Letter From The CEO

I’ve been spending considerable time thinking about web marketing and social media, and its effectiveness for the community of KaleidaCare customer agencies. We recently completed a survey of all our customer agencies, to assess their website and social media presence and likely effectiveness to reach meet key organizational drivers. What we found mirrors the entire non profit world. With some notable exceptions, the majority of agencies build the tools (attractive website, “donate now” button, links to Facebook and Twitter, volunteer solicitation, etc), but then miss making the investment in the content and programming. Agencies seem to miss the fact that a website and Facebook are just tools and a platform. To create activity, you need to be active. Over half KaleidaCare’s customer agencies had not updated news in the last 3 months, or had ineffective links to donations and volunteer opportunities. You’ll never know how many potential donors or volunteers you lose because of a broken link. And these days, however you reach out to people, you need to assume everyone interested in your organization will visit your website. Old content and broken links are equivalent to having dead plants on the front step of the house you are trying to sell.

I would like to highlight one agency that significantly impresses with its web presence: ACH Child and Family Services (out of Fort Worth). It’s worth a visit. Their website is very attractive and well organized. They make clear and compelling calls to action around their key organization drivers “Get help” and “Donate.” All their links and buttons work (Have you tried to donate on your own website or get information?). The news releases and events are current and well written. It’s current and fresh. It certainly supports the image you’d want to present as you approach donors, volunteers, and state officials as you reach out both in person and through the web.

My challenge to you is this: Don’t think about web marketing as a one time investment in technology, think about it in terms of ongoing content and programming. Think about the key drivers of your organization and how you have lined up your web presence with those drivers. One new donor a quarter or one new foster family a year would more than offset a modest investment in keeping your content and programming current. What content and activity draws donors and volunteers to you? Have you given someone the responsibility and time to dedicate to the task?

We are exposed to lots of good ideas and services here at KaleidaCare. I have been compiling information about best practices and resources to help with web marketing and social media and would be glad to share it. Our mission is to extend best practices throughout the field. Please feel free to reach out to me and discuss.

Thanks for all you do!
Alistair

Welcome New Customers

Florida United Methodist Children’s Home (Enterprise, FL) is headquartered on a beautiful 100-acre campus on Lake Monroe. The agency offers a wide array of services including shelter, residential, foster care, independent living and a counseling center. An onsite-school serves shelter clients and a beautiful chapel offers services for all clients. FUMCH is Eagle and COA accredited. They are excited about moving to the new software and are already “live” on KaleidaCare.

Childhelp (Seymour, TN) is a Family Foster Agency (FFA) in Tennessee that has been open for 5 years. Childhelp has also aided the community by providing Forensic Interviews, Therapy and Community Trainings. Childhelp had an 88% permanency rate in 2009. After securing a grant for KaleidaCare, they will be able to move from their paper files to the KaleidaCare solution.

Methodist Home for Children (Raleigh, NC) has been serving children and families for over 100 years. Founded in 1899 as a traditional campus-based orphanage in Raleigh, North Carolina, MHC is now a community-based agency active throughout North Carolina, especially in the central and eastern regions. MHC will be using KaleidaCare for Electronic Billing and case management for the programming of child care, foster care, group homes and family preservation.

Harmony Host Homes (Brighton, CO) provides residential care and support for developmentally disabled adults requiring widely varying levels of supports and services. Harmony Host Homes contracts with independent homes that provide support and residential services to no more than 2 clients at a time.

Regional Crime Victim Crisis Center (Abilene, TX) was referred to KaleidaCare by New Horizons. RCVCC serves victims of violent crimes, including sexual assault, in Abilene and the surrounding region of West Texas. RCVCC completed a grant to obtain KaleidaCare to help them move from their paper system.

KaleidaCare’s National User Group – A Must Attend Event

This year’s National User Group is the one user group that you do not want to miss! The annual event will have all the draw of other user groups – Interesting and Informative Topics, Great Networking with Other Users, In-Person Interactions with your KaleidaCare Team, and a Great Location: Austin, Texas. But this year’s event will also highlight the upcoming product changes. “During this year’s User Group, we will be unveiling our next gen product, Solutions 7. This will significantly ease the navigation of the system and will add several ‘bells and whistles’ that will enhance the user’s experience,” said Chip Bolyard, Director of Account Management.

