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Streamlining Care, Boosting Compliance
How ChildServe Transformed Documentation & Achieved 99% Compliance Across Diverse Programs with SETWorks
About ChildServe
ChildServe is a specialty pediatric healthcare provider for 5,800+ children and young adults with special healthcare needs in Iowa. For nearly 100 years, the organization has partnered with families to help children with special healthcare needs live a great life. The array of over 30 services they provide are interwoven and streamlined so families can have many of their child’s needs met in one location. ChildServe’s specialties include: complex medical care, pediatric rehabilitation, autism and behavioral health, and community-based services.
Company Size: 1,500 staff
Participants: 5,800 individuals
Location: Iowa
“With SETWorks, we are able to maintain well above 90% compliance — even on days that we have limited staffing or kids are coming and going very quickly.”
Stephanie Martindale RN, BSN, CPN // Community and Autism Services Nursing Director // ChildServe
Challenges
Replacing a retiring system & disparate processes across programs
How do you ensure high-quality care and compliance when the software system you’ve relied on for years is being retired?
That’s the question the Community Services team at ChildServe faced when they learned their existing documentation platform, EDoc, would no longer be supported. The change presented a unique challenge — and an opportunity — to replace a system that worked well for some of their programs but left others relying on paper-based processes.
ChildServe’s Community Services includes a large team of managers, supervisors, nurses, and direct care staff spread across five different locations, providing essential services such as Respite, SCL, Medical Childcare, Autism Day Program and Day Habilitation.
With over 800 children and their families relying on ChildServe’s programs, maintaining consistent and accurate documentation is crucial — not just for quality care but also for meeting strict compliance standards.
Stephanie Martindale, Community and Autism Services Nursing Director, shared some insights around the SETWorks transition and her experiences with the program.
“Our Respite department was on EDoc, but our Autism Day Program and Medical Childcare were still on paper,” explains Stephanie. “Trying to find one system that would work well for multiple programs was a struggle, given what we do.”
The transition was particularly important for their medical services, which involve complex care plans and daily nursing assessments that must be carefully documented to ensure compliance.
“Some of our programs are physician-ordered. To make sure we are meeting those requirements, we need to ensure we’re doing what we say we’re doing.”
Stephanie and her team knew they needed a platform that could seamlessly integrate all of their services while improving workflows and maintaining high compliance rates.
“There’s not a lot of programs built for what we do,” says Stephanie. “Or bits and pieces might work, but not all of it. We needed something that would work across the board.”
Solution
A seamless transition to a unified platform
When ChildServe learned that EDoc would be acquired by SETWorks, they saw an opportunity to rethink their processes and bring everything into one streamlined system.
Rather than automatically migrating to SETWorks, however, ChildServe carefully evaluated their options to ensure the best fit for their diverse programs and needs.
“Our team looked at some other solutions,” Stephanie explains. “One of the deciding factors in choosing SETWorks was knowing they would help transition records and care plans from EDoc into SETWorks. Knowing we’d have support was a big deal.”
The SETWorks team didn’t just migrate ChildServe’s records — they collaborated closely with the ChildServe team to identify ways to leverage SETWorks’ features to also improve their documentation processes across the board.
“Today, we’ve built care plan forms directly into SETWorks and started sending them to parents electronically, including intake forms and annual updates. That process used to be done on paper,” says Stephanie. “Now, parents can review and sign them digitally, and then everything gets uploaded into SETWorks, where staff can easily access and review the information.”
ChildServe also took advantage of SETWorks’ highly configurable forms to create specialty care plans, such as those required for children with seizure disorders, as well as forms for physician orders.
“We can set up our forms to auto-fill information like meds, allergies, and contacts from the child’s profile in SETWorks, which saves us time.”
SETWorks also includes quality checks to help keep everything in compliance.
“SETWorks is set up for us in such a way that staff have to acknowledge they have reviewed the care plan before they can do their documentation,” says Stephanie.
SETWorks is a great fit for ChildServe and other care providers looking to electronically manage client records, including health and medication administration records (eMar).
Part of what makes SETWorks such an effective solution is its seamless integration with SETWorks technology partners, such as CaraSolva MedSupport® eMar.
“We use MedSupport® for our services with multiple children who have high medication needs in a group setting, like our Medical Childcare and respite weekends. This has been a great addition to our services,” explains Stephanie.
“For smaller groups or one-on-one care, we use SETWorks’ Medication feature. Staff like SETWorks for documenting medication because it’s easy to use — they just click a button to mark medications as ‘administered’ or ‘not given,’ and they can quickly add new medications.”
According to Stephanie, the most exciting development has been with the daily required nursing assessment.
“We have a nursing assessment form created in the system along with our nursing flow sheets — suctioning, G-tube displacement, trach displacement, seizure logs. It all goes into SETWorks,” says Stephanie.
“Since the development of the Daily Required form process in SETWorks, that tab shows which child or young adult needs a daily assessment and it’s color coded to show if it’s been completed or not, which has been much cleaner and more efficient.”
Results
Exceptional care, measurable success with 99% form completion
Improving the health and well-being of children with special healthcare needs has always been a top priority for ChildServe, and their commitment to quality is evident in everything they do. According to Stephanie, SETWorks helps them deliver on this promise.
“We had been focusing on our nursing assessments even before SETWorks, and had been seeing improvements, but we had a pretty significant jump since implementing the nursing assessment form within SETWorks,” says Stephanie.
“Our Ames location achieved 99% completion, and our Des Moines location 98% during the first month with SETWorks Daily Required Forms implementation. Overall, we completed 697 out of 707 assessments for children who received services during the month,” said Stephanie.
Stephanie is confident that her team can maintain this high standard they’ve established, thanks to SETWorks.
“It’s much easier for our supervisors who are reviewing assessments to catch what’s missing versus manually reviewing paper,” she explains. “You can run a report in SETWorks for compliance, and it’s set up to alert us if something’s missing by showing it in red on a daily basis.”
SETWorks’ cloud-based platform also ensures that Stephanie and other Community Services Managers can oversee multiple locations seamlessly.
“I can access SETWorks from anywhere. Whether I’m in Des Moines or Cedar Rapids, the fact that I can log in 24/7 to review care plans or address concerns for any location is fantastic.”
Ease of use and remote accessibility are critical for an organization of ChildServe’s size and scope — especially since so many staff members work remotely.
“We’re probably 80-90% paper-free now,” says Stephanie.
“We used to have binders and binders of files for all of the children we serve, but we don’t have those anymore since it’s all in SETWorks. Everything is streamlined.”
SETWorks’ user-friendliness has also made it easier for ChildServe to train staff and follow up.
“You can show staff pretty quickly how to log in and complete their sign-offs,” says Stephanie. “If something is missing, you can send them an email through SETWorks with a link to the issue, saying: ‘Here’s the problem, please fix it.’“
Going forward, ChildServe plans to expand SETWorks to its residential group homes, further streamlining operations.
“I have no doubt there’s so much more SETWorks can do for us,” Stephanie says. “We’ve just scratched the surface, and we’re excited to explore more ways to improve efficiency and care delivery.”
Ready to streamline your documentation and boost compliance?
At SETWorks, we understand the challenges of delivering high-quality care while managing diverse programs. Our comprehensive platform helps agencies, like ChildServe, transform their processes, improve compliance, and save time, to further provide exceptional services.
Let us show you how SETWorks can help your organization thrive. Contact us today to learn more!
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