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Concussion Infographic

Carly — Tue, 21 May 2013 12:33:41 +0000

We’ve been talking about concussions a lot lately – how to assess them, common symptoms and risks. We integrated the SCAT2 within the Presagia Sports Athlete Electronic Health Record (EHR) system to equip our customers with a tool for consistent and effective concussion assessments and in turn the ability to make the best return to play decisions and provide better athlete care. We’ve written a whitepaper about it, blogged about it here, here and here, and now for something a little more artistic.

Click on the image below for a PDF version of the infographic which we invite you to print out or pass along!

How do you manage your athletes’ concussions?

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Q&A: Designating Leaves Retroactively

Carly — Tue, 14 May 2013 14:16:14 +0000

Q? Sometimes when we’re responding to FMLA requests, our notices don’t go out on time. We still ask that employees submit medical certifications to support it but go ahead and approve leaves and retroactively designate absences. Is this a valid way to handle it?

Leave Case Manager in Minnesota, 1,200 employees

A: This approach is a little tricky. The FMLA states as per 29 CFR § 825.300 “when an employee requests FMLA leave, or when the employer acquires knowledge that an employee’s leave may be for an FMLA-qualifying reason, the employer must notify the employee of the employee’s eligibility to take FMLA leave within five business days, absent extenuating circumstances.”

However after an iconic FMLA case in 2002, Ragsdale v. Wolverine World Wide, Inc. the Department of Labor (DOL) revised their retroactive rules to support the Supreme Court’s decision. Under the new regulations, retroactive designation is allowed if an employer fails to or is unable to designate the leave as FMLA in a timely manner. However it should be mutually agreed upon by the employer and employee and cannot cause harm or injury to the employee as a result. The DOL provides the following as an example:

“Henry plans to take 12 weeks of FMLA leave beginning in August for the birth of his second child. Earlier in the leave year, however, Henry took two weeks of annual leave to care for his mother following her hospitalization for a serious health condition. Henry’s employer failed to notify him at the time of his mother’s hospitalization that the time he spent caring for his mother would be counted as FMLA leave. If Henry can establish that he would have made other arrangements for the care of his mother if he had known that the time would be counted against his FMLA entitlement, the two weeks his employer failed to appropriately designate may not count against his FMLA entitlement.”

Be careful when designating retroactively without the employee’s consent. An employer who regularly, and without justification, fails to issue a timely notice to the employee runs the risk of a claim that it interfered with, restrained, or improperly denied an employee’s FMLA rights. In short, stick with the five business day rule as often as you can.

Have a question you’d like our Compliance Team to answer? Send your questions to compliance@presagia.com and remember to include your state and how many employees you have.

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Integrating an Athlete EHR and the SCAT2

Carly — Mon, 13 May 2013 21:08:11 +0000

In earlier concussion-related posts – Concussions 101 and What is the SCAT2 – we looked at what causes concussions and their symptoms and then explored the SCAT2, a world-class concussion assessment tool that we’ve integrated into the Presagia Sports Athlete Electronic Health Record (EHR) system. To refresh your memory on what the SCAT2 is and where it came from, click here.

We made the choice to integrate the SCAT2 in Presagia Sports with the ultimate goal of supporting better athlete care. Concussions have received a lot of media attention lately and the reoccurring themes are how poorly they’re often dealt with and how athletes aren’t properly reporting them. The SCAT2 allows coaches, athletic trainers or other members of the medical team working with an athlete to help prevent both scenarios. Starting with the ability to conduct baselines, athletes are engaged in a conversation about concussions, some of the symptoms that may occur and different ways in which they will be affected including short-term memory loss, unsteadiness, blurred vision, etc. The baseline assessment is also a crucial component of properly assessing if an athlete has suffered a concussion. Due to the fact that certain elements of the SCAT2 are based on subjective things like memory or coordination, it is especially valuable to have baseline values to compare a new score to. This way, the person conducting the assessment can make a return to play decision more confidently. Once an athlete has been assessed, Presagia Sports’ SCAT2 automatically produces an ‘advice to athlete’ document that can be given to the athlete or their guardian, and includes helpful information about concussions, symptoms to watch for and other important points.

