Indiana NPR Q&A

1. Indiana NPR Q&A 20 Mar 2012 12 Noon EST

4. Q1. For routine certain PAM activities can they be entered ahead of time (i.e. newsletters, websites already scheduled for an entire year)? No, system will block – in the Old NPR too many folks entered anticipated events that then later never happened. And need a way to block accidental bad future dates – typos like 2021 instead of 2012 etc. Will get the following error message Fix the following error(s) before you click submit. Start Date of Activity should be less than or equal to today's date. End Date of Activity should be less than or equal to today's date.

5. Q2. Is there a way to pull CC reports by agency but broken down by counselor? Yes, as special runs – provided to Shirley and Cheryl periodically upon request.

6. Q3. Is there a way info can be retrieved/saved after SHIP Talk times out? No, lost. Due to the Personally Identifiable Information (PII) captured by the NPR, CMS Security standards require the NPR application to “time out” after 15 minutes of inactivity. This time out is designed to prevent sensitive client information from being displayed on a screen while the counselor or data entry person is away from his or her desk . Counselors may keep the NPR application active by saving data entry records, by navigating across pages, or by running reports. Be sure to Save (Submit) each CC or PAM record as soon as you have completed data entry. If your NPR session “times out” on a partially completed CC or PAM form, you will lose your partially completed data, and you will need to re-enter the full form again after you re-log-in. Also note that if you take more than 15 minutes to enter one client contact form (such as if you were entering a full 1000 character Comment field), the system will time out on you and you will need to re-enter the entire form again. Lengthy data entry on a single client form or periodically clicking within a data entry cell is not enough to keep the system from timing out.

7. Q4. Can the notes section be expanded? Allow more than 1000 characters? It could be expanded, but there are several reasons not to do so. An important consideration is the recent CMS requirement that the system time out after 15 minutes without a Save [Submit] activity or other similar function. Since the 15 minute time out was implemented in February, we have had several reports from other states noting that when they attempt to enter lengthy comments, the system will occasionally time out on them before they have completed the comments and all the info is lost and must be re-entered (typing faster). Also during CY 2011: Only 0.1% of IN Comments were 1000 characters And only 0.4% of IN comments were 900 or more characters So the need for expanded characters in the comments box is not large and the time out and do-over risk will increase as the number of characters typed into the Comments box increases.

8. Q5. When you pull up a report you can click on “printer friendly version” to print and then there is something like a print preview box that pops up but you can’t go on to print. I have used short cut keys like “control P” to print but this shouldn’t be necessary. Run report Click Print Friendly link See Print Friendly version of the report Inside the white Print Friendly box, click CTRL A Highlighted Then Right Click Copy Then Paste into Word blank page or into Excel blank page See examples that follow:

9. Run Report Click Print Friendly link

10. See Print Friendly version of the report. Inside the white Print Friendly box, click CTRL A CLICK CTRL A

11. Highlighted Then Right Click Copy

12. Then Paste into Word blank page

13. Or Paste into Excel

14. Q5b. Also, there is no feature to allow someone to delete an entry that is accidentally entered twice. State Director (only) can delete duplicate records (due to CMS security requirements). Send details of the particular contact or event to be deleted to state director. State director searches for the record. State director delete recs. Click View on desired record. State director sees the Delete button (click to delete) (and confirm) See example

15. State director delete recs Click View on desired record to delete

16. State director sees the Delete button (click to delete) (and confirm) Only the state director can see the Delete button

17. Q6. The county served feature:   In reports, this feature does not seem to accurately show where the clients live.  For example, for Area 11's report, it consistently shows clients served in only Bartholomew County and does not reflect the fact they serve clients in other counties. Another example would be Area 5.  The report only show Clay County but Area 5 routinely takes the calls for our 1-800#.  Their report should show many counties served in the state. Information of where clients live is entered by the counselor in the client zip of residence and client county of residence fields. The county of service location however was established when the agencies were created in approx. April 2010.

18. For Area 11, it appears that the main (or only?) physical location is in Bartholomew county. If so, then all records entered for Area 11 will by default suggest Bartholomew county as the counselor location (though the user can change this for any given record).

