CEO Letter Q2 09

As resources have tightened so significantly over the past few months, I’ve been investigating how technology might help increase the resources available to child and family services agencies.  I have been taking a hard look at the fundraising software packages, asking questions beyond the marketing hype.  And I have been trying to figure out how the social media explosion (Facebook, Twitter etc.) might be relevant to our world.

I have reached the conclusion that there are very powerful opportunities for private agencies.  There is a vast community of people who could be enrolled to join the mission of your agency:  Donors, volunteers, foster parents, new employees, etc. There is a huge reservoir of relevant and timely knowledge to be tapped.  There are more people out there who want to help, and share what they know, to create a bigger impact, than we might even imagine. I will confess that I originally dismissed Facebook and Twitter as amusing distractions for people who don’t have real work to do.  As with many trends, for some they are indeed just distractions, but used properly they become very powerful ways to enroll people.  At the National User Group this year, we will have experts speak on using the social media world to enroll donors.  My own Twitter community has fed me cutting edge knowledge on foster care legislation, changing electronic record standards, new customers prospects, and technical ideas for tools to speed development (Twitter:  KaleidaCareCEO).  My friends network through Facebook has enrolled me as a donor in a number of great causes, in a way that was non intrusive, fun, and allowed me to make an informed decision and enroll other friends.

If your agency hasn’t tapped into the some of the technology resources, I would urge you to take a look.  Child and Family Services Agencies could really benefit.  We will be talking about this at the National User Group in Austin which will be held April 22nd-24th, and I plan to develop resources to share with customers.  It’s not too late to sign up.  Go to the registration button on the home page.  If you would like to learn more, please contact me by email at adeakin@kaleidacare.com.  Or come and follow me on Twitter.

Your partner in service,
  Alistair

User Group Updates

National User Group Returns to Austin

KaleidaCare’s National User Group returns to our corporate headquarters of Austin, Texas.  This year’s event will be held April 22 – 24, 2009 at the Hyatt Place – North Central (7522 North IH 35).  Our User Group will feature a blend of presentations focusing on timely practice issues and system functionality.

Dr. Wayne Carson, CEO of All Church Homes in Fort Worth, Texas, will present “Social Workers and Computers:  Ideas for Developing a Successful Relationship” based on how his organization embraced the change of moving to computerized client records through the first year and beyond.  “Utilizing KaleidaCare Solutions to Monitor Growth, Quality, and Fiscal Accountability” will be presented by Shane Frazier, MIS Director with Omni Visions from Nashville, Tennessee.  This presentation will highlight how Omni Visions utilizes Solutions to manage the various aspects of their organization.  Rochelle Conway, Regional System Administrator with Phoenix Foster Homes in Jackson, Tennessee, will provide a “how to” presentation on how their organization trains and maintains their foster parents as KaleidaCare users.

Allison Supancic and Ellen Moutos-Lee from the Hogg Foundation for Mental Health, a grant-making foundation that provides funding, public education, and research in Austin, Texas, will provide an overview of the grant writing process.  Their presentation will include where to look for grant funding, how to approach a grant project and some of their experiences of reviewing successfully funded grant applications.

We are also pleased to offer “Leveraging the Web and Technology for Fundraising and Enrolling the Community” by representatives from Convio, a fundraising organization that specializes in on-demand constituent relationship management software.

The KaleidaCare Staff also have a number of presentations planned, including:  A review of KaleidaCare Reports:  New Friends and Old Favorites, Using Excel to Add More Reporting Value, and an overview of recent and upcoming development projects.

We hope you can be part of this year’s National User Group.

Online User Group Going Strong

KaleidaCare’s Online User Group meets monthly to provide a forum for users to discuss recent enhancements, system questions, and practice issues.  This ongoing group averages 25 participants from various types and sizes of organization.  The group has also created a message board to foster communication outside the regular meetings.

The Online User Group is currently held the first Tuesday of each month at 12:00PM ET/11:00AM CT/ 10:00AM MT/9:00AM PT.  System Administrators can contact their Account Manager for more information about this group.

