Posts Tagged ‘CHAA’

Dispensary Selection Results

August 7th, 2012

For about four hours this morning, balls were hopping in the bingo machine as we randomly chose one dispensary for each of the 68 competitive districts.  All the drawings are online for you to watch – there were 404 applications considered in the 68 drawings.  There were also 29 CHAAs where there was only one eligible applicant.  There were two CHAAs that we did not select today because of pending court action.  There were also 27 areas where no applications were made – making up the 126 areas in the state. 

The results are posted- you’ll notice that only the dispensary application number is on the list; that’s because of the confidentiality clause in the Medical Marijuana Act.  

The successful applicants will be notified by mail and need to fill out some more paperwork to get the certificates.  I talked about that last week.  We anticipate sending some certificates out this month depending on how quickly the applicants respond.

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Registration Certificate Selection Tuesday

August 3rd, 2012

Next Tuesday (August 7) is “Selection Tuesday” for our medical marijuana dispensary applicants.  By the end of the day, we’ll have whittled the initial pool of 486 medical marijuana dispensary applications down to 99.  We won’t be allocating the full allotment of 126 Registration Certificates on Tuesday because 27 of our Community Health Analysis Areas had no applicant at all- leaving 99 Community Health Analysis Areas with at least 1 applicant.  About 75 of the 99 had 2 or more applicants- so we’ll have about 75 drawings on Tuesday.  We’ll post an updated summary of how many eligible applications there are by district on our website before the drawing.

We’ll be using a device that blows pre-labeled ping pong type balls inside of a clear cage to randomly select the successful applicant in each competitive area.  We’ll go CHAA by CHAA starting at #1 and continuing through #126.  The agenda for the day is posted on our website (the first selection will begin at 9 am and we’ll finish around 1 pm).  Applicants will be e-mailed the number of their ball(s) in advance…  and all applicants will be notified of the selection results electronically by Wednesday.  The successful applicants will receive their Registration Certificate after they complete their required Dispensary Agent paperwork.

The process will be webcast live on this internet URL and the entire event will be recorded and posted on the ADHS dispensary website.  Because of the large number of applicants and the limited capacity of our facility, credentialed media, a few Agency staff and our independent auditors will be the only folks that’ll be invited to the selection location.  The Act doesn’t allow us to identify the applicants by name or even business name- so we’ll use application numbers to identify the successful applicants.  We’ll also post a table of the successful applicants (by application number) on our dispensary website by the close of business on Tuesday.

Everybody that’s allocated a Dispensary Registration Certificate will have a little less than a year to build out and get an “Approval to Operate”.  Keep in mind that an application for Approval to Operate a dispensary is not complete until we get a written notice that the dispensary and cultivation facility (if it’s in the business plan) is ready for an inspection and they meet our criteria.  Our team recently put together some tools to help Registration Certificate holders meet our Approval to Operate criteria, including an Approval to Operate Application Checklist, Approval to Operate Application Instructions, and the Dispensary Inspection Checklist

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Dispensary Application Update

July 23rd, 2012

Most of the applicants for medical marijuana registration certificates have been able to correct deficiencies in their applications…  and 460 of the 486 applications we received are now complete.  Five applications have been withdrawn, 3 have been denied, 15 are pending, and 3 are on the clock to respond to requests for additional information.  

The complete applications are currently being evaluated to determine which will be eligible and move on to the random selection process on August 7th.  At least 25 applications will be allocated certificates without going through the random selection process because they’re the only application in their district (CHAA).  We’ll be providing more information about the August 7th agenda in the next couple of weeks.  We’ll probably be issuing 95-99 dispensary registration certificates in about 3 weeks.

