CHI Centers Participant Services

CHI Centers, Inc.C
Silver Spring, MD USA

CHI Centers, Inc. is a non-profit organization headquartered in Silver Spring, MD. CHI Centers serves just over 400 developmentally disabled adults. It is the mission of CHI Centers to join with others to create the conditions that allow all persons with disabilities to have opportunities to participate in community life; to have choices in the pursuit of personal growth; to maintain positive relationships with family, friends, and neighbors; and to be afforded respect and dignity. CHI Centers provides employment, recreation, and residential programs for developmentally disabled adults consistent with fulfillment of their mission statement.

CHI Centers Participant Services is a brand-new application used by CHI Centers employees and select outside facility-based users. Users of the Application include Executive Level Management, Resource Managers, Nurses, Admissions Personnel, Service Coordinators, Caregivers, and Transportation Personnel.

The application tracks Participant information and demographics, program participation, and site and program information. Users are able to enter and edit Participant data and view arbitrary reports from within the system. A primary goal of having the system was to produce CHI Centers' Participant Face Sheet, which was achieved, and is a great time-saver for employees.

Different users utilize the application in different ways.

The Admissions personnel will enter a new participant into the system, provide the basic demographic information, assign a Resource Manager to the individual, and utilize the information for future incident reporting.

Add Participant

Auto-lookup of city and state by zip code is provided by the AJAX Autocomplete Extender and custom web service.

A Resource Manager will use the application to coordinate services and enter information regarding an individual's plan information.

Administrative Menu

Administrative Menu allows for easy additions and maintenance of supporting data while role based security handles access. Executives will utilize the application to provide statistics to agencies which provide funding. Nurses will utilize the application to track medical review information to ensure that reviews are done in a timely fashion. Support staff will utilize the application to produce Face Sheets which can be provided to funding organizations as well as to emergency personnel should the need arise.

Edit Participant Page

The Edit Participant Page allows a user to quickly update a participant's information as well as enter documentation records for a variety of related tables. Many of the Edit Table controls provide for file uploads.

Application size and scope

The application utilizes one Microsoft SQL Server 2008 database, 45 database tables, and 95 web pages.

Today there are 15 subscribers and growing.

The application is not transaction-oriented per se. It does, however, provide a reliable, easy-to-use and convenient data store for CHI Centers enabling them to track critical data and produce a variety of necessary reports.

The project

I developed this application over the course of 225 person hours in conjunction with a subject matter expert at CHI Centers. 150 person hours were spent on the Iron Speed Designer portion of the project.

Code extensions and customizations

I incorporated fewer than 1,000 lines of custom code into the application over the course of 50 person hours. Field input controls were made "read only" and restricted viewing of certain tables were implemented based on logged in user role and user ID. I made use of Telerik's Masked Edit Textbook control and their Reporting system for the entry of telephone and social security numbers. I also used Telerik's Reports to produce the Face Sheet report due to formatting requirements

Page layout customizations

I used the standard Rockies page style in Iron Speed Designer. In a very short time, the users came to appreciate the professional, consistent look and features that the UI provides. I customized the header to include CHI's logo and the application name. No significant page customizations were done outside of cleaning up and formatting the controls, etc. on each page.

Iron Speed Designer impact

I estimate a savings of 200-300 hours in development time and a savings of $20,000 by using Iron Speed Designer. Equally important was the speed from inception to implementation and use in a production environment. Iron Speed Designer allowed CHI to get up and running quickly with a professional, custom application designed to meet their needs.

This project would not have been possible without Iron Speed Designer. The savings in development cost is critical to budgets that are stretched to the limit in the current economic environment. Iron Speed Designer definitely allowed CHI to maximize results while minimizing cost.

Next steps

There are plans to further extend the application in the future. Development to add additional information and reporting is ongoing.

The goal is to make the application available to all sites. There are currently four major sites and numerous smaller sites.

About the developer

Michael has over fifteen years of experience developing databases, data warehouses, and web-based applications for a variety of industries ranging from Long Term Care, Long Term Care Pharmacy Adjudication, Finance, and Art and Collectibles to Construction, Real Estate, Telecom, and Defense. Technologies/tools used include Iron Speed Designer, MS SQL Server, Telerik's suite of controls and various .NET technologies.