How to import your facilities list from your state trauma registry, and how to update it again later with fresh data.
Prerequisite Knowledge
This article is about the Facility List, an important concept in AngelTrack for dispatching, PCR, and billing, for both EMS and fire calls.
Before continuing, be sure to familiarize yourself with the Facility List feature and its many functions throughout the product, by reading the Facility List Guide.
You must also understand the particular importance of state facility codes, which are discussed in the Facility Codes Guide.
Built-In Facility List
When your AngelTrack server was first deployed, it imported a copy of your state trauma registry's official list, if it publishes one.
Not all states do, in which event your facility list in AngelTrack might still be empty. In this situation you must create your own facility records as-you-go, inputting their state facility ID numbers manually by looking them up in whatever partial list your state publishes. You can find your state's facility list by visiting the NEMSIS website, scrolling down and clicking your state, clicking "State Data Set", and then opening the "Facility List" node.
If your state later publishes a computer-readable facility list, then you can use AngelTrack's importer to pull the whole thing into your AngelTrack server. Follow the instructions below to learn how to reconcile conflicts between your facility list and your state's.
Updating Your Facility List with New Data from Your State
When your state trauma registry updates their official facility list with new data, you can re-import it into AngelTrack, which will attempt to merge the changes into your own facility list. Unfortunately this is tricky business, because states can sometimes publish a breaking change to their facility list that will require manual intervention.
Because of the possibility of breaking changes, AngelTrack does not automatically maintain your facility list for you, or automatically re-import new data from your state trauma registry. You must do this yourself, when your trauma registry notifies you that they've updated their list.
To import the updated list, login to AngelTrack with administrator privileges, visit the Facility List, and click the bulk-import button 
.
The importer will already know the URL for your state's facility list as posted in the official location on the NEMSIS website, so you should not need to specify a URL or provide a .CSV file. Remember that not all states post one, so AngelTrack might find nothing there.
For your first import attempt, choose the "Dry run" option, so that AngelTrack will show you any breaking changes that will require preparation.
Breaking Changes
Here are some examples of breaking changes that you must consider during a facility list update:
Deletions: If your state trauma registry deletes an entry from their facility list, AngelTrack will not also delete the matching record in your facility list, because that record may have financial and historical data attached to it. You can leave such records just as they are, because those facilities are now closed and so you won't be visiting them again. Or you can manually mark them deleted.
Name changes: If a record in the state facility list changes its name in a significant way, AngelTrack's importer will warn you in orange text. If the facility is not also changing its street address, then name changes are harmless, as long as your dispatchers know that they may need to search for the facility under its new name, as they won't be able to find it under its old name.
Address changes: If a record in the state facility list changes its address in a significant way, and if you've got a call history to or from that facility, then AngelTrack's importer will warn you in red text. These changes are potentially serious, and so must be manually reviewed. Facility address changes normally consist of moving just around a corner, i.e. changing from a side-street address to a main-street address, where it makes no practical difference. However, it is nevertheless possible that a state trauma registry could mistakenly change an existing entry to an entirely different location. In that case, you must retire your existing facility record by deleting its state facility code (or changing it to a generic code as provided somewhere in your state's facility list), thus forcing AngelTrack's facility list importer to create a whole new facility record to represent the facility at its new address.
Generic Facility Codes
Your state trauma registry's official list might contain generic codes, which are catch-all codes used for transports to places not in the list. For example, your state might publish a generic code "999999" to represent all transports to a private residence, and maybe "999998" to represent all transports to an out-of-state hospital.
These generic codes do not go into your facility list in AngelTrack. Instead, AngelTrack's facility list importer will divert them to a special list of generic codes which AngelTrack automatically uses whenever necessary. For example, if you transport a patient to a private residence, then there won't be a destination facility record attached to the call; or if there is a destination facility record attached, it won't have a state facility code. On the Followup page the crew member will choose "Home" as the type of destination. Seeing this, AngelTrack can then auto-select the "999999" code -- or whichever generic code fits best -- from its list of all published generic codes.
All of the aforementioned happens automatically. During the import of your state trauma registry's facility list, AngelTrack's importer will flag any generic codes, and tell you that it diverted them to the generic codes list. No further action from you is necessary.
Duplicate Records
If your dispatchers have manually created a record for a facility, and if that facility also appears in your state's facility list under a different name or street address, and if your dispatchers have not also input its state facility ID, then AngelTrack's importer will create a duplicate record for it, because it won't exactly match any existing facility record in your list.
You must manually identify and merge these duplicate records, using the "Dupe finder" tab of the Facility Edit page for any of the affected records. For further reading, see the Facility List Curation Guide.
Importing a .CSV File
AngelTrack can also import from a .CSV ("Comma-Separated Values") file of facilities.
The file must have the data arranged in certain columns. From the Facility List Importer, click "Show detailed instructions for CSV files" to display the detailed instructions for how the data must be formatted.
If your file is in Microsoft Excel™ format, use Excel to convert it to .CSV by selecting the "Save As..." feature. If there are multiple worksheets in the Excel workbook, then each worksheet must be individually saved as a .CSV and then imported separately.
For each data row in the .CSV, AngelTrack attempts to locate an existing facility record, by matching the name and street address. If an existing facility record is found that matches those two criteria, then the record is updated with new data (from the .CSV) for the other fields.