News

Sequest Technologies News - November, 2007

Sequest Technologies Eighth Annual

User’s Conference Overview October 16-18, 2007

Sequest Technologies hosted their Eighth Annual TIER® User’s Conference “Come Explore for a Three-Day Tour”, October 16-18th. Over 130 guests from across the United States attended the conference. In this issue I would like to share with each of you the overall experience of the conference.

First I would like to start off by thanking all the guest speakers and staff who presented in the training classes on Monday and also the sessions Tuesday – Thursday. This year’s conference was very successful and the hard work from everyone really paid off. This year’s conference was held at the Doubletree Hotel located in Oak Brook, IL. We received good feedback about this hotel. Clients who have attended previous conferences commented that it was easier to get to the session rooms throughout the day. There were also a lot of restaurants and even a shopping mall nearby. I recently started with Sequest Technologies and this was my first User’s Conference. I had fun coordinating the conference especially the Tuesday and Wednesday evening events. I enjoyed meeting all of our clients and prospects. Everyone is nice and inviting. Sequest Technologies has many close clients who have become friends and have built more than a client to vendor relationship. It is a great feeling to be a part of this new and exciting company. These next two pages are filled with more conference highlights. Enjoy.

Conference Kick Off

Sequest Technologies President, Bill Connors, gave an introductory speech to start the morning off. He reminded all that the true focus of our three day tour was building a stronger relationship with each other. “What we create with a transaction (contract) becomes a relationship and hopefully blossoms into a partnership”, stated Connors, a one time Sequest client. Sequest utilized their management consultant, Pat Richie, to continue Bill’s vision for the conference. Mr. Richie is an internationally known speaker/consultant for teambuilding, leadership and business ethics. He consults with corporate leaders, professional sports team owners, national broadcasters, star athletes and college educators. Mr. Richie has been teaching these subjects for over 25 years. He has worked specifically with players and coaches in the NFL, Major League Baseball and the NHL. The San Francisco 49’ers awarded him three Super Bowl rings recognizing his contributions to the team’s success. Pat’s opening session motivated the group and focused all on building a better team-with each other and Sequest.

Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday’s sessions were presented by Sequest staff members and also client presenters. I would like to recognize the following presenters and thank them for sharing their time and overall involvement with the Sequest.
• Case Study - Bob Fernandez from Marworth and Greg Stanek from UHS/Peachford, presented a case study on their overall experiences with TIER® from their initial implementation to their current operating status. They also did a session on Testing Your System
• Training Your System - Scott Bell from Sequest was accompanied by Jennifer Peterson from Dakota Boys and Girls Ranch. Here they discussed how to prepare for training, the best practices of training your system and what works and what doesn’t work when training your systems.
• Case Study - Jon Appel from CADAS and Dave Gerick from Father Martin’s Ashley presented their case study on their overall experiences with TIER® from their initial implementation to their current operating status.
• Scheduler - Jim Mays from Sequest was accompanied by Michelle Gwaltney from Family Services of Indiana. Jim and Michelle explored ways of using the Scheduler in TIER® to track and provide services including customization options and a case study exploring how Scheduler is being used within a TIER® Client Organization.
• DB Fine Tuning –Greg Jolda from Ingraham discussed concepts and principles that are applicable to current database management systems (Oracle, SQL Server, etc.). Greg also taught the all day Monday training class, Advanced SQL Server & Database Tuning class.

