AngelTrack has handy workbenches for viewing your crews' reports in NEMSIS and/or NFIRS format, and testing the validation rules against them.
EMS reports are subject to NEMSIS validation rules published nationally and by your state. Likewise fire reports are subject to NFIRS validation rules published nationally. AngelTrack has workbenches that you can use to view your crews' reports in their raw format, and test the various validation rules against the data.
Accessing the Workbench
To access the workbench, you must have Administrator, Captain, Biller, or QA Reviewer privileges.
You launch the workbench from these locations in AngelTrack:
- From the "Compliance" menu on the Billing Home page;
- From the "Workbench" link on the Custom Data Validation Rules page, accessible under Settings; and
- From the "Search" popover, if you input a trip ID and then press "W" instead of pressing ENTER.
Quick Walkthrough
Don't worry, it's easier than it looks! Try this quick walkthrough and see:
- Find the dispatch ID of a recent completed report.
- Input the ID into the workbench's Dispatch ID datafield and click "Load EMS".
- Among the choices under "Validation", the "EMS national schematron" option will be pre-selected for you. Click the "Validate" button to apply it to the loaded report.
- View any warning or error messages that appear in the box.
- Now switch the validation choice to "EMS state schematron" and try again, to see what your state trauma registry's data validation rules say.
That's it! You've successfully applied the national data validation rules and your state's data validation rules to a completed PCR, the exact same way AngelTrack does when the attending submits the trip to QA, and when AngelTrack prepares the chart for upload to your state.
Fire (NFIRS) Calls
If the dispatch ID you picked is for a fire (NFIRS) call, then the workbench will have fewer options, because there is only a single set of nationwide data validation rules. For that reason the workbench will always automatically apply the NFIRS validation rules to the loaded report, and show you the results.
To learn more about AngelTrack's implementation of the NFIRS rules, please visit the NFIRS Rules Guide.
Options
Here is what each workbench option does:
Use state/county cleanup transforms means: When loading the requested XML, AngelTrack should apply its standard fixups for the jurisdiction state and county. These fixups are used to match AngelTrack's standard NEMSIS XML output to the particular requirements of that jurisdiction. For example, a certain state might require all blank SSN fields to be reported as "000-00-0000".
Include split reports for secondary BLS+ responders means: In a multi-responder situation where more than one FR+ rated unit responded to an emergent call, AngelTrack might be configured to emit a split NEMSIS XML containing one PatientCareReport node for each of the responders. Enabling this option allows you to view and validate these multi-node reports. To learn more about the topic, please visit the Patient-Centric Reporting Guide.
Documents in eOther.FileGroup means: Should the workbench include the contents of documents attached to the PCR? Normally it doesn't, because documents can be very large and therefore bog down the workbench with meaningless massive binary data. To learn more about how documents normally get included in a NEMSIS XML, please visit the Document Persistence Guide.
NEMSