Happy New Year from the CEO

As 2008 gets underway, the CEOs of our customer agencies  are raising some consistent themes as they talk about their plans and challenges for the new year:  Financial pressure from shrinking margins, the management problems that arise from regulatory change and staff turnover, and the increasingly sophisticated demands for reporting and financial management.

This all drives KaleidaCare’s plan for the year. The Kaleidacare team has focused on key areas where we can best serve customers in 2008: Although we have the most cost effective enterprise system for child and family welfare agencies,  we need to hold our costs low and help existing owners unlock the value of the investment they have already made.  We need to increase the reporting capabilities and management tools to relieve key pain points of customers and create measurable savings.  And we need to improve our ability to support customers as they manage change through improving services and support.

By bringing in new customers, it will allow us to further invest in the product and services, and the sales team is looking forward to extending the KaleidaCare community of users extensively in 2008. I have been particularly encouraged by the fact that nearly all new customers in 2007 came to us from recommendations from existing customers.  The core of our marketing and sales plan is to make our current customers successful, and we will not deviate from this plan.

Let’s make it a great year together!

  Alistair Deakin,
  President & CEO

FFTA’s Benchmark TFC! Project

The Foster Family-based Treatment Association (FFTA) continues to collect foster care outcomes through its Benchmark TFC! Project. Benchmark TFC! is an established, national outcomes project designed to identify national benchmarks for Treatment Foster Care while providing valuable information for participating agencies. “Having access to aggregate data that represents children and youth across the country is invaluable to any agency committed to quality improvement,” states Melissa Cole, Administrator of the Foster Family-based Treatment Association.

KaleidaCare offers Benchmark TFC! Participants an easy way to collect and report project data. Since most of the data is standard client information (Date of Birth, Gender, Admission Date, etc.) that users are already entering into Solutions, they are not burdened with additional or duplicate data entry. Once the data is entered, KaleidaCare generates a de-identified back-end report to the Project Director at designated reporting periods. “Kaleidacare Solutions makes participating in the Benchmark TFC! Project very simple,” states Lynn Castrianno, Ph.D, Benchmark TFC! Project Director. “Your agency  doesn’t need to remember to submit the data or figure out what format you would have to use. It’s taken care of!”

The FFTA’s Benchmark TFC! Data Points and KaleidaCare Solutions Tool:
Date of Birth and Gender – Client Basic Information

Admission Date, Kinship Care, and Discharge Date – Client Tracking
Diagnosis – Diagnosis Log
Admission and Discharge Functional Surveys – Functional Survey

Complete instructions on where and how to enter the data is available on the KaleidaCare Solutions Home Page.

For more information on the FFTA Benchmark TFC! Project please contact Lynn Castrianno, Project Director, at lcastrianno@cox.net or Melissa Cole, FFTA Administrator, at mcole@ffta.org.
For questions about entering the data into KaleidaCare Solutions, please contact your Account Manager.

New Kaleidacare Customers

All Church Home for Children (Fort Worth, Texas) is Texas’ newest customer.  All Church Home for Children offers a continuum of care for immediate and long-term services for children, youth and families in crisis.  From Residential Group Care to Foster Care and Street Outreach to In-Home Respite Care and more, All Church covers outreach, community and residential services.  KaleidaCare is excited to welcome such a prominent and respected agency to its community.

Free Will Baptist Family Ministries (Greenville, Tennessee) will begin implementing KaleidaCare in January.  Free Will Baptist Family Ministries is a non-profit, Christian child and family care ministry. The services offered in eastern Tennessee include Group Care and Foster Care.  Among some of Free Will Baptist Family Ministries’ programs outside of Tennessee include a Community Based Group Care Facility in Bristol, Virginia.  Free Will also has an Emergency Shelter in Little Rock, Arkansas, and The Laurels Retirement/Assisted Living Center in Norton, Virginia.

Creative Connections & Sunny Home, Inc (Bakersfield, California) will be the first agency in California using KaleidaCare.  Creative Connections currently places adults in Foster Care in Southern California.  In the near future, Sunny Home will begin placing children in Foster Care as well. This agency is particularly excited to manage their Foster Parent training across both programs through KaleidaCare University.  Welcome!

KaleidaCare Continues to Improve Product

The KaleidaCare Development Team has been busy this past quarter working on system enhancements and new functionality.

