Archive for the ‘New Applications’ Category

If you take a look at the schedule for the recent Provider Admin Conference in Fishkill, NY, you will see many sessions discussing things like Caseloads and Super Roles and such.  There really is an art to that, we have developed over the years incredible flexibility in defining user access and maintaining HIPAA compliance.

How ever if you are a large agency, a state, or multi-state agency and/or you are using lots of Therap modules, this can become a lot to remember and maintain.

Thinking back, when I started using Therap as a Program Director at Community Systems, Inc. in Torrington, Connecticut, I had to send a spreadsheet to Wai Nam with who I wanted as users and what I wanted them to be able to do.  And to the same any time I wanted to make a change!

Since then we have also come to work people and agencies in many more places and situations. We also have customers providing supports in every kind of environment and style you could imagine.

This has lead us to a place where things like programs and sites need to be much more flexible and data needs to be able to move as the individuals we support do (yet maintaining the historical data and security we all need).

So based on this, we are working toward our next generation of access control (I am afraid it doesn’t have a fancy name yet, but again, Therap Points could be on offer!)

We have several goals for the new system, but the most important for me are to make access control:

• Quicker
• Simpler
• Easier to implement
• Easier to user
• Easier to support
• More effective in real life situations
• More tools for cross-provider and multi-provider access

At Fishkill we showed off our initials designs to a great reception and we picked up tremendous ideas.  This will obviously be a huge transition for everyone that touches all of our application so you will hear a lot more (and get to try some things out) as we get closer to deployment.

:: Justin ::

Richard and I spent most of Wednesday in Louisville, Kentucky talking with the folks from Deyta about ANCOR’s Performance Excellence Toolkit as well as the other satisfaction survey and benchmarking products that they have.

With Performance Excellent, agencies can become part of a national system to measure quality and progress.  Obviously when looking at topics such as Preventive Healthcare (which will be coming out in 2010), harnessing the data held within Therap could made participation a lot easier and more accurate.

We are in the process of starting a trial of just that (if you’d like to join in, please let me know). 

We are also looking at the concept of a bridge similar to the one we built to the College of Direct Support to help agencies remind their staff to complete satisfaction and other surveys with Deyta.

Given that this would be a second bridge, we’re starting to think of them a bit like “apps” (why should Apple, Blackberrry, Palm, and Android get all the fun?).  Do you have any ideas of services out there that would be ripe for integration with Therap?

Make sure that you are at the Provider Admin Conference in Fishkill, NY in February where Deyta will be presenting on the pilot and their other services.

:: Justin ::

As part of our move towards HIPAA, HITECH, and ARRA compliant interoperability with systems like pharmacies, states, and Health Information Exchanges, Therap is developing HL7 compliant interfaces.

Get in touch, or look out for Health Information Exchange user groups in the future to learn more.

:: Justin ::

Interesting post over on the Twitter Blog about issues they had with a recent update.

Read and enjoy

:: 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 ::

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 ::

As you most probably know, we brought out the first Beta release of MARs in Therap 8.0.  Since then we have had loads of feedback and barrowloads of suggestions from users around the country.

Based on all of that we will be bringing our next beta version of Medication Administration Records in Therap 8.1 which we hope to be delivering to you around the end of this of this month.

Probably this biggest single change that we have made is that now each month’s MAR is it’s own entity which can be set up in advance and reviewed afterwards.  In doing this we are also creating a full set of roles so that you can control who can do what both in terms of configuring the MAR and documenting the administration of medication.

In order to make these changes work the way we want them do we have added some new features elsewhere in the system.

Now, when you go to add a medication to your Medication History, you will be able to say exactly what time that medication is supposed to be administered (useful even if you aren’t using MAR)

Also, when you give meds we are now able to display your initials (which I think we will probably use elsewhere too in the future)

Your unique initials will be defined in your user profile.

Next time I’ll show you how these come together on the new MAR.

:: Justin ::

I think that Sajjadul dropped himself in hot water by letting slip on a call yesterday that he was testing Hab Plans.  Always wanting to play with new toys and also being very excited about this I begged Sazzad for a look.

Here’s what I saw:

If you are from New York, these will make perfect sense.  If not, then take a look and see if you would find them useful.

Once again, Sazzad and his team have exceeded all expectations!

Starting on FirstPage, you’ll see that Hab Plans have their very own area (and set of roles).  The eagle-eyed amongst you may also have spotted the new stuff in the MAR box, I’ll show that off tomorrow!  As usual clicking on a screenshot will take you to my Flickr  account where you can see much more.

You can of course search for any Hab Plan that you have previously made:

As you can see, Hab Plans exist in the sames states as ISP (they will also have similar access roles).

There is of course more…

Including links to Servcies, Valued Outcomes and ISP Programs that are included in the ISP.

All of this has been based on conversations with numbers of our New York customers, for which we are vert grateful.

If you’d like to know or see more, be sure to give me a shout!

:: Justin ::

We recently released a significant update to Therap Ideas, you can now see which Ideas and Comments you have read, and keep track of all your own contributions.

If you haven’t tried it out yet, just clickon the Share Your Ideas with Therap at the bottom of any page

:: Justin ::