Participants will learn about the major planned enhancements, see how navigation will change, and receive data migration information during the User Group. The Account Management Team will also provide information on the training resources that will be available to assist staff with the system upgrade.

The User Group would not be a user group without some of our customers sharing their best practices, great ideas, and out-of-the-box thinking. A customer panel will discuss how they have utilized the system reports to survive the accreditation process. Another group of users will discuss how they use a nightly Database Download to create additional reports from their KaleidaCare Data.

Online User Group Scheduled for July 13th

The next KaleidaCare Online User Group will be held on Tuesday, July 13th at 12:00 PM ET / 11:00 AM CT / 10:00 AM MT / 9:00 AM PT. This web conference meeting is an opportunity for System Administrators or their designees to learn about recent enhancements and upcoming changes and ask questions of KaleidaCare Staff and other users. If you are interested in more information about the Online User Group, please contact your Account Manager.

Georgia Quarterly User Group Update

Eleven people from eight agencies attended the Georgia User Group on June 10th. Many thanks to The Bridge for hosting this quarter’s meeting.

Participants discussed how they are preparing for the shift to Performance Based Contracting (PBC). Starting July 1st Georgia Child Placing Agencies and Child Caring Institutions will enter PBC data in the new GA SCORE web portal. While agencies are concerned about the amount of time this will take, they still want to maintain their own data in order to ensure they have good reporting to monitor their performance, document and capture other data, and possibly refute State data. Agencies noted that they also still need a system for tracking non-DFCS clients, such as DJJ or private clients.

Trish Murphy, Senior Account Manager, announced that she and CEO Alistair Deakin had met with Care Solutions President Carla Rogg and Vice President of Technology Dawn Reed. Care Solutions developed the GA SCORE system. It was a very positive meeting; KaleidaCare and Care Solutions are very interested in working together with the State of GA on a possible interface between the two systems. We’re going to explore this further and will provide updates along the way. Trish also attended the State PBC training on the GA SCORE system in June.

The group also discussed how some agencies problem-solve issues with having direct care staff in group/residential programs access the system. Sometimes it is difficult for them to take time to step away from the clients in order to go in an office where the computer is located. Depending on the agency some have addressed this by allowing more of a shift overlap for documentation time, or having overnight staff do the data entry or utilizing laptops. Agencies want to have their direct care staff enter daily notes or shift notes because this direct observation of the client’s behavior can provide extremely valuable information. Trish demonstrated the Progress Log, which can be used by direct care staff or foster parents, and generates a Totals Format which tallies the entries automatically. Giving direct care staff access and time to document in this log can provide rich, measurable data on client behavior. Attendees also discussed the pros and cons of having direct care staff enter an Incident Log directly into KaleidaCare versus completing a hand written form which a supervisor or other staff person reviews and then enters in the system.

The Service Billing Users learned about several upcoming enhancements, two of which are Georgia-specific Electronic Billing changes. In July, Georgia providers will need to indicate a Billing Disability for APS/State Contracted electronic claims. Detailed instructions will be emailed prior to the release. They will also allow providers to submit electronic claims with a “date span” for certain services. Both of these changes are for APS/State Contracted electronic claims only and will not impact other payers or states. Lastly, Trish explained an additional safe guard that will prevent users from saving changes to the billing fields of a billable Case Note or Session Log in certain situations, such as while the Validator is running. An email with further details about this will be sent to all Service Billing customers. The time frame for EDS taking over the GA Medicaid contract from ACS has been delayed until November 1st. KaleidaCare is researching the requirements involved in this change and will update customers as more information becomes available.

The new time for the meeting (1:00 to 3:00 instead of 2:00 to 4:00) was appreciated by participants coming from further away. Due to the Annual User Group in Austin in September, the GA User Group will not meet in September. The next meeting will be on December 9th at 1:00. Invitations and the location with the 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.