Thank you again for dedicating your time to expand the minds of others. Along with all the teaching and learning throughout the three days at the conference, we also wanted everyone to have some fun. So we organized two events; one on Tuesday evening and the other on Wednesday evening. The Tuesday evening event was held in the hotels banquet room.
The room was decorated in a luau motif with palm trees lluminating the walls, island music playing, and Sequest employees dressed in Hawaiian shirts. We had a Gilligan’s Island cast look-a-like contest. There were prizes passed out of M & M dispensers with a bag of M & M’s for all the contest winners (Skipper, Gilligan, Professor, Ginger, Maryanne, r. & Mrs. Howell). (attach pics) Jim Mays MC’d the luau and asked some very difficult Gilligan’s Island trivia questions. Wednesday evening we went offsite. We rented two coach buses that dropped everyone off at one of three destinations downtown Chicago. One of the three locations were Dave & Buster’s, which is a place for adults to act like kids. Here you can play video games to your hearts’ desire. They also have great dining. The second destination was Water Tower Place on Michigan Avenue. Water Tower is one of Chicago’s landmark shopping hot spots, which contains eight levels of 100+ stores and restaurants. Michigan Ave (Magnificent Mile) is also known as the busiest shopping street in the city. Last but not least, our third stop was the famous Navy Pier. From popular restaurants, shopping, games and even a giant Ferris wheel ride for the entire family, Navy Pier is well known for its never ending activities. This is also another historical landmark for Chicago. Initially designed for shipping and recreational purposes, Navy Pier has evolved into a premier entertainment center.

The conference came to an end on Thursday, October 18th. Overall the conference was a great success. Again, thank you to all of the Sequest staff and client presenters, guest speaker Pat Richie and a big thank you to our clients and prospects for exploring with us on a three day tour. The Sequest staff would like to give a special thank you to Bill Connors who showed his appreciation for our hard work by giving us a well needed day off on Friday. We really appreciated it and definitely put that day to good use.

The Results are in – The 2008 User’s Conference Was a Success

We would like to thank everyone again for their participation and attendance at the conference and an added thank you for completing the survey.

The survey will assist us in making future conferences even more successful.
Here are some of the results of this year’s survey
93.9 % - Satisfied with the conference
96.3 % - Will return (Yeah)
96.3 % - Would encourage others to attend

Here are some of the comments of this year’s survey

“The interaction with other users and Sequest staff was extremely positive and informative.”
“ I received an enormous amount of useful information, tips, and things to avoid during our implementation.”
“Pat Richie was superb and of course the opportunity to connect with other TIER users and the Sequest staff”
“Good sessions and great networking. Nice location and facilities. Good food”
“Provide a map to show the location of the meeting rooms”
“Note on the list of trainings if the session is geared toward current users or those going
through the
implementation process or determining whether or not to purchase TIER.”
“Enjoyed hearing about how other facilities adapted to the TIER program”
“Make the agenda available on Sequestuser.net”
“Enjoyed the shuttle ride to downtown Chicago”

If you would like to see the full results of the survey go to:
http://www.surveymonkey.com/sr.aspx? sm=1rZwzqWpE7qzJBblI8MyLG4Z_2fQ2fpedm_2b6NKbdJFcng_3d

Thanks Again – The Sequest Staff

1st TIER® Executive Session Well Received by Attendees

Sequest developed a series of seven workshops that targeted TIER® user leadership interest points. Sessions were created as a result of the Leadership Survey conducted in July 2007. Pat Richie, management/leadership consultant, delivered extensive content on the role of leaders within teams and best methods to promote corporate alignment. This session was the second Mr. Richie delivered to conference attendees, immediate reactions and post conference surveys showed topics were an off the chart success. The topics were applicable to all attendees; addiction services, behavioral health, psychiatric hospitals nd social services executives.

Our first experience in this executive track also included another guest speaker; Doug Mellinger, founder and chairman of Foundation Source Software (www.foundationsource.com). Mr. Mellinger is an expert in the software field as well as an internationally known figure with regard to philanthropy and non profits. He delivered an exceptionally insightful and educational session on the trends within philanthropy and the future direction of giving circles, private foundations and areas non profits that should focus in their fund raising campaigns. Attendees were excited to meet and more importantly have access to such a renowned expert in the field of philanthropy.

