Tax questions from Foster Care Providers

 12-29-23

Does anyone provide their foster families with basic information regarding taxes? I seem to have several calls a year regarding 1099s and what information they need to file their taxes, and if they are eligible to claim the foster child, any credits, etc. Obviously, would include a huge caveat that we are not tax providers, and to seek out guidance from a tax professional for their specific situation. BUT, do you have a cheat sheet of sorts that you provide to your providers? I’d rather not reinvent the wheel, if someone has something started already.

Thanks much!

Emily

 

Emily Asleson
emily.asleson@mcleodcountymn.gov

SSIS Qualifications

 12-12-23

Our current process is for the supervisor to let our director know what the person on their team should have permissions for and what they are qualified to do, such as TCM for which department, etc.  What is the process at other counties?

 

Is a child protection worker required to complete their foundations training prior to being “qualified” for CW-TCM?  Or is the social worker degree enough?  Sometimes our workers can’t complete this training for quite some time, and that ends up being a lot of time we can’t claim for.

 

Thank you!

 

Lavelle Kroontje

Fiscal Supervisor

Cass County Health Human & Veteran Services

400 Michigan Ave, PO Box 519

Walker, MN 56484

IFS enhancement - SSIS details on checks

 12-05-23

Can you send an email out to the group to see if anyone else would like changes made to IFS on what gets printed on the checks for SSIS.  Client Name, Invoice # and Remittance descriptions.

 

IFS Enhancement Group is asking for more feedback on what counties would like to see if their support for IFS to have the option of picking what you want printed on checks and ach advice of deposits.

 

Thank you.

 

 

Paying for hotels in emergency situations

 11/15/2023

We have needed to pay for hotels for adults, youth and families in emergency situations. How are other counties handling this?  Are you using credit card for the stay?  Do you rent out hotel rooms on an annual basis? Apartments?  How did you handle this legally?  What about the incidentals?  What if the family gets kicked out? Destroys the room? Purchases something to the room they should not?

 

Thanks,

 

Tracey Hansen | FISCAL SUPERVISOR

Blue Earth County

Human Services

Desk: 507-304-4293| Main Line: 507-304-4222

410 S 5^th Street | PO Box 3526 | Mankato, MN

www.blueearthcountymn.gov

Medica billing question

 09-21-23

Medica was approved as a Special Needs Basic Care (SNBC) provider as of January for our county but is not one of our PMAP providers.  We are now running into an issue with the clients on SNBC that have elected Medica and we are offering MH TCM  services to the client.  We are under the assumption that we would not be able to bill MH TCM to Medica since they are not our PMAP provider.

 

Does anyone know if this is correct or has had  issue/experience with this? 

Does anyone know if you can contract with a provider even if they are not one of your PMAP providers so we could bill for these client?

Any suggestions or advise would be greatly appreciated.

 

Thank you

Carrie Kisor

Accounting Specialist

Finance Department

501 South Minnesota Avenue

St. Peter, MN  56082

Phone:   507-934-8578

County Attorney's billing breakdown

 08-07-23

We currently pay our county attorneys for their time to help us with Child Support, Fraud/FPI, Social Services adult/child, and contracts.  They send us a detailed tracking of what case they worked on by the quarter hour, under each of these categories.  Does anyone know if they need to track it in such detail?  As you can imagine, it takes them quite a bit of time to track this for us.  Would they be allowed to send summary invoices under each of these categories using percentages or estimates?

 

Thank you,

 

Lavelle Kroontje

Fiscal Supervisor

Cass County Health Human & Veteran Services

400 Michigan Ave, PO Box 519

Walker, MN 56484

LHPA Funds Question

 08-07-23

How are the other counties spending their LHPA funds?  Are you contracting it out?  Going with a big idea?  Or a bunch of small purchases?  (examples of each)

 

How are other counties spending their MA Renewal money?  Just OT for current staff?  How are you tracking it for reporting?

 NOTE FROM JULIE - To clarify, this is money from the Minnesota Department of Revenue, and is Local Homeless Prevention Aid (LHPA).

