Retrieving a missing Client record
Occasionally an organisation finds that they are unable to locate a Client record, which we appreciate is a matter of considerable concern because this results in important or critical Client information being lost, including most importantly evidence of service delivery, which is a requirement of your organisation under the NDIS.
If your organisation finds that a Client record is missing, prior to engaging SupportAbility there are several preliminary searches that can be performed in an attempt to locate the missing record. If these searches prove unsuccessful, your organisation has the option to escalate the matter to SupportAbility for further investigation using a paid support contract as deemed necessary.
Audience: Authorised Representatives, Executive Management, HR Specialist, and Operations Management.
Summary
The following list summarises the content of this article. Click on the links below to take you to the relevant sections:
- Possible causes of a missing record
- Searching for a missing client record
- SupportAbility investigation - authorisation and required information to investigate
Possible causes of a missing record
There are a couple of reasons why a Client record cannot be located, such as the browser's auto-fill functionality changing key attributes of the record i.e Client Name, or the record has been deleted.
More information on each of these possible causes has been outlined below.
Auto-fill functionality
As many areas in SupportAbility are form-based in structure, if the autofill functionality is turned on in your browser, occasionally commonly used fields such as 'names' may autofill and overwrite the existing name in the Client record, thus unintentionally renaming the record.
We, therefore, recommend that Staff have the auto-fill functionality turned off in their browsers to prevent this from happening. This link contains instructions on how to disable the autofill functionality for each of the different browsers.
One of the searches outlined below may be helpful in locating a record that has inadvertently been renamed.
Deleted records
Due to the significant and far-reaching consequences of deleting records, we highly recommend that Client records are never deleted, and suggest instead that they are made inactive if no longer required, to preserve important historical data.
SupportAbility implemented restrictions to the parameters in which a Client record can be deleted in 2019, to assist with preserving important Client information. Primarily, deletion of Client records is restricted when it is attached to other related records such as Journals etc. More information about this is outlined in the When can a Client record be deleted? article linked below for reference.
Searching for a missing Client record
We recommend attempting to search for the missing Client record first and foremost by any specific identifiers, such as the Client's NDIS Number, age, Client Contacts, or any Activities they may have participated in recently.
Several Searches and Reports are available as outlined below which may be helpful with locating the missing Client record.
Client Search
The Client Search, accessed from the Dashboard:
Includes a large range of search criteria, some of which may be helpful in locating the missing record. These include:
- NDIA # (NDIS Number)
- Sites and Services this Client was a participant of
- Key Support Worker
- Suburb
- Age: From/To
- Gender
- Country of Birth
N.B. When generating a Client Search the default setting for Active is 'Active Clients Only', therefore it is important to select the option 'All Clients' to ensure the search applies to both active and inactive records:
Information about searching by service participation in the Client Search can be found in the Searching by Service Participation in the Client Search article, linked at the end of this article.
Client Service Participation Report
The 'Client Service Participation Report', accessed via Reports, may be helpful in locating the missing record, by selecting for known attributes of the related Client's Service Participation:
N.B.
Your organisation will have greater ability to refine your report parameters if Staff Members are entering the following information in the Client Service Participation section of Client records:
- Participation Dates
- Key Support Worker
- creating separate entries for each Status, and/or Key Support worker per Site/Service.
If separate entries are not being created per Status or Key Support worker, the report results will only reflect the current settings as SupportAbility does not track changes to these fields.
More information about this report is available in the Client Service Participation Report article, linked at the end of this article.
Searching by Activity
Searching by Activity is another way in which a missing Client record can be searched for.
There are several tools to assist you with this as follows:
- Activity Search
- Activity Report
- Activity Clients Report
Reviewing the participating Clients in the Results List may display a Client name that is unexpected or inaccurate. That record may be the missing Client record that has unintentionally been renamed.
Activity Search
The Activity Search is accessed via the 'Dashboard', and can be filtered by multiple search criteria, including Activity Dates, Services, Sites, Activity Dates, and Funding Type, for Activities which the missing Client is known to have participated in either historically, or is scheduled to participate in the future:
Activity Report
The Activity Report is accessible via the 'Activities' section of the 'Reports' menu:
This Report can be filtered by the following search criteria:
- Staff Members
- Clients
- Sites
- Services
- Activity Dates
- Program
- Tags
- Activity Sign Off Status
Activity Clients Report
The Activity Clients Report is accessible via the 'Activities' section of the 'Reports' menu:
This Report is filterable by a greater range of search criteria than the Activity Report and therefore may be more helpful in locating the missing Client record:
SupportAbility investigation - authorisation and required information
In order for us to conduct an investigation for a missing Client record, it is important that your organisation has attempted to locate the missing Client record internally using the resources outlined above.
Engineering investigations are usually reserved for cases where an organisation believes a serious breach has occurred and may incur paid support charges. Please see the Support Contract Pricing article linked below for more information.
If this is required, we do recommend an organisation's Authorised Representatives contact us at support@supportability.com.au to determine what is possible. We may be able to provide your organisation with an estimate before conducting the investigation as required. However, investigations do not guarantee that the Client information will be located, or recoverable if it has been deleted. Please also see the SupportAbility Event Data Logs and Paid Investigations article for more information.
If further investigation is accepted by SupportAbility, depending on the situation, formal authorisation on letterhead may need to be provided, including:
- The purpose of the investigation e.g. simply the retrieval of a missing Client record, a matter related to a legal investigation, an audit related to the Royal Commission into Abuse and Neglect, etc.
- Details of any specific information required by your organisation
- Staff who are authorised to liaise with SupportAbility regarding this matter
- As many known details about the Client as you can provide, such as:
- Full Name
- Date of Birth
- Last known address
- Any known Client Contact details
- Start and End Dates for receiving Services with your organisation
- Site/Services the Client participated in
- Funding Type e.g. NDIS or other
- Last known date the Client record was accessed