Technical details

Technical Information about GoalMinder 4.0

November 12, 2006

Purpose:

GoalMinder® 4.0 is an information management software system for behavioral health care providers which includes full-featured scheduling, treatment record management, automatic generation of clinical reports, continuous outcome monitoring of patients' progress in therapy, tracking both disorder-specific symptom reduction and goal attainment, a powerful aggregate analyzer to help users analyze their clinic's effectiveness, and an optional fully-integrated billing package called GoalMinder Account Manager. Regression statistics give initial estimates of progress. Outcome data during the process of therapy can be graphed and shared with clients, referrers, payers and in staffings. Data can be exported to full-featured statistical packages or spreadsheets for more formal analysis. The aggregate analyzer searches for user-specified subgroups of patients and lists them, mail merges form letters to them, counts them, and or performs initial comparative regression analysis (slope, intercept, and R-squared analyses) based on client or therapist-generated rating scales. The program can be used with several off-the-shelf voice-dictation programs and has state-of-art billing and claims modules, and client-server capability for clinics anticipating more than 10 simultaneous users.

Technical features:

GoalMinder runs in a Windows 98/2000/XP/NT environment on IBM-compatible personal computers with at least 512 MEG of RAM. Processor speed of at least 800 MHz is preferred. For use with dictation programs a soundboard such as WAV® or SoundBlaster®, and a faster machine (at least 800 MHz) and more empty disk space (100 MEG) will be needed. For small networks, a server with a minimum of 256MEG RAM and a minimum of a 10 GIG hard drive is recommended. In general, the server should have roughly the same amount of memory as the processer speed.

GoalMinder is written in Visual Basic 6.0, primarily using SQL calls. GoalMinder comes in two versions. For smaller installations of 1-8 simultaneous users, GoalMinder writes to an Access(r) database. For larger installations or for clinics with multiple locations using a central database, a Microsoft® SQL version of the program is available. We provide an attractive hosting arrangement for your SQL database at very little cost. Upgrading from one to the other is possible without any data loss. We suggest that clinics anticipating 6 or more simultaneous users choose the client-server version of the program. A clinic can begin with the access version and switch to the SQL version with no difficulties, however, as the program can identify which database system to utilize.

We regret that the program is not Macintosh® compatible unless the Mac is equipped withdual processors.

The program is based entirely on relational database principles such that different parts of the program can make available information to other parts of the program. For example, to schedule a client, the program needs the name of the client entered in either Quick entry or Client Registration. The calendar then associates the client to the therapist seeing him/her and "reports" to the treatment area that this patient was seen by this therapist on this date. The program will be aware of whether a session note, intake, or termination report is entered for the patient, who the referrer was, what demographic information to include in the report, based on the client registration information, etc. To the therapist, this means that only a few data entries and a button click can result in a comprehensive report.

In most cases, GoalMinder can be modified to work with existing schedulers and billing/claims modules at reasonable cost. We recommend, however, that our integrated system be carefully considered prior to making the decision to interface our product with other schedulers or billing packages.