Thank you,

 

Lavelle Kroontje

Fiscal Supervisor

Cass County Health Human & Veteran Services

400 Michigan Ave, PO Box 519

Walker, MN 56484

SSIS Service Arrangements question

 07-31-23

I am wondering what might be the practices of other counties in Service Arrangements. Where do they make note for who or what the payment is for. Without giving the identity of the client, yet providing sufficient notation on the Auditor’s Voucher Entries report that is printed to accompany their batch. Wabasha County lists under Invoice Number, but sometimes there is no invoice or account number available, and whatever is noted, appears on the receipt portion of the check to the vendor. We realize some of our vendors deal directly with our clients, while it is more for the non-client specific vendors such as local grocery stores, etc., that we use to identify the invoiced charge.

 

Thanks in advance for any information shared.

 

Julie

Wabasha County Finance

651-565-3044

 

 

Procuring Items for Clients

 07-25-23

Julie, can you ask this to all counties to see what they are doing to help support customers with basic needs with a short turn around time; like gas, groceries, diapers, formula, cleaning supplies, and clothes?

 

Currently Olmsted County is issuing purchase orders to customers to take into specific vendors to meet their emergent needs for gas, groceries, diapers, formula, cleaning supplies, and clothes.

 

We are finding this process to be very labor intensive, and open to fraud.

 

We are curious as to what other counties are doing to assist with these types of needs.

 

Thanks for passing on!

 

Suzann Bakken

Assistant Controller

Olmsted County Finance

e-mail suzann.bakken@olmstedcounty.gov

Phone & Fax 507-328-6460

AMH-TCM Billing Question

 06-28-23

I’ve been trying to bill AMH-TCM for a straight MA client for a  client we did telehealth with in May. According to the bulletin it appears that we should be using telehealth (in patient’s home) as the location. When we do that I get an error saying procedure code is inconsistent with the provider type/specialty. I tired billing it directly through MN-its with the same results. We have filed all of the necessary paperwork with DHS as of 4/13/23. I’m wondering if anyone else has had this issue? Should we use the covid coding instead?

Thank you!

 

Taylor Spilde

Fiscal Officer

Norman County Social Services

218-784-5404

Paying for Childcare for Children in FC

 06-26-23

How does your County handle paying childcare for children in Foster Care.  Considering the MAPCY supplement amount and the total amount of the monthly charges from the facilities.

Do you pay monthly?  Weekly?  Just trying to come up with something easier and more streamline.

Thanks

 

 

Patti Evenson

Accounting Technician

she/ her

Goodhue County Health and Human Services – Finance Division

426 West Avenue, Red Wing, MN 55066

Phone: (651) 385-3221

Fax: (651) 267-4879

Email: patti.evenson@co.goodhue.mn.us 

Gift Card Policy question

 06-22-23

Nicollet County is looking at revising our policy regarding gift cards as there has been a lot of chatter in recent months about all of the do’s and don’ts (mostly don’ts) related to them.  I’m wondering if anyone would be willing to share their policies.  Mainly interested in HHS and Veteran’s Services but if those policies include anything related to giving them out for employee recognition, those are welcome too.

 

Thanks!

 

Christopher Germscheid

Fiscal Supervisor

Finance Department

501 South Minnesota Avenue

St. Peter, MN  56082

Phone:   507-934-7195 

Note: during our fiscal focus group we touched on this subject. We have added a folder that contains a lot of good information regarding gift cards. You can find that information in the link below.

Link to Gift Card Documents

Posted by Blog administrator

MH Hold payment responsibility

 06-15-23

We received a bill for a mental health hold for someone who is not on MA and we have no ties to this case/person. We are wondering who’s responsibility it is to pay this bill? Is this just something the county has to do or does it go back to the client?

Thanks,

taylor.spilde@co.norman.mn.us

Taylor Spilde

Fiscal Officer

Norman County Social Services

Tel:  218-784-5404

Fax:  218-784-7142

SUD assessment question

 06-13-23 

If a client is on a commitment for chemical dependency reasons, and our LADC is doing the case management/treatment coordination, can the LADC do her own SUD assessment even though there’s a diagnosis from a professional already?  If we don’t do an SUD assessment, then we don’t have anything to enter into DAANES, and then can’t bill for any of the treatment coordination time.  If you don’t know the answer, can you please pass along some contacts to assist me in finding the answer?