New Functionality

Lock All – Logs and Agency Documents
Lock All gives those users who have Locking and Unlocking Permissions the ability to lock or unlock ALL of the records in the browse screen.

Client Tracking Event Locking
Event Locking gives users the ability to lock Client Tracking Events from being edited once locked.

Client Tracking Email Notification
Automated Email Notifications can now be generated by program and/or event status to alert staff when a client is Referred, Placed, Discharged, etc.

User Interface

Report Window Size
Yes, you are seeing your reports better!  The Solutions Report Window can now be enlarged to full screen and resized as desired.

Distinguishing Action Buttons
At customer request, we've expanded the blue bar so that its buttons (View report, New Search, etc.) are not right next to the main menu bars above them (Logout, Preferences, etc.). We found that it was too easy to click on LOGOUT by mistake when trying to select one of the other tool buttons.

Facility Tools

Facility Menu Report
The Facility’s Smoking Policy, Age Range Accepted, and School District have been added to the Facility Menu Report.  To view these data points go to Administration > Facilities > Menu and search for a facility.  Check the desired facility and select View Report.

Staff/Professional Tools

System Security – Inactivate User
Entering a Date No Longer Employed on the Staff/Professional Employment Screen will automatically make the user’s login inactive.  No need to scramble the user’s password.  The Date No Longer Employed also ends all Assignments for the user.  If the user returns to your agency, simply delete the Date No Longer Employed and the record is active again.

Assignments
A Delete All Assignments Button has been added to the Assignment screen.  If you need to give a user a Geographic Assignment and remove all other Direct Assignments, this button allows you to remove all the assignments with the click of the button.

Session Log

Addendum Added
Addendums can now be added to Session Logs.  You are also able to add an Addendum to a Case Note and Incident Log.

Information Section

Current Medication Information Section
Current Medications on an Information Report will now be separated by those that are still current and those that have expired during the time period of the Information Section.

Data Warehouse

Primary and Secondary Grouping Added to All Client Status Reports
Reports can now be grouped by a primary and secondary grouping.  For example, you can generate a report of Referrals for 2007 and group the results by Month and Division or Discharges by Program and Month.

Active Client Status
Level of Care has been added as a data point to the Active Client Status Report.  Because a client may have multiple Levels of Care within a given time frame, the date range for each level of care is included in the report.  The Active Client Status Report can also be grouped by Level of Care.

Client Status Discharge Report: First Admission/Last Discharge
The First Admission Date for the client and the Last Discharge Date for the client has been added to Client Status Discharge Report.

Listings Reports

Secondary Grouping Added to All Listings Reports
Reports can now be grouped by a primary and secondary grouping.

Financial Tracking

Credit Balances
The Service Billing Accounts Receivable Tool will now accept a credit balance transaction.

ID Number on Client Contract Association Tool
An ID Number has been added to the Client’s Per Diem Contract Association Tool.  This is a required field.  The ID Number will accept any value (alphanumeric).

Validator Error Report
“NONE” has been added as a search option to both the Available Payer Categories and Available Payers on the Validator Error Report. With this enhancement, those logs with no payer information will more easily be accessed along with all other logs. You can now view all logs with errors by running the report without any filter criteria.

Agency Documents

Search by Creator
The creator has been added as a search/filter item on all Agency Documents.

Outcomes - CAFAS

Search by Author/Creator
The creator has been added as a search/filter item on the CAFAS Tool.

Report Format
The CAFAS Report defaults to the Client Assessment Report.

For more information on these enhancements, contact your Account Manager.  We are already working on the next list of improvements for you and your staff.

New Year’s Resolutions for Your Agency

New Year’s Resolutions may seem a bit cliché, but they are a reality.  Pick up any newspaper or magazine this time of year, and there will an article on how to set and keep your New Year’s Resolutions.  Now, most of these are talking about personal resolutions, but for many of us our resolutions may go way beyond our own need to shed a few pounds or exercise more.  As managers, supervisors or directors, the start of a new year can be the ideal time to implement changes on a departmental or agency-wide basis.  Perhaps there is a new policy that needs to be put in place, a new agency vision that needs to be incorporated, or maybe even new software that needs to be embraced by the entire agency.  Change can be hard enough when it only impacts one person, but when change needs to impact an entire group of people; it brings on its own set of challenges.

Successful life changes as well as corporate changes are best made when they are well thought-out and well planned. Before you make the change – here are some things you might what to keep in mind:

• Clearly identify the change that you want the agency to make. Be specific and write it down. Identify any barriers that may prevent the agency from making the change. For each one identified, develop a strategy for overcoming it.

