You can define your own custom crew certificate types, which can extend / act like the base certificate types.
This feature extends AngelTrack's certificate tracking system. If you are not yet familiar with that system, then please visit the Certificate Tracking Guide first.
Creating a New Certificate Type
At any time you can create a whole new certificate type for crew members, for vehicles, and/or for stations. You can then deactivate it and reactivate the new certificate type whenever necessary.
To do so, visit your Certificate Types List and then click the plus sign 
to open the Certificate Edit page.
Once it's active, the new certificate type will appear in certificate-type picklists throughout AngelTrack, including the many and varied certificate-tracking features and reports.
Due to caching, it may take up to an hour for a new certificate type to appear in all relevant UI.
Extending a Built-In Type / Report-As / "Acts Like"
If the new certificate type is for crew members, then it can extend, or act like, a built-in type, so that it can participate in AngelTrack's service-capabilities calculations for shifts.
Here are some examples of what you could use this for:
- Create an "Advanced Wheelchair Van" certificate, which extends the "Wheelchair Van" built-in type and therefore qualifies the crew member for the "Wheelchair Van" service capability.
- Create an "ALS - Cardiac Tech" certificate, if there is such a thing in your jurisdiction, which extends the "ALS - Paramedic" built-in type and therefore counts as a paramedic patch towards composing a BLS or ALS shift.
- Create an "ACLS + CPR" certificate, if your protocol and jurisdiction recognizes an ACLS course as CPR competency, which extends the "CPR" built-in type and therefore counts as a CPR card towards AngelTrack's automatic CPR card enforcement.
To learn more about service capabilities, and how AngelTrack calculates them using vehicle capabilities plus crew certificates, please refer to the Service Levels Guide.
NEMSIS Reportability of Extended Crew Certificates
NEMSIS reportability of custom certificate types is tricky, because the NEMSIS spec stores certificate-level data in three different datafields using two different sets of identifiers.
For example, a paramedic who ran a call, gave one medication, and performed one procedure would be reported in NEMSIS like this:
/PatientCareReport
/eCrew
/eCrew.CrewGroup
eCrew.01 = PATCH12345
eCrew.02 = 9925007 Member level = "Paramedic"
/eMedications
/eMedications.MedicationGroup
eMedications.09 = PATCH12345
eMedications.10 = 9905007 Caregiver level = "Paramedic"
/eProcedures
/eProcedures.ProcedureGroup
eProcedures.09 = PATCH12345
eProcedures.10 = 9905007 Caregiver level = "Paramedic"
Do you see how the paramedic is reported as 9925007 (the "Member Level") in one place, but as 9905007 (the "Caregiver Level") in another? The two values are similar, but not identical.
In order to automate this hassle so that the paramedic need not input his patch number three times for this call, AngelTrack stores all of the following information for his patch in the certificate record:
Patch type = ALS-Paramedic
Patch number = PATCH123456
Member level = 9925007
Caregiver level = 9905007
A crew member can have many certificates on file. When emitting a NEMSIS document where AngelTrack must declare what kind of provider he is, AngelTrack picks the "winning" certificate from his list, and sends its data in the aforementioned NEMSIS fields.
In the above example, the paramedic might also have a wheelchair van certificate, and perhaps even a BLS certificate, but his paramedic certificate is the "winner" and so will be used to populate the NEMSIS datafields.
The patch types, member levels, and caregiver levels have already been arranged for you in AngelTrack's built-in certificate types, to meet your state's expectations. You can edit them but it will probably never be necessary. You only need to learn this stuff if you want to create a new custom certificate type that extends a built-in type, such that it might be the "winning" patch under which AngelTrack reports a crew member via NEMSIS.
In other words, you can ignore all this unless you want to create advanced versions of wheelchair, BLS, ALS, fire, or rescue certificates that extend the base types and thus will get reported via NEMSIS.
Configuring an Extended Crew Certificate Type
AngelTrack's certificate-type editor will help you configure all of the aforementioned.