Having an integrated SCAT2 in your Athlete EHR also allows the entire medical team to be notified of the event and appropriately adjust any treatment plans or medications for the concussed athlete. Certain medications should be avoided after a concussion, in particular aspirin, blood thinners or medications with codeine, so if your athlete gets a concussion at an away game, their physician at home can adjust this and have an alternative ready before the athlete even returns.

Additionally, by integrating all this information within Presagia Sports, you can see all assessments and baselines whenever you’d like. You don’t need to file them, bring a folder of baselines with you whenever traveling or dig through old tests to do a manual comparison. All of the information is as portable and accessible as your smartphone or tablet.

If you’d like more information about integrating the SCAT2, download a free copy of our whitepaper Keep Their Heads in the Game: Manage Concussion Assessments like a Pro with the SCAT2.

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Presagia Partners With Physiotec to Deliver Optimized Care to Athletes

Carly — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 14:18:28 +0000

Montreal, Canada, April 26, 2013 – Presagia, the leading developer of web-based and mobile Athlete Electronic Health Record (EHR) software solutions, announced today that they have partnered with Physiotec, a forerunner in the development of health and fitness exercise software. The integration of Physiotec’s software with the Presagia Sports Athlete EHR will enable sports medicine professionals to better engage athletes with interactive exercise and rehabilitation programs.

Presagia Sports is a secure web-based and mobile-accessible Athlete EHR and concussion assessment system that centralizes athlete health data including injuries and illnesses, treatments, surgeries, and medications. It also provides communication tools to connect the medical team in support of collaborative healthcare.

Physiotec specializes in interactive exercise programs for rehab therapy and fitness. It’s software solution includes over 5,000 unique exercises comprehensively presented in video, photo and written formats, making it an invaluable resource for athletes and medical professionals during treatment and rehab, as well as for strength and conditioning.

“We’re delighted to be working in partnership with Presagia. This collaboration stemmed from both parties’ willingness to provide their clients with a state-of-the-art revolutionary yet simple integrated solution,” states Pierre Labonte, President of Physiotec. “Through its shared vision with Presagia, Physiotec reinforces the vital role that it plays in today’s fitness, wellness, and sports performance industries.”

Through the integration, the Presagia Sports mobile app will include a section showing all of the Physiotec exercise programs prescribed for an athlete. Users can then view the details of any exercise program and launch Physiotec to modify the program or watch the videos.

“Physiotec’s and Presagia Sports’ web-based offerings complement each other perfectly; users will now be able to navigate from one system to the other with a single sign in and prescribe specific exercise programs quickly and easily without any duplication of data entry. We’re thrilled to offer our customers access to Physiotec’s best-in-class library of targeted exercise videos and documentation,” declares Donald Olds, President and CEO of Presagia.

Athletes will also be able to take advantage of this powerful functionality, directly on their mobile phones. They will be able to see all of their exercise programs, current and historical, and watch how-to videos. This will bring a new level of interactive engagement by providing athletes with an invaluable resource to help them follow their treatment plans, resulting in faster, healthier recoveries.

For more information about Presagia Sports, visit www.presagiasports.com.

About Presagia
Presagia provides secure web-based health management software solutions used by athletics organizations worldwide. Presagia Sports is a multi-sport Athlete Electronic Health Record (EHR) and injury management system that centralizes information needed by athletic trainers, physicians, coaches and physiotherapists while streamlining data entry. It also includes real-time reporting and collaboration tools. Presagia customers include the World Anti-Doping Agency, the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Association, the English Institute of Sport and the Irish Sport Council. www.presagiasports.com

About Physiotec
Since 1993, Physiotec has been a forerunner in the development of health and fitness exercise software in the fields of physiotherapy, occupational therapy, manual therapy, sports & fitness. Physiotec offers interactive solutions with thousands of different exercises devised for physical therapists, athletic therapists, kinesiologists, chiropractors and personal trainers. www.physiotec.ca

Media Contact:
Geoff Simpson
Director of Sales & Marketing, Presagia
1-514-847-7474 x742
gsimpson@presagia.com

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Presagia Sports featured in Training & Conditioning Magazine

Carly — Mon, 08 Apr 2013 14:48:21 +0000

Montreal, Canada, April 8, 2013 – Presagia, the leading developer of web-based athlete health management software solutions, is pleased to have been featured in the latest issue of Training & Conditioning magazine.