KaleidaCare’s Newest Customers

Visinet (Omaha, Nebraska) joins the KaleidaCare Customer roster.  Visinet, a COA accredited and FFTA member agency, serves the mission of providing families and individuals with a stable, nurturing, and secure environment for the promotion of healthier family functioning.  Through over 20 programs serving 40 counties, Visinet has become one of the largest human service agencies in the state.  Visinet will greatly benefit from having KaleidaCare to track the many clients and services offered.

Childkind (Atlanta, Georgia) is a very remarkable new customer.  Since 1988 Childkind has recruited and supported families with extraordinary skills for in home placements of some very special children.  These families give homes to children with medical and developmental challenges who are either institutionalized or in the state custody need.  Childkind and these families are truly helping children belong and thrive in a family that may not otherwise have such a chance.

Recent Enhancements

KaleidaCare continues to expand and improve all aspects of the system.  This past quarter brought a host of enhancements, the majority of which are outlined below:

General Enhancements

Browser Verification Warning

If a user accesses Solutions with an unsupported browser, a warning will appear on the login screen that recommends using Internet Explorer for best performance.  The user will still be able to access the system using an unsupported browser but is warned that doing so may result in difficulties using various parts of the system.  KaleidaCare Solutions requires Internet Explorer (the recommended version is 7; however, 6.02 is still supported).

Spell Check

A new Spell Check tool has been added to Solutions.  The enhancements include checking the entire page during the spell check, the ability to add words to the tool so that they are ignored in further spell checks, and checking the first word of each sentence for proper capitalization.  The new tool will ignore uppercase words (i.e. CPS, CAFAS, etc).

New Formatting on Agency Documents, Face Sheets, and Information Reports

The reports are utilizing a smaller font, extra lines between sections have been removed, and the data within some sections has been reorganized into a more condensed format.  The condensed text will reduce the number of pages printed.

New Report Functionality for Case Note, Session Log, and Incident Log

New reporting functionality has been added to the Case Note, Session Log, and Incident Report.  This new reporting functionality includes:

• Auto refresh when altering the report parameters
• Auto page breaks when printing
• Worker name moved to bottom of report and in first name - last name format
• New download features:  PDF, CSV, Rich Text, Plain Text
• Stationary header on compressed reports when scrolling
• Header prints on each printed page
• Alternating shading on compressed and total reports for easier reading
• Multi-sort option on compressed report columns
• New “Totals with Graphs” format on the Case Note and Session Log
• Ability to search for a word or phrase within the report

Child to Adult Enhancement

Any individual (client or other family member) who is marked as a child will be automatically changed to an adult on their 18th birthday.

Case Management Enhancements

SYSTEM ADMINISTRATION

Menu Tools Report

This new report on the Menu Manager Tool displays the system permissions for each user menu.

Transfer Client Logs/Agency Documents

This new Data Maintenance Tool will allow System Administrators to move or merge Client Logs and Agency Documents from one client to another to assist in managing duplicate clients.

Addendum Changes

System Administrators can now Edit or Delete an Addendum written by another user.

CLIENT ADMINISTRATION

Assignments

The assignment tool has been modified to allow any user to make a geographic assignment to a Family or Facility.

Admission Date Added to Incident Report

The client’s most recent substitute care program admission date has been added to the Incident Report.

Health Care Log

The Date of Visit on the Health Care Log will no longer default to the current date and will require the user to enter a valid date before the log can be saved.  This has been requested particularly on the Health Care Log because in most cases the log is not being entered on the same day of the visit.

Medication Log

The Dosage Field has been lengthened to 500 characters to allow for greater definition on the medication.

Addition to Compressed Report for Case Note and Session Log

The Start Time and End Time have been added to the date on the Case Note and Session Log Compressed Reports.

FFTA Benchmarking Changes

While the FFTA Benchmarking Project will be suspended later this year, we have made the most recent changes to the outcome tool.

Document Storage

The document display has been reordered to group alphabetically by 1) Type and 2) Document Name.

Client Status Report Addition

The Total Number of Families and Total Number of Individuals have been added to the Family Members Report.

Facility Information Section Addition

Resumptions and Client’s Gender have been added to the Client History Information Section for Facilities.

Staff/Professional Listings Report Additions

Date of Birth has been added as a data point on the Staff/Professional Listings Report and the report may now be grouped by DOB.

