Even with increased awareness and understanding about mental health and mental illness, mental health care, particularly psychiatric care, can still be difficult to access. This often leaves Primary Care Physicians (PCPs), nurses, and other healthcare workers on the frontlines of mental health care in the United States.
However, in Utah PCPs can access specialized psychiatric consultations through the Consultation Access Link Line to Utah Psychiatry (CALL-UP) Program. This legislative funded program is designed to address the limited number of psychiatric services in Utah and improve access to them, and serves patients at no cost to providers or patients in the state of Utah.
iCarol is proud to play a role in the service delivery of CALL-UP, through CALL-UP’s use of iCarol for psychiatrist on-call shift sign up, CALL-UP program documentation to maintain state funding, and through iCarol’s Public Web Forms.
Here’s how iCarol fits into the service delivery workflow of the CALL-UP program in Utah:
The on-call service for psychiatry consultation is available Monday through Friday from 12:00pm to 4:30 pm. Participating psychiatrists are invited by the CALL-UP program administrators to sign into the iCarol system to sign up for shifts where they will be on-call for consultations.
Primary Care Physicians (PCPs) are instructed to contact the CALL-UP program to request a consultation. If the PCP calls in, CALL-UP staff collect basic demographic, needs, and other important data from the PCP in order to comply with state funding requirements, which is input by the phone specialist into iCarol, using an iCarol Contact Form. Then, they can forward the call to the on-call psychiatrist for the consultation to occur.
PCPs can also request a consultation online, using an iCarol Public Web Form. The form has a built-in screening element that first ensures the requestor is a physician, as this is a requirement for program access. If they are not a physician, a prompt instructs them to please contact their doctor.
If the requestor is a PCP then they continue to use the form to provide the information needed to obtain a consultation, including the demographic and other information required to maintain state funding.
Once the Public Web Form is received by CALL-UP staff, they have the information they need to contact the PCP requesting consultation, and connect them with the on-call psychiatrist. Because the iCarol Web Form is simply a publicly available iCarol Contact Form, they already have the data they need, automatically submitted to iCarol with the form, to meet their reporting requirements.
For more information about Utah’s CALL-UP Program, visit their website.
Want to learn more about Public Web Forms and talk through how they might be used for your program or partnership?
iCarol Public Web Forms take the power of data collection and custom workflows available to your iCarol system users inside the iCarol application, and brings them online for public use.
This means that visitors to your public website could fill out a webform, submit it, and the completed form and data comes into your iCarol system, and is available for reporting, exporting, and placing a client into any other workflows so they can receive your services. What you do with the information is completely dependent on your particular use case! Some common uses of Public Web Forms are:
Service Inquiries – Offer people another way to get in touch with you and inquire about your services. Let them provide you with needed information at the time that’s most convenient for them, then follow-up with them by phone, text, or email. You can even text or email them from within your iCarol system!
Program Enrollment – Invite folks to sign up for one or more services you offer. Once their completed form is in your iCarol system and you validate it, it’s easy to create a profile and begin any other workflows to enroll them in services.
Accept Warm Referrals from Partner Agencies – If a local provider refers clients to you for services, that provider can use your Public Web Form URL to enroll or request services for a client.
And those are just a few of the ways this service is being used.
In a recent Monthly Support Training we walked through several use cases to show how Public Web Forms can be the entry point that results in a number of new ways to help your community and better engage partners and collaborators to improve care coordination and continuums of care.
We’ve also added a lot of functionality to Public Web Forms recently. For instance, did you know that with iCarol Public Web Forms you can…
Include simple password protection, if you want to allow the form to be easily found on your website for ease of access, but only usable and fillable by authorized partners
Create Follow-up Activities automatically when they arrive in your iCarol system
Upload documents like consent forms, authorizations, proof of identity, etc. with a form submission
Restrict form availability to certain days and hours, so people are directed to the right service at the right time
Embed pre-screening questions that redirect a client to a more appropriate contact method and disable form submission if they don’t enter the right pre-qualifying criteria
Notify key staff when a new form arrives in your system
If you haven’t explored Public Web Forms for your agency lately, now’s the time to take another look.
iCarol Customers can view our recent Monthly Support Training by logging into iCarol, navigating to our Help Center, and searching for Public Web Forms.
We’d also be delighted to have a quick meeting with you to talk about your needs, answer your questions, or provide a demo of the product. You can schedule a meeting here or simply Email us!
Data shows that when specialists respond to mental health crises, everyone is safer and outcomes are better. That’s why communities everywhere are investing in crisis intervention teams as an alternative to 9-1-1 and law enforcement in response to crisis, suicide ideation, homelessness, substance abuse, and more.
One way iCarol organizations are improving their workflows around Mobile Crisis Dispatch is by using Public Web Forms.
Our Public Web Forms are essentially a public-facing version of the same forms our customers use internally in the iCarol web application to log their contacts with clients, collect data, and provide resource and referral information. When placed on a website, these forms can be used for purposes such as intake and eligibility screening or service requests. Once a form is submitted by the web visitor, it arrives in the iCarol system as a completed Contact Form where it can be dispositioned as appropriate by contact center staff, and work with other elements of iCarol to take their purpose even further.
One example of how our customers use Public Web Forms is for Mobile Crisis Team dispatch. In a traditional workflow, someone in need of Mobile Crisis might call the contact center, and a specialist will process their request and complete an intake form over the phone, print it, and fax it to a team who will respond in person. In some centers using disparate systems for different departments, they may even encounter processes where paper or electronic forms are passed between departments requiring specialist to do manual data entry for their data collection.
A Crisis Team Dispatch workflow using a Public Web Form may look something like this:
A crisis services provider has a web page outlining their Mobile Crisis offerings, and places the link to a request form on the web page.
The person requesting response fills out the form, configured by the provider, requesting services and providing information about the situation.
If certain criteria must be met in order to request services via form, a pre-screening element can be built in which directs the person to call instead and speak to a specialist live, if they don’t meet the eligibility requirements to submit a form online.
Submitted forms arrive in the iCarol system and certain staff are notified of submission by email.
The specialist opens the form, contacts the requestor if necessary to fill in additional information, and explain to the requestor what will happen next.
The form is shared with the team providing the direct Mobile Crisis response. In iCarol, forms can sent in many ways: password protected and emailed within the system, sent to a secure Provider Portal for responders to access, transmitted electronically to another software system, are just a few examples.
The crisis team receives the necessary information, and responds.
The crisis team can then disposition the visit according to their protocols, and can add additional data to the form electronically to close the loop and provide the contact center with outcome data and more.
This is just one way Public Web Forms are being used, and we look forward to bringing you more of these stories in the coming days.
Want to learn more about Public Web Forms and talk through how they might be used for your program or partnership?