It offers pickers for the three fields (base type, member level, caregiver level) and pre-populates them with reasonable choices. You can change the choices if you need to match your state trauma registry's expectations, or to satisfy some other downstream consumer of the data.
The pickers for Member Level (eCrew.02) and for Caregiver Level (eMedications.10 / eProcedures.10) are themselves populated with Custom Picklist Values, which you can also extend if you have an Enterprise PCR add-on license. Likewise your state might extend them with custom values; to learn more about that, please visit the StateDataSet Guide.
Remember also, you can customize AngelTrack's formulae for what constitutes a BLS shift, an ALS-I shift, and an ALS shift. These settings -- concerning the required certificate level of the secondary crew member -- are on the Preferences page, and they take account of extended/custom certificate types. To learn more please visit the Service Levels Guide.
Reporting of Extended Certificate Types
Some of AngelTrack's crew-certificate reports will blend together all equivalent cert types, others will not.
For example, on the Crew Home Page, the crew member's patch level display blends together equivalent certificate types. Suppose you create a custom certificate type named ALS-CT which counts as ALS. Suppose a crew member has an expired ALS patch but a valid ALS-CT patch. His ALS-CT patch means he counts as an ALS caregiver for the purpose of shift capabilities, but whether or not AngelTrack complains about the expired ALS patch depends on which page you are viewing.
The following locations in AngelTrack will flag the aforementioned ALS expiration even though the crew member has got an equivalent ALS-CT patch:
- Nightly certificate expiration reminder emails
- Certificate Holders Report
- Certificates Overview Report
- Employee Self-Edit Page's certificate summary
Whereas the following locations in AngelTrack will not mention the ALS expiration because there is an equivalent renewal (ALS-CT) on file:
- Crew Home Page's graphic patch display
- Crew Home Page's expiring-certificate reminder
The following locations in AngelTrack offer a tickybox to allow you to decide whether to combine equivalent certificate types when calculating expirations:
- Crew Certificates Expiring Report
Import of State Custom Certificate Levels
Your state might define a new certificate level, via its custom picklist values aka its StateDataSet.
A common example of this is a "Cardiac Technician" certificate, which counts as a paramedic patch.
AngelTrack will attempt to automatically import all custom certificate levels declared by your state, during AngelTrack's regular auto-import of your state's StateDataSet, auto-creating any new types which are implied by your state's custom values for Member Level (eCrew.02) and Caregiver Level (eMedications.10 / eProcedures.10).
Unfortunately, the NEMSIS spec does not clearly define how new certificate types are to be represented, nor does it enforce consistency between custom values for the Member Level and Caregiver Level fields, upon which AngelTrack depends in order to understand the new certificate type which the state is trying to communicate. The situation is a free-for-all, and so AngelTrack cannot always auto-create a certificate type that perfectly matches the intentions of the trauma registry.
If AngelTrack cannot auto-infer the capabilities of a new custom certificate type, then it will mark the certificate as equivalent to a Wheelchair Van Driver, a First Responder, or an Other Healthcare Professional.
You might need to adjust any auto-created certificate type afterward to match the state trauma registry's expectations, and to correct any incorrect inferences that AngelTrack has drawn from the StateDataSet. Remember you can view your state's data dictionary (on the NEMSIS TAC website) to check that everything matches, or to create picklist values and certificate types by hand.
NFIRS Reportability
The built-in fire-related and rescue-related certificate types can all be extended in the aforementioned manner, to create derived or advanced versions of the basic certificates which still count towards a shift's capabilities.
The NFIRS data spec includes each crew member's name, rank/grade, primary role, and actions taken, but does not include any datafields for certificate types. Instead, in the NFIRS-10 module, AngelTrack will automatically send each crew member's highest fire-related certificate type as their Rank/Grade, including any custom/extended certificate types, if any such certificate is on file; else, AngelTrack will send the text from the "Rank/Grade" field of their employee record.