where he lends his clinical and healthcare financial expertise. Kirsh recently took time to discuss the changing role of data in the healthcare system.

Q: You say that we need to move from numerator data to denominator data in healthcare. What does that mean?
Kirsh: Numerator data is event data, events that may have happened to an individual. The next evolution is to look at the population being served – the denominator – and the environment the population is in in order to develop a service model for that population. It is population-based medicine. The population could be very small, such as ones by a diseases state or location, but it is still denominator medicine. So, the information that goes into it is a little different than going to collect somebody’s events that have taken place. There is a big distinction between the 1990s and the 2000s in that we are moving aggressively away from numerator medicine toward denominator medicine.

Q: Why is looking at huge volumes of aggregated data important in terms of improving healthcare and moving to denominator data?
Kirsh: Organizations live and die by their data, but think about taking that data to the next level and being able to identify sub-segments of a population where there are adverse risks to the delivery of medication, for instance, and realize that this population is very valuable. This is because you can begin to see populations genetically that medications can be developed for. You need to be able to look at large sets of data in order to pick out those small aberrant populations and it is those aberrant populations that are valuable. But you can’t identify these populations by looking at data in a small way.

Q: Do large IDNs have enough data in-house to effectively manage the new payment and care delivery models?
Kirsh: No. Data is only as good as a reference point. I can get a lot of data and turn it into some kind of a graph, but unless I have reference points, it won’t mean anything. To get reference points you, would need to have other IDNs that are aggregating their data and are sharing it, in order for an IDN to get some premise of where they are as compared with some standard. They could just set their own standard and say they are going to reach that. But, when you look at financial performance and outcomes, you can’t just set your own standard; you have to look at what outcomes are taking place broadly.

©The Changing Role of Data in Healthcare, a work product of the HIMSS Business Insider, is reprinted with permission from HIMSS.

The conference will focus on the increased scrutiny of the 340B program from Congress as well as HRSA and the implications of this oversight amidst the current 340B audit environment. Sentry personnel are ready to speak with conference attendees about preparing their Covered Entities with software solutions that address the critical functions needed to maintain 340B program integrity, operate with ongoing compliance within HRSA guidelines, and develop a documented trail of activity from the provider to the patient to the pill to the purchase.

“The fact that compliance and auditability are now center stage with all 340B stakeholders is the inevitable and natural conclusion of the recent program expansion and Congressional review. I am proud that our software products have always been developed with compliance as their cornerstone. Sentry provides Covered Entities the necessary tools to maintain program integrity and benefits,” said Travis Leonardi, President and Founder of Sentry. “As the Hospital 340B software leader with hundreds of hospital and pharmacy clients across the country, Sentry is uniquely qualified to provide both insight and direction on current 340B discussions.”

Sentry has two key 340B solutions, Sentinel and Sentrex, both of which were developed with the rules based technology that provides audit preparation tools, detailed reports and a documented trail of program compliance. Both Sentinel RCM (hospital program management) and Sentrex (contract pharmacy solution) are guided by the Covered Entity’s federally-mandated Policies and Procedures.

For more information about Sentry Data Systems Healthcare Business Intelligence and 340B Program software solutions visit www.SentryDS.com or call 800.411.4566.

Sentry is proud to be an exhibitor (Booth #3031) during the meeting, which takes place at the New Orleans Ernest N. Morial Convention Center. As a leading healthcare technology company, Sentry will provide the pharmacists attending ASHP information on our cutting edge compliance solutions for hospitals and pharmacies.

Please contact us if you’ll be attending ASHP and want to set up a time to meet with someone from our staff during the conference.

ASHP Midyear 2011
December 4-8, 2011
New Orleans Ernest N. Morial Convention Center
Booth #3031
New Orleans, Louisiana