Freemed-YiRC FAQ
V2.0

Table Of Contents:

  • What is Freemed-YiRC?
  • Freemed-YiRC Features: Current and Planned
  • How does Freemed-YiRC run?
  • What is needed to run Freemed-YiRC?
  • Can I see a demo of Freemed-YiRC?
  • Where can I get Freemed-YiRC?
  • How much documentation is there for Freemed-YiRC?
  • Why am I giving away Freemed-YiRC for free???
  • What can you do to help Freemed-YiRC?
  • Where do I give feedback, submit bug reports, or ask questions about Freemed-YiRC???

    • What is Freemed-YiRC?

    Freemed-YiRC aims to be a COMPLETE software package to help YiRC agencies in the tasks of:
  • Data Gathering
  • Contact Manager (Which takes the place of the standard Staff Database, Resident Database, and contact manager)
  • Casenotes
  • Clinical Casenotes (i.e. it will have MACSIS/Medicare functionality built-in)
  • Incident Reports
  • Service Plans
  • CRISIS (Emergency) Information
  • Case Management
  • Electronic Data Exchange
  • Resident Info (in applicable situations (i.e. a resident moves from one program to another))
  • Incident Reports
  • Casenotes
  • Clinical Casenotes
  • Service Plans
  • etc...
  • Medical Billing
  • Some Accounting/Payroll functions (in terms of timecard and medical billing functions.... Freemed-YiRC will NOT include general ledger/AR/AP, etc... functions, HOWEVER, Freemed-YiRC can be modified to export data to a product that does these things...)
  • MACSIS/Medicaid billing
  • Insurance billing functions
  • Direct billing (i.e. directly billing counties, agencies, or even parents)

    • Freemed-YiRC Features: Current and Planned

    Currently Freemed-YiRC includes:
  • Contact Manager (Demographic Info, Addresses, E-Mail Addresses, Phone Numbers, etc...) for Staff/Residents/Contacts
  • Security Database (which restricts what users are allowed to see)
  • Group Database (i.e. a database of all the facilities an agency maintains)
  • Incident Report System
  • Medical Information Databases (Diagnosis Code info, Clinical Services Database, etc...)
  • Semi-Functional Clinical Casenote data gathering & formatting system.
    • What Freemed-YiRC plans to include:
  • Casenotes
  • Service Plans
  • CRISIS (Emergency) Information
  • Case Management
  • Medical Billing
  • Self Healing properties (i.e. backup and fault tolerance features)
  • Data Exchange Methods including HL7 and XML
  • Integrated Local (intra-office) and Internet e-mail client.

    • How does Freemed-YiRC run?

    Freemed-YiRC can be accessed through ANY standard Internet browser (i.e. Netscape Communicator/Navigator, Microsoft Internet Explorer, etc...). A person is given a username and a password to the system by the system administrator (or personnel manager, or whoever normally does this function). Now, Freemed-YiRC is built around the fact that there is going to be A LOT of confidential data in this system. And not everyone is allowed to access all of this data. Hence, users in Freemed-YiRC are going to be restricted in the tasks they do. If they do not have access to certain functions, they will not be allowed to see certain information. As I work for a YiRC agency I have seen this happen too many times. There is a complete security system built into Freemed-YiRC to insure that the users do the tasks they are assigned... this means no snooping :).

    Users are presented with menus which look and feel like many Internet websites. This can really reduce staff computer training time due to fact that many people now have home computers and are comfortable with the Internet. Most of the systems I have seen (including our current system) are text-only, and can be very scary and intimidating to new staff. The entire system (outside of some System Administrator functions) is "point and click" and graphical in nature. Everything from Incident Reports to Casenotes are entered in this fashion. There is a lot of error-checking already built-in and much more to come.

    What is needed to run Freemed-YiRC?

    Freemed-YiRC (just like the Internet) is based on a 'Client/Server' model of computing. These means that most of the processing is done on one central computer, but the data can be accessed and served to many smaller (less powerful) machines.

    SERVER HARDWARE: For most agencies, only one server actually stores and serves the data. This needs to be a rather fast server (i.e. a fast Pentium III or celeron with lots of RAM). A VERY fast server can be purchased for less than $2,000 which should more than adequately suffice for the task.

