December 12, 2024
Following are this week’s updates. If you have questions, please contact [email protected].
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August and September MSPs in Production
On the morning of Dec. 9, the August and September MSP builds were pushed to production environments as a combined build release, “September 2024 MSP.” In the focus on accomplishing the release, CalMHSA inadvertently overlooked communicating it to counties; we apologize for that oversight.
CalMHSA is refining procedures to ensure counties remain informed of future MSP releases to QA and production environments. In the meantime, the complete release notes for the September 2024 MSP release can be found here. Some items that might be of particular interest to counties include:
- Problems added to service notes will now use the service date as the default problem start date. (Item #41: EII 127088)
- CalMHSA is testing new functionality around “age of majority” for documents requiring legal guardian signature. No changes have been made at this point. (Item #42: EII 126758; Item #47: EII 126697; Item #106: EII 126699; Item #122: EII 127941)
- Language is now an available field for Client Contacts in the Client Information screen. (Item #52: EII 128636)
- Disclosures now have program filters for both the Disclosures list page and the Add Documents popup window. This should help medical records staff filter all of a client’s documents. Please note that these filters are program-enrollment based. Currently, services are not connected to a program enrollment, only a program. This means that when filtering by a program enrollment, services will not show in the filtered list. CalMHSA is working with Streamline to address this issue. (Item #104: EII 128384)
- Signatures should be working much better. There was an issue where the signing suffix was not included or would include both the signing suffix and the degrees. A new configuration key was created, and CalMHSA is working on creating a Knowledge Base article to cover this setup. It will be available by the end of this week and will be announced in this week’s EHR Bulletin. (Item #123: EII 128441)
- Groups now have CDAG enforcement on client names. (Item #155: EII 125173)
- Inquiry is now CDAG enforced using the Program field in the Inquiry Handled By section. There is a method for removing this requirement, if counties desire. This Knowledge Base article can be found here.
- There is improved TEDS Episode creation logic that has been implemented. (Item #299: EII 127523)
- Users are now no longer able to edit a document for a program that they are not associated with. They will still be able to see this document, if it’s within their CDAG, but won’t be able to edit it. (Hotfix Item #121: EII 127772)
Next State Reporting Meeting Will Cover Proposed Changes to CARE Act Data Dictionary, Workflows
CalMHSA is aware of the SB 1400 and SB 42 changes that have been proposed to the CARE Act Data Dictionary and workflows. Our team is working through these proposed changes and what this will mean for SmartCare. The California Behavioral Health Directors Association is accepting feedback on the proposed changes, and CalMHSA will likely not make any major development efforts until a more finalized version is provided. The changes will be discussed in next week’s State Reporting Office Hours on Dec. 19 at noon.
Cumulative Observation Report in Production
The Cumulative Observation Report aids medical/clinical teams that are recording and tracking seclusion and restraints, safety and observation orders and their associated flowsheet data. This report, now in production environments, includes those different data elements and is compiled into a centralized repository. Instructions for pulling the report can be found here.
Treatment Team Update
CalMHSA has learned there was an update to the treatment team functionality in the July MSP, which is currently in production systems. Now, when a client is discharged from a program, ALL staff treatment team members associated with that program — even those who were entered manually — will have their treatment team record deactivated. This appears to be retroactive, so counties may find that treatment team members who were manually added and not manually removed have since been removed from the treatment team. This does not seem to impact non-staff treatment team members.
Because this field already existed for CalMHSA counties, we assumed no change occurred. However, at the end of the post, a note indicated that “Once the Program is discharged, the Treatment Team member will be deactivated, and the end date of the treatment Team member will be updated to program discharge date once the Job is completed.” We apologize for this oversight and any issues it may have caused. The “Job” in this case seems to be the nightly billing job, the frequency of which counties can schedule.
With this change, CalMHSA is now recommending that, if a treatment team member is associated with a client via multiple programs, the staff be added to the treatment team for each program they are working in with the client. This will mean that no staff member is removed from the treatment team prematurely. CalMHSA is working on updating the Knowledge Base article about this change in functionality; watch for updated screenshots and instructions to be posted within the next week.
Full-Service Partnership Agreement Now Available
This new document, available in production systems, is permissioned to be created and edited by LPHA, Non-LPHA, Receptionist, Contractor No Rates, Contractor Full Permissions, and County Sys Admin user roles. This is a simple consent document that counties can use to document a Full-Service Partnership Agreement in SmartCare.
This Week’s Production Updates
New functionality in the EHR – and what you need to know about it – is available here.
Upcoming Initiatives
See the EHR Product Team’s ambitious upcoming initiatives in this list, updated weekly as products and priorities evolve — and sortable by topics like medical, clinical billing and more.