T&C is a publication geared towards the sports medicine industry and those professionals involved in the training, conditioning, rehab and care of competitive athletes at all levels. In the featured article, On the Front Lines, T&C focuses on a wide range of tools to help prevent, diagnose and assist healing of concussions. These include software, fitness training tools and nutritional supplements. Presagia Sports, a secure web-based and mobile-accessible Athlete Electronic Health Record (EHR) system, was chosen based on its recently integrated SCAT2, one of the most widely used concussion assessment tools.

Click here to read the full article or click here to browse through the whole magazine online and flip to page 19.

With the integrated mobile SCAT2, Presagia Sports users can assess their athletes for concussions via their smartphones and tablets using a step by step process. The system provides automatic calculations, a built in timer and can store baselines assessments, allowing for more accurate assessments to be made. All information stored within the Athlete EHR is centralized, meaning the entire medical team is instantly notified when a possible concussion takes place, allowing them to modify treatment and medical plans if necessary to deliver optimized care to their athletes.

For more information about Presagia Sports and the mobile concussion assessment tool, please visit www.presagiasports.com.

About Presagia
Presagia provides secure web-based health management software solutions used by athletics organizations worldwide. Presagia Sports is a multi-sport Athlete Electronic Health Record (EHR) and injury management system that centralizes information needed by athletic trainers, physicians, coaches and physiotherapists while streamlining data entry. It also includes real-time reportin g and collaboration tools. Presagia customers include the World Anti-Doping Agency, the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Association, the English Institute of Sport and the Irish Sport Council.

Media Contact:
Geoff Simpson
Director of Sales & Marketing, Presagia
1-514-847-7474 x742
gsimpson@presagia.com

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What Is the SCAT2?

Carly — Fri, 22 Mar 2013 16:11:37 +0000

In our earlier Concussions 101 post, we looked at what concussions are, how they’re caused, some of their symptoms, and briefly covered the Sport Concussion Assessment Tool 2 (SCAT2).

Not long after our summer 2012 launch of the mobile version of Presagia Sports, we added an integrated SCAT2 to enable our customers to leverage this widely used concussion assessment tool anywhere via their smartphone or tablet. Since then, our customers have benefited from being able to perform baseline assessments and evaluate their athletes for possible concussions when they occur, whether during a practice or at a game. Through our own research, we found the SCAT2 to be one of the most straight forward and accurate methods for assessing concussions, but what exactly is it?

In 2008, at the Third International Conference on Concussion in Sport in Zurich, Switzerland, a group of experts published a concussion evaluation tool to implement a standardized assessment methodology, the SCAT2. It was an updated form of the original SCAT published in 2005 after the second conference held in Prague, Czech Republic.

The intent of the SCAT, a two page assessment, was to create a standardized tool that could be used for patient education and physician assessments of sports-related concussions. Developed by combining eight different evaluation forms from varied international organizations, it was seen as an “initial mandate” by its authors. Just a few years later, the SCAT2 surpassed its predecessor.

The SCAT2 consists of a series of questions and tests, each of which is scored. It includes a “how do you feel” questionnaire, the Glasgow Coma Scale (GCS) response test, the Maddocks sideline questions, balance and coordination tests, as well as the Standardized Assessment of Concussion (SAC) which gauges orientation, memory and concentration. The individual scores are then combined to obtain a set of overall scores indicating the number and severity of symptoms. When the assessment is done on paper- usually lasting 15 to 20 minutes – the examiner must manually calculate the individual and overall scores.

In the days or weeks following a serious concussion, repeated SCAT2 assessments may be conducted to measure the athlete’s progress of recovery.
Since its publication, it has become accepted as the standard diagnosis for sports related concussions. The NFL (National Football League) has created a league specific adaptation of it and it is regularly used by the NHL (National Hockey League).

