Reminder: Please Complete Survey Monkey 

In the April 10 Bulletin we requested feedback on a county request to add the ability to delete scanned medical records to the Medical Records/Quality Assurance user role. This feedback survey closes tomorrow, May 9. If your county has not yet responded, please do so by the end of the day tomorrow. Complete the Survey

So far, 14 counties have responded. Four indicated that this user role should not have the permission (Colusa, Kern, Lake, and Sonoma), and six believe it should have permission (Glenn, Kings, San Benito, San Diego, San Joaquin, and San Luis Obispo). The other four counties have indicated that they don’t have a strong opinion or are indifferent, as they’re using custom user roles (Mono, Stanislaus, Tulare, Ventura). 

Because these responses are nearly evenly split, CalMHSA may leave this permission off of the user role, as it is simpler to add permissions via a custom user role rather than remove them from the standard user role. All feedback will be re-evaluated on May 12 after the survey closes. 

Clinical Updates in February and March MSPs 

The February and March 2025 MSPs, which were deployed to QA environments on April 29, include some clinical initiatives and other features counties might be interested in, including:  

• Ability to lock inquiries 
• Sending a service request for more information 
• Appointments for Today widget now shows procedure code next to the client’s name 
• Address Verification in Client Information 
• Scheduled events can now include more than one staff 
• Appointment Search now has end date and does not auto-update 
• ASAM 4th Edition – Not Using 

For more details about each of these, download the complete summary. CalMHSA plans to deploy the MSPs to production systems on May 19. 

BHIN 25-014: Updates to NOABD Letter Templates 

In response to the Behavioral Health Information Notice (BHIN) that provides updated NOABD templates, CalMHSA is in the process of updating the templates and ensuring they are available in the system. This should be complete within one to two weeks.  

Please note that CalMHSA is not adding the attachments in SmartCare, as these simply need to be included in the envelope when sending a NOABD to a client. Counties should have a supply of these ready to include as needed. CalMHSA will ensure the letter indicates that the appropriate attachments are included and will notify counties when the updates are completed 

Counties Can Now Edit/Deactivate Flag Types  

Counties are now able to deactivate primary-driven flag types. Other changes may also be made, though the associated document and whether a flag is a Reception/Front Desk Flag is not currently editable. CalMHSA is exploring all options for what can be edited within a flag type. However, counties should feel free to deactivate any primary-driven flags that they are not using. 

CARE Act Updates 

The CARE Act Protocol has been updated with the current proposed design changes based on testing, county feedback, and the DHCS Data Dictionary v2.0. These changes will take time to develop and deploy; an ETA has not yet been determined.  

We understand that counties are expected to report based on Data Dictionary v2.0 as of Jan. 1, 2025, even though the final document was not received until Feb. 28. When DHCS presented these changes on an all-county call, they indicated that they are aware that this is not ideal and understand that development and implementation of these new requirements will take time.  

It remains unclear how long they will acknowledge this, but the volume of changes will require a substantial development effort. CalMHSA plans to deploy changes as they become available and will alert counties, as well as provide updated Knowledge Base articles. Please be sure all relevant staff are aware of the latest information and provide staff training as necessary. 

New Functionality: School Name

CalMHSA has created a field in the Client Information screen on the Custom Fields tab for School Name. This is driven by global code category XSchoolName, which counties will need to manage. This category now includes a single global code value, “Test School.” The functionality is now in production environments. 

This Week’s Production Updates

New functionality in the EHR – and what you need to know about it – is available here.