Direct Assignments and Total Direct Assignments for Individuals, Families, and Facilities have been added as data points on the Staff/Professional Listings Report.  These new data points will list all direct assignments for Individuals, Families, and Facilities for the staff person and a total number of assignments for each.

Education Tracking – Courses Tool

The Record Hours Courses have been reordered to appear in chronological order.

Financial Enhancements - Service Billing

Authorization Tool

Duplicate authorizations for the same Service, Payer, and Date Range will be prevented.  If a duplicate authorization is entered an Authorization Conflict Pop Up will appear.

A new Number of Pending Units and Number of Billed Units will appear when editing an Authorization.
The Authorization Type will default to Units when adding a new Authorization.

Client Payer

The Payer Address dropdown has been moved to follow the Payer Information.  Currently, Magellan in Georgia is the only payer that requires a specific address selection.

A number of enhancements have been released for future payer expansion:

• Policy Number Type is a new field that is defaulted to MI – Member Identification, which is the current Electronic Billing Payer Requirement.  Future payers may require a different policy number type.
• Subscriber Secondary ID Number and Subscriber Secondary ID Type have been added for future Electronic Billing expansion.
• A Student Status dropdown and School Name field have been added.  Future payers may require these fields.
• An Eligibility Status dropdown has been added to the payer tools.  The current default is Active Eligibility.  The Last Verified and Verified By will be populated with the date, time and worker when saved.

Validator Report

The Validator scheduled update times are now listed on the report filter:  Report Updates twice daily.  ET - 12:00 Noon and 11:00pm, CT - 11:00am and 10:00pm, MT - 10:00am and 9:00pm, PT - 9:00am and 8:00pm.  If the user runs a Validator Report while it is updating, a notice will appear stating that it is currently updating.  The last update date and time will also appear on the report.

New Validator Errors/Edits:

• Validator Error 70 – KY Medicaid: Policy number must be 10 digits.  For electronic billing, the KY Medicaid policy number from the client payer tools must have 10 digits.
• Validator Error 71 – Policy number must be 12 numeric digits.  For electronic billing, the Amerigroup, Magellan, or Cenpatico policy number from the client payer tool must be all numbers and have 12 digits.
• Validator Error 72 - APS: Policy number must be 9 numeric digits.  We have removed the requirement that the policy number begin with a 3 to match APS’s change to this requirement.

Coding Review

The Coding Review search filter now defaults to Pending Only, which are those that need completed.  To also see the Validated and Ready to Bill items, simply uncheck the Pending Only Box.

Generate Bill – More Information (Electronic Billing Assistance)

The HIPAA 837P Mapping has been added to the More Info Button on the Generate Bill Tool.  This document will assist Electronic Billing Users in finding where their EB data originated from.  This is helpful for certain types of rejections (or denial info) from a payer.  Payers will reference EB rejections/issues as "Loop 2300 NM103" to indicate what data was rejected.  This document allows the agencies to find out what we supplied in this field and where to go to fix the bad data.

CMS 1500 Billing Form

The CMS 1500 Form has been altered to meet specific Impact Plus/Kentucky Medicaid requirements.

Location Tool

The Type of Locations have been reconfigured to have the Point of Service Code in front of the Type Name (i.e. 99 – Other Place of Service).

Deposit Reconciliation Report

The payment offsets have been added to the Deposit Reconciliation Report.  The receivable ledger numbers are populated from the payer category or they can be overwritten by the payer ledger number.

Check Distribution Report

The payment offsets have also been added to the Check Distribution Report.  The receivable ledger numbers are populated from the payer category or they can be overwritten by the payer ledger number.

Financial Enhancements – Per Diem Billing

Billing Listings Report

• The Contract Field on the Billing Listings Report Filter has been changed to a multi-select field.
• The Billing Category Field on the Billing Listings Report Filter has been altered to allow filtering by All Billing Categories.
• Rate Name and Rate Code has been added to the Billing Listing Report.

Posted Payment Report

The Contract Field on the Posted Payment Report Filter has been changed to a multi-select field.

Billing Period

The logic of a billing period has been altered to include the last day in the count (i.e. January 1 – 31 = 31 Days/ Units).