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Selection Tuesday

June 21st, 2012

Overall, we ended up receiving 486 medical marijuana dispensary applications among our 126 Community Health Analysis Areas (CHAAs).  Twenty-seven of the CHAAs had no applicant at all- leaving 99 Community Health Analysis Areas with at least 1 applicant.  Seventy-five of the 99 had more than 1 applicant.  Assuming that each of these end up being complete, we’ll need to randomly select successful applicants in 75 of the CHAAs (we’ll be posting an updated summary of how many complete applications there are by CHAA in a few weeks).  Here’s how it’ll work for the competitive CHAAs on Selection Tuesday (August 7):  

We’ll be using a device that blows balls inside of a clear cage to randomly select the successful applicant in each CHAA.  Applicants will be assigned a random code in advance…  and the person with the code that matches the ball that blows into the chamber will be allocated a Registration Certificate.  We’ll repeat this process for each of the competitive CHAAs.  The process will be webcast live on a URL that we identify a few days before August 7.  The Act doesn’t allow us to identify the successful applicants by name or even business name publicly- so the live announcement will be made using the code that only the applicants will have.  Each applicant will receive their unique identifier electronically so they’ll know whether they won their CHAA drawing via the webcast.  The Certificates will be mailed later that day. 

Everybody that’s allocated a Dispensary Registration Certificate will have a little less than a year to build out and get an “Approval to Operate”.  Keep in mind that an application for Approval to Operate a dispensary is not complete until we get a written notice that the dispensary is ready for an inspection and they meet our criteria.  Our team recently put together some tools to help Registration Certificate holders meet our Approval to Operate criteria, including an Approval to Operate Application Checklist, Approval to Operate Application Instructions, and the Dispensary Inspection Checklist.

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Week 1 for Dispensary App’s

May 18th, 2012

We’ll wrap up our first week of accepting medical marijuana dispensary Registration Certificate applications today. We’ve received about 40 applications so far this week- and our team has been doing an excellent job of reviewing the applications for “Administrative Completeness” this week- so much so that we don’t even have a backlog (yet).  

Any applications that are “Administratively Incomplete” (in other words, if they’re missing something) are being returned to the applicants so they can correct whatever is wrong.  In June, we’ll be checking for “Substantive Completeness” (which is a more thorough, quality review), and the applicants will have another chance to make corrections.  We expect to award all of the Registration Certificates on August 7.  If there’s only 1 qualified applicant in a Community Health Analysis Area- that applicant will be awarded a Certificate.  We’ll be holding a random drawing on August 7 to award Certificates in the CHAAs with more than 1 qualified applicant. 

Prospective applicants can check out our Registration Certificate Application Checklist, Instructions, and the official Application on our Medical Marijuana Dispensary webpage.  We’re refreshing our dispensary application page each weekday around the close of business to show how many applications we’ve received by Community Health Analysis Area.  Applicants have until next Friday (May 25) to finish and turn in their paperwork.

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The ABC’s of our Community Health Analysis Areas

January 28th, 2011

Several years ago, our public health statistics team divided the State into 126 Community Health Analysis Areas to help us analyze data for various disease monitoring programs.  The initial trigger to develop the CHAAs was a 1988 law that directed the ADHS to use the data in the cancer registry to identify areas and populations that need investigation. Until recently, the state-collected cancer data was not complete enough to looks at rates on a relatively small geographic scale, limiting analysis to the county level only.  Once we had enough data to meet the legislative mandate to report on rates across the state we developed CHAAs to present our data at a geographic scale smaller than the county level.

We created CHAAs by modifying the 126 Primary Care Areas used by the ADHS program for Health Systems Development. PCAs have been used to characterize the health needs of communities for many years; however, the PCAs didn’t provide all the coverage and detail that we require for every part of the state, so we developed the CHAAs to more closely align to the growing rural communities and to Phoenix’s villages.

Each CHAA is built from US 2000 Census Block Groups. These Block Groups are relatively small geographic regions of the state. A typical CHAA contains approximately 21,500 residents. But, because of the scattered pattern of development in Arizona they range widely in population, from 5,000 to 190,000 persons. The use of the relatively small Block Groups gives us the ability to aggregate data at a variety of sizes, from the Block Group level up to the CHAA level that we use in analysis. A CHAA in the highly urbanized areas of Maricopa County contains approximately 100,000 persons. The average rural CHAA contains approximately 10,000 persons.

You’ll be hearing alot more about CHAAs in the very near future.

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