The remaining sessions were largely developed by Bill Connors, Sequest President/CEO. These sessions explored the market
desire for Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) from a basic view - what are they, what aren’t they and what yours should be to the use of dashboards, balance scorecards and other graphical presentations of such valuable metrics. Sequest staff developed exceptional prototypes of TIER® Dashboards for quality, finance as well as examples of third party tools such as MS Excel using TIER® data to deliver data driven management information.

Conference satisfaction surveys on the executive sessions were extremely positive-100% satisfied-and attendees are encouraging Sequest to continue to deliver/build on this concept for 2008. The one additional component that will be absolutely vital to a TIER® Executive Track will be client participation, commented Bill Connors, Sequest President/CEO. We need to deliver relevant presentations and the best way to do so will be to actively engage our client partners in delivering sessions-that has been our success in our business and our conference. Attendees responses showed 90% would recommend to fellow leadership. Please do so!

New Client Corner

Sequest Technologies is pleased to announce the formation of an information technology partnership with Dual Diagnosis, LLC (www.dualdiagnosis.org) and Ellisville State school (www.ess.state.ms.us).

Dual Diagnosis, LLC -

Dual Diagnosis plans to use all the features of the TIER® Workflow System; business development, service delivery,
quality management, human resources, environmental management and billing and accounts receivables in three facilities:
Foundations, Memphis, TN; The Canyon, Malibu, CA; Michaels House, Palm Springs, CA.

Dual Diagnosis’s corporate office is located in Brentwood, TN. Their treatment programs provide evidenced-based, integrated dual diagnosis and substance abuse treatment to individuals with drug addiction, alcoholism, and co-occurring mental health and substance abuse disorders. They achieve their mission by offering rehabilitation of the highest quality, counseling and clincal services, education, research and technical assistance to the public and professionals.

Ellisville State School -

The selection of the TIER® Workflow System by the Ellisville State School resulted from a national search for software
conducted by the Mississippi Department of Information Technology (www.its.state.ms.us). The Ellisville State School is located in Ellisville, Mississippi. It operates under the State Board of Mental Health, specifically in the Bureau of Mental Retardation Division. The school provides services to children and adults with mental retardation and developmental disabilities. The goal of Ellisville State School is to provide each individual served with appropriate services so that each will develop to the maximum of his or her potential. Ellisville State School is organized into four residential units: Clover Circle ICF/MR; Pecan Grove ICF/MR; Hillside CF/MR; Paul D. Cotton ICF/MR The School supports an extensive range of community services in addition to the residential units. Their community services include case management, day habilitation, early intervention, in-home services and community vocational services.

Client Spotlight - Catholic Charities of Orange County: Laurie Muollo

Catholic Charities Community Services of Orange County is a multi-faceted agency touching every human need throughout Orange County, New York. Along with seven outpatient Chemical Dependency Clinics, the Early Learning Center and an Employee Assistance Program, Catholic Charities Community Services of Orange County provides outreach services including food, heat and rent ssistance, resource exchange, Immigration Services, Maternity & Adoption Services and with two collaborative efforts with the OrangeCounty Department of Social Services works diligently to prevent homelessness through the Housing Resource Center and keep families intact through the Child Welfare Program.

Catholic Charities Community Services is looking forward with great excitement and anticipation toward the implementation of Sequest Technologies’, TIER® software program for the outpatient Chemical Dependency clinics. We are at the beginning stages ofthe implementation just completing the Gap Analysis with Jim Mays and Dan Rizzo in late September. Four members of the staff from different disciplines (clinical, administrative, billing and IT) were able to attend the Annual Users’ Conference held in October. This was an outstanding experience. The sessions were informative and productive and meeting the Sequest Technologies staff and other TIER® users was very beneficial. The current plan for implementation is to fully test the software at one clinic location then “go live” at the remaining locations simultaneously. Catholic Charities Community Services is enthusiastic about our partnership with Sequest Technologies.

