[Gambas-user] Quicky app

[Scott Castaline]

Ash wrote:
> I... wow, in short, extensive. In long, I was mearly asking originally about
> the programming since I'm sort of new still to programming, I've learned it
> before but the basic steps so I understood most of what I read. Since still
> in HS and no job and at night, it's really over my head right now. I'd love
> to help if I could, if I knew how to program. Since I could spend usually
> from here to the end of the week around 11 hours a day on any project
> (Summer Break has to have some benefits) but, still way over my head. Sorry,
> I just, first I apologize for starting something that big. Second, I read it
> all and interested (eh, I'm just a sucker for nobel causes :P) and would
> love to know how to help, if I could at all.
> 
> On 6/24/07, Scott Castaline <hscast at ...407...> wrote:
>> Erik Vega wrote:
>>
>>> It's actually quite interesting with me. I'd love to hear more about
>> this,
>>> then again I love anything that deals with software and programming.
>> Love to
>>> hear more, even if it's irrelevant and a bit off-topic.
>>>
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> Okay, you asked for it. You may want to grab a beer before continuing.
>>
>> We live in the Atlanta area of Georgia of the US of A. My wife is what
>> they call a Service Coordinator or in some cases a Case Manager in the
>> areas Early Intervention Program known as Babies Can't Wait in the
>> Health District we live in. Her function is as an advocate for
>> developmentally delayed infants. She assists the family in getting
>> needed services for the child, such as Physical Therapy, Speech Therapy,
>> Occupational Therapy, just to list a couple of things that I know of.
>> The state of Georgia has in the past 1 - 2 years has started to make
>> changes to the program affecting various groups in the program as well
>> as making cuts in funds.
>>
>> Okay, (forgive me Lord for I will be sinning) here comes the part where
>> I rant. An idea of what is going on can be explained in a TV ad that the
>> Democratic challanger to the Governor used in his campaign. It showed an
>> empty adaptive wheelchair sitting in a dark room. The message was that
>> the Governor, had cut money to the disabled, so that he could give
>> himself and other rich business people major tax breaks. Which had some
>> truth to it, not all. What is happening is that these kids are being
>> divided up and placed into different funded groups. You have some that
>> don't meet criteria so are direct billed to the state, those are not a
>> problem. Then the very few that are Medicaid, also no problem. The
>> problem is with 3 groups that are called CMO's. Sonny says (the
>> Governor) that things are working great. The CMO's are making a profit,
>> the state is saving money. Well yeh, the CMO's are getting paid by the
>> state, but either don't pay the providers or take a very long time to
>> pay. There are some therapists that have just gotten paid recently for
>> services provided almost a year ago, and then they've held back or
>> denied payment on some services. My wife originally started back in 1998
>> sub- contracting to the program through another company that handled the
>> billing and other administrative functions. They had to go out of
>> business leaving about 35 to 50 people to have to fend for themselves.
>> My wife of course is one of them, and is now contracted directly to the
>> county's program BCW. I'm handling the billing and application process
>> for her. Now the clincher, the state has just published guidelines to
>> individual counties as to how they can restructure themselves. It looks
>> like my wife's position could disappear. A speech therapist or a
>> Physical Therapist, or whatever would now be expected to do Service
>> Coordination as well as what they are supposed to be doing. Problem is
>> that a lot of the Therapist's have stopped being providers because they
>> couldn't afford to wait so long to be paid and then get paid for only
>> half of what they were supposed to get. That is why I just want to throw
>> something quick together, but something that I could then either go in
>> and put in the needed time and work to fix up or replace. Ok end of rant.
>>
>> Basically I figured that based on the data my wife works with and that
>> some of that data is reused in the billing side, I felt this called for
>> using a DBMS of some sort. I am familiar with MySQL version 4.x and have
>> started playing around with 5.0.1. I came up with 3 tables. The first
>> table is similar to an address book, with client name, address,
>> caregiver (usually parent or some guardian), a phone number(I'm thinking
>> of 2 fields for a primary number and an alternate number might also use
>> check boxes for home, cell, work, fax, not sure if I need that part),
>> type of billing whether Medicaid, State Funded, Peach State Health Plan(
>> 1 of the 3 CMO's), and Amerigroup (2nd of the 3 CMO's). The 3rd CMO
>> refuses to pay for service coordination or provide it themselves, so
>> that one doesn't matter. The last field would be in most cases a
>> Medicaid number or an assigned number by the CMO. I was planning on
>> using an autogenerated numbering system for indexing.
