Course Content
How to set up a service provider
11:00
Hi there.
This is Ali Rider from Acare Consulting, and this is a training video about setting up your new service providers in HIFUS.
So in order to do that, we're going to click on the administration menu and then go to service provider.
And that's going to bring us to the screen where we're looking at the details for the service provider that we're currently logged in at.
But this is not where we want to end up.
We're going to use the service provider management menu and then click on list of service providers.
Here, we can see all of the service providers that exist already in our community, but there's also a button here to add a service provider.
So let's click on the add service provider button in order to add a new 1.
Now, the first thing that we'll need to do is give a name to this service provider.
I'm going to call this service provider, the Rent Bank.
However, of course, you will use the name of the service provider in your real community.
Next, we need to indicate whether we want this service provider to join an existing cluster in which case there's a drop down menu and we can choose which 1.
So if we wanted them to join the main cluster integrated, we would choose that option.
However, you can also, at this point, say, nope, we don't want to join an existing cluster.
Instead, you could set up a brand new cluster.
If you go ahead and proceed with adding the service provider and you choose these options, it's going to create a brand new cluster for you, which you're probably going to then want to modify the settings for.
But for this case, I'm going to add this service provider, the Rent Bank, to the integrated cluster.
Next, we need to indicate the service provider type.
So I'm gonna say that this is a housing support type of service provider.
Note that this is a single select drop down menu.
So if you're trying to add an agency that has multiple components, for example, an agency that has an emergency shelter and also some transitional housing.
You may need to think about your service provider configuration and set up the different branches of the organization as multiple service providers.
Oh, wait.
I'm gonna pick a prevention diversion here.
Seeing is how this is preventing homelessness.
Next, we can indicate the primary service provider.
Now, what this does is in the service provider tree, it allows you to sort of categorize and say that this service provider is a sub service provider or a child service provider.
Of this other 1.
And it keeps things organized in your service provider tree, but most people don't see that.
The main place that this becomes relevant is when you are trying to set up some settings like making certain fields mandatory or disabling fields.
There are certain places where a parent service provider, the primary service provider, can set things up for a child.
Now, you can change this later and it's not the most important feature.
So if you're a little bit confused, we can leave this blank and change it later.
Now, a lot of the fields on this screen to be honest are not particularly useful.
They're things that we can enter, but they don't make a big difference in the software.
And so it is also possible to change most of these things later.
So for example, we can indicate which genders this service provider serves We can also indicate some other attributes that this service provider has To be honest, I'm really not sure the value of this field.
We can indicate what services they offer, such as prevention and diversion services.
And we can indicate the target clientele.
This is a general purpose service provider that doesn't serve a specific client's die a demographic group.
However, again, most of these fields do not have a significant impact on how the software works.
So if you need to skip some of these, or if you're not sure worried about doing it wrong, many of these, it's not really a big deal.
However, I do want to indicate 1 in particular.
This field here, refer our category type, which is a bit of a strange name for a field.
We can indicate what type of agency this is.
So I'm gonna call this housing services.
If we choose a value here, then this service provider will be added automatically to the directory of services as a place that has the refer category type of housing services and is listed as delivering these services offered.
If you leave this field blank, the refer category type then this service provider will not be added to their directory of services.
The directory of services is often used for referral purposes.
When you are doing an intake at a shelter, for example, you can indicate where the client was referred from.
And that would be a list of places.
So if you want this service provider to be available on those referral lists, it's more convenient for you to simply choose a refer category right now.
If you don't do that, then you can still manually add a place to the directory of services later, but that's an extra step and I wanna save you some time here.
So if you choose a refer category type, then it will be added as a place and you can make referrals to or from this service provider.
Next, are we going to allow concurrent stays?
This is only relevant if this is a shelter or uses the admissions module in any sense.
So that includes motel programs, domestic violence, transitional programs, allowing a concurrent stay would allow the clients to be booked into more than 1 bed at the same time.
For example, having a book bed at a hotel and also staying at a shelter on a on a specific night.
In most cases, we want this set to know unless there's a specific reason in your community why you want to allow that.
Next, we do want the service provider to be active that will allow us to use it.
And we can indicate if we want to copy the mandatories from and copy the lookups from another service provider.
Now, the momentories and lookups are covered in different videos, but basically, we're hopping some configuration from these this other service provider that is presumably already configured.
The mandatories is what fields are mandatory or disabled, and the lookups is the options in the drop down menus.
So if we wanna copy those values from another service provider, then we should choose that service provider here.
Now, the next several fields are really only for information purposes.
As I mentioned, they a lot of the fields on the screen don't do much.
So you can indicate a cutoff time like we stop accepting referrals 11PM.
Like, we stopped doing intakes at that point.
We can enter a phone number for this service provider.
We can add an extension, put in a fax number, put in an email address, and a website.
And optionally add some comments.
However, this is not prominently displayed And so, as I mentioned, it's not necessary and we can change it later.
Now, at this point, it looks like we should be able to click the save button.
We're at the bottom of the page, but there's a trick.
We haven't put in the the address of this service provider yet.
In fact, it's on a different tab, so we need to go back up to the top.
Notice that there are 2 tabs.
I know.
This is a little bit weird, but it's the way it is.
Luckily, we are not going to be adding service providers very often.
So we do need to go to the address tab and notice that there is a red star indicating there are some mandatory fields on it.
So here, we now need to add our address information for this particular service provider.
I'm gonna say it is at 123 Main Street in British Columbia in Abbotsford.
You can provide the postal code and under geographic region This is where you would indicate which geographic regions this service provider provides services to.
Now presumably, you will have configured your geographic regions in HIFUS before you have set up this service provider.
But if you have not, then you should go set up your geographic regions and then remember to come back and edit this service provider.
This will be particularly relevant if you're using the geographic region filter, which not every community does.
But there's our geographic region and that's why it's a multiple select.
We're not indicating which region this service provider is in.
We want to indicate what they provide services to.
Now once we've done all of that, we're going to click on the save button and we have now created our brand new service provider in HIFUS.
There it goes.
So we have our green data saved notification.
And under Grand View, which was the primary service provider, we now have a Rent Bank listed.