Monday, December 22, 2014

My Messages

If you don't have unread required messages to view, the message grid no longer loads up by default in My Messages.  There is no need to wait for messages to be loaded unless you want to see them, so this change was made.  Simply click on the Inbox to see your messages. 

We also made changes to insure that you can always see the first and second attachments that may be associated with a message. 

User Meeting in January

If you are able to host a user meeting for our Tennessee InfoServDD users group some time in January, please email support@practicalhealthsystems.com.  

Monday, November 24, 2014

Med Variance Alerts

We are now sending out an additional Medication Variance Alert to those who are to be notified. This one is sent out after the user has identified that one of the med variance conditions has been med and submits the "Give Med" form.
This alert says, "A new Medication Variance condition has occurred.  You will receive another email upon its completion."

The user then is supposed to complete the Med Variance form.  Once that is completed, you receive the Med Variance alert that you are accustomed to seeing.  If you receive the first alert without a follow-up alert, you will need to make sure that the user filled out the form.

NOTE:  Kentucky users will not receive this alert.

Monday, November 17, 2014

Agency Sites - New Fields Added

We have added some new optional fields to the Agency Sites form.  Not all agencies will use these but you could all make use of the "Notes" field.  The additional fields are at the bottom of the form.
The Housing Type field only applies to Missouri currently.  Send us a Help Desk if you need the Housing Type field as well.



 

Tuesday, November 11, 2014

Important Dates on Info Page and Med History on Health Passport

We have implemented the change on the Personal Info page that shows the "Important Dates" so that only the Encounters/Appointments marked as Important Dates  = Yes will show up here.

Also, the New Health Passport has been changed to include the Encounters/Appointments marked as  Med History = Yes under a new Medical History section near the bottom.

Please mark the encounter/appointment records that you think are worthy of showing up in these areas.

Show this under Important Dates on Personal Info Page?
  * Yes  No
Show this on Health Passport under Med History?
  * Yes  No

Monday, November 10, 2014

Exclusions Database for November Updated

The Exclusions OIG.Gov database has been updated (as of 11/7/2014).

Thursday, November 6, 2014

New Contact Type -- "Inactive"

We have added a new contact checkbox to designate the contact as inactive.  Inactive contacts will not show up on the Face Sheet, etc. 
From Individuals, Contacts, View Contacts, click on the Change Type link to get to the screen below where you see "Is contact INACTIVE?".

 

Encounters / Appointments Changes

The "Important Dates" section on the Personal Info Page can get a bit lengthy for some if the individual has had several doctor visits, etc.

We also had a request today to include information from specific Medical Appointments (Encounters) on the Health Passport as a Medical History to be seen by physicians, etc.  (Even though some states may no longer require a Health Passport, you have told us that you are still using it, so it will remain on your menu.)

To take care of these issues, we have added two fields at the bottom of the Encounter add/edit form.  These have also been added to the Encounter Query so that you can edit these and get a quick look at which ones have been changed. 
We will implement the "Important Dates" change so that only encounters marked as "Yes" will be shown soon.  But for now, it will continue to show the last year's encounter plus those scheduled for the future until you have had enough time to edit these.

Show this under Important Dates on Personal Info Page?
  * Yes No
Show this on Health Passport under Med History?
  * Yes No

 

Wednesday, October 29, 2014

Fix for CyberSitter Issue with Personal Info Menu

If you have a computer using CyberSitter Internet filtering that has trouble showing the new pull-down menus on the Personal Info page, please add the following to the allowable URL list:
https://ajax.googleapis.com

This will fix the issue and the new menu will be displayed.

(Scroll down to see the "New Menu Option" post on May 29th below for a picture of the menu.)

Friday, October 24, 2014

Outcomes / Goals Progress Notes Change

We have always shown all of the progress notes that have been written throughout the month on the Progress Notes entry screen/report. But some individuals/consumers have several and the notes can be lengthy.  So we've added a new link at the top that allows you to toggle between showing all the notes/history or just showing each outcome/goal along with the link to add a new note.

This should be especially helpful near the end of the month for those with several outcomes/goals.


Look at the top of the screen for the new link "Click here to Show with NO History".


Thursday, October 2, 2014

By-passing Required Reading in My Messages

We have added a way for you to by-pass required reading in My Messages.  This is just an option that you can use in special situations.

You may need to turn this on temporarily for an Executive Director or someone who has been out on leave for several weeks and needs to immediately access the system without having to view every message that has been marked as required. 

Note that the red "Required Reading" message will still be present at the top of the My Messages screen to let the employee know that these important messages still need to be viewed.

