Customers’ Blog

I’m back from my “staycation” and can’t wait to get started at my desk (ignore the sarcasm, I’m trying to be sincere)!  I would have had this posted sooner except the entire building lost power this morning; hope it’s not an indication of the rest of the year!  I had a wonderful time at home with my family during the holidays, but now it’s back to work.  I’m looking forward to everything Justin has mentioned in his blog about the upcoming year at Therap and I can’t wait until the Provider Conference in February at Fishkill, NY.  Three days of talking non-stop about Therap is something my co-workers will never understand, but I can’t wait, so many new things to discuss!!!  Hope to see you there!!!

In anticipation of the storm heading our way, all of the schools in the county are closed (except for my daughter’s of course…don’t tell my boss, but my kids and I were looking forward to a snow day so we could finish getting ready for Christmas, oh well!).  Also, several staff that drive from other parts of the county have called to say that they won’t make it to the office due to the driving conditions.

You might think that this causes quite a disturbance in how things work around here, but staff that typically check out Therap in their office, can jump online and login wherever they are, whether it be at a day program, a residential site, or their home computer, and not miss a thing.  And as you know, the show goes on in this business, no matter the amount of snow.  One more way Therap makes life at work easier!

Now, I know it’s only December, and Santa needs it for the reindeer and his sleigh, but…

I am pleased to announce that Cardinal Service Management, Inc. is now Occazio. 
Occasio is a latin term meaning a favorable opportuinity.  That is what Occazio can provide to people. 

Pete

Our agency is in the midst of re-vamping all policy/procedures and SOP’s; a question was proposed that brought about in depth conversation.

Wondering what all you other Therap users are doing.

When someone fills out a report, GER or T-LOG, how do they determine the notificaiton level?

Can’t wait to hear your feed back!

Cheryl

Yesterday’s seminar was awesome!  I got to hear some ideas that Therap is working on, one of which is having the picture of the individual visible anywhere you see the individual’s name!  Great idea, hope to see it soon!

But what I enjoyed most was sitting with new and potential users to discuss the different modules on Therap.  It’s amazing what a fresh set of eyes can do for someone that’s been working on Therap for awhile.  I’d show them what the ISP Program/Data or ISP Plan could do and I’d get questions like, well can it do this….?  Wow, I’ve never thought of that, let’s send a feedback!

You’ve heard it several times on this blog, as well as others… if you have a chance to get to a Therap conference, you need to go!  You’ll get to learn new things about Therap and you’ll always leave with a bunch of great new contacts in your network!

So, until next time…

…see you later dude!

Renee :-}

…for the Therap Technology Seminar was very interesting.  It started out with Karen (my office mate) and I waiting 45 minutes at the rental car place for my reserved car that the manager claimed was getting an oil change (have you ever seen the Seinfeld episode where he questions the rental car lady about her understanding the definition of taking vs. holding a reservation?  We kind of felt like that.) Once we get the car, it smells like cologne, not anything bad, but slightly overwhelming.

We get going and after we get a little way on Interstate 86, I call my husband to let him know we are finally headed out. He asks me what vehicle I have.. I tell him the make of the car and he asks if it is dark grey.  “How do you know that?” I ask.  He tells me that his buddy from work just turned in the exact same car and told them that they need to change the front tires because they are bald (small world).  So now I have to pull over on the Interstate to check out the tires, to find out, indeed they are bald (or at least we think they are, but we don’t really know, because we are the kind of women that don’t pay attention to those kinds of things, that’s what we have husbands for!).

My husband calls the rental car place (he does these types of things for me out of love) and they direct us to go to the next town to this tire/muffler/oil change place and they’ll get the tires changed, because we do live in the snow belt and will probably be driving through snow at some point in time during our trip.

We get to the tire/muffler/oil change store and sit down to wait the hour that it’s going to take to get us in, and realize that, right next to the store, separated by a single door, is a hair salon?  Can you imagine the different odors that go through that door?  Well, indeed we can, because when we finally get the car and get in… not only does it smell of cologne, it also smells like an oily garage.

