Certified Trainers Blog

 Posts Tagged ‘Alaska’

Testing. Testing. Is this thing on.

I am new to the great big sea of information that is Therap. I have been swimming in it for about a year and have come to realize a few things. First, the deeper into Therap one goes the more amazing it is. Second is that fact that once you step into the Therap waters you are carried swiftly (and gladly) into those deeper waters. And finally I have learned that no matter how deep you get there is always a friendly Therapite to guide you.

Until next time this is Craig, from the blue waters of the Pacific Northwest, signing off… Wait is this thing still on.

Just read Pat Watt’s Blog on GERs – Grrrrrr and I have to agree with her.  Here is my similar story.

The Problem

Focus is small but growing.  As we grow we find things we did manually in a short period of time, now are laboriously long.  To speed up the process I am creating Excel programs designed to make life easier and more accurate.  Our payroll coding was long seen as a log jam in the getting our Care Providers paid every two weeks.  Using ISP Data, exporting it to Excel, and then using macros and lookup tables I was able to complete most of the payroll coding.  One piece of the required coding was to capture if the Day Hab took place in our After School Program.  In the location block our Care Providers would enter: After School Program.  Or they would enter ASP, or asp, or AFTER SCHOOL PROGRAM; one Care Provider with a sticky shift key always entered AFter SChool PRogram.  I tried to capture every possible variation using nested IF functions in Excel but gave up when I found one Care Provider who was very “creative” in her spelling.  As she told me,

“It is the mark of a handcuffed creativity, and a constipated mind to only spell words one way.”

I like a good turn of a phrase.  And in my effort to share these words of wisdom with my favorite elementary school teacher, I pulled out my phone to text her.

Brief Side Track

That surprises most folks that a dinosaur like me can text.  I am of the generation that took typing (not keyboarding) in Junior High School on a manual typewriter.  It took real effort to use a typewriter.  To type a single character, you pressed the key firmly, then an arm with your selected character snapped up and struck the printer ribbon and paper with a sharp thwack.  Thwack, thwack, thwack, ding!  When you heard the bell, you finished that word and then manually returned the carriage to return to the left side of the page and advanced a line.  I’m guessing 90% of you have no idea what a carriage is.

The difference between Typing and a Word Processor:

• “White out” was not a term for a bad blizzard, it was how you fixed typing errors.  Just hitting the backspace key didn’t fix anything.
• You used a dictionary to “spell check” and you had to do it before you typed the word.
• Your font and font size were determined by the typewriter you used; to change fonts you spent $300 to buy a different typewriter.
• If you wanted a copy of what you just typed, you grabbed a different sheet of paper and typed it again.
• And a mouse next to your keyboard was grounds for your roommate to move out.

Back to the story

We have this old fossil texting.  But the problem with someone from the Jurassic era is that our thumbs are not as limber as they used to be and texting is a hit or miss proposition.  To help me most cell phones have predictive text.  The function of predictive text is to help you rapidly enter correctly spelled words or specific abbreviations.  And the predictive text could learn new words too, like “Groovy” and “Far-out.”  And other new words like “AARP” and “Metamucil.”

The Solution?

Now if someone from my generation can learn how to use predictive text while texting on a cell phone, why can’t those young, bright and energetic folks from Therap insert predictive text in certain data fields?  Wouldn’t it be groovy if the Location box on ISP Data could use predictive text to help Care Providers enter “After School Program” the same way every time?

And if Therap can’t do that, then I would wonder who had the handcuffed creativity and constipated mind…

If we could, I would be LMAO…

As the temperatures rise and the snow melts spring fever is hitting all of us. I get up in the morning to 32 degrees and head to work in short sleeves and a light jacket, by the time I leave work it is 50+ and I want to run the air conditioner already. Funny how when I lived in places like Las Vegas 50 degrees was cold, I am running a fan in my office daily now. I know for most of you that doesn’t seem strange but after 17+ years in Alaska I have adapted to the climate. In my front yard we have what we call Lake Davis, we had so much snow this year that we have our own little pond that the area ducks have started swimming in. It will be a disappointment to get up one morning and the pond and the ducks will be gone, but at that point we will start to see green on the trees. We only have about 3 1/2 months of green and warm temperatures then it will be right back to white and cold. I LOVE ALASKA!!