In our next post, we’ll look at some of the specific benefits of integrating the SCAT2 within an Athlete Electronic Health Record (EHR) system and why we chose to do so in Presagia Sports. If you’d like more information about the SCAT2 in the meantime, download a free copy of our whitepaper Keep Their Heads in the Game: Manage Concussion Assessments like a Pro with the SCAT2.

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Second Edition FMLA Guide including DOL Final Rule Amendments

Carly — Tue, 19 Mar 2013 18:30:50 +0000

On the 20th anniversary of the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA), the Department of Labor (DOL) announced their Final Rule amending the FMLA for military leaves and airline flight crew rules.

While the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) and the Airline Flight Crew Technical Corrections Act (AFCTCA) were both passed in Congress and signed into law there were elements that were never properly implemented and still needed clarification years later. Published by the DOL on February 5, 2013 these changes went into effect March 8.

Some highlights of NDAA include:

Veterans have been clearly defined and are officially covered under the Act
A qualifying serious injury or illness of a covered veteran has been also been defined by four different categories
The amount of time an employee can take under the qualifying exigency leave related to a servicemember’s “Rest and Recuperation” has been increased
Qualifying exigency leave has been expanded to allow eligible employees to take to care for a servicemember’s parent for certain activities
Non-military affiliated healthcare providers may now certify servicemembers and veterans

Changes made to the AFCTCA include:

Airline flight crew members may now take up to 72 days of leave during any 12 month period
Employers must track FMLA leave in increments of no greater than one day for all absence types
New record keeping requirements have been established for employers

In order to help clarify these changes and what they mean for employers we’ve released a second edition of Presagia’s FMLA Guide which includes a detailed overview of the FMLA, common mistakes employers make and how to avoid them. It also includes a closer look at the NDAA and AFCTCA and what the DOL’s Final Rule changes within them. Click here to download your free copy of Presagia’s FMLA Guide today.

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Whitepaper – Presagia’s FMLA Guide, Second Edition

Carly — Thu, 14 Mar 2013 14:09:57 +0000

In light of the Department of Labor’s (DOL) Final Rule – announced on the 20th anniversary of the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) - which amends the Act concerning military leaves and airline flight crew rules, we decided to release a second edition of Presagia’s FMLA Guide.

The objective of this guide is to help employers have a deeper understanding of the FMLA by:

Defining the terms used in the FMLA
Explaining important amendments and the DOL’s Final Rule
Identifying common mistakes and misconceptions
Providing employers with a structured approach to building an FMLA best-practice compliance strategy

Download Whitepaper

Growing Number of U.S. Employers Insourcing Leave Management with Presagia

Carly — Fri, 22 Feb 2013 15:44:33 +0000

Montreal, Canada, February 22, 2013 – Presagia, the leading developer of Software as a Service (SaaS) absence management solutions, announced today that it has signed eight new customers this past quarter for its flagship product, Presagia Enterprise. This supports the growing trend of employers turning to sophisticated workflow automation and decision support software to manage employee absence.

The new customers include Global 500 and Fortune 500 companies and represent a variety of industries such as financial services, media, manufacturing, law, and healthcare.

Presagia Enterprise is a secure web-based system that enables employers to manage leave in compliance with the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA), the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and 450 pieces of state legislation, alongside their own company policies. It also includes tools to support Stay at Work and Return to Work programs.

This continued growth is driven by the need to comply with an ever increasing number of laws that govern leave and disability at the federal, state and, in some areas, at a county or municipal level. Presagia is currently tracking almost 200 pending and proposed laws in order to better prepare its customers as they look to the future.

“Presagia’s success in the marketplace has been driven by its unique focus on compliance and workflow automation,” explains Allan Compagnon, Presagia’s Compliance Officer and Practice Leader. “We update our Compliance Engine, workflow and leave documentation on a monthly basis, ensuring that our customers will always be working with the latest legislation and legal best practices.”