Fortunately, the rest of the drive was uneventful and Karen and I spent the majority of it discussing Seinfeld episodes (name all of Jerry’s girlfriends:  Two Face, Big Hands, Mutton Girl, etc…; episodes related to food: Marble Rye, Jumbalaya, Lobster Bisque…. yada, yada, yada) because we are cramming for a Seinfeld SceneIt? party that we hope to have after the holidays.  Karen has asked Santa to bring her the game, so we want to be prepared!!!

Hopefully the rest of the week will be more about Therap and less about Seinfeld!  I promise!!!

Renee :-}

Here is a thought………………..

When you log on to your computer,  how do you reach the Therap login page?

There are two roads that one could take( or only 2 this author knows).   One option would be going through the Therap home page.  (http://www.therapservices.net/)  However, I would venture to guess it is all too common for a short cut to be created that links directly to the login page.(https://secure.therapservices.net/login)

I personally have always  gone through the Therap home page,  but did not require my team to do the same, I thought it to be just one extra and needless step for them.   About 4 years ago I began setting the shortcuts all to the home page  and they stayed that way because Cheryl said.  It was not until recently that I took the time to review the website with the DSP’s, giving what Cheryl said to have a bit of meaning.

It was interesting, enjoyable  and humbling to watch the reactions.

I find the T-Girl to be cute, especially her accent!  They  chuckled at the application.

I find Planet Eptar to be silly and too whimsical.  They are often playing the game.

I find Justin’s caricature slightly disturbing.  They found it uncannily  like Justin’s real photo and cool.

I find the conference updates to be a must look at each login.  I don’t think they noticed them.

I find the User’s garage to be intriguing.  They thought they were incomprehensible chicken scratches.

I find the quizzes to be fun.  They found them to be competition among them.

I find the Blogs to be a light hearted addition to my day.  They noticed Justin’s real photo.

It goes to say  we all see things differently.  What I thought were the best applications did not acurately represent my team.  What I thought was a extra step turned out to be extra learning!

So WHAT IS YOUR SHORT CUT?

Just a quick note about some things I found out about Therap last week.  After a recent update, you are able to run a search on ISP data, then export to Excel and get some really cool information.  Fields that are included are time in, time out, and the comments sections.  This allows for some pretty awesome data mining once you get it into Excel. 

Pete

After watching “A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving” last night, this is what my children think would make the best Thanksgiving dinner ever…thanks Snoopy, Woodstock, and Charles M. Schulz.  Not exactly a traditional meal.

Sadly for them (thank goodness for me) we are going to have dinner at my Dad’s house, or Grandpa Ron, as my kids would say, where he and his wife, Grandma Betty, will cook all the normal Thanksgiving yummies.  This I know for sure, because one year my Dad dared to cook the turkey on the grill… it almost ended in a family revolt against all future Thanksgiving dinners.  So whether you are having a traditional meal, grilled turkey, tofurkey, or toast and jelly beans…

I sent a feedback to Therap about IPOP/Safeguards automatically attaching to the ISP Plan even though the individual had been deactivated from the program the IPOP was referring to several months prior to the ISP Plan being created.

For example, and IPOP was approved for the Day Program in May, the individual was deactivated from the Day Program in August and the ISP Plan is currently being created.  That IPOP is automatically listed in the ISP Plan, even though it is no longer applicable.  The only solution that they had for me was that the IPOP would need to be discontinued so that it would no longer link to the ISP Plan.

Although this will work, I had to give back privileges to the Day Program staff so that they could discontinue the IPOP now, months later.  However, I think that there should be some other mechanism in place.  How is the Provider Administrator to know if all the necessary information has been discontinued prior to deactivating an individual?  There was a suggestion that maybe there be a prompt to remind staff, but I think that it should be assumed that if the person is no longer in the program, than the IPOP/Safeguard is no longer applicable, and therefore should no longer be included in the ISP Plan.

In response to my feedback (which was, as always, very pleasant and made me feel like I have great ideas that they will someday put in place), Therap requested that I discuss this idea with others in our forum!

So, please post your comments here in the Customer Blog, or hop on over to the  forum:

http://therapservices.net/forum/dspforum/viewtopic.php?p=961#961

and put your comments there so that Therap can  better understand how this is used with ISP Plans by different users.  Thank you!!!