Tuesday, February 23, 2010

Your Day Planner and Safari

If you're a therapist using a Mac as your computer of choice, you may be using the "Safari" web browser.  Although we prefer Firefox or Chrome, Safari is a great browser, so no problem there. What does happen from time to time is that things look a little different in some browsers than others. For example, it was brought to our attention this morning that the day planner was looking a little strange for some mac users. Namely, it looked something like this:

That's certainly not what we want, to have the hour blocks cut off half way across the screen.  The way it's supposed to look is the way it does in the other major browsers (Firefox, Google Chrome, and IE):


Thankfully, once we found out about the problem, it was pretty easy to get it fixed so that your day planner shows up in the right place now no matter what the browser.

Although we do our best to keep things looking the same in all four major players in the browser market, sometimes we miss things, so if you see something that seems out of whack to you, let us know.  We can usually get it fixed the same day!

~Ethan

Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Better Visibility for Direct Services Admins

If you are a direct services administrator for therapylog.com, you may remember back when you used to be able to look over an entire month of work for your therapists on the calendar interface at once.  Last week, we had to remove that feature because the amount of data getting pulled back and forth was too much for the server to reasonably handle.  In a way, that's a good sign because it means more and more people are storing their all their data with therapylog rather than just doing their billing through it.

However, although we didn't think the administrators would miss this interface, we were wrong about that. Both Beth Michaelis (North Kansas City) and Jodie Noe (Malden) let us know that they made use of the calendar regularly for seeing which therapists were completing their appointments and where their unbillables might be.

We think it's a great thing for the administrators to have that level of visiability into the system, so they can just browse through and see where there might be problems, so we decided to give them another way to do that which wouldn't be so taxing on our infrastructure.  After conversing with both of them via email and pitching an idea or two, this is what we came up with:

On the "Admin Tools" tab on the homepage, there's a new button labeled "Direct Services"


This is where we plan on storing any tools that specifically have to do with administering direct services billing programs.  As we come up with new and better ways for you to monitor and intervene in the work flow, they will be added on the toolbox that you are taken to when you click that button:

As you can see, right now we only have one tool (one feature at a time), and it's the one we're interested in right now.  The "Day Tracker" is the new direct services tool for checking any given day for incomplete appointments or unbillables, without having to run a report.  Clicking on that button takes you here;

[PHOTO REDACTED]

This is the Day Tracker.  Inspired by the things that Beth and Jodie told us they needed, this is how you can check any day for anomalies.  The form at the top there is a standard day picker.  Just type in the date you want to look at, or use the visual calendar control that's built in with it by clicking on the text box, and click "Change Date" to see all incompletes/unbillables for any date you want.

Below that form are two tabs, one that says "Incomplete Appointments", and one that says "Unbillable Appointments".  The incomplete one comes up by default, and it shows you every appointment for that day which the therapist has yet to complete their documentation for.  If someone forgets or gets behind, you'll be able to see that here so you can remind them before it slips too far into the past.

By clicking on the "Unbillable Appointments" tab, you're taken to this view:


This is a listing of all the appointments that are fully documented (that is, the therapist has completed them), and are for medicaid eligible kiddos, but we cannot bill them for one reason for another.  Want to know what those reasons are without running a report?  Just click on the appointments you're interested in and watch the unbillable reasons appear:

[PHOTO REDACTED]

Investigate as many as you like.  Once you're satisfied, you can click on that appointment again to close the reasons.  It's that simple.

This is just the beginning of what we can do at therapylog.com to keep you in tune with your therapists progress. Have other ideas or suggestions? Let us know.  We're always interested in making your workflow better.

~Ethan

Send in the Subs

We've had more than a couple therapists come to us with a problem.  Specifically, they don't know what to do about subs and student teachers:

"We still want to track our goal data, but we can't have it be billed to medicaid because substitute and student teachers aren't eligible for that"


One of the suggestions that came up was a new service code that would allow you to say "I have a sub working on this, so don't bill medicaid, but here's the progress data".  We haven't had anything like that before, and so far we've been only asking for goals on services that are billable, but we don't want things like this to get in the way of therapists enjoying our site and feeling like therapylog.com is useful.

So, as of today I've personally restructured the service scheduling form to ask for goals on any service that is THERAPY (regardless of whether it's billable or not).  This in conjunction with the new service code (Substitute/Student Teacher, see screenshot below) should make your request a reality.  The new service code is not billable, so anything you record under it will NEVER get sent to medicaid, but it's still a THERAPY code, so it allows you to track goals and progress just like any other piece of billable therapy (so you can get those nice graphs on your caseload page to include the data your subs and student teachers collect).




Like most of our enhancements, this doesn't do anything for US.  We don't make any more money because you can now record more non-medicaid data.  Our value comes from making YOU happy as our users, because if you like and can recommend our service, we'll continue to grow.

So if you have something you need that isn't there, something that bothers you that you wish would go away, or just an idea about a little change that would make your workflow easier, don't hesitate to leave me a comment.  I'd love to hear from you.

~Ethan

Thursday, February 11, 2010

SDAC Costs and their Collection

One of the biggest things that holds up SDAC Medicaid claims is the calculation and validation of your district's costs.  At therapylog, we've seen the problem.  Who do you send them to?  Are you sure they got there?  Will you need to submit a justification for the differences from last year?  What were last years costs anyway?  How do you know that your reasons for cost differentials will be accepted?

Now, we're showing you what we've done to try and ease this process for you.  This post is directed towards SDAC coordinators, so if that's you check out what we have in store:

See that screenshot?  That's the new cost management screen.  It's the next step that comes after your time study is complete (Step 4).  The top form allows you to upload your cost calculation sheets directly to us, and right there you can see which files you've already uploaded (so you know we have them).  Don't remember which files you sent?  Click their name to download a copy of the file you sent us (so you know we got the right one).  Need to submit another file?  You can send as many as you want, and they'll all be listed there for you.

And that second table below shows what we currently have on file for your cost totals (Along with the totals we have on file for the same quarter last year).  If you still have 0's in those boxes for your quarter, just hit the "Edit Costs" button for the current year, and you'll be take to this form:

Here you can see a form that lets you enter in your salaries and fringe costs for the quarter, and it immediately calculates your differential right there on the screen so you can see the change since last year.  Green means the difference is within acceptable limits.  If it goes beyond 5%:


  
You'll be shown immediately, so that you can submit your justifications NOW, not in 6 weeks when medicaid sends it back with questions.  Don't know what to put for your justifications?  Use some of our examples of common justification reasons for cost increases and decreases from the bottom of the screen:


Just Drag-and-Drop them onto the textbox where you want to use them, and they'll become part of your reasoning for your cost difference.  Use one, or as many as you want, and you can always type your own specifics in around the usual reasons to make your point clear.

We are always trying to make therapylog.com a better place for your district and you as a user.  Have other ideas on how we can improve?  Let us know by leaving a comment!  We'd love to hear from you.

~Ethan