To turn on this capability, edit the employee's permissions and go to the bottom of the form.
Change the permissions for "My Messages: By-pass Required Reading" to A/E/D.
 

Tuesday, September 30, 2014

Site Evaluation Reviews, Fire Drill Notifications

The Site Evaluations module under Maintenance allows you to have a supervisor review the evaluations done and document issues/problems and actions to be taken.
We have added additional questions in section B and C that were not properly being reflected in the supervisor's review.  These issues have been corrected.

The questions affected were B.6., B.7., and C.4 in the way they were not pulling forward the "First Eval" and "Second Eval" fields.
 
You can simply edit the supervisor review and save it to correct these issues.

Fire and Weather Drill Notifications may not have been sending you notifications correctly when the drill lasted longer than 3 minutes.  The notifications for these are assigned under Maintenance, Notify Sites.  If you have already set this up, you should receive notifications via My Messages now when a drill takes longer than 3 minutes.


 

Monday, September 22, 2014

Attendance Chart's "Head in bed" time changed to 11:59 PM in Tennessee

Tennessee has changed its "head in bed" time from 12:01 AM back to 11:59 PM.  The form's legend has been changed as has the report.

Monday, September 15, 2014

Vehicle Checklist -- Additional Questions Added

Today an auditor stated that we needed to add a couple of questions to our Vehicle Maintenance Checklist form.

These new questions are:
  • Are heating and air conditioning working properly?
  • Are the van lift operating instructions posted?

These questions and additional comments pertaining to each field have been added to the form and to the report.

Tuesday, September 9, 2014

New Exclusions Database for September Added

If you're using the OIG Exclusions process, note that we have uploaded the latest OIG database into InfoServDD today and it is ready for use.

Friday, August 8, 2014

PHS Wins Award!

PHS president Lynn Johnston accepting award
Volunteers of America Kentucky recently presented Practical Health Systems president Lynn Johnston with their annual vendor/man of the year award.   Lynn has personally spent countless hours in Louisville guiding them through some exciting new system enhancements and customizations including a Corporate Incident Management System, time tracking system enhancements specifically designed for corporate level grant/project management and reporting, a new employee blog, maintenance request customizations, and a new eLearning website to mention a few.

Volunteers of America - KY has offices in West Virginia, Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee and Ohio and serves more than 8,000 people each year.

Thursday, August 7, 2014

New 8-7-2014 OIG Exclusions Database Loaded for Tennessee

You can run your exclusions processes now for August.
(Search for "Exclusions" in this blog for further info about this.)

Thursday, July 31, 2014

My Messages - New Message Preview Feature

We have added a way to preview a single message or multiple messages from My Messages while still on the list.  Just click on the right arrow to the left of the message row and it will drop down a small scrollable window with the message content.  The arrow turns to a down arrow.  Just click it again to make the preview window disappear. 

You can even click on multiple messages and see all of the content at once while still on the list, which is nice in case you want to read related messages at the same time.

Previewing the message does NOT mark it as being read.  So if you only preview the message from your Inbox, it will remain there.


 

Monday, July 14, 2014

Exclusions Updated

The OIG.HHS.Gov Exclusions database was updated on the 10th and is ready for you to use in InfoServDD. 
Remember that you must have permissions to this from your employee permissions record to see it on your Employees menu on the lower left hand side.

Maintenance Request

We've added the job cost and labor hours to Maintenance Requests.  Tracking cost and labor is entirely optional for you, but is available now if needed.  These are currently available from the "Completed" link.

Thursday, June 12, 2014

Training Specific to the Individual -- Enhancements

Several changes have been applied to the Training Specific/Mock Fire Drill part of the program.
The trainers (house managers, etc.) should schedule new Training Specific training from Maintenance, Training Specific, Add and not from Employees, Training Schedule.

The links available are "Train Staff" (if not yet trained) and "Report".  If the course has been taken, the "Train Staff" link goes away.  The scheduled status is automatically changed to "Completed" when the course is completed.

From Maintenance, Training Specific, View, you now have a filter by county in addition to the month and the year. This is the county of the individual/service recipient, by the way. 

From Maintenance, Training Specific, Add, the remark is now read-only and is set to Scheduled.
Once the record is added, the trainer can click on Train Staff and you will see two links.
One is Take Course and the new one is Take Course without the Mock Fire Drill.  If the trainee has already been trained on a Mock Fire Drill at the site, then you can click on Take Course without the Mock Fire Drill.  (Please follow your agency's internal policies concerning this choice.)
The username/password has been moved to the bottom of the form and some additional instructions have been added to ensure that the trainer is logged in and the trainee is the one adding their username/password "signature" onto the form.
If the user clicks on "...without Mock Fire Drill", the user is redirected back to the Training Specific View page after the course is taken.  Otherwise, it stays on the screen to let you see Mock Fire Drills.
The course or courses taken will also be marked as completed under the trainee's employee/training record.
 