KaleidaCare Assesses User Satisfaction

KaleidaCare strives to provide the best possible child and family case management, reporting, outcome tracking, and billing software product on the market. This spring we conducted a survey of 10 satisfaction data points of our customer executives and System Administrators. Here is a snapshot of the results:

The QUALITY of our responses to your feedbacks – EXCELLENT 63.8% and 32.8% Above Average
The TIMELINESS of our responses to your feedbacks – EXCELLENT 58.6% and 36.2% Above Average
The TIMELINESS of your Account Manager's response to your needs – EXCELLENT 69.0% and 22.4% Above Average
The KNOWLEDGE level of your Account Manager – EXCELLENT 72.4% and 22.4% Above Average
The ABILITY TO ANTICIPATE your needs and provide assistance proactively – Excellent 35.1% and 42.1% ABOVE AVERAGE
Our PRODUCTS AND SERVICES we provide meet your objectives - Excellent 24.6% and 38.6% ABOVE AVERAGE
The EASE of working with us. – EXCELLENT 63.8% and 27.6% Above Average
Overall, how do you rank our services to you – EXCELLENT 50.9% and 41.8% Above Average
How has KaleidaCare service changed over the past year? – Much Improved 27.8% and 50.0% SOMEWHAT IMPROVED
How has KaleidaCare's system performance changed over the past year? – Much Improved 32.1% and 45.3% SOMEWHAT IMPROVED
When new functionality is added to KaleidaCare, is the information being communicated in a timely and informative manner? – Strongly Agree 42.9% and AGREE 53.6%
A Few Comments from the Survey:
- KaleidaCare has been so easy to use and all our questions are answered very quickly. Our account manager is extremely helpful.
- I have been exceptionally pleased signing up with your service.
- KCare has been very responsive to our needs and it is wonderful knowing there is a team ready to help us when needed.
- Customer service has always been responsive to our needs. Increase in on-line training opportunities and user groups also very helpful.
- I really love some of the new reporting functions.
- Keeps getting better
- Significant increase in upgrades, enhancements and overall functionality....rolling out more quickly.

We will continue to work to improve our product and our services to increase these percentages in the coming year.

Thank you to all who completed a survey! Congratulations to Damian Kirwan of Human Services Consultants in Arizona for winning the Starbucks Gift Card for timely survey submission.

Tips and Tricks - Browsing the Right Way

Use the Right Browser – KaleidaCare is designed to be used on a PC with Internet Explorer (IE). We recommend IE 7, but IE 6.0.2 or higher will work. If you try to login with another type of Browser such as Mozilla Firefox, Safari, Chrome, etc. you should see the warning shown below. This was added to alert users that they are very likely to experience issues. If you see this warning, the best thing to do is open up Internet Explorer and then login. Some users may need to contact their IT Dept.

Use Compatibility View for IE 8 – If you’re using IE 8, we recommend you use Compatibility View. This has resolved a variety of issues such as the inability to view reports, not seeing icons and sometimes errors when saving. Click on the icon to the right of your address bar that looks like a broken page. It can be a bit tricky to tell if the Compatibility View is on or off by the icon, but if you hover over the tab it should show a little pop up that tells you if you are in Compatibility View (see image below).

Don’t access KaleidaCare from multiple browser windows or tabs – we’ve said it before, but we’ll say it again because this is the most common cause of errors, especially when saving, or when moving back and forth between two windows/tabs. It is easy to do this accidentally especially if you’ve minimized the browser. Remember to log out of KaleidaCare when you are done and before you login again check to be sure you’re not still logged in from an earlier session. If you want to copy and paste from one area of the system to another, View the Report (which pops up in a window), then copy and paste from the Report into the new log. You can minimize the report window (leave it open) and go back and forth between the report window and the document you are working on. Another option is to copy information into Word first and then copy it from Word into the new log.

Letter From The CEO

Welcome New Customers

KaleidaCare’s National User Group – A Must Attend Event

Online User Group Scheduled for July 13th

Georgia Quarterly User Group Update

KaleidaCare Assesses User Satisfaction

Tips and Tricks - Browsing the Right Way

Spotlight on KaleidaCare University

Recent Developments

KaleidaCare Calendar

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