Justin's Blog

Archive for June, 2011

As I said in my previous post, as part of our Individual Unification involves a simplification of the IDF workflow.

We will be referring to this new form as Individual Detail.

With the IDF, when changes are being made, there are actually two copies of the form maintained (this actually seems to cause people a lot of confusion).

With the new form there will be only one.

Because of this, when we do the update (scheduled for July 11th) any changes that have not been approved will be set aside.

This means that you want to make sure that all of your IDFs are in either in “In-Prep” or “Approved” Status by July 11th.

If you have any questions about this, please get in touch.

You can also look out for webinars and support materials which we will be getting to you as soon as we can.

:: Justin ::

We are currently undergoing one of the biggest changes that Therap has seen in many years, perhaps since the introduction of FirstPage back with Therap 5.0.

One of the most interesting things about this particular change is how little visible change there will be to start with.  Don’t, however, underestimate the amount of work that is going on underneath the hood/bonnet.  Virtually every query (and we have lots of very big queries in our millions of lines of code) within the system is being updated.

What might cause such an enormous change you ask?  Well, if you have been to one of our conferences recently, you will have heard us talk about what we are calling “Individual Unification”.  During a recent discussion with the folks in Nebraska, they commented that it sounded as momentous as the unification of Germany.  While it might not rise to those standards, who can resist a bit of Hasslehoff?

In our case we are not unifying a country, but an individual record.  Imagine a fairly common scenario where a person is supported by a state, a service coordination agency, a residential agency, and a day provider.  In our current setup, that individual effectively has four unconnected records.  In fact given that we may well have four separate contracts to provide Therap to those agencies, they need to.

However, with our upcoming release, in a sitation where we have a state contract covering all those agencies, that record will become one.

In our first release, this will allow for a few very cool features for those of you who work for states or for multi-state providers.  When you log into your new parent account, you will see all your T-Logs, GERs, and SComms on one page regardless of how many providers they come from.

This though is just the beginning.  We have a whole host of functionality around referrals, annual plans, waiting lists, transfers and more which are being built to work on this new platform.

There will also be a few changes that will impact every provider:

We are simplifying the IDF.  It will now have a more straight forward Submit > Approve > Update workflow (no more “Pending Update Approval”).

We are simplifying Provider Administration and combining agency wide roles with User Profile options and Provider Admin Capabilites. 

Currently we are looking to release this next stage of the revolution next month, look forward for a whole lot of details and updates in the coming weeks.

There will be some actions that you need to take to prepare, so look out for information.

:: Justin ::

We are very excited to announce our first Connecticut Regional Conference.

Following on from the recently formed Connecticut Users Group, the conference will take place at the Four Points in Meriden, CT on September 29th and 30th, 2011.

Click here for more details.

Don’t forget our full calendar of conferences around the country.  Find one near you here.

:: Justin ::

Upcoming Conferences

• Therap Regional Conference in Bismarck, North Dakota, June 21-22, 2011
  Date : June 21-22, 2011
  Location : Bismarck, North Dakota

• Therap Regional Conference in Baltimore, Maryland – July 25-26, 2011
  Date : July 25-26, 2011
  Location : Baltimore BWI, Maryland

• Therap Regional Conference in Denver, Colorado – August 3-4, 2011
  Date : August 3-4, 2011
  Location : Ramada Plaza Denver North, Colorado

• Therap Regional Conference in Buffalo, New York, August 24-25, 2011
  Date : August 24 -25, 2011
  Location : Buffalo, New York

• Side-by-Side Technology: Therap & CDS, Murfreesboro, Tennessee, September 20-21, 2011
  Date : September 20-21, 2011
  Location : DoubleTree Hilton, Murfreesboro, Tennessee

• Therap Regional Conference in Meriden, Connecticut, September 29-30, 2011
  Date : September 29-30, 2011
  Location : Four Points by Sheraton in Meriden, Connecticut

• Therap Regional Conference in Salt Lake City, Utah, October 5 – 6, 2011
  Date : October 5-6
  Location : Airport West, Salt Lake City, Utah

• Therap Regional Conference in Portland, Maine, October 17-18, 2011
  Date : October 17 -18, 2011
  Location : Portland, Maine

• Therap Regional Conference in Burnsville, Minnesota, October 25 – 26, 2011
  Date : October 25 – 26, 2011
  Location : Nicollet Inn, Burnsville, Minnesota

• Therap Regional Conference in Cortland, New York, November 9-10, 2011
  Date : November 9-10, 2011
  Location : Cortland Ramada, 2 River St, Cortland NY 13045

• Therap Regional Conference in Salem, Oregon, 10-11 November, 2011
  Date : November 10-11, 2011
  Location : Salem, Oregon

• Therap Regional Conference: Focus on National Issues – CCHIT and Meaningful Use, Florida, December 6-7, 2011
  Date : December 6-7, 2011
  Location : Kissimmee, Florida

• Therap Regional Conference in San Diego, California, December 7-8, 2011
  Location : San Diego, California
  Date : December 7-8, 2011

• Therap National Provider Administrator Conference, February 7-9, 2012
  Date : February 7-9, 2012
  Location : Ramada, East Hanover, New Jersey

Maureen, Stephen, Ken, Jay and I have spent the last couple of days in Helena, Montana at our local Therap conference.

