How to Complete an Evaluation

When you complete an Evaluation in ALIS, this begins a three-part process.

The three parts are: the Evaluation (the topic of this article!), the Service Plan, and the Care Plan which creates the schedule for Care Tracking.

Completing this process for all residents results in a standardized review of all your residents' needs, and a clear plan to provide for their needs in ALIS Care Tracking.

All three parts of the process can be generated as PDFs if you need to print them or or sign them on paper.

The Evaluation you use in ALIS is highly customizable, and must be implemented with ALIS Onboarding. We have template options you can choose from, or we can add a fully custom evaluation.

Completing an Evaluation can be broken down into three steps:

1. Reviewing the current health profile information

2. Carefully answering questions about the resident's needs and acuity, and adding notes

3. Deciding the date of expiration and next reason for evaluating the resident
   
   

Start New Evaluation

You can find the Start New Evaluation button for your resident in a couple of places:

• The Evaluation Center
  • You may find the resident in the Needs Attention section if their profile is in the Applicant stage, or if their current evaluation is expired.
  • If they have not been evaluated in ALIS before but have a Current Resident profile, you will find them in the All Residents tab.
  • For more information about the Evaluation Center, check out this guide: Evaluation Center Reference Guide
• The Resident Profile
  • Find the blue bar titled Evaluations and Service Plans. If there is no evaluation or service plan in progress, you have a Start New Evaluation button at the top left of the section.

The Start New Evaluation button is not available if the resident has an in-progress evaluation or service plan. In order to start a new one, you must click the Continue button for either document and complete the process, or you can delete the in-progress evaluation.

It may be more beneficial to continue and complete an existing document, so that when you do start a new one, it will retain previous answers, giving you fewer items to update.

Evaluation Information

Once you click Start New Evaluation, the first screen requires a few key details: 

• Confirm the resident's Product Type (AL, MC, Independent, etc.)
• Confirm the date of the evaluation. If you are entering in details from an evaluation initially recorded on a previous day, you may find it important to adjust this date.
• Select a Reason. This list is customizable to suit your organization's requirements. If you need to update the options in this list, contact ALIS Support or your onboarding manager. This selection will estimate the length of time before another evaluation is required, but you can always customize the expiration date later.

• Add any internal notes to the text box if you want to document something that won't display on the final PDF document of the evaluation. This text will only display in ALIS, and not on any printed documents.
• Once you click Save Evaluation Information, you are then prompted to complete the different sections of the evaluation.

Before you go on to add information in the sections on the left column of the page, notice the Download Evaluation button above the sections. If you click the option Filled Template, this will generate a preview of the document you are completing, including any notes you add to the answers. Use this to preview the document at any time during the process.

On the right above the evaluation are a few status indicators:

• The status bar containing a percentage shows how many of the total questions have been answered.
• The red box will show you the number of required questions remaining before you will have the Complete button available for this evaluation.
• The yellow/orange box will show you the number of not-required questions that have not yet been answered.
• The care points total and resulting care level will display in the box below the percentage of completed questions.
  • Resident Care Levels are calculated by the number of points accrued in the evaluation.
  • Points values are associated with answer choices, and can be overridden by administrators. Read on for more details about points and care levels!

Health Profile and COVID-19 Vaccination

These are the two sections always showing at the top of the evaluation, and you don't necessarily need to add information here, but you should review it for accuracy and completeness. 

The Health Profile here is the same exact section you have on the Resident Profile, and any changes you make here or on the resident profile will display in the other location.

• This information fills out the cover pages of your Evaluation, Service Plan, and Care Plan, so it is a good idea to review and make sure the details are complete.
• When you make any updates to this information, remember to click the blue Update button at the bottom right of the section.
• This is the only part of the evaluation that does not auto-save as you type. 
• All of this information is easily accessed for all residents in the Health Profile report on the Reports page.

The COVID-19 Vaccination section gives us the chance to add vaccine details if we have not already done so for this resident. Read this article for more information about the COVID-19 Center: ALIS COVID-19 Center

We can also use the Upload Certificate button to upload the vaccination card, which can be set to display in the resident's Emergency Packet. If the certificate has already been uploaded, you will have a link to download it under the COVID-19 Vaccine column. 

For more information about the Emergency Packet, check out these articles:

How to set up your Emergency Packet

How to Generate a Resident Emergency Packet

Answer Questions and Add Notes

After the above-mentioned sections, we get into the custom parts of the evaluation. All the questions, answer choices, points, and needs triggered to the Service Plan can be changed to suit your organization's needs. 

The color on the right side of the section indicates the following:

• Red means there are questions in the section that must be answered before the Complete Evaluation button is available.
• Yellow/Orange indicates that there are questions in the section that are not required, but have not yet been answered.
• Green indicates that all questions in the section have been answered.

Under the section names, you can also see a total of needs triggered and care points triggered by the answer choices within the section. This also displays if any Care Packages are triggered within a section. 

For more information about Care Packages, read this article: Care Packages

Click a section to view the questions, and answer them to your best ability.

• For questions that simply give you a box to type information, these record details to display on the evaluation only, and do not flow the Service Plan.
• If you answer a single-choice or multi-select question, it is possible that an orange box will display to the right describing the resident's need. This means information will go on the Service Plan. The Notes field is especially impactful for these questions. The notes flow to the Service Plan, and if the need also triggers a task on the resident's Care Plan, the notes can serve as instructions for caregivers.

Points

Some answer choices may trigger a points value displaying to the right. If you hover your mouse over the points value, you may have an Edit Pencil appear. This depends on your security permissions within ALIS. You can click on the pencil to change the points value associated with the question.

Evaluation Reasons and Expiration

When you are done answering all required questions and adding notes, the green Complete button will become available at the top right of your screen. 

The next step is to determine the next reason and date in the future when your team will once again complete the evaluation again for the resident. The best practice is to recomplete the evaluations two to four times yearly. If a Change of Condition occurs, you can always recomplete the evaluation at any time.

Remember that each time an evaluation is recompleted, the same answers and notes are retained, so you are only reviewing the information for potential changes!

The date that you set in this pop-up will determine when the evaluation displays as Expired in the Evaluation Center and other locations. You can edit this later if you are not sure the best date to select.

Most likely it makes sense to click Go To Service Plan as a next step. That way, you can configure your Service Plan and then collect all signatures for both the evaluation and service plan in one session. 

To learn more about completing your Service Plan, read this article:

How to Complete a Service Plan

Signatures

As mentioned above, it likely makes sense to collect the signatures after you have completed the Service Plan. The number of signatures required for either or both documents is customizable for your organization. 

After you complete the Evaluation, you can then access the Evaluation & Service Plan Details page. This is where you can collect signatures for both the Evaluation and Service Plan once each is completed.

For more information about the Evaluation & Service Plan Details page and signing documents, check out these articles:

Evaluation Center Reference Guide

E-Sign Evaluations and Service Plans