QuickShots Alert: Excel is changing administration dates on single-digit dates

When entering vaccines on the Excel spreadsheet for QuickShots, Excel is removing any zero in front of the day’s date.  For example: 10/02/2009 is being changed on the Excel spreadsheet to 10/2/2009.

This date is then being imported back into STIX as 1/2/09.

To prevent your vaccines from loading into STIX with the wrong date, you must format the entire “Admin Date” column on your Excel spreadsheet as TEXT.

To format the “Admin Date” column on the Excel spreadsheet as text, do the following:

1. Right click at the top of the “Admin Date” column so the entire column is highlighted.  
2. On the pop-up menu that appears, select “Format Cells”.
3. On the “Format Cells” window, click the NUMBER tab.
4. In the “Category” field, highlight “TEXT” and click OK.

Now, when you enter a date with a leading zero, Excel will leave the zero intact and your data will import into STIX correctly.

If you must talk with someone about this, please e-mail a request to questions@integritas.com, and someone will contact you. Thank you for all you do to support the health and well-being of your employees.

Single Dose Administration of H1N1: May Need New Report to State

CDC has now stated that only a single dose will be required for children over age 10 and all adults. Thus, the report from QuickShots will not make sense if you administer the vaccination only to adults. (So much for being pro-active!)

Since Integritas licenses STIX to providers that do administer vaccines to children under 10, we will not be altering the QuickShots report. We also do not have the resources to do another 79 versions of the program! So, here's what to do instead:

Regardless of whether you have set up STIX for a single dose or for two doses, if you do not administer the vaccination to children under 10, when using QuickShots, you should produce the spreadsheet using the default result code of "C" to mean "Completed":

If you have already produced your spreadsheets, no worries: Just instruct people to replace the 1 with C. Worst case, do this yourself (copy/paste or Find/Replace) prior to using QuickShots to import the spreadsheet back into STIX.

Any dose loaded into STIX with the result code of "C" will be reported on the QuickShots H1N1 Report as Dose 2.

If you want your report to the State to be absolutely clear, you can download and use this MS Word template. Just run the QuickShots report, then type the data into a new document based on the MS Word template, save the document each reporting period, and send it to the state. They’ll never know the difference.

Using the default result code "C" will also ensure that a Next Due date is not triggered in STIX, so no employee will have a Next Due date in their record for H1N1. Note that with this approach you do not have to change the STIX setup for the H1N1 vaccination (unless you just like doing that). This approach will work regardless of how you have set up STIX -- for one dose or for two doses.

The jury may still be out regarding what the final final determination from CDC will be, so we will continue to monitor the situation. When it’s totally clear from CDC whether the immunization will forever be one or two doses, we will incorporate the H1N1 Report to the Department of Health into the latest release (only) of the STIX program, in case it is needed in the future. If needed, users will have a choice as to whether they want to run a 1-dose report or a 2-dose report, depending on the CDC determination, age groups they serve, etc.

Produce QuickShots Spreadsheets by Job Class or Division

We have updated all (79) versions of QuickShots, to enable you to export data to a spreadsheet by one of the FOUR following options: department, job class, work location, division. In other words, we added job class and division as program options, as shown below:

If you want, you could combine these but only in ways that make sense. For example, if you want to produce spreadsheets for every department, but only for a single job class, select the menu item to run by department, then select the desired job class (or other variable) by clicking the icon to the right of the desired field:

If you have a specific combination that you want to produce, please just try it in QuickShots and see if you can get the result you want. Integritas will be unable to help you with this, since every client is set up differently.

To take advantage of these selections, you must re-download the QuickShots Installation program that is appropriate for your version of STIX, and have your IT department install it again. If you don't need these selections, do not bother downloading the latest version, as there will be no benefit to you whatsoever ~ just more work.