 

Thank you,

 

lavelle.kroontje@casscountymn.gov

Lavelle Kroontje

Fiscal Supervisor

Cass County Health Human & Veteran Services

400 Michigan Ave, PO Box 519

Walker, MN 56484

 

Billing systems question

 06-07-23 

What billing systems do counties that have mental health clinics use to bill MMIS or at least capture the information (electronic health record) so that they can input the claim into MN-ITS?  These would be services that mental health professionals would provide, not mental health TCM.   

 

Thanks,

 

Janet Nilsen

nilsenj@StLouisCountyMN.gov

Budgeting for Salaries

 05-15-23

I’m conducting research on how other counties budget for the HHS salary/fringe lines. 

 

I am receiving guidance from a higher level to budget salary/fringe based on actual average spent in the prior year (adding in expected contract wage increases) instead of taking each individual position expected salary/fringe for the next year.  We’ve been under budget for a few years, but have continuously had vacant positions in the agency. 

 

Wanting to hear from others on how you calculate salary/fringe expenditures into the budget. Thank you all in advance!

Carli Goble

Fiscal Supervisor

 

Aitkin County Health & Human Services

Accounting Department

204 1st Street NW

Aitkin, MN 56431

Phone: (218) 927-7254

Reconciling incentives

 05-08-23 

Do counties reconcile incentives from collections? Incentives, such as, MFIP/DWP, SNAP, AFDC,MSA, MA…

 

If so, how do you do it?

 

Thanks,

 

Ann Ozan

Fiscal Supervisor

Carlton County Public Health and Human Services

PO Box 660, 14 N 11^th Street

Cloquet MN 55720

Outstanding Checks

Does your county have a limit as to how many times a client/vendor will be contacted regarding an outstanding check?  Does your county eventually just cancel the payment?  Are you willing to share your policy for outstanding checks? 

 

 

 

Please note I have a new email address and update my contact information:  new email Amie.Gendron@WCMN.US

 

 

Amie Gendron

Administrative Services Supervisor

Wadena County Human Services

124 1^st ST SE

Wadena, MN  56482

Telephone:  218-632-2535

Fax:  218-631-7616 

Gift Card Policies

 04-04-23

Does any counties have gift card policies they would like to share?

 Email them to Shelley.koen@mnprairie.gov

I will collect all of them and store where everyone can access them and then send a link out.

 

Question from:

Pat Moga

Winona County, Finance Director

202 West Third Street

Winona MN 55987

 

County Board per diem payments

 04-04-23

Our board was wanting to know what other counties are paying for per diem for their social service board meetings monthly?

Could you post the question to the blog

 

What do other counties pay their social services board members in per diem monthly?

Thanks!

 

 

Taylor Spilde

Fiscal Officer

Norman County Social Services

Tel:  218-784-5404

Fax:  218-784-7142

Combined Public Health and SS Budgets

 03-21-23

If you’re a combined Public Health & Social Service Agency, did you combine your budgets or leave them separate?  What do we need to take into consideration in either situation? Is there anything else that would be helpful?

 

Thanks.

 

 

 

Marlene Remmel

Fiscal & Child Support Supervisor

114 N Holcombe Ave Ste 180

Litchfield MN 55355-2273

320-693-5300 ext 310

320-693-5344 Fax

marlene.remmel@co.meeker.mn.us

Systems used to bill for services that SSIS does not

 02-07-2023

What system(s), if any, do counties use to bill services that SSIS doesn’t already bill for them.  For example, OBRA screenings, Officer-Involved Care Coordination, Intensive Treatment for Foster Care, SUD billings, etc.  Did your county’s IT department create something for you?  If so, what platform do they use?  If you purchased a billing software, what is the name of it? 

 

Thanks

 

Janet Nilsen

St. Louis County