In this issue:

Letter From The CEO

One of the lessons I’ve learned in leading change management is to allow for seasons to let changes take hold. The last six months at KaleidaCare, we’ve had the luxury of one of these seasons, where we’ve been able to focus on execution. We’ve made tremendous strides with our development team in preparing for some exciting new features and capabilities. We’ve also been able to build on our customer relationships, helping each customer to get more value out of the system. And we’ve pushed through some significant upgrades to hardware and software to improve response speed, reliability and security.

For the next six months, we will be pushing hard again on new product development. To help ensure quality and a great experience for current customers, we’ve hired a new member of the team to manage Quality Assurance. Lisa Boyle has an undergraduate degree from Emory University and a Masters degree from the University of Texas, and will be joining us in April. Along with the rest of the development team, Lisa will help make sure that there will be a lot to show at the Annual User Group meeting in September. Be sure to book your place early! It’s going to be a productive and fun time in Austin!

We’ve had a great start to the year, and are enthused about what we’re going to be able to do to help each customer serve clients more effectively and efficiently, supporting you on the front lines of caring for children and families is our main motivation.

Your partner in service,
Alistair Deakin

KaleidaCare Annual User Group

KaleidaCare firmly believes that we always have a great deal to learn from our customers. Our customers are the ones out there every day working with clients, dealing with new policies and regulations, training staff and figuring out how to stretch an already thin budget. We’ve also learned that our customers love to learn from each other! One way we do this each year is through KaleidaCare’s Annual User Group. We are excited to announce that the 2010 Annual User Group will be held in Austin, Texas on September 15-17, 2010.

Sessions will include: Exploring Reporting Options and Making them Work for You, What will be New and Different in the New Version, How to Make the Best Transition and Transition Planning…just to name a few. We will also be conducting an Executive Session Track on Thursday, September 16th, primarily led by our CEO, Alistair Deakin and other Executives within our customer base.

Early Bird Registration before August 24th: $200
Registration after August 24th: $250

To register for the Annual User Group click - http://www.kaleidacare.com/EventRegistration.aspx.

The Annual User Group will be held at the Holiday Inn Town Lake, which overlooks Lady Bird Lake in downtown Austin. To quickly book your stay please use this link - click here to book Holiday Inn Town Lake. Once you have selected your arrival and departure dates and room choices, open the Corporate, Group & IATA Identification (optional) section by clicking the plus sign. Please be sure "KCA" is entered as the Group Booking Code. Our Group Rate is $119.

We will see you in Austin this September!

Recent Enhancements

KaleidaCare has released several enhancements to Solutions in the past quarter as outlined below.

Home Status Report – New Data Points

The new Home Status Reports implemented last Fall have been helping agencies track their new foster homes from inquiry to approval. As agencies began using the reports, we received requests for several new data points which have now been added as outlined below.

Initially Approved Report: This report will show all homes that were initially approved during the time frame selected.

Open Homes Report: This report will show all homes that are currently open, including homes which are On-Hold for Corrective Action and Not Accepting.

The new data points added to the above 2 reports are:

  • Inquiry Type
  • Inquiry Source
  • Referral Source
  • Initial Placement Date – date of the first placement of a client in that home

The addition of these fields will allow you even more flexibility when pulling reports for your foster homes or other facilities.

Screen Help on Document Upload Screen:

Document Storage/Retrieval is an add-on module that allows you to upload and store files on a client’s record in KaleidaCare. The size of the files being uploaded is restricted in order to help in the upload and download process. A new message on the screen alerts users to the requirements and recommends zipping or compressing larger files.

Don’t have Document Storage and are interested? Talk with your Account Manager about this add-on module as well as the discount being offered through April.

Service Billing Enhancement

New Payers added for Electronic Billing

We have added the following payers to the Electronic Billing System:

  • CO Medicaid
  • WV Medicaid
  • Aetna
  • Cigna
  • Humana
  • UBH

If you have any questions regarding these new payers, please contact your Account Manager.

Product Demos

KaleidaCare University
Thursday, April 15th
12:00 PM ET / 11:00 AM CT / 10:00 AM MT / 9:00 AM PT

KaleidaCare University/ KCU is a learning management system that lets you track classroom & online training. The module includes a 300+ Online Course Category that users can view and pass tests to earn Continuing Education Units. Your agency can also upload trainings to access them over the internet.

Contact Chip Bolyard at cbolyard@kaleidacare.com to register for this demonstration.