Wednesday, June 4, 2014

New Exclusions Database Loaded for Tennessee

Tennessee providers should be able to see the new exclusions database for 6/2/2014 from OIG.HHS.Gov.

(Read Exclusions blog posts below for more info.)

Friday, May 30, 2014

Texas Menu Changes

We've made the Note menu  dynamically display only the notes necessary for the individual based on that individual's "Primary Residential Service" from their demographics screen.
So if the individual's primary residential service is "FCC", you will see the FCC Note, but not the RSS/SL or SHL/Respite/CS Note choices, for example.

Also, new TxHml services have been added into the system.

Thursday, May 29, 2014

New Menu Option

Some states currently have the option to see a new menu option on the Personal Info page.  If you go to Maintenance, Agency Mgmt, View and scroll to the bottom you'll see an option to turn this new menu on.  It automatically displays only charts that are applicable (from Charting Requirements) for the individual selected.  It also gets rid of the links that you used to see.
You can try this out by changing the setting as described above, but note that you may need to at least send out a My Message to your staff members to alert them of the change since we have used those links for so long.
 
Just hover your mouse over the menu heading and then click on the option you want.  Other than the look and feel, it works the same as before.

Personal Info Page with the Charts menu highlighted

Personal Info Page with the Note menu highlighted

Enhancements

A few miscellaneous enhancements have been made:

From Maintenance, General Reports, Chart Reports, you may now output the various chart types as a PDF.

My Messages: Forwards now forward attachments and show the original "from" and "sent" information in the message.

My Messages: Work Site:  We have had an agency testing out sending messages to anyone working at a work site and the results have been favorable, so we're adding this feature for everyone.  Obviously, you have to make sure your employee records have the sites from which they can work updated for this to be useful.   Those providers that use our time tracking will have these up to date.

Home Meetings:  If you have had multiple positions/titles, it was displaying each title under the "Staff Positions" section.  It now only displays the current position/title.

Help Documentation & Videos:  From the home page, the link "Help Documentation" has been changed to "Help Documentation & Videos".  It now goes to a new page that allows you to move between help manuals and videos.  The videos are short and to the point and may be useful for training of new staff members.  New videos are being added daily.

MAR Report:  The report now shows up to 10 time slots.  You have been able to enter 10 time slots for a while.

Friday, May 23, 2014

Maintenance Requests

The view and report for Maintenance Requests have been enhanced with a couple of additional filters so that you can filter by the type of request.

Wednesday, May 21, 2014

Training Scheduling Changes

Employees --> Training Schedule

If a course has the status of "Scheduled":
  • You have access to the "Edit Schedule" link.
  • You do NOT have access to the "Edit Students" link.
  • You CAN "Add Students" from the Add Students link.
  • Changes you make in Edit Schedule affect the students' records.

If a course has any status other than "Scheduled" ("Completed", etc.):
  • You do NOT have access to the "Edit Schedule" link.
  • You CAN "Edit Students".
  • You CANNOT "Add Students".
  • Changes you make to Edit Students affect the students' records.
If the training course's scheduled record has been changed to completed and you forgot to add a student, you must create another scheduled course and assign that student to it. 
These changes have been made to make it easier to manage and to prevent errors.

Tuesday, May 20, 2014

Sage Accounting -- Programs

The Programs module of our Sage Accounting interface now includes a column to mark the program as "Allocated" (yes/no).  Obviously, this only applies to those who interface with Sage Accounting.
Please mark the programs accordingly using the grid under Financials, Sage Accounting.

Message to Your Staff

I see that Pacesetters has already taken advantage of this new feature! 
If you have access to Agency Management, go there (Maintenance, Agency Mgmt, View Agency) and scroll to the bottom. 

Enter in a short message to your staff like "Our mission is to...." or maybe a time-sensitive reminder and save. 

This message displays for everyone at your agency under Quick Facts on the right-hand side.
Be sure not to make it too large as that also pushes the My Messages link down the page.

In addition, we can also change the image that appears on the home page to your agency's logo.
Contact us if you have not already done so to have us add your logo.
 

Tuesday, May 13, 2014

Training Specific to the Individual Scheduling (From Maintenance)

This module now immediately filters by the current month and year.  Simply change the filters at the top to see older data.

My Message Forwarding

My Messages forwards now allow attachments from the original message to be forwarded.  