• Identify and commit to what the agency will have to do differently to make the change happen. Remember nothing will change until your behavior changes.

• Identify a core “implementation team”.  Unilateral mandates don’t usually go over very well with employees.  Enlist the input and support of administration, co-workers and employees.  You don’t need to poll everyone before the decision is made, but involving a few key individuals in advance will go a long way in determining the success of a change
• Understand that change is incremental, especially on a large scale. Most change is slow to evolve. Celebrate the small successes as you move toward the bigger goal.  Just because you decide you want to change the agency’s mission or way of working – doesn’t mean it is going to happen overnight.

• Accept that the path to a permanent change is never linear. Roadblocks and setbacks are going to be a part of the journey. Acknowledge them and use them as learning opportunities.

• Be willing to ask for help when you need it.  In this age of information, help is never very far away.  If implementing the change becomes a bigger challenge than expected, look for help outside of your organization.  Don’t give up without using all of the resources that are out there.

• Above all, stay positive. Be confident in your decision and have an expectation of success.  Your positive attitude will be a huge influence on those around you.

To summarize how to implement a change in 7 steps might be a bit simplistic, but hopefully this gives you some “food for thought” as you look toward change in this New Year.  Change is inevitable, but not always successful, if it isn’t well planned and well thought out.  May your changes all be good ones, as you move forward in 2008!

Georgia User Group

KaleidaCare users and prospective users from 10 Georgia agencies met on December 13th.  The Group set a regular schedule of quarterly meetings for 2008 and discussed ideas for topics and the format of future meetings.  Ideas included selecting a topic beforehand, small group discussions, and having a few agencies share some of their Agency Documents.  Some of the newer KaleidaCare customers feel these will be great ways to get tips from agencies that have been using the system for years.

Trish Murphy demonstrated some recent system enhancements and new modules in the system, and described some items on the 2008 Roadmap.

A portion of the meeting focused on the Revenue Maximization Module and Electronic Billing functionality, which is helping agencies bill Medicaid directly for their services.

The next meeting will be held on Thursday, March 13th at 2:00 p.m. at Hillside.  Announcements will be sent out in advance to remind everyone.  Future meetings are planned for the 2nd Thursday of June (6/13) and September (9/11).  The December meeting will be on the 1st Thursday instead (12/4).

Heather Rowles, the Executive Director of the Multi-Agency Alliance for Children (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.  For more information about starting a User Group in your state, please contact Chip Bolyard at 512-219-8025 ext. 228 or cbolyard@kaleidacare.com.  A special thanks to CHRIS Kids for hosting this meeting.

Learning: A Lifelong Process

Learning is a lifelong process.  As Alvin Toffler wrote, “The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn”.  To maneuver through life, we must always be learning.  Whether it’s a new job, a new gadget, or a new software system, learning opportunities abound.  At KaleidaCare we know that there’s always more to learn . . . a better way to run a report, a more efficient way to enter data, an innovative way to track the data that you need to report.  We also know that in your agencies, there are always changes – new employees, new programs, and new reporting requirements.  To help you meet these learning challenges, we’ve implemented some new training offerings.

Ongoing Monthly Webinars – Anyone from your organization can log on and participate in a general training on a specific topic.  These trainings are always posted on your home page with information on how to participate.  Here’s what’s coming this quarter:

January 11, 2008 @ 2pm CST (3pm EST):  Reports
January 22, 2008 @ 2pm CST (3pm EST):  Facility
February 12, 2008 @ 10am CST (11am EST):  Health Care Logs
March 11, 2008 @ 2pm CST (3pm CST):  Client Tracking

New Web Training Packages – While we continue to offer onsite trainings, which are often the best fit for your organization, we realize that sometimes your learning needs can be managed in a less formal way.  We now offer personalized Web Trainings available to you at your convenience on any topic that is needed for your organization.  There is no limit to the number of people who can attend and we work with you on the agenda to fit your needs.

Onsite Training – Our standard onsite training sessions provide your organization with a full day of class room, hands-on KaleidaCare Training.  These customized trainings give your staff the ability to interactively learn in a group setting, and can also provide one-on-one assistance as needed.

Be a lifelong learner and promote the same within your organization.  Contact your Account Manager to take advantage of the many learning opportunities available.