With Presagia Enterprise, from the moment an employee makes their leave request through to their eventual return to work, the system guides users through each step in the process and provides wizards with decision support to complete each task. This includes automatically generating all of the forms and letters that need to be delivered to the employee. Workflow and decision support is even provided for less common tasks, such as entitlement exhaustion, growing into eligibility, appeals, reconsiderations, recertification and responding to missed deadlines.

“Traditionally, the problem with using an insourced software system to manage leave was that most were basically data entry systems that still required a lot of knowledge on the part of the users,” explains Donald Olds, Presagia’s CEO. “Presagia’s solutions provide a level of workflow automation and decision support that makes it so that you don’t need to be an expert to use the software. Automation of mundane and repetitive tasks like generating leave correspondence packages also significantly reduces workload.”

“By managing leave internally using Presagia’s software, employers gain much better visibility and control of employee absence. They also ensure consistent and equitable application of leave laws by uniting all users, from HR to front-line managers, in a single, centralized system,” adds Olds.

For more information about Presagia Enterprise, visit www.presagia.com/for-employers. For Presagia’s FMLA and pregnancy leave infographics, visit www.presagia.com/infographic and www.presagia.com/pregnancyinfographic.

About Presagia
With offices in the U.S. and Canada, Presagia provides integrated absence management software solutions to employers and Human Resources Outsourcing providers. These innovative solutions enable organizations to increase efficiency, improve compliance, control absence, and reduce risks and costs. Presagia customers are located around the world and include enterprises such as Ceridian, CenturyLink/Qwest, Scripps Health, American Foods Group, and Multicare Health System. www.presagia.com

Media Contact:
Geoff Simpson
Director of Sales & Marketing, Presagia
1-514-847-7474 x742
gsimpson@presagia.com

Updated FMLA Intermittent Leave Guide

Carly — Tue, 12 Feb 2013 15:59:18 +0000

Here at Presagia, we’re always looking for new ways to improve ourselves and our material – even after we’ve published it! When we had a look back at the Presagia’s FMLA Intermittent Leave Guide, we decided we could simplify the different faces of intermittent leaves, so we did. In this updated version, it is separated by types – certification, medical condition and absence duration – instead of one long list and now looks like this:

By Certification Types

Certified – Predictable Leave
An employee requests intermittent leave in advance and it is approved and thus scheduled for a foreseeable event. This is a best case scenario for employers as it is straightforward and can be planned around. An example of this would be scheduled appointments or follow ups for a known and existing medical condition.
Certified – Unpredictable Leave
Related to an unpredictable but certified health condition where the condition is not always predictable but for which typical frequency and duration are generally known for example, severe morning sickness.
Uncertified – Unexpected Absence
Essentially a no-show kind of situation in which the employee is not expected or certified to miss work, but does so anyway and claims intermittent leave as the reason. Even if this kind of absence is related to a serious health condition that qualifies, the employee is obligated to request and certify the leave before an employer is obligated to extend the protection of the Act to those absences.

By Medical Condition Type

Serious health conditions of a chronic and ongoing nature
Chronic and ongoing conditions may generate absences that are predictable (as in regularly scheduled dialysis treatments) or unpredictable (asthma or diabetes). In this case there is a regularly recurring need for leave for a known and ongoing medical condition that the employee will have to deal with on a continual basis for an indefinite period of time.
Serious health conditions requiring periodic treatment
Conditions in this category generally include temporary medical conditions for which the treatments are specific and recovery is likely. Both predictable and unpredictable absences may result from these conditions as well.
Serious health conditions of an episodic nature
Conditions in this category almost always generate absences of an unpredictable nature. Although the frequency and duration are generally known, the events are often unpredictable. The condition may be either temporary or of a longer term duration.

By Absence Duration Type

Full day absences
Time is designated against the employee’s workweek for each full day of absence until exhausted.
Partial day absences
Only the actual time used for the absence can be booked against the employee, absent unusual circumstances.

Other small changes and clarifications were made throughout as well, so click here to download a free copy of the improved Presagia’s FMLA Intermittent Leave Guide.

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