19. For Area 11, it appears that the main (or only?) physical location is in Bartholomew county. If so, then all records entered for Area 11 will by default suggest Bartholomew county as the counselor location (though the user can change this for any given record). Area 11 Agency and Counselor Default COCL for Area 11 Though can change with drop arrow

20. Similarly for Area 5 and Cass county as the default physical counselor location. Can change county and zip of counselor location from the defaults with the drop list down arrows.

21. Information of where clients live is entered by the counselor in the client zip or residence and client county of residence fields. If you enter the client zip as 47201, the system knows that this zip is in Bartholomew county and pre-fills the county for you.

22. In some cases a zip crosses a county line (as in this example), in which case, you could have selected Brown county if appropriate

23. If you had entered client zip of residence as 46156, then would have option of selecting Decatur county or Rush county of client residence

24. If an agency level user in Region 11 runs a report by county of counselor location, he or she will see Bartholomew county of counselor as an option, but not Brown county, since the physical location seems to be in Bartholomew county and there have seemingly been no remote temporary sites in Brown county and appear to have no in-home visits in Brown county to-date. COCL

25. But if run a report by county of client residence, will see Brown county as an option COCR

26. Also important to keep in mind that what Area 11 agency folks see regarding contacts among Brown county of residence clients may well be different (a smaller number) than the Brown county of residence report that the state folks can see. The reason is that Area 11 folks get a report on only those Brown county residents that were served by the Area 11 agency. Whereas as state folks get a report on all Brown county residents served - summed across every agency in the state that might have provided a service to a Brown county resident.

27. Q7. Is there any way to delete inactive counselors from the data base?  Some sites have long lists of counselors because the list includes active and inactive.  Generally don’t recommend deleting users. Better to inactivate users, in case they return to Active status and especially if the targeted user has data already entered associated with their logon account. But if you truly wanted to delete a user:

28. Appropriate higher level user (such as a state admin) search for account to delete – e.g. this Inactive Shirley Jones account. Click Select by account to delete.

29. Scroll down and click Delete button

30. Then read the confirm message and decide

31. Q8. Is there a way to delete accounts that have old or incorrect emails For old but valid emails, the above comments apply. Better to Inactivate than Delete. For accounts with incorrect emails that were never confirmed by the user, we can do some special runs to delete any strays in pending status etc – would need to tell us the particulars. We also do a general purge of very old partially confirmed pending accounts every two months or so (most recently in late Feb).

32. Q9. Is there a way to expand the reporting capabilities to include multiple fields in one query?  For example, asking for one report for a particular date and multiple counselors and multiple sites? Yes possible, but CMS has other priorities they want us to do right now. We also have another batch of potential reports already proposed for CMS to consider-approve, so such would likely come before this request. In the meantime, I can run various ad hoc special reports as needed. Re multiple sites, you can create a Substate Region for Reports to accomplish various accumulations across agencies, counties, zips etc. Substate regions for reports Appropriate state admin can create substate regions for reports. Click link. Click add a substate region for reports Create regions for reporting purposes.

33. Substate regions for reports Appropriate state admin can create substate regions for reports. Click link.

34. Click Add a Substate Region for Reports

35. Create regions for reporting purposes. Other PPs available with full details on this process.

36. Q10. Which is better for entering and doing reports on NPR, internet explorer or Firefox? System was designed primarily to accommodate IE. I use Firefox by default on NPR with no problems. Often the greater problem is folks using really old versions of IE. Encourage use of IE9 etc.

37. Q11. I have difficultly being able to query the number of CC and/or PAM for myself or others for whom I have submitted on their behalf.  I run a query (or report) seeking the number of CC and/or PAM forms and I get "No contacts for that date."  But I have entered them and can find the list under my name for the CC and/or PAM forms that I have submitted.   This issue has happened to several others as well.  And includes trying to run the report on both logins. Would need a specific example to completely address this. But common explanations include the following:

38. Difference between: Submitter reports which are by the date that the record was actually entered and are based on the person who actually entered the data. Vs Counselor reports which are by the date of client contact and are attributed to the counselor providing the service.

39. Since you can see the records in the search list, the records are available to the reporting function, just need to determine which report to use and the specific report parameters.