Here at work we are working hard at getting the Training Management System and the Billing up and running. With the TMS we are about 50% of the way there. The next step is to import the current certifications for all our staff. if anyone has any tips on how to make this go smoothly let me know. I have been working feverishly trying to get all the classes and other requirements put into the system, it seems that every time I think I have everything in someone comes up with another 2 or 3 more to add. I’m sure this will be an ongoing issue.

I am working on setting up schedules of training for the staff from all departments, up to this point it has been just the Residential staff using Therap but with the addition of the TMS all staff even if they don’t do direct care will have access. This should improve communications with all departments for all sorts of things: trainings, special events, etc. I am looking forward to that, I think it will create more unity instead of it being each department on it’s own.

I will be leaving in just over a week to go to Gettysburg, PA for a dog show. Included in this trip is a side trip to my parents who are 300 miles away from the show site. We will be near Bradford, PA May 2 – 6, if there are any Therapites out in that area I would love to meet up and maybe have lunch. Then May 6 – 13 I will be at the show in Gettysburg. If there is anyone in the area that would like to see about 500 Bernese Mountain Dogs all in one place let me know, I would love to have visitors at the show site. If you don’t know what a Bernese Mountain dog is come on out and see. You will learn why I am so passionate about my dogs. My life is divided between Therap and my dogs, and of course some sewing/quilting and embroidery thrown in there too.

It’s been nearly two weeks since Allison bestowed (or maybe the right word is “shackled”) me with the honor of Therap Certified Trainer and my first blog post has been hanging over my head. I’ve brainstormed a list, looked at some examples of other Alaska newcomers, and decided I need to jump right in. My plunge was further inspired by an amazing Therap moment I experienced earlier today which I couldn’t wait to share with other Therap enthusiasts.

For those of you who are old hands at Therap billing, this won’t be an exciting read and you should move on to another post … But for those of you who haven’t yet ventured into ISP Billing or maybe aren’t planning to, read on and reconsider!

The agency I work for – REACH – is located in Juneau, Alaska. Our initial Go Live date was April 5, 2010 and we have spent the past nearly two years implementing and fine-tuning our ISP Data system. We are a medium-sized agency – we currently have 290 active users and approximately 180 individuals in our system. We are in the final stages of preparing for electronic billing. While we are not yet ready to send claims electronically, for the month of February I generated billing data using the Therap Billing module. Since it was the first time I attempted a complete month’s worth of data, there was much clean up to be done on the Service Authorizations. But once I got past that and generated the billing, I created a pivot table to die for! With just a few clicks, I could instantly see how much revenue we generated in February by individual, by type of service, by program; the combinations are many!

Here’s the process:

1. Generate ISP billing data for a given time period. Note: double-check that data is appearing in the ISP billing data generator for every individual. If the individual’s name is not appearing in the screen where it asks you to select individuals to generate the data, this is because the service authorization is incorrect. In my experience the most common SA issues are either the SA is expired or the SA is linked to an ISP program that has been discontinued.
2. Once the ISP billing data has been generated, do a Billing Data Search. When you do the Search, leave it open-ended so data from all Programs will be pulled. All fields should be left blank except your Service Date range.
3. Export the information to Excel and insert a Pivot Table.

Here’s a suggested Pivot Table format: For the Row Label – click Individual. For the Column Label click Program and then drag Sum of Amount Billed into the Values area. Of course you can organize the data in many ways but this gave a wonderful at-a-glance view of revenues by client and by program. While we haven’t fully implemented electronic billing, I can still access a great deal of information using Billing Data Search.

I continue to be amazed at the questions which can be answered by learning how to access and organize information being collected by our direct support professionals in Therap!

Kim Champney is from Juneau, Alaska, and she is the latest in a stream of certified trainers. From Alaska. And the world.

Her partner in crime, also from Juneau, Alaska, is Pat Watt, also a certified trainer.

Smarties. (They always hang out in nerdy herds.)

Rob Sterling presently reigns as THE Excel nerd in my life (boy, will I have things to show you once I steal all of his ideas!).

Kim is the Quality Assurance Director for Reach, Inc., and she knows lots of stuff  may know everything. Really. Billing, provider administration, individual supports, Excel, attendance…

(But does she have super powers??…Well, yeah, kinda…that is another story!)