How to Create a Word Merge

You’ve often heard about it but have never needed to use it or seen it used in “practice.” This would be using the Word Merge function in TIER®. The Word Merge takes data that is entered in a form and uses it as a data source for a Word Merge Template. This feature is often used for Consents.

In order to use the Word Merge feature there must be an existing template in MS Word. From TIER®, the user will locate the Consent form that is to be used as the data source for the Word Merge document. The user will then:

• Right click on the desired form
• Select Properties
• Click on the Merge Templates tab
• Click Add. The Template Definition dialog box opens.
• Fill in all the information, including the whole path to the Word Merge Template, i.e.,
C:\MyDocuments\MergeDocs\ConsentDocument.doc or use the Browse button to locate your document
• Select Microsoft Word for Kind
• Click on Open. The MS Word template opens
• You are now able to add the desired fields to set up the Merge document.
• Save the changes and close MS Word
• Click OK in the Template Definition dialog box.
• Click OK in the Form Properties dialog box.

To run Word Merge from the document (form) in TIER®, after you have entered the appropriate information, on the tool bar, click on the printer icon, select Word Merge, then the Word template will open in MS Word. If you need additional information, please check out the “How To” section on Sequest.net or contact Sequest Client Support.

What’s in the Readme?

As new TIER® executables evolve, we’d like to begin highlighting some of the features available in newer versions of TIER®.

New to TIER® 5.03 and higher are password expirations and custom initializations.

You asked for it and we delivered! TIER® 5.03 now has capabilities to handle password expirations. Password expirations can be set at the group level or user level. To set the password expiration, right click on the group or user and select properties. Then, click on the Passwords tab and enter the number of days until the password expires. TIER® uses the value entered here and adds it to the value saved in the op__autoexpireuserpwlastupdated field to determine the expiration date.

For example, if the number of days entered is 6 and you last saved the user settings on the 20th, then, on the 27th, the user will be prompted to change their password. After the user changes their password, the auto op__expireuserpwlastupdated will change to the current date/time and the calculation will start all over again.

Support Tip: Because the calculations cannot use NULL values, you may wish to manually update the op__ expireuserpwlastupdated field to the current date/time before using the new executable to prevent all of your users from changing their passwords upon first login.

This is just one of the many enhancements made in newer versions of TIER®, be sure to review your ReadMe file to discover more. The Readme and newest TIER® executable is always available online at http://www.sequest.net/clients/tier_upgrades/. If you need assistance in upgrading your executable, please contact Sequest Support.

Signature Pad

TIER® has some features that are categorized as “add-ons”; one of those features is the TIER® Signature Pad. TIER® Signature pad is available to clients running TIER® 5.0 and higher. The Signature Pad object can be used on any form that would require a “physical” client signature, such as Consent for Treatment. The electronic signature saved can then be printed from TIER® to a Crystal Report.

To see how to set up signature pad and add the electronic signature to a Crystal Report, check out the “How To” section on Sequest.net for more information or if you are interested in purchasing Signature Pad, please contact Sequest Client Support.

Sequest.net vs. SequestUser.net

There have been many questions lately that deal with the difference between the two websites that Sequest Technologies, Inc. has been able to supply its customers. In this article we will do an exploration of the two websites and explain the purpose and function of each.

The first site that we are going to take a look at is Sequest.net. Sequest.net is the main company website. This website is what we use to release documentation, such as user manuals, work orders, readme files, and script documentation needed for upgrades to the TIER system. We also use this website to download new executables, gain access to TIER Diagnostics (our VNC connect tool that allows us to gain access to a problem PC), and TIER training modules made possible by Adobe Captivate.

SequestUser.net is the website that we use as a forum. This website was launched at the 2006 User’s Conference. This website is designed to be used as a place of discussion. Sequest Technologies, Inc. will use this website to inform you of new releases. We want you to use this website as a place of discussion to share tips, forms and ideas. All user conference material is also available for download at this location.