QuickShots FAQs Now on Integritas Website

We have received some interesting questions about QuickShots from our customers, and we want to be sure that everyone has the advantage of the answers. We have started a page for Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) about QuickShots, and related information. Here are the questions for which answers are now available to everyone:

1. How can I use an employee (patient) identifier that is different from the one that QuickShots has put into the spreadsheet?

2. How can I correct a spreadsheet in which Excel has eliminated the leading zeroes from the STIX company code (e.g. 0001 is changed to 1 in the spreadsheet.)?

3. If one of my Company names (Description) includes a slash, QuickShots does not create the spreadsheet. What should I do?

4. We want to use our employee card swipe system to input into a spreadsheet OR We want to use our intranet for data entry, and the data downloads to a spreadsheet. Is there a way for QuickShots to import our spreadsheet into STIX?

5. Excel gives me a warning about saving the spreadsheet as a CSV file. What should I do?

6. How can I avoid having to sort through all the "loaded" records when viewing the QuickShots Load/Error Report?

7. How can I distinguish and report employees who waived the immunization from those who refused the immunization?

Check out the QuickShots FAQ.

QuickShots Q&A Webinar

An additional webinar for QuickShots has been scheduled for September 23 at 4 PM Eastern time (3 PM Central, 2 PM Mountain, 1 PM Pacific, 10 AM Hawaii). This webinar will be a Q & A only, not a "Show & Tell". It will also not address state immunization databases (see below), but we may schedule another webinar on that topic later this month if we see it is needed.

HL7 Export to State Immunization Databases Ready September 30

As mentioned in an August e-mail, STIX will soon be able to produce the HL7 file that is being required of healthcare providers to update State immunization registries. This export will be incorporated into the existing STIX Import/Export utility that is part of the STIX program itself. We are producing this export only in the latest release of STIX, Release 9.1. You will need to upgrade to Release 9.1 to have this export, but the export itself will be free of charge. (Of course, if your support fees are current, the upgrade is also free of charge, except for the very few customers who still need to upgrade to the MS SQL Server database.)

Integritas produced over 75 versions of QuickShots (can you believe it??!), so as to enable its use with any version of STIX, Release 7.0 or higher. However, this export is much more complex, and we simply do not have the resources to produce 75 versions of the program.

Specifically, the export will meet the requirements of New York State, whose requirements are broader and more inclusive than any other state whose requirements are published at this time. (The one exception that we are aware of at this point is that the Mother's Maiden Name field for NY State requires a first name, middle initial and last name, and STIX will only produce whatever is entered by the user in the single STIX field for Mother's Name.)

The NY State file that is exported from STIX will meet the requirements of the other states that have published requirements to date (Georgia and Virginia), since the NY State file includes all the fields required by these other states.

Please note! Once you have exported this file from STIX, your own HL7 expert may need to work with your State Department of Health to have the file work with your State's system. If your HL7 expert requires support from Integritas, we will make this support available at a charge of $250 per hour, with a minimum one-hour charge.

To our knowledge, no other software vendor has provided any resources to their customers to deal with H1N1. We ask that you grant us your understanding about this support charge, which is the only charge we have applied to anything related to H1N1. Moreover, HL7 interfaces have typically only been available at a charge of $7,500 per interface, which we have waived in this case. We cannot possibly address every state's requirements individually, and frankly, your internal HL7 expert in the IT department should be able to handle the conversations with your State DOH with no trouble. However, we recommend that you alert them now that you may need their support.

STIX 9.1 Billing Enhancements Webinar

To assist your billers in learning newly streamlined billing functions, Integritas will present a one-session webinar that walks through the STIX 9.1 billing enhancements on Wednesday, September 16 at 10 AM (Eastern time). We will repeat the session on Friday September 25 at 3 PM (Eastern time).

The webinars are offered free of charge; simply click the appropriate link above to register.

This one-hour single session webinar is intended specifically for STIX Billing users; please pass the word to anyone in your organization who uses the STIX billing functions.