OIG.HHS.GOV Exclusions Database Changes

For those agencies that need to track the oig.hhs.gov exclusions, the May file has been uploaded.
In addition, it now shows a partial name match and includes the system's date of birth which you can compare to the oig.hhs.gov potential match records' birth dates.
For most, this will mean that there are no true matches found in Step 2.  (That's a good thing.)

Also, it will no longer let you re-run step 1 after it has been run in order to protect you from overwriting your data.

Thursday, May 8, 2014

Trainers can Add Students

1) A new "maximum number of students" field was added to the training tracking and now trainers can add students to a course until it reaches that student maximum.  If this is left at zero (0), it has no limits to the number of students that may be added.

2) There is a new "Add Students" link to the right of each previously added course that was scheduled.

3) You won't be able to add students if the date of the course has already passed.

4) Newly added students will have their course status set to "Scheduled".

5) One more important bit of information:  In order to see this link, you must have "A/E/D" permissions to "Employee: Training Sched Add Students".

New On-line Employee Training Website

We now  have a separate website for on-line training for employees.  This allows you to setup courses, give tests and track the results.  There is a separate charge for this service.  Call us if you are interested!

Access All Inactive Employees

There is a new permission that you may need to update for your employees.  It is called "Employees:  Access All Inactive Employees".

The Employee Search Screen is available only if you have permissions to Employees: Employee Mgmt.
If you do not have "Employees:  Access All Inactive Employees" set to A/E/D but you have employees that are in the list of employees you supervise, you will still be able to see inactive ones that you used to supervise.

To see all inactive employees, your user group must be:
Executive Director, Agency Admin, Human Resources (Personnel)
OR you have A/E/D permissions to the new permission called: Employees: Access All Inactive Employees

You can still see inactive employees IF they are still in your list of those you supervised, even if you don't have access above.

Exclusions Database -- HHS.Gov

The oig.hhs.gov website has an exclusions database that your employees need to be checked against.  This is a requirement for Tennessee providers.  Check to see if it is a requirement for your agency if you are in a different state.
The person in charge of this should have their permissions for "Exclusions:...." changed to A/E/D (add/edit/delete).
This will give them access to a new menu under Employees called Exclusions (near the bottom).
Click on "Start Here" and take note of the instructions on the screen.
Each time a new database is loaded on HHS.Gov, a new row will be shown under the Start Here link and you will need to complete the process.

New streamlined Training Specific to the Individual Procedures

From Maintenance, Training Specific, the trainer (usually the House Manager) adds a Training Specific course and assigns a staff member and the individual/service recipient to be trained.
A My Message is sent to the staff member notifying them that they will be trained for an individual.
The trainer and the staff member sit down together and the trainer clicks on the "View" link from Maintenance, Training Specific, and finds the course that was added.
Click on Train Staff.
Click on Take Course.
The Mock Fire Drill form is loaded.
Select the site/home that you're training on and fill out the drill information.
Read/review the training specific to the individual information found below the Mock Fire Drill form.
Move above the Training Specific information and have the staff member type in their user name and password to agree/validate that they understand the information.
This process adds both signatures to the documents and adds the individual to the staff member's caseload if the individual is not already on it.
It also updates the scheduled training course with "Completed" and adds two courses taken for the staff member.


New Encounter Type for Tennessee: SIS

The encounter type SIS has been added for Tennessee providers.  We still have the ICAP score and date under demographics, but you should enter SIS information under encounters.

Wednesday, March 26, 2014

New Login Screen

Get ready for our new login screen....  It essentially works the same way as the old one, but looks better and gives you some additional information if you fail to enter one of the fields.

 

Wednesday, January 29, 2014

Medical Encounter Report Change

We have made a change to the Medical Encounter Report's medication list.  All medications listed are now only meds that are active at the date/time of the encounter/appointment.
So if the appointment is six months in the future and your meds all have end dates prior to that, no meds would show on the report.
Conversely, reports in the past show the meds that were active at the time of the encounter.
In practice, the report is normally only printed just prior to the appointment, so this change may not be noticed by some.

Wednesday, January 15, 2014

Employee -- Corrective Actions and Performance Modules

Some states already have the employee performance module and the enhanced disciplinary action module.

We are changing the Discipline module for the State of Tennessee to a Corrective Action module.
After you search for an employee, both modules appear on the list of actions.


Corrective Action Form
 
Performance form
 


 

My Messages -- Scheduled (or Repeating) Messages

We are also adding the ability to schedule repeating messages that can be sent out automatically in the future.
This will allow you to create reminders that can be sent every "X" days, weeks, or months starting on a specific date and ending on an end date that you specify.