And I am sure she is a very adept blogger as well…I’m waiting.

Allison

My Alaskan Friends asked to know how I check for overlaps. This method depends on ISP Data export to Excel and then nested Excel IF formulas.  I’m a big fan of Excel Macros to eliminate repetitious key strokes and to prevent incorrect typing, do it right once and then let the Macro repeat it.  This explanation assumes you understand how Excel IF functions work. Get in touch if you want more details.

Step 1. Search ISP Data for all possible programs that could overlap. Ctrl and click will let you select all the programs you want to check for overlaps. I do not check all the programs. For example, as I understand it a Care Coordination meeting could overlap with Day Hab but would not be a problem, therefore I do not select Care Coordination. For me I select Day Hab, Hourly Respite, Supported Employ, In Home Supp, Supported Living, and Daily Respite. I may have missed one there but you get the idea. Export the search to Excel.

Step 2. Create columns for the Excel function TIMEVALUE for both the Begin Time and End Time. You need the timevalue function because the times are exported as text and without timevalue 1:00 pm sorts as an earlier time than 8:00 am.

Step 3. Sort the data by name, date, timevalue(begin time), and timevalue(end time). I’m not sure you need the timevalue(end time) but I do it anyway.

Step 4. Create column for overlap. In this column you insert a nested IF function. You are going to compare the current row with the data in
the row above it. The nested IF function is:

If the Individual Name is the same as the row above

• TRUE, next IF Function
• FALSE, Not an overlap

If the Date is the same as the row above

• TRUE, next IF Function
• FALSE, Not an overlap

If the current row timevalue(Begin Time) < timevalue(End Time) of the row above

• TRUE, OVERLAP
• FALSE, Not an overlap

The actual function looks something like this:  =IF(A2=A3,IF(B2=B3,IF(C3<D2,”OVERLAP”,”"),”"),”") Where column A is the Individual’s name, column B is the Date, column C is the timevalue(Begin Time), and column D is the timevalue(End Time). If there is an Overlap the cell will read OVERLAP, if there is no overlap the cell will be blank.

Hope this helps.

The first of March, another beautiful day in Eagle River.  Forecast high temperature 26 degrees, forecast low temperature 20 degrees… Current temperature zero degrees…  Our Alaskan weathermen never get it right.

FOCUS joined the Therap family to eliminate paper notes.  Our Direct Support Providers had a habit of hanging on to the paper notes and turning them in bunches.  As the stories go, they often had coffee stains, spilt cereal, creamed carrots, and other biological hazards spread across them.  It wasn’t unusual for staff handling the paper notes to be using universal precautions; you know, gloves, surgical mask, and HAZMAT bins.  With Therap we no longer have to keep our shot records up to date just to read the notes our Providers write. 

However, since our Providers need to access a computer to write their notes, they often are unable to complete the notes immediately.  While with paper notes our Providers had a habit of hanging on to them and turning them in bunches, with Therap some of our Providers have a habit of writing their notes in bunches.  Unfortunately, some are submitting the ISP Data for the services they provided very time late, three to four weeks in one extreme case.  Of course this adds to the difficulty in billing and payroll.  My concern is, since I can’t remember what I had for breakfast, how can the Providers write accurate notes for services they provided so long ago?

When I do a performance review with any of our Providers, I always check the timeliness of their ISP Data submission to ensure it is within our standard.  Took me a while to figure out how to do it in quickly and accurately.

In an ISP Data Search you can check an individual ISP Data Collection entry.  In the blue field at the top is a date / time stamp for when the data was submitted.  That can be compared against the date the services were provided to determine how time late the entry was made.  However, that is data for a single note and does not indicate a trend or average over a broader time frame.  To get that trend or average the data can be exported to Excel.  Unfortunately, that date / time stamp is not included during an export to Excel.

In an Activity Tracking Search you can search by Provider for a given time frame (no more than one month) to see when they submitted ISP Data.  Each line of data cannot be accessed in this search; but the data can be exported to Excel.  However, it will not give the date the services were provided; just the date the entry was made.

Now we have two separate Excel spreadsheets; one with the date services were provided and the other with the date the data was submitted.  How do we combine them to get at the length of time between the time the services were provided and when the Therap ISP Data was submitted?

