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 WHAT'S
NEW IN 5.3?
by Dan Voss, Product Manager
This spring, version 5.3 of Sweet-CAD, Sweet-Billing,
and Sweet-Field Data will be released. All three products
contain a variety of fixes and minor enhancements, but there are
some big things to talk about.
The major new item in Sweet-CAD 5.3 is an extension of the
CAD system to be used in your vehicles. MobiCAD is installed on a
laptop in each vehicle. In the vehicle, your crew members use
MobiCAD to receive dispatch information from Sweet-CAD, view
the locations of both the incident and their vehicle on a digital
map, update their statuses, and send and receive text messages
to/from dispatch.
MobiCAD:
- Eliminates the problem of
information being misunderstood on the radio
- Eliminates the need for
dispatchers to manually update vehicle statuses in Sweet-CAD
- Eliminates delays that happen in
the field when the crew has difficulty getting the attention of
dispatch
- Helps calm the dispatch center
by automatically moving information to the crew in the field,
instead of requiring the dispatcher to document information in
Sweet-CAD and then relay the information to the crew over
the radio.
Sweet-Billing and Sweet-Field
Data have undergone the most sweeping changes, since the products
were first introduced to the Windows platform, in order to achieve
NEMSIS Gold Certification. I’m
not going to discuss what NEMSIS is in this article – that has been
covered in depth in other forums. However, if you don’t know what
NEMSIS is, PLEASE visit
https://www.gotomeeting.com/register/693126035 to view a
recording of the live webinar that we held in February that provides
an overview of NEMSIS and what it means to your service.
NEMSIS certification has brought many new fields for information
gathering to these products. In Sweet-Field Data, the new
fields have not had the type of impact that they have had in
Sweet-Billing. The transition for your crew members from version
5.2 to version 5.3 should not be a major event.
That’s not to
say that version 5.3 is a non-event for
Sweet-Field Data.
Crew members will benefit from several new mini-features like:
the APGAR score calculator, Pediatric Trauma Score
Calculator, improvements to calculation of the Revised Trauma
Score and more.
However in Sweet-Billing, the impact is much more apparent.
New codes, tabs, and fields have been added to support the NEMSIS
data elements and to improve the organization of data in Sweet-Billing
in general.
Most of the data fields that have previously been presented in a
grid on the Field Info tab have now been moved to new or existing
tabs in the system. This means that Call Type setup can be used to
turn these fields on/off and set defaults.
Our NEMSIS implementation gives new importance to company
authorizations for customers with multiple directories. A new
utility is included in 5.3 that allows management of company
authorizations for codes across directories without having to access
each individual code. Billing Service customers that have avoided
using company authorizations in the past because of the setup time
required will appreciate this utility.
Beta testing of Sweet-Billing and Sweet-Field Data is
scheduled to begin in mid-March. General availability of Sweet-Billing
and Sweet-Field Data version 5.3 is targeted for the end of
April.
A webinar is scheduled for March 13 to provide an introduction to
what’s new in Sweet-Billing and Sweet-Field Data 5.3. Click here to register.
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