Both of these locations are password specific….if you do not have a user id or password for either location then contact support@sequest.net and we will make sure to get you one. If you have any other additional questions please feel free to email support as well.

Initialization

New in form design and as discussed in the “What’s New in Form Design” session, are changes to Initializations. The change has been made to help increase the speed in which results are returned for initialized fields. In the past users have been restricted to: TIER_DOCID, TIER_FOLDERID, TIER_PARENTID AND TIER_USERID for filtering results. Users are now able to use controls on the form for filtering results. Forms designers must now have the ability to write SQL statements to implement this functionality. In order to filter using controls on the form (for the Filter property of the initialization) the user must add /*SQL*/ to the filter, i.e., /*SQL*/ IF :ADMISSIONKEY IS NULL (SELECT a.PRESENTING_PROB FROM FD__INTAKE_ASSESS a, FD__NURSING b where A.OP__DOCID=b.OP__PARENTID and
b.OP__DOCID=:TIER_PARENTID) ELSE (SELECT a.PRESENTING_PROB FROM FD__CLIENTS b, FD__INTAKE_ASSESS a WHERE b.OP__DOCID=b.OP__PARENTID AND b.OP__DOCID=:TIER_PARENTID). This SQL statement is used in an initialization to return the Presenting_Problem from the Intake Assessment.

MSI Setups

Client requests for MSI setups have been steadily growing over the past couple of years. To accommodate the needs of our clients, MSI setups are now available.
Please contact Sequest Support to get your MSI setup file. (When making your request, be sure to mention the version of Crystal Reports you use.)

Welcome to Sequest Technologies, Inc.

Greg Jones joined Sequest as Director of Business of Development in 2007. Greg has extensive sales and management experience in the areas of hospital-based medical devices, patient accounting software platforms, and financial analytic software tools with such market leaders as IVAC Corp., Medtronic Inc., and Siemens Medical Solutions. Mr. Jones manages all Business Development Executives and Marketing personnel with the intent to further Sequest’s mission to deliver software solutions within healthcare. Mr. Jones holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Marketing from Illinois State University.

Linda Vokoun joined Sequest in the Technical Support department in 2007. She previously worked as a Customer Support Technician for over two years at ParishSOFT, LLC, in Ann Arbor, Michigan. She has also held a variety of contract positions for both computer and network support. She has over 20 years of practical experience in troubleshooting computers and software, along with more recent training in programming, databases and software support including C++, VB, .NET, MS Access and SQL.

Linda has a Bachelor of Open System Technologies degree from Baker College in Flint, Michigan and in her life before computers, received a Bachelor’s degree in Theatre and Education from the University of Michigan.

Prior to joining the Sequest Technologies Business Development team in 2007, Geralyn Sperber worked as a Social Worker for a children’s group home; New Alternatives, Inc. in Orange, CA for 2 years. She has also worked as a Case Manager on an in-patient adolescent unit; New Life Treatment Center for 3 years. Geralyn was one of the responsible parties for opening up the First Partial Hospitalization Program for the chronic mentally ill in Orange County, CA in 1990 with Psychiatric Management Resources. As an accomplished Community Relations Representative for psychiatric hospitals she has trained 36 others to do Business Development for LA, San Diego, Riverside, and Orange Counties. She was with College Hospitals for 11 years opening up 7 partial programs.

Geralyn received her Master’s Degree in both Marriage and Family Therapy and School Counseling. Additionally, she received her BS in Speech Language Pathology and Audiology with a Psychology Minor. These were obtained at Loma Linda University.

Prior to joining the Sequest Team as a Business Analyst in 2007, Scott Bell worked in the addiction treatment field for 5 years as a Counselor and Case Manager for both Adult and Adolescent patients. Scott has also spent the past 5 years working as the Clinical Information Systems Manager with Cumberland Heights in Nashville TN. Scott received his B.A. from Western Kentucky University in 1998 and is currently working on obtaining his Master of Science in IT Project management degree.