Document Storage and Retrieval
Thursday, April 22nd (EARTH DAY)
2:00 PM ET / 1:00 PM CT / 12:00 PM MT / 11:00 AM PT

Document Storage allows users to upload an image or document (Photo, Word, Excel, or PDF File) and attached it to a client record. Users can then download the document when needed. This saves time, paper, and money.

In honor of the 40th Anniversary of Earth Day KaleidaCare will offer a 15% discount for the first year for any organization that adds this module to their system by April 30, 2010. Only $85 a month – it is like getting 2 months for FREE!

Contact Chip Bolyard at cbolyard@kaleidacare.com to register for this demonstration.

Georgia User Group Notes

The Georgia User Group kicked off 2010 with their meeting on March 11th. Eighteen people from nine agencies participated in this quarter’s meeting. Thank you CHRIS Kids for hosting!

The main topic was the Performance Based Contracting (PBC) Outcomes that Georgia Child Placing Agencies and Child Caring Institutions will be held accountable for in the new State contracts. The specific measures are still being developed and several agencies are participating in a work group and providing feedback to the State. In general, they will look at Permanency, Safety, and Well-Being. Agencies agreed that they will need to find ways to track outcomes for themselves in order to monitor their own performance and possibly refute State data. Using the Next Due Dates on Health Care Logs for Annual Medical, Bi-Annual Dental and Annual Optical will be an easy thing to do in the system. Creating new Agency Documents with Dropdowns or Checkboxes, or adding these to existing documents, will be good for measuring things such as number of family visits or MRO services provided on the Agency Document Aggregate Report. Other ideas included using the Event Reasons Report. Reasons for Client Tracking can be set up very creatively to measure any number of things such as Number of Previous Placements.

Trish Murphy, Account Manager, explained that when using Reasons for Client Tracking an agency will want to consider at what point in the process to capture the data. For the example of the Number of Previous Placements if you want to know that for all clients, you should track it at Referral. But if you only want to count that for those clients that were Placed (and exclude clients you Deferred), you should track it at Placement. Even if your agency uses an agency document for the Discharge Summary it is quick and easy to complete some of the dropdown fields on the Discharge screen in client tracking to provide great aggregate reporting. Trish also suggested looking at some fields that pull into the Data Warehouse reports that aren’t currently used and creatively use them for something other than their label intends. Another idea is to consider adding a new Program that will help easily separate out reports, for example on clients who receive a particular service or have a different funding source.

Agencies using the Service Billing module remained for further discussion, including several enhancements (see Enhancements section for details) this past quarter. There are also two Georgia specific billing changes. Effective 1/1/2010 providers are allowed only 90 days from the date of service to submit State Contracted Service Encounters. Exceptions to this deadline are permitted in specific circumstances but require additional documentation and will therefore need to be keyed into the web portal directly rather than submitted electronically. Also, effective 7/1/2010 EDS will take over the GA Medicaid contract from ACS. KaleidaCare is currently researching the requirements involved in this change and will update customers as more information becomes available. Several Service Billing agencies also discussed some ideas on how to manage common work flow issues.

It was requested that the meetings be moved back an hour and held from 1:00 to 3:00 instead of 2:00 to 4:00. This would ease the difficulty with rush hour traffic for participants coming from further away. The schedule will remain on the 2nd Thursday of each quarter at this new earlier time. The next meeting will be on June 10th at 1:00 but the location has not been determined yet. An invitation and directions will be sent out in advance. Agencies are encouraged to give their input and ideas for discussion.

Heather Rowles, the Executive Director of MAAC and Trish Murphy are the co-chairs of the Georgia User Group. For more information about these meetings, please contact Heather at (404) 880-9323 or hrowles@maac4kids.org or Trish at (404) 580-1142 or tmurphy@kaleidacare.com.

Positive Approaches to Embracing Changes

As we all know, change can be very difficult. Whether it’s implementing new software, adding a new procedure, or learning a new skill, change challenges us to perform in ways that may not always be comfortable. In our experience with implementing new software in various agencies, we have seen a number of different positive approaches used to help staff embrace change. We thought we would share a few of these ideas with you to help you manage any upcoming changes in your agency.

It doesn’t have to be a Million Dollars: A Texas agency hosted a number of trainings for their staff and wanted to make the training experience positive and fun for all of the attendees. They also wanted to recognize and show appreciation to the staff for their willingness to take time away from their normal duties and to embrace the new duties on which they were being trained. At the first group of trainings, the training coordinator had worked hard to procure a wide assortment of restaurant gift certificates, movie passes, and gift certificates for other services which were given away as door prizes. What a great idea, although it did cost a bit of money and took a good bit of leg work! For the next batch of trainings, the same coordinator went to the local Costco and bought a big box of candy bars at a fraction of the cost of the first round of incentives (not to mention a lot less headache). It was quickly evident that staff were equally (if not MORE) excited about the candy bars as prizes than they were about the more elaborate gift cards. While both are great ideas, it’s good to remember that it doesn’t always have to be “a million dollars”. Unless of course you are giving away “100 Grand” bars!