>>
>> One child table could be compared to an item table in an inventory
>> control DB. The record would contain a medical code number referred as
>> the ICD9 which is related to the diagnosis (ie: Cerebral Palsy). I would
>> then have a 3rd field that contain the value from autogenerated field in
>> the parent table for a particular client. The relation would be multiple
>> records in the child table to one record in the parent table, through
>> the clientID (autogenerated field in Parent Table, and 3rd field in
>> child). I think the key for this child table could be the ICD9.
>>
>> The other Child Table would be a more involved version as the first
>> child. My wife has to have at least one face to face visit(contact) with
>> the client and caregiver and at least 3 indirects(phone calls, or other
>> means) that can be with client/caregiver or a therapist. This table
>> would track by date, type of contact, if face to face one of two
>> possible locations and notes about the contact. The notes are not fixed
>> in length but are definitely not books not even chapters.
>>
>> Data entry, would be centered around the parent, which only needs to be
>> inputted once unless there are changes such as phone number change or
>> moved to another address. The first child would be entered most likely
>> at the same time as the client into the parent table, but a means to be
>> able to put more that one record per client. The second child table
>> would not necessarily be used at the time of initial entry of client
>> into the Parent Table and the first Child Table. I would need to be able
>> to pull up a record of an existing client and enter info pertaining to
>> the 2nd child. So a query of the parent to find a particular client and
>> then the option to add data to the 2nd child that is related to the
>> query d client. The clientID field would again come into play for this
>> child. The field can be manually filled in by user as I realize that
>> this would involve logic that I'm not sure of to automate. It's
>> something that I could do later.
>>
>> Reporting would be done once a month where one would need some fields
>> from the Parent and the second child. A separate report for each client
>> sorted by client and then the child info (contacts need to be sorted by
>> date and show dat of contact, type of contact, (see description above),
>> location of contact (if face to face), and the notes. Right now she uses
>> a spreadsheet template that puts the client info and her name/title and
>> date (month/year) as a header. The rest of the page is divided into 4
>> horizontal sections that repeat themselves broken up into the date,
>> type, location, and notes. In some cases the notes for a particular
>> contact will flow into multiple sections (1 to 3 sections in rows).
>>
>> Another report would be one of the billings directly to BCW. I am
>> currently using a spreadsheet template that has last name, first name,
>> Medicaid #, or State Funds, or State Funds/CMO Name, or even the comment
>> of evalution/Not eligible, the date of face to face and dates of the
>> first 3 indirects, and a final field of bill amount for client. This
>> also contains a header of the form name, wife's name/title, month/year
>> and a vendor #. I have room for 18 rows for clients and leaving 4 rows
>> open for stamping by county accounting along with page total. Each apge
>> looks the same with the final page containing the subtotal of each page
>> and the final total. I'm not sure of how to determine the bill amount.
>> The clients that are straight State Funds are billed one amount the Not
>> Eligible another amount, dependent upon time involved (hourly rate), and
>> CMOs and Medicaid are $0.00 amount since we bill direct but have to
>> report it on this bill. The other bills are handled separately and at
>> this time I'm not planning to include this in the billing part yet. I
>> have forms that have to be hand written and mailed in, but I need to be
>> able to pull up the info for reference from all 3 tables. This I think
>> could be handled on a multilevel query, by client list all diag codes,
>> and contacts for month.
>>
>> I guess that's about it for now, there is another report that my wife
>> does that is similar to my state billing. I apologize for my extensive
>> use of bandwidth, and hope that I didn't destroy too many peoples day or
>> now night(late night for me). I can also attach the forms in OOo format
>> on a future email if interested. I need time to convert some of them
>> from M$Office to OOo. The billing I have in OOo already.
>>
>> Any suggestions or help, I would be forever indebted and if you come
>> through Lawrenceville, GA., there's a place that serves real cold
>> Guiness Stout Draft nearby.
>>
>> TIA
>>
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I'm basically in the same boat. My programming days goes back to the 
70's and consisted of IBM 360/370 COBOL and 8080 Assembler as well as 
6800 Assembler. All in school environments as part of my EET degree. I'm 
just looking for a simple approach to make life a little easier for my 
wife. She has an extremely large case load and spends many hours at it. 
Even though her gross income is fairly decent even for here in the ATL 
area, with all of the time and effort she probably truly makes only 
about $1.00/hr. gross. Since we don't know what the near future holds, 
to really spend the time or money for a more complex app doesn't make 
sense at this time. But if things work out I would probably want to be 
able to take whatever I threw together and make a real app out of it.