Justin's Blog

 Archive for the ‘Therap 8.1’ Category

We have had quite a remarkable week here in Therapville.

We’ve had five user group meetings up and down the East Coast, we welcomed Stephen to the fold, and we have continued to add new customers across the country (and in Canada).

The User Groups have been particularly good.  With Sazzad and Asif here to learn even more about ISPs, IEPs, ELPs, Hab Plans, and billing there have been some pretty intense conversations going on as we continue to make Therap a better and better product.  We are especially excited about providers who are working together to share data through Therap.

At the same time though, we have worked out that the were elements of the 8.1 release that we did not handle very well. As Chief Operating Officer, responsibility for that falls squarely on my shoulders.

There were three areas in particular that we didn’t do a good enough job of either in usability testing or communicating how the changes would work.

The most grievous of these was the way that we split roles into those that relate to a caseload and those that give access to an agency-wide feature.  In this case, though the chnage is good and useful, we didn’t explain properly what we were doing, analyze the impact on our users and the interface that we presented isn’t particularly friendly.  There were similar (and actually related) issues with the update of TMS and the new functionality in Parent-Child accounts (used by States like Delaware and multi-state providers like ResCare).

Part of being a rapidly growing company like Therap is the challenge of meetings our customers requests for new features while maintaining the quality of the system and support that our customers quite rightly expect and demand.  In this case we most definitely fell short.

In response to this, we are doing a few things:

Firstly, I am appologizing to anyone and everyone that was adversely impacted by these changes. 

Secondly, we are working hard to make sure that we provide appropriate support materials to guide you through the changes. 

Thirdly, we are working hard to update the interfaces and processes that have been causing confusion and frustration.

Finally, I am in the process of conducting a full review of how our release processes impact our users so that we can put in place procedures that will prevent similar occurences in the future while not slowing down our development of new and enhanced features.  I can’t guarantee that we will never screw up again (in fact I can probably guarantee that we will), but what we will do is face up to our mistakes and do everything that we can to learn from them and provide you with the very best system and support that we possibly can. 

In the meantime, if you have any suggestions for what we can do to help you support your staff and consumers better, please do not hesitate to either post them in “Therap Ideas” for general discussion or you can contact me directly.

This is a really exciting time to be part of the Therap community, we are establishing ourselves as the national leader for electronic documentation and we have a host of increadible innovations coming your way.

Thank you for your continued support and partnership.

:: Justin ::

I do hope that you are enjoying Therap 8.1

A few points to note:

• Read the Release Notes!
• If you haven’t tried it yet, check out the dashboard.  this is obviously brand new (so much so that it doesn’t have a Test Mode so do your training on FirstPage).  This is just the beginning so send us lots of feedback so we can make it even better!
• Download and Try out the T-Girl Training CD!
• Notice the change in Super Roles.  There are now two types: Agency Wide and Caseload Based.  This may be a little confusing to start with but will actually make life much simpler as you move forward.  To help in the transition, we have split all your existing super roles in two and added the prefix “Agency-” to the agency based ones.
• Some new features won’t become available to you until you give yourself access by updating your Super Roles.
• Check out (and update if you would like to) your initials in your profile.  They’ll be used in MAR for now, but probably other places soon.
• If you have any questions, please let us know.  We’ll also be publishing a schedule of webinars to tell you all about the new stuff.

:: Justin ::

We are happy to inform you that we will soon be releasing Version 8.1 of the Therap Applications. In this release, along with other modules, we have also updated the Medication Administration Record (MAR) module .

Please note that, to access MAR in 8.1, users will now require a new set of MAR specific roles instead of the Health Tracking (HT) roles (HT Submit, HT Update and HT View). Following are the new MAR Roles which will be introduced in 8.1:

1) MAR Configuration Approve – With this role, users will be able to Approve an MAR.

2) MAR Data Submit – This Role is for user who will be entering Data in MAR.

3) MAR Data Update – This role will allow users to update the previously submitted data.

4) MAR Data View – Users with this role will be able to view the approved MAR forms and generate MAR reports.

Once Therap 8.1 is released, please update the super roles of the users who are currently working with the MAR module, for them to be able to access MAR.

Please feel free to write to us with your questions and suggestions.

Thank you.


Sazzad Rafique
Senior Software Engineer
Therap Services, LLC

Tonight’s the night!

If you haven’t already, read the Release Notes.

As if that was not enough, we actually have more stuff that didn’t quite make it into 8.1 that you will be seeing over the coming weeks.  One of the biggest of those is a make-over for SComm.  Check this out, Shawon and his team have done some incredible work:

Long Messages

Will now scroll inside your page so the “Mark As Read” buttons are much easier to find

Advanced Search

Find any SComm using any part of the message.

Easily Add Your Recipients

Type a few letter of their name or check the box.  We’ve also streamlined the number of fields you have to complete:

New, Clean, Easy Interface

Easy to learn and easy to use, that’s our goal:

More information at your fingertips:

Easy filters and new icons will make working with your messages quicker and easier.

So there is something to look forward to!  Remember we want you to really kick the tires of 8.1 and let us know what you think.

:: Justin ::

Don’t forget that 8.1 is coming out this weekend and we’ll have some downtime Friday night into Saturday morning.

Look for release notes coming soon.

Just to whet your appetite a little, here are some new T-Log screen shots (note the Send via Scomm button!)

:: Justin ::

There I was, quietly doing some testing while waiting for Michele’s car to be serviced when I came across this.

I think you’ll get it from the pictures (click on them for bigger versions).

In 8.1 we will run this beta in parallel with FirstPage with a view to a possible transition in future (with lots of feedback of course).

I think this is REALLY cool!

Lots of kudos to Rajiv for making it look so pretty.

Only another week and you will be able to try it for yourself.

:: Justin ::

We are planning to release Therap 8.1 on Saturday April 18th, 2009.

As this is a big release (much more on that over the next week) the system will need to be taken down for a number of hours, probably starting around midnight.

As usual we will give you much more detail as the release gets closer

:: Justin ::

Once you have created your MARs and staff have done all their documentation, you’ll want to find new ways to use all that wonderful information that you have at your fingertips.

We are introducing a new flexible report generator that will look something like this:

I am sure there will be much more to show you soon!

:: Justin ::

And produce output like this:

An easy way to get reports on things like PRNs give, med follow ups, missed meds etc!

Of course if you still hanker for a straight printout, we’ll give you that too!

OK, let’s take a look at how you will set up an MAR when Therap 8.1 is released:

Basically you can set up any month’s MAR in advance (or look at old ones).  Obviously this is all based on having the correct roles assigned to you.

As usual, if you click on a screenshot, you’ll get to see it and many more in Flickr.

Having chosen the MAR you want to set up, you’ll get a screen something like this:

Here you can work on the meds and administration times for the MAR.  Of course noone will be able to document administration until the correct month comes around and the MAR has been approved.

Now let’s look at the new MAR itself:

As you can see we have changed it a little so that there is almost a mini-MAR for each med.  This not only makes it easier to see what date you are one, but allows us to display much more information about the medication.  This will be particularly useful as we move forward with integration with First Databank‘s medication database.

You’ll also notice how staff initials now show up making it easier to see at a glance who administered what.  More info on initials here.

There are also a few changed when you go in to actually document giving the med.  You’ll notice the red square for when a med was missed.  You can also document a PRN along with it’s follow up:

Next time we’ll look at some of the reports and a new take on archiving that I really like!

:: Justin ::