40. Another potential issue would be Scope issues – what has authority to see what. Agency administrators and persons with super data editor rights can see more info than regular agency users and regular data submitters. And state folks can see even more.

41. Another possible issue is the need to sometimes scroll down the user list to select a second (or third) account that a given user might have been coded under (sometimes the second user account might be far down the list – not always adjacent). Shirley’s first listing Scroll down

42. Shirley’s three other accounts [one of which inactive] further down the list If have multiple accounts, need to check which account was used to enter specific sets of records at various points in time

43. Q12. When entering a PAM, is it better for each presenter to enter a PAM or just have only one presenter enter for all those attending? Better to have one person enter a single PAM form with multiple presenter-contributors and assign the hours of effort to each presenter-contributor. Each user will receive credit for his-her hours when you run presenter-contributor reports, even though used one single PAM form.

44. Q12b. If a client visits the office at 10:00 Monday and 3 counselors in the office discussed the case, can all three counselors complete a client contact form for that 10:00 client visit on Monday? No, in such cases, the counselors should agree who is the counselor of record and enter one contact record for that 10:00 Monday client. If all 3 counselors collaborate on every single client that interacts with the agency, then the 3 counselors could take turns claiming any particular client contact. The client contact is different from the PAM in that CMS and Congress primarily want to know how many client-centric contacts occurred and are less concerned with how many staff might have assisted with a given client contact.

45. Up until now, the CMS definition of a client contact has been all activities with a client during a given 24-hour period. What is changing soon is that CMS will allow multiple client contact records on the same day for a given client if indeed there were two or more time-separated contacts by a client on a given date. Thus, if a client called the office at 10:00 and Counselor A took the call, such could be one contact and Counselor A could take credit for the contact. Then if the same client called back at 2:00 PM the same day and Counselor B took the second call, then the agency could create a second contact record and Counselor B could claim the second (separate) contact on that date. However, if Counselor A handled both the 10:00 and 2:00 calls with the client that day, Counselor A should still create only one contact record and add the total hours spent with the client across the 2 calls that day. And, still, if all 3 counselors in the office discussed the 10:00 client call, then such is still only one contact and the counselors have to decide who takes credit for that contact.

46. Could we reconfigure the CC record to allow multiple contributing counselors (in addition to the counselor of record) to each client contact record (similar to the PAM multiple presenter-contributors). Yes technically possible. But would require CMS and OMB approval to change the forms and the underlying database. Nothing can legally be changed on the client contact form or the underlying database until Jul 2013 at the earliest. And CMS has recently stated that they do not intend to make any changes to the forms or data structure for the next three-year cycle as well (July 2013 – July 2016).

47. The other issue regarding multiple counselors creating separate contact records for the same contact is one of fairness. Most states (perhaps Indiana as well) have state-level performance measurement and performance award systems, in which local agencies are held accountable for (and sometimes rewarded with additional funding) for achieving specific client contact goals. If a given agency created 2 or 3 contact records for every client contact, then the other agencies in the state would be at a significant disadvantage and a data entry arms race would soon commence. So please only one contact record for each contact with a client.

48. Q13. NPR reports for Client Contact and Public Media Activity broken down by each site and counselor under each site.  This is something I would like to access monthly for site visits and to keep my sites advised of where they are progressing each month.  I would also like to have the same data in a quarterly report by each site and counselor. We send such special reports to Indiana upon request. See example IN reports by agency counselor in Q2. And similar PAM report example below.

49. Q14. I have an example of a problem with the NPR for Susan Spilly. When in Susan's account and she runs a PAM report on herself as submitter, no events show. It works when she runs a PAM report on herself as a presenter. The issue is that Susan had 2 accounts – one agency-level and one state-level. Her PAM submissions were entered using her state account. So she needs to scroll down the drop list to find her second account and run the submitter report on that account – and records show with her as submitter. Also note that the submitter reports are by date that the record was entered not necessarily the date of the event.

50. Contact Info For NPR questions and comments, contact: Shirley Jones SJones1@idoi.IN.gov 765-608-1202 Or Tiffany Peebles TPeebles@idoi.in.gov 765-608-1207