About FMYiRC

From FMYiRCWiki

What is Freemed-YiRC?

1 Short Answer
2 Long Answer
3 Documentation
4 Authors

Short Answer

Freemed-YiRC is a software project which aims to provide a product capable of providing Child Caring Agencies/Youth in Residential Care (YiRC) agencies with a fully functional internal case management/information system.

Long Answer

The name Freemed-YiRC, also abbreviated as FMYiRC, is made of up two parts:

"Freemed" comes from the FreeMED software project, in which early versions of Freemed-YiRC were derived from
"YiRC" stands for "Youth in Residential Care", the type of agency this software is aimed at.

Freemed-YiRC is FREE/OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE.
- The software/source code is freely available for download from the FMYiRC site.
- Freemed-YiRC is licensed under the GNU General Public License (GPL)
  - In short, the GPL states that you are allowed to freely download, use, copy, and modify this software.
Software upon which FMYiRC Uses:
- Operating System: Linux
- Webserver Software: Apache
- Database: MySQL
- Programming Language: PHP
FMYiRC is web-based!
- It is loaded on a Linux server at your agency.
  - Your data is stored on your server at your agency.
  - You own your data.
- All that is required to access FMYiRC is a computer with Internet access and a web browser
  - Clients/workstations can use Windows, Linux, MacOS, etc...
  - The Mozilla Firefox web browser is highly recommended
- With additional networking setup by your agency, one FMYiRC server can be used by many multiple off-site locations and mobile users.
FMYiRC was designed with security in mind
- Anyone in child care circles will tell you that all types of security are important when it comes to information relating to youth.
- For one, much consideration has to be paid to the HIPAA privacy rule!!!
- Access to FMYiRC can be restricted to the HTTPS protocol. This uses encryption (SSL) to ensure sensitive information is not intercepted by 3rd parties during transit across your network or the Internet.
- A properly configured FMYiRC Linux server will have it's own firewall, in addition to the main Internet firewall at your agency.
- FMYiRC itself has a very fine-grade access control system. The administrator can control exactly what individual users have access to.
FMYiRC was designed to be reliable and fault-tolerant
- The entire design of FMYiRC was created by taking into account years of previous information system designs.
- FMYiRC is easy to backup.
  - There are only two major pieces to FMYiRC to backup:
    - The database... very easy to backup with MySQL
    - The FMYiRC software itself... contained in one place, very easy to backup using operating system utilities
  - FMYiRC includes utilities to back itself up!
- FMYiRC can make use of MySQL server real-time replication.
  - You can set up two FMYiRC servers for a high level of fault-tolerance.
  - If one server goes down, users can switch over to the second server in very short order.
  - Using a dual-server setup, downtime due to server maintenance or upgrades becomes next to nothing. You can switch your users to the secondary server, take the primary server down, perform the maintenance/upgrades without the pressure of a down server situation, bring it back up, switch the users back to the primary server, then do the same cycle with the secondary server if necessary.
FMYiRC is modular
- If you would like to add functionality to FMYiRC, you can do so by creating new software modules.
- Creating new modules for use with FMYiRC is relatively easy, documentation for this process is available.
- Too see the current list of available modules for Freemed-YiRC, please visit the Module Index.
FMYiRC is capable of electronic data transfer
- Current capabilities:
  - Electronically billing the Ohio Department of Mental Health (ODMH) MACSIS clinical Medicaid reimbursement system.
  - Electronically billing the Ohio Department of Mental Retardation And Developmental Disabilities (ODMRDD)] billing system for I/O Waivers.
  - Electronically submitting Ohio Department of Mental Health (ODMH) Outcomes information from Ohio Scales.
- Works in progress:
  - Electronically submitting data to the OACCA Outcomes Data Project (ODP)
- In addition, a long-term goal of Freemed-YiRC is to allow agencies to electronically transfer resident information when a resident is moved between agencies.
  - An example would be Intake information, which is usually quite a bit of paper documentation. If both agencies are using Freemed-YiRC (or another program capable of importting information in the specified format), then this information could be sent electronically and automatically populated in the system, which will save time and reduce errors during the intake process.

Documentation

Freemed-YiRC, thanks to this Wiki-based site, has a growing amount of documentation which can be accessed here. In addition, if your agency is interested in using Freemed-YiRC, please be sure to read this document: The Freemed-YiRC Planning and Implementation Guide.

Authors

Freemed-YiRC was created by Joe Thielen with massive sponsorship from LHS - Family & Youth Services - Toledo, OH.

As of May 2008 Josh Shriver is now assisting the Freemed-YiRC project as a active developer!

Major thanks to the following agencies which funded the bulk of the Foster Care additions (most notably the Resource Location module) as well as the forthcoming Report Generator module and much more.

The 12 Inc. - Massillon, OH
House of New Hope - St. Louisville, OH

Also many thanks to the following agencies who are currently either using Freemed-YiRC or have looked into using it and have provided feedback and sponsorship: