Partnering Technologies Lighten the Load for Autism Service Providers
Software companies SKILLS Global and CodeMetro are teaming up for the benefit of clinicians working with children on the autism spectrum
Woodland Hills, California, July 5, 2017 (Newswire.com) - This week software providers SKILLS Global, LLC and CodeMetro, Inc. announced a new alliance which is a dream come true for clinicians working with children on the autism spectrum: software tools to manage the day-to-day business of their practice, directly integrated with clinical tools to help assess, treat and manage the difficulties associated with autism.
Autism Spectrum Disorder, or ASD, is the fastest growing neurological disorder worldwide, affecting one percent of the global population and approximately 1 in 68 children in the United States according to the most recent estimates from the CDC. The current surge in awareness and diagnoses of autism around the world has led to a struggle in the healthcare industry to adequately provide treatment for all of the people who need it. There is also a saying in the autism community, “If you have met one person with autism, you have met one person with autism,” meaning that the disorder affects each person differently and requires individualized care; making the problem even more complex and time-consuming for clinicians. To help reduce this burden, California-based software companies SKILLS Global and CodeMetro supply autism service providers with web-based, practical support in areas such as scheduling appointments, generating reports and conducting assessments to develop treatment plans that are tailored to each individual child.
This technology helps to make sure everyone on the child's treatment team is on the same page and is applying the latest and best in scientifically-proven therapies.
Eliana Ferreira, CEO, SKILLS Global
The most commonly prescribed treatment for children with autism is Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA), which is clinically proven to vastly improve a child’s outcome in life. Demand for specialists in ABA has increased exponentially in recent years. ABA therapy is particularly effective if children receive intense services at an early age. This need for early intervention compounds the problem of children being placed on waiting lists for treatment, as the older that they are when they start services, the lesser the impact those services will have. This leads to a reduction in the child’s overall improvement throughout life, and contributes to even more expensive costs down the road in the form of long-term care and the debilitating drain on community and family resources for individuals unable to achieve the independence they might have obtained with earlier interventions.
SKILLS Global’s web-based software tool called Skills® for Autism is based on ABA techniques and includes an assessment of nearly 4,000 skills across the full range of developmental areas, which then ties into a curriculum with lessons targeting the needs identified in the assessment. “Skills® is a one-stop resource for clinicians to create and implement treatment plans fully customized to the individual child’s needs,” says Eliana Ferreira, CEO of SKILLS Global. “This technology helps to make sure everyone on the child’s treatment team is on the same page and is applying the latest and best in scientifically-proven therapies.”
Skills® for Autism also automatically generates progress reports, which can be vitally important to time-strapped care providers needing to report on the progress of their patients to parents and insurance providers. Administrative tasks can often bog down clinics, leading to even fewer children being able to be served as a clinician’s time is taken up with logging progress and creating reports. Many clinics still complete these arduous tasks by hand, using cumbersome and outdated pencil-and-paper methods.
NPAWorks helps autism service providers streamline administrative operations while keeping overhead as low as possible. This assists them to maximize service provision while avoiding financial troubles. Since the states mandated private insurance carriers to cover autism services, autism service providers have commonly experienced their cash flows to be negatively impacted. NPAWorks serves autism service providers by organizing and protecting critical information for clients, staff, and funding sources. NPAWorks brings clients and staff together with the most advanced scheduling system on the market and provides automated warnings for all scheduling changes, expirations, and deadlines. Finally, NPAWorks produces and tracks insurance claims and non-insurance invoicing to make financial management a snap. With the launch of the Scheduling Genie, NPAWorks is the first and only software to provide a smart scheduling solution that further streamlines operations and assists with the improvement of service provision. “It’s the close collaboration between our patrons and our Development Team that keeps NPAWorks on the leading edge of what the autism service industry needs,” says Kim Finger, Ph. D., CEO of CodeMetro.
Technology can provide the missing link for more oversight, consistency and training for therapists in their daily work. Many new therapists are entering the field of ABA treatment every year in a race to catch supply up to the demand, but this also means that there is a broad range of experience in the field and it can be a burden in terms of time and effort for supervisors to ensure that their patients are getting consistent services and quality care. The use of the software tools provided by CodeMetro and SKILLS Global allows the limited number of experts in the field to increase their efficiency and oversight of therapists, meaning more children can get off of wait lists and into needed treatment.
SKILLS Global Media contact: Deirdre Wiley
Tel: 877.975.4559 x1129
Email: D.Wiley@skillsglobal.com
CodeMetro, Inc Media Contact: Thomas “Mac” McCaffrey
Tel: 877-796-9883 Ext. 171
Email: tjmccaffrey@codemetro.com
Source: SKILLS Global, LLC
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