Recent workshops held in NSW provided customers of The Care Manager with a hands-on experience of the new calendar capabilities in the upcoming TCM Version 7.0.

The well-attended workshops, held in Sydney, Newcastle and Maclean generated much excitement and enthusiasm amongst the 16 organisations represented as participants experienced the new look calendars featuring multiple diary views.

For organisations employing their own service staff, much work has been done in Version 7.0 to provide enhanced rostering capabilities across client, worker, program and group diaries.

DCA thanks organisations which attended for their valuable feedback. Many of the ideas put forward will be incorporated into the Alpha release of Version 7.0 for review later this year.

Feros Care today won the Technology Innovation award at ACSA '08 for their implementation of an integrated service delivery model called the Gateway Community Care Initiative, which uses The Care Manager for integrated client records and staff rosters. Feros Care cover a broad geographical region throughout Northern NSW and Southern QLD.

Jennene Buckley (CEO of Feros Care) and Gabrielle Taylor (General Manager Community Services) are pictured at The Care Manager stand with Peter Young, General Manager of Health & Community Services for DCA.

Users of The Care Manager in Victoria now have the capability to interface to the HealthSmart hospital system using The Care Manager HL7 interface. The interface enables client information to be automatically synchronised with hospital records, improving the co-ordination of care, and reducing data entry associated with entering and updating client records.

The interface is now operational in two major metropolitan health services to synchronise client identifiers and demographic information between hospital and community services. Upgrades planned in forthcoming Release 6.10 will extend this functionality to provide automated notification of admission to hospital. Users of The Care Manager will be able to view hospital inpatient and emergency attendances from within the client history, instantaneously populated from the HealthSmart online interface.

DCA has signed with the NSW Community Options peak body to provide electronic referral services to be implemented by 15 agencies statewide, using the NSW NSNet e-referral services as a hub for inter agency co-ordination.

Community Options provides case management and direct care services to aged clients living at home. This exciting project, to be implemented during the first half of 2008 will enable secure e-referral between Care Manager users and other organizations participating in HSNet.

For more information on HSNet, click here.

In previous years The Care Manager has offered Basic and Intermediate training in the use of the software. The popularity of a series of one-off database administrator’s courses in 2007 and the evolving nature of the use of The Care Manager has prompted the introduction of a series of more specialist training modules in 2008. These modules have been designed to better meet the needs of both the new user and the more experienced user.

For more information about The Care Manager's new Training Courses, click here.

As a culmination of partnership DCA has worked with a number of metropolitan and regional health services in Victoria to provide support for the Hospital Admission Risk Program (HARP). The HARP programs are clinically intensive programs involving partnerships between health services and community organisations to manage chronic disease in the community, and as a direct result, reduce the incidence of unwanted hospital admissions.

In support of these objectives, The Care Manager staff have worked with our partners to deliver:

• screening tools, common and service specific assessment, including multi disciplinary assessment and care planning
• support for the processes of referral, admission, treatment and discharge
• iIntegration of patient/client information using HL7 interface with the hospital patient management system
• collection and reporting of patient/client data for the Victorian Integrated Non-admitted Health (VINAH) minimum data set.
  

Welcome our new look website. We've made major improvements to the design and navigation to:

• make it easier for you to learn about The Care Manager
• help you find the information you need
• provide up-to-date information in line with the rapid advances that are continually being made at The Care Manager.

The MS Society of NSW and VIC have recently merged to form a single organization providing a variety of services to clients with Multiple Sclerosis. This is now one of the largest disability and aged care funded organizations in Australia.

Following a rigorous requirements analysis, MS Society has selected The Care Manager as the integrated solution to replace the separate systems in each state.

We are pleased to announce our new Sydney training venue is now up and running.

The training room is located at DCA's offices at Suite 2, Level 3 Miller Street in North Sydney.

The training room accomodates 11 participants.

A new Quick-Guide is available for agencies that use the Programs module in The Care Manager.

The first page of the guide explains the search and menu functions at the Programs Switchboard.

The second page at the Client Switchboard shows what buttons are not used by agencies using Programs.

This useful reference sheet can be downloaded by registered Bulletin Board users

Users are now able to subscribe to the News from The Care Manager forum on the Bulletin Board.

Subscribing means that every time a new item is added on the Bulletin Board, an email will automatically be sent to the user containing full details. It’s free and easy to subscribe, and equally easy to un-subscribe.

The Care Manager Bulletin Board replaces the Frequently Asked Questions page on The Care Manager website and provides a forum for licenced users of the software to ask questions and share their knowledge with other users.

The Bulletin Board assists users to learn about upcoming version releases, new documentation, user group meetings and other useful information.