Apricot Connect

Hi April,

We have a home-visiting nursing program and several behavioral health programs working in Apricot. I’m guessing from your post you are in more of a traditional clinical setting? If so, you will probably experience some challenges / needs that our team does not but here’s what’s been helpful for our nursing / behavioral health programs:

• During implementation, try to pin down what you need to report on. (This can be very difficult depending on how you’re funded but any insight you can get into this will make it easier to set the system up with that in mind.)
• Focus on what information you need to capture, not on how paper forms or forms in previous systems were set up. You might find that you want to combine some forms or reorganize information a bit in Apricot because of the way the records, links, and forms work together. It may mean a steeper learning curve for staff if things are on different forms but over time the system will work better and staff will be happy the system is set up well.
• We have tested workflows with our behavioral health programs. Because of some quirks of that feature, most of our staff have found it’s easier to have forms ordered in the document folder in the order you need them or have certain forms linked together instead of using the workflow feature.
• Be mindful of including signatures where they’re not 100% necessary. If a signed form needs to be updated, it will preserve field data entered on existing records but it won’t preserve how the form looked or any text label fields you used. There are tricks to work around this but it’s best to be mindful of that from the start.
• Try to avoid entering the same health information on multiple forms. For example, if you have 3 places in the paper version of your intake paperwork where the client enters their Name and DOB, don’t include the Name and DOB 3 times. That info will be visible on every form because it will be entered on the client profile. Similarly for pregnant clients, if you have gestational age on multiple forms, pick one place for that to be entered. If you need that info visible in multiple places, use links and autopopulate fields but consider whether you really need it visible there or are just used to having it there.
• Lastly, in our nurse home visiting program, we’ve gone back and forth between using number and text fields for information like weight, blood pressure, etc. Based on my experience, I’d recommend using number fields and having a text box next to each like the example below. It will give you the most flexibility in reporting.
  • Weight in lbs (number field)
  • Notes about Weight (text field)
  • BP: Systolic (number field)
  • BP: Diastolic (number field)
  • BP Notes (text field)
• Take advantage of reports to show patient trends! For example, we’ve just finished building pregnancy and infant growth charts as native reports with graphs. We’ve also used native reports for quick client overviews where you enter the client’s name/ID and it shows the recent assessments, notes, etc. for only that client. It can give you more information at once than opening the quick-view for a bunch of different forms.
• Connect Client Portal: It’s pretty good but can be challenging for clients to know what forms to complete when. I believe there are some updates on the horizon to improve this. The biggest challenge is if you have multiple clients in the system with the same email address (ex. 2 kids from the same household using one parent’s email address or a few kids in foster care with the same DFS worker). You can’t create multiple Connect accounts for a single email address. We’ve managed this by having other ways for DFS workers to sign forms, disabling one account an enabling the other, or having clients sign in person where-ever possible. For most programs and clients though this hasn’t been an issue based on how our services work. The best part of Connect is direct messaging. It does require an account to be “created” from your end but the client does not need to create a password or ever log in to receive direct messages or complete forms sent through direct messaging.

Hope this helps and wasn’t information overload!

Best,

Naomi

Just saw your comments about the growth charts! These are in now way perfect but they work pretty well. They’re brand new (went live last month) so we’re still tweaking things. We have 2 native reports. One for pregnancy growth charts and a separate one for infant growth charts.

Pregnancy Charts:

There are 7 sections but you’ll only ever use 2-3 at a time. All sections use global filters for client’s record ID, client’s name, and a number field to indicate how many days in the past you want to view info for (ex. view the past 365 days of data points).

Section 1: This is just a list of active clients and their record ID’s. This helps you confirm that you’re viewing the chart for the correct client.

Section 2: Growth chart for 1st trimester (underweight, normal, overweight by bmi)
Since the boundaries for the normal range are linear, I was able to figure out an equation for them. The slope changes after the first trimester because the babies grow more quickly after that so I split the charts into 1st trimester and 2nd/3rd trimester.

For each group of 3 data columns in the chart, that’s 1 point in time where the mom was weighed. The blue and green are the lower and upper limits for recommended weight gain and the purple in between is their actual weight gain.

Section 3: Underweight growth chart (2nd & 3rd trimester)

Section 4: Normal weight growth chart (2nd & 3rd trimester)

Section 5: Overweight growth chart (2nd & 3rd trimester)

Sections 6-7: Obese growth charts split into 1st and 2nd/3rd trimesters. (This one chart, the 1st trimester is different so I had to use a spearate section.)

It seems like a lot but you only ever open the two sections relating to that client’s pre-pregnancy BMI so it’s not too bad.

Child Growth Charts are simpler because you just need to see the percentile they’re in. The report is set up similarly with the 1st section for confirming you have the right client and similar global values.

Section 1: Client Overview

All the other sections are set up as follows. There’s a column chart showing the age of the child in weeks across the bottom (x-axis). The vertical y-axis is the child’s weight percentile. There’s target lines at 3%, 15%, 85%, and 95% to show the normal range and average range.

When staff enter this info, they enter the baby’s weight, length, and head circumference then use infantcharts.com to calculate the percentile. The percentile gets entered into Apricot to help generate the chart. This is the only piece that’s not seamless but I haven’t found a way to code that into the forms/report.

Section 2: Weight-for-age chart

Section 3: Length-for-age chart

Section 4: Weight-to-length chart

Section 5: head circumference-for-age

Sections 6-9: these are the same as sections 2-5 but for twins, they’d show the chart for the second twin.

Hope this helps! Let me know if you’d like to see more of how this is set up. I’d be happy to discuss it further just know it’s new so we’re still working out kinks.

Hi Naomi,

Your follow-up gave me a few more ideas, so I wanted to share something back from our build as well. 😊

One solution I created for our NFP program is an NFP Client File that works as a container-style form. It organizes the client record by phase like Pre-Enrollment, Enrollment, Pregnancy, Postpartum, Infancy, and Toddler, so staff have one place to orient themselves instead of navigating a large number of disconnected forms.

I also built a Chart Audit section inside it that uses read-only checklist fields to show, at a glance, which forms have been completed within each phase. I’m attaching a couple screenshots so you can see the concept.

The audit portion is still a little buggy. It relies on a fairly large number of linked records and form rules, and I’ve found that the more logic I ask it to evaluate, the less consistently it behaves. That said, I think it could be a really valuable approach in a workflow with a more manageable number of forms/rules, as long as it’s monitored and tested when changes are made.

That experience has actually reinforced your recommendation about keeping forms and logic streamlined. We’re now looking at consolidating several of our NFP assessments, which I’m hoping will make the Client File and audit concept more sustainable.

One lesson I can also share back: we’ve been trying to separate structured/reportable information from narrative documentation. For example, using encounter, referral, or service forms for things we want to quantify, while keeping journal-style entries for the narrative story. That distinction has helped us think much more intentionally about what belongs on each form.

I’ll keep sharing anything useful we learn as we go!