    SERVER SOFTWARE: For the most part, the software is ENTIRELY FREE! The Operating System (OS) for the server is Linux. This a free and extremely powerful Unix-like operating system can be freely copied, modified, and even downloaded from the Internet. I've tested Freemed-YiRC to run on Red Hat Linux and Linux-Mandrake and it runs fine on both. I recommend either. There are many different distributions of Linux, and Freemed-YiRC should work with all with little to no modification. Freemed-YiRC requires web serving software, this is included with Linux, and is also free. The web server is known as Apache and the vast majority of web servers on the Internet use Apache (including LHS Family and Youth Services). The data is stored in a standardized database known as an SQL database. Freemed-YiRC currently supports either PostgreSQL (FREE) or MySQL (semi-FREE). I recommend both, and both are usually included with Linux!!! I have plans to include support for larger databases such as Oracle, Sybase, and DB2 in the future!!! Lastly, Freemed-YiRC requires a programming language called PHP. Again, PHP is included with Linux (at least with Red Hat and Mandrake) and is also free!!! Of course, you'll need to download Freemed-YiRC also. It can be downloaded FREELY from the Freemed-YiRC site.

    CLIENT HARDWARE/SOFTWARE: All the client requires is access to the Freemed-YiRC webserver (either over the Internet or using a private LAN/WAN (Local Area Network/Wide Area Network)), and a good web browser (Netscape/Internet Explorer). So, in theory, you could use any old 486 running Win31 and Netscape all the way up to a brand new Pentium machine running Win95/98/2000/Unix/Linux and Netscape or Internet Explorer (or any other good web browser).

    Can I see a demo of Freemed-YiRC?

    YES! A 'live demo' of the latest version of Freemed-YiRC is always running on the Freemed-YiRC website which can be found at:

    http://freemed-yirc.familyandyouth.org

    Where can I get Freemed-YiRC?

    All source code, documentation, and data models for the software can be found on the site:

    http://freemed-yirc.familyandyouth.org

    How much documentation is there for Freemed-YiRC?

    Since Freemed-YiRC is in Beta (i.e. a "Work In Progress") there isn't a full manual for it. However, there is a lot of technical documentation for anyone who wants to use (or abuse) Freemed-YiRC. When a full version of Freemed-YiRC comes out, a complete manual will be available for it.

    Why am I giving away Freemed-YiRC for free???

    I am a firm believer in FREE SOFTWARE. If it weren't for the efforts of the many free software programmers on the Internet, my agency (and undoubtedly many others) wouldn't be able to do the things we do on our very limited budgets. FREE software gives the user the ability to make any modification to the software they wish. If a particular user is savvy enough, and wants a certain feature added to the software, but knows it may be a while before the author(s) of the software can implement it, that user can implement the feature him or herself!!! And when enough people are using the software and are giving the author(s) feedback, that piece of software can become a VERY FAST and ROBUST product tailored to any users needs. This is in sharp contrast to "proprietary" software in which a user is not allowed to modify it, and has to pay for each copy installed. With FREE software you can install one copy or 1 million and pay ABSOLUTELY NO LICENSE FEES!

    Freemed-YiRC is licensed under the GNU General Public License (GPL). This means a user has complete FREEDOM in using, copying, modifying, installing, and distributing Freemed-YiRC.

    Of course, there are many other reasons why I am doing this. I've seen how hard it is to get information passed (electronically and otherwise) from one agency to another. It a lot of these places were using the same software (or software that allowed data exchange) then this would not be hassle it is today!

    I plan to implement MANY features into Freemed-YiRC which will allow for data exchange as well as import/export functions (like accounting/payroll info to accounting packages that support importing data). There are emerging standards for this (like HL7 and XML) and I will take a look at all of them, as well look at feedback and do the best that I can to implement these!

    What can you do to help Freemed-YiRC?

    USE IT. :) I work for a child-caring agency, but just using one agency is pretty myopic. I need to know the needs and wants of many agencies in order to make it a really robust system. Eventually, more programmers may start working on Freemed-YiRC. If a user wants to implement a change to Freemed-YiRC please feel free to do so! As mentioned above, Freemed-YiRC is GPL'd, so you can do pretty much whatever you want to it. And if a user sends me a modification that proves useful to them and may be useful to others, I will probably include it in a future release of Freemed-YiRC!

    Where do I give feedback, submit bug reports, or ask questions about Freemed-YiRC???

    You can contact me regarding any aspect of Freemed-YiRC via my e-mail address at joethielen@familyandyouth.org

    Document By: Joe Thielen Last Modified: 07/17/2000