This month we spoke with Kristin Martinez, M.A., CCC-SLP, a clinical quality manager with PresenceLearning, to discuss how caseload management works online.
Let’s begin with how you access your assignments as a PL teletherapist.
PL providers are given assignments that are a good match based upon active licensure, relevant discipline, and availability that is in-line with a particular school’s schedule. Providers receive notification of this assignment with all necessary initial details as well as the name of the PL lead clinician supporting this district. Following this first notification, the lead clinician then contacts the provider to initiate the process of supplying all required assignment details.
Once a provider has a confirmed assignment, she will have access to any information PL has gathered regarding the district, school site, and student caseload. And, in the majority of cases, the provider will also be given access to the district’s IEP system including full access to student IEPs. Once IEP access is obtained, the provider can enter all relevant student and IEP information into the PL platform to facilitate compliance with IEP due dates and metric tracking during therapy sessions. PL’s provider platform is truly a “control center,” where providers can create and view therapy schedules, enter the therapy room, complete therapy documentation, track student progress, access PL’s content library and help center, review caseloads, and update availability for additional assignments.
Can you walk us through how you would prepare for a session?
Prior to the first therapy session, a provider might spend time exploring PL’s vast activity library, and then selecting activities to be moved over to the therapy room queues. Each provider has his or her own therapy room, and can create as many activity queues as desired. Queues can be organized in any way that makes the most sense to each provider—by goal area, age level, or activity type. To prepare for a therapy session, a provider can check the queues to make sure that there are activities to support students’ goal and interest areas, and once students have joined the therapy room, the provider can easily toggle between activities as appropriate.
Can you explain how you would document a session?
As long as a provider has entered metrics (based on IEP goals) for each student, it’s easy to electronically track data within the therapy room during sessions. When preparing for the therapy session to begin, the provider simply selects the student name, chooses the metrics to be tracked, and then indicates a positive or negative response to each attempt. This data is then saved and automatically pulled into the Objective section of the student’s SOAP note, including the percent the student had correct. Monthly metric averages are reported within each student’s profile, making progress note and IEP goal updates much easier.
How can providers prepare activities ahead of time?
Preparing for a teletherapy session with PL is pretty similar to preparing for an in-person session! Of course we as therapists are always first considering the IEP goals to be targeted in each session, in combination with the developmental appropriateness and interest level of each activity. One key difference, of course, is that when planning a therapy session with PL, there is a library of 80,000+ activities at your fingertips! If they haven’t done so already, providers can select activities from the library and move them over to the therapy room to be organized into queues. And, if PL’s library doesn’t have exactly what providers are needing for a particular session, they can scan and upload anything from their personal collection. Copyrighted content can be uploaded for personal use but not shared to the greater PL community. PL’s product team has also created interactive activities that can be customized for each student, so there is never a problem finding an activity that is appropriate for each student’s individual needs.
If you’re considering making a transition to telepractice and are interested in joining the PL Care Network, please fill out an application today!