Actually I haven’t been here a full two days thanks to getting delayed in LaGuardia and stuck in Denver.

Every time I land in Montana I am struck all over again by what an amazingly beautiful place this is.

On top of that, it’s been a great conference with all sorts of fascinating sessions and discussions, including a lot about what we are calling “Individual Unification”.  Expect to hear much more about that in the coming weeks.

For now though I have a couple of extra days of meetings out here so hopefully I will get to see something beyond the hotel walls!

:: Justin ::

When we brought in medication scheduling in 9.0 it opened up a world of possibilities.  There is however a bit of a problem.  Not all possibilities for med scheduling can be done through the scheduler that is built into the Medication History module.

Well, we have a solution, and a very cool one at that which can basically copy with any scheduling routine you have.

All you need to do is go to your MAR and switch to Configuration Mode, you can now click on any cell to make it scheduled or remove the scheduling.

You can now define exactly the schedule you want your staff to see!

:: Justin ::

Over the past months, and again this week, there have been awful, frightening stories coming out of the New York State developmental disability system, and in particular their institutions.

These stories have been highlighted by the New York Times and I would encourage you to go and read them, even though you won’t enjoy the experience.

There is no doubt in my mind, based on a lifetime of experience working both in institutional, community, and family based settings supporting people with diabilites that institutions by their very design are, at best, an inappropriate model for supporting people with disabilities.  However, while the environment undoubtedly contributed to the horrors in these stories, I really don’t think it is the sole casue.

The problem here is a complete lack of accountability and transparancy.  In fact I think that the two are so closely linked that they are almost the same.

When someone is able to deny that they saw something, knew something, or said something you end up with the situation where people are debating what it means to be hit by a stick, or whether something was actually or accurately reported.

A number of years ago, we had quite a cool poster out entitled “10 Reasons not to use Therap“.  Reason number 10 was “You want to be able to deny you saw it so you don’t have to take action.”  Once documentation is completed in Therap it is not going anywhere.  There may be a perfectly legitimate need to edit it or even delete it, but even if that is the case there will always be a full audit trail there showing what was there before and who did what to it.  You will also have a full list of who looked at it and when.

Not only do I find stories like these (which unfortunately are not confined to New York, or institutions) heartbreakiing and infuriating, I also find them increadibly frustrating as I know that there are simple, cost effective ways of providing tools that can stop this happening.

Take the following example from the story:

During one visit, an employee told the Careys to take home a duffel bag they had never used. They discovered a logbook inside the bag detailing startling changes to Jonathan’s treatment plan. Among other things, the school was withholding food from Jonathan to punish him for taking off his shirt at inappropriate times.

In this case, the family found out information (by accident) and immediately acted upon it.  How much better would care have been if the family saw all the documentation as it was written?

Was is most frustrating is that we and many agencies across New York and across the country know the answer to this and are actively making themselves more transparent and accountable while at the same time becoming more person centered, efficient, and effective.

When an agency uses Therap they have the option of giving controlled, recorded, HIPAA secure access to parents so that they can see exactly what is written about their child as it happens.  I have heard so many stories of how this not only improves the quality of supports, it also improves the relationship between the family and the agency.  If you’d like some examples, give me a call.

By using Therap, there are now 700 or so agencies across the country supporting more than 70,000 individuals who have taken steps to address the lack of accountability and transparancy that comes from keeping data hidden away in books and filing cabinets.  Combined these agencies are witing more than 1,000,000 progress notes each month in Therap (along with countless other items).  Each one of those notes is read on average 12 times.  That is 12,000,000 opportunities each month for someone to see something going wrong and address it.

No system in the world can completely prevent abuse from taking place, but by becoming open and accountable, while maintaining security and privacy, states and agencies can involve entire circles of support in the prevention effort.

:: Justin ::

If you are using our new New York ISP, Hab Plan and MSC section that we introduced in Therap 9.0, you may have noticed that some special characters are showing as question marks when you print.

We have identified the issue and will be releasing an update tomorrow to fix it.

Thanks to everyone who pointed this out to us.

:: Justin ::

Today we had the first day of our New Mexico conference here in Albuquerque.

It’s been a great day with some intense and indepth discussions about the whole system, but especially the eCHAT.

As usual I have been having fun with Excel!  Todays challenge was to produce a report which showed all individuals monthly percentage change in weight.  I won!

If you are really interested, let me know and I’ll make a video.

More tomorrow…

:: Justin ::