The secret is that both spreadsheets contain the Form ID number.  With the Form ID number to connect the date the service was provided and the date the ISP Data was submitted it is a relatively simple process to use the “Lookup” function (I used “vlookup”) to put all the needed data on one spreadsheet.  With the data on one spreadsheet, the data can then be easily manipulated to determine how late the data was submitted and any average or trends you may be interested in.

This of course is just an overview of how I do it.  If you need help with the details, just let me know.

Greetings from FOCUS,

FOCUS launched ISP Data Collection in August 2011 as a means to eliminate paper notes.  I was hired after the implementation so I can not speak to how smoothly it went.  But since I have been here I have discovered that, between our Therap data, and the ability to export the data to Excel, we have been able to examine our data in new and novel ways.  For example, at FOCUS we use the ISP Data as our means to determine our Care Providers payroll.  Next we are using data exported to Excel to review our input to Finance for billing and claims.  Not exciting to most of you, but a good starting point for us.  Our next step was expanding into utilization.  Without the Billing module, and less than a full year of Therap data, it was quite a detailed exercise to create Excel graphs depicting service utilization using input from the legacy system and Therap data.  Now we are in the process of setting up Service Authorizations.  Once again discovering that with less than a full year of  Therap data, the ability to export Therap data to Excel, combine it with the our legacy system, is the key to capturing a good starting point for Therap Service Authorizations.

My plan is to share these magical spreadsheets with everyone in my required Webinars…  Stay tuned for more details…  Or give me a blast if you can’t wait and I will see if I can give you a hand.

Want to know more about FOCUS?  Check out our web site: http://focusoutreach.org/

This is my first blog since becoming a Certified Trainer… Honestly, it is my first blog ever.  Who says you can’t train old dogs.  Or Old Salts.

Rob

It has started out as a crazy week with being gone all last week to the National Conference in New Jersey. It was a great week, I learned a lot and met a lot of great people. I always enjoy it when I meet another dog enthusiast (especially someone with a Bernese Mountain Dog!) I only wish I had enough fore thought to have stayed longer and gone to the Westminster Dog show. I knew people that were there and it would have been a great experience. Maybe next year!.
I not only learned a lot at the Conference but now have someone else in the agency that realizes the benefits of Therap and the things that we are not utilizing to their fullest, this of course means a lot of work ahead for me because now our implementation is going to move forward at a very rapid pace. I may be looking to some of you for information as we do this as to what works and what doesn’t.

The evening in New York city was great, it was a first for me. I discovered there is a lot to see and do and not enough time to do it all. Next trip i want to go to Ground Zero, take in a show and many other things, guess I will have to plan leave in conjunction with the conference.

Today we had a Risk Management Committee meeting and we are looking for some input from other agencies. What do you do as far as procedure/protocol for allowing someone who has a documented seizure disorder to go swimming with staff supports? Do you allow them to swim, do they have to wear a flotation device, does the guardian and/or parent sign off on it, just what parameters are in place if any?. Do you have a written protocol or procedure that you would be willing to share? If you do you can e-mail it directly to me at kristined@fra-alaska.net. Thank you for any input you can share on this topic. I am finding that this is something that a lot of agencies have not really looked at and have just allowed clients to swim. We are looking at the Risk of all our operations very closely and how it can impact our services.

This past weekend we went to Palmer to go to the Dog show that I had talked about previously, which we won’t talk about except to say we donated to the club putting on the show. While there the second night in the hotel I was startled awake by my phone at 1:45 AM, it was my son in OK City telling me that he and his wife were at the hospital to deliver their first child. All day I paid more attention to my phone than to the dog show which is probably why we didn’t do much there. when we started home after the show I was still waiting for news about the babies birth. The bad part was I knew we would be out of cell range off and on during the next 6 hours. Well finally at about 4:33 AK time she was born. 7 pounds, 8 Oz. 19 1/2 inches long, Peyton Maria Bye. I will be visiting OK City in December to meet her. If anyone wants to get together and talk Therap I would love to meet you.

I had the opportunity to meet with a provider from ND by phone yesterday to help them through the process of implementing the MARs. It was a great phone call and I look forward to talking with them again. Good Luck Red River Human Services Foundation with starting the MARs. You can do it and show the rest of the state that it can work.

People at our agency call me the Therap Nerd but that is OK…I get very excited when I talk about Therap.