Georgia User Group

The Georgia User Group kicked off 2009 with their meeting on March 12th.  Eleven people from six agencies attended the quarterly meeting.  We reviewed the 2009 Survey Results together.  Some highlights from the Survey include:

• Half of respondents found the GA UG to be Very Useful and half Somewhat Useful.
• The most popular topic was CQI/PQI reports so this will be the main topic at the next meeting.
• Having agencies share their experiences, processes and documents was rated as most useful.

The group discussed how to efficiently determine when clients in CBS programs aren’t returning and ensuring that they are Completed from Client Tracking.  This has been especially difficult to keep up with for agencies serving larger outpatient populations.  One suggestion was to review cases at weekly treatment team meetings and identify clients who have no-showed a certain number of times in a row and reach out to them or close their case if they do not respond.  Account Manager Trish Murphy suggested pulling a Client Status Report regularly to monitor the number of Active Clients in CBS Programs.

Trish then shared some Recent Enhancements, such as the Merge Client Logs/Agency Documents SA Tool, Menu Tool Report and User Assigned Report.  Trish reminded attendees that the upcoming Report Enhancements on the Case, Session, and Incident Logs are being postponed in order to ensure that all agencies can download the program needed for printing.  Some enhancements to the Case/Session Logs that will come along with this include the Worker Name moving to the bottom of Log and appearing in First Last name order and the End Date/Time on Compressed Format.

The second part of the meeting focused on the Revenue Maximization Module and Electronic Billing functionality.  Trish showed some recent Service Billing enhancements, such as the Coding Review now defaults to Pending Only and a more user-friendly message appears when the Validator is running.  Upcoming enhancements to the Authorization tool and the Authorization Warning Report were reviewed and customers provided valuable input.

Many thanks to Childkind, our newest Georiga customer, for hosting this meeting.  Mark your calendars now for the next meeting on Thursday, June 11th at 2:00 p.m. at the MAAC office in downtown Atlanta.  Announcements and directions will be sent out in advance to remind everyone.  The remaining dates for the 2009 meetings are as follows: September 10th, and December 10th.

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.

Customer Spotlight

Thinking Outside the Box – Houston Galveston Institute

Houston Galveston Institute (HGI) has been a KaleidaCare customer since the Fall of 2008 and has found several creative ways to use the system to help document their work.

Created in 1977 to address the need for mental health professionals to increase their understanding of families and to improve their skills in systems-oriented therapy, HGI now has three main components to their organization: Training, Clinical, and Research.  They have begun tracking the Clinical aspect of their agency on KaleidaCare and are documenting the therapy provided to their diverse population.  One example of their needs involved finding a place to centralize documentation such as policies and procedures and to document ongoing therapy with clients which is delivered through a mobile unit, at two office locations and at various community sites.  Because many of their therapists are contract therapists and work at various sites, they needed a way to provide them quick access to the most up-to-date policies and procedures.  A few other “outside the box” ideas are also shared below.

Policies and Procedures – HGI Administrative Staff will be creating an Agency Document that outlines the current policies and procedures and will assign View access to therapists for the completed documents.  This will allow therapists access to the most current version of policies and procedures online at any time.  It will also allow HGI to track changes to their policies and procedures over time by archiving prior versions of the documents.

Idea/Task Order List – HGI created an Agency Document where staff could submit ideas to improve system usage.  Staff members are able to indicate whether the idea is a “requirement” for their work, what area of the organization the idea will impact, and specifics on the idea or need.  Administrative staff members in turn are able to document how the idea was handled and the resulting action taken.  This provides an effective means of communicating and documenting requests such as additional drop-down values, new program requirements or other suggestions.

Progress Log to track payments – Because HGI did not need to use the standard Progress Log for their client, they instead configured this log to track payments received at each therapy session.  The log is configured to track the amount of the payment received and whether it was paid by cash, check or credit card.  Because of the nature of the Progress Log and its ability to calculate the values entered in a progress log item field, the various report views for the Progress Log (particularly the Totals) view allows HGI to quickly access information on the amount of payments received in a given time frame, from a given therapist, or in a given program.

As HGI continues to increase their utilization of Solutions, KaleidaCare is excited to work with them and learn about even more creative ways to “think outside the box”.