People love to “gamble” on a chance to win: A recent new customer decided to offer incentives to foster parents for entering their daily notes into the system. They implemented a very effective program that would give the foster parents the chance to win prizes. A number of the smaller deadlines were rewarded with agency giveaways such as pens and mouse-pads. For the larger prizes, the foster parents who entered their notes following the established deadlines were entered into drawings for a family pack of movie passes, a wireless mouse, and a flat-screen monitor. The excitement generated by the chance to win prizes was a great motivator.

Sometimes group perks work wonders OR competition is a powerful tool: Upon implementation, each program in the agency was given a deadline by which to complete their initial data entry – entering all of their clients and their basic information. The program that met the deadline with the most complete data entry was awarded with a ½ day of an onsite chair masseuse.

Cash is never a bad thing: As an incentive for foster parents to enter their incident reports and progress notes into KaleidaCare, one agency offers a $50 monthly technology reimbursement. This money helps to offset the cost for internet access. Parents who receive the technology reimbursement are required to enter logs online rather than submitting them in paper format. A win-win situation for everyone!

While we do expect people to deal with change when it is part of their job responsibilities, it’s always good to remember that sometimes a little extra incentive can be a valuable key to success.

Has your organization done something exciting that you’d like to share? Share them with the KaleidaCare Account Management Team solutionssupport@kaleidacare.com.


Tips & Tricks

Creating a Random Client List for Auditing Purposes

Agencies are sometimes asked to provide a random list of clients for auditing purposes. It’s amazing how difficult it can actually be to produce something that is truly random! One simple way you can “randomize” a list of client IDs is to follow the steps below:

Run a Client Listings Report for “Currently Active” clients and select the System ID# as the only data point. Note: You could add additional filters by region, division, program or any other available filters as desired.

When the list of Client ID #’s is displayed, highlight the IDs and use CTRL-C to copy them.

Go online to http://www.random.org/lists/ and use CTRL-V to paste your list into the box provided. Click GO! and your list is put in random order. You can then easily select the top 10, 20 or desired number of clients for your audit.

Another tip for auditing efforts is to create a KaleidaCare Solutions Menu for the reports users will need to review. This menu can then be assigned to those staff auditing files. Auditors may also have a larger geographic assignment to audit various files. An end date can be added to the assignment during the set up so the access can end after the audit period.

Online User Group

Our Online User Group continues to grow in attendance is held on the 2nd Tuesday of every other month. Twenty-one users representing 17 agencies attended March’s Online User Group held March 16th.

KaleidaCare highlighted recent enhancements to several tools in KaleidaCare as well as new Electronic Billing Payers (see the article on Recent Enhancements for details).

The main focus of this month’s online discussion was around the upcoming new version of KaleidaCare. The group reviewed a PowerPoint Presentation on the basic principles governing KaleidaCare’s decision making process for development of our next generation system. This new platform will allow for easier navigation, multiple report windows being open at once and other features which users have requested. This exciting change sparked conversations amongst the users present on training and providing support as staff learn the new system. KaleidaCare discussed ways in which we will provide support and training before, during and after this transition, and will work closely with System Administrators. Mock-ups of several screens were shown to give an idea of how the look and feel of the system may be different.

We will continue to update customers on this important project throughout the year via the Online User Group, the Annual User Group, and System Administrator Communications.

All agencies are invited and encouraged to participate in the online user groups. If you are not currently receiving notifications of this meeting and would like to be included, please send your request and contact information to Chip Bolyard at cbolyard@kaleidacare.com.

New Customer

Human Services Consultants (Phoenix, AZ) is a treatment foster care agency that is now using KaleidaCare. HSC had been working to mold a custom system for 3 years to meet their needs. After much wheel spinning, it made sense to join the KaleidaCare community and begin using a system in a matter of months. HSC is looking forward to managing facility information, foster parent payments and reminders for what is coming due. We are excited to welcome the newest FFTA customer!
 

All contents © by Kaleidacare 1995- 2010 . All Rights Reserved
To unsubscribe from our mailing list send an email to unsubscribe@kaleidacare.com