Justin's Blog

 Posts Tagged ‘Fishkill’

Unfortunately we have confused people a bit by having two set of dates out there for our conference.  I am very sorry for any difficulties we have caused.

Let me just confirm the following:

The conference runs from 8:00am  on Tuesday February 8th until 4:45pm on Thursday February 10th.

We will be setting up on Monday the 7th and often people arrive that afternoon/evening – we usually have some food available and get a head start on brainstorming!

Similarly, people will often stay over one the Thursday night and we would be delighted to have company for dinner and more conversations.

Remember you can find the  latest schedule sign up here

:: Justin ::

I am very excited that we have released the first preliminary schedule for our National Conference in Fishkill, New York in February.

Check it out here

Sign up and learn more about the conference here.

:: Justin ::

We put a bunch of people through their paces in Fishkill, and are very excited to welcome these fine folks into the illustrious fellowship of Therap Certified Trainers.

To see the full list, click here

To find out more about becoming a Certified Trainer yourself, click here.

Congratulations!

:: Justin ::

Previous, I have talked about COIS, our Cross Provider Information Sharing functionality that I believe will revolutionize the developmental disability community.

However, if you are a state like Delaware, Montana, or North Dakota or a multi-state agency like Dungarvin, then you need a different, more hierarchical style of cross-provider access.

Since starting with state-wide access in the First State of Delaware a few years ago we have added more and more of this type of functionality and at Fishkill were able to discuss, brainstorm, and even demonstrate the next generation of what we are calling MAPS (though to be honest I would really like a better name, I just haven’t come up with one – there could be an undisclosed number of Therap points, if you come up wiith the name we choose!).

The biggest issue in state-wide systems is caseload management for folks like case managers.  As any provider knows these caseloads are changing all the time and are further complicated by admissions and discharges throughout the state.  We are developing a number of feature which will make this process much more effective for everyone involved.

There are also massive reporting questions across multiple agencies.  Those too we are addressing.

And for the user who needs to review data from multiple agencies, we have lined up some features in SComm, Notifications, and FirstPage that will blow your mind!

Finally, (well actually I am sure there will be much, much more, but anyway…), there is the intersection of MAPS and COIS.  Where individuals are served in a state where there information can be shared between providers and viewed and reported on by the state.  Now, THAT, is exciting!

:: Justin ::

Well, the conference is now over (and I hope to have a post reflecting on all the amazing things that went on, but I am still catching up!) and in fact we were back in Fishkill today debriefing.

One of the coolest things looking back is how right we were with our big ideas, as confirmed by the conference attendees.

COIS (Cross Provider Information Sharing) is a concept that we have been working with and thinking about since Therap started, and infact we have even implemented versions of it.  The problem up to now has been that although it worked technically, the solutions we had come up with did not work within the realities of employees from multiple agencies working on the same document and communicating directly with each other.

One example I often use is where an individual is hurt at day program and an incident report is generated.  Do they want to share that incident report with the residential agency?  (probably yes), as soon as it is written by a DSP (probably no), can both agencies comment directly on the same report (technically we could make it happen, but you don’t want it to).  I could go on for paragraphs with questions which either have an answer of “No Way!” or “It depends” and computers in general are not that good at “it depends”.

In this latest version of COIS we believe that we have most of the answers and we have an implementation path that will get us the rest of them safely as me move along.

Probably the biggest hurdle is actually identifying that the records of one individual in two providers are about the same person.  How do you do this when you can’t ask the other for a list of their individuals to pick from and you can’t give them a list of yours (both would be HIPAA violations and probably not good business practice).  We have a wonderful and elegant solution to this that we showed in Fishkill.

Once that link is there each agency can now choose which of their staff are allowed to send SComms over that link.  So if I have been given permission by my Provider Admin, I can send and receive care SComms about individuals in my caseload to users at the other agency who have access to the same individual and have been given permission to do so by their Provider Admin.

Phase one of the implementation will involve setting up the link and sending SComms.  After that we will start being able to attach Therap forms.

Having spoken to so many users about this and shown then a pre-alpha version, I am more excited than ever and think this will be a real game changer.

:: Justin ::

Wednesday was another tremendous day here in Fishkill!

I introduced a couple of new programs.  These are both designed so that we can use our marketing dollars in ways that will provide educational and training benefits to our customers.

You can check out the details of our Therap Points Program and sign up here.

If you are the kind of person who likes to make your own videos, why not check out our “My Therap Video” contest.

Much much more to come.

:: Justin ::

Here’s the presentation that T-Girl gave to start our Provider Admin Conference. The bits that may sound like they don’t quite run together are where I was having a conversation with her!

:: Justin ::

What a great day! 200 people all in Fishkill all talking Therap in ten simultaneous sessions.

It all started with T-Girl strutting her stuff and bringing us up to date with all the great things that have happened since our last annual conference (I hope to have this up on YouTube soon)

Probably the most exciting thing for me was to be able to talk about our upcoming Big Ideas.  What is happening now, is rather than focusing on looking for a new module we are looking at bigger and wider issues.  This morning I talked about the following:

Health Information Exchanges and HL7 Interfaces

Cross Provider Information Sharing (COIS)

Multi-Access Provider System (MAPS)

Simplified Access Controls

Secure Feedback and Issue Tracking

When I get time I will give much more detail about what these involve.

:: Justin ::

I have some pretty exciting stuff to reveal to the world on Tuesday morning in Fiskill, New York.

On Friday, we were reviewing four (yes that was four) new or revolutionized features within Therap that we will be releasing during the upcoming year.

I can’t tell you how excited I am about them, they are, I believe real game changers in the future of electronic documentation within the developmental disability community and beyond.

We will (and hence you will) be able to do things that no one has even been able to do before.

The impact on agencies, their staff, and the people that they support will be felt for years to come if I am right.

It’s is so exciting, and such an honour to be working with a team as talented as the one we have here at Therap.

I can’t wait to show you all on Tuesday, see you there.

:: Justin ::

We have published the latest version on our schedule for the Provider Admin Conference in Fishkill next week (there’s also a version on a white background to save you some ink!).

There will probably be some last minute changes, so be sure to pick up the final version when you arrive on Monday or Tuesday.

It is absolutely worth taking a few minutes to read through all the sessions and work out what your path will be through the conference.  If you have questions, we’d be happy to sit down and make some suggestions.

You should also think about who you would like to meet with.  Things like “I would like to talk with the person who designs T-Girl”, or “I would like to sit down with the developer for MARS”, or “I would like to meet with a Therap customer for an agency similar to mine” are all great requests that we would like to help you with.  Be sure to stop by the Help desk to ask.

We’ll also be coming out with a few sample paths to follow a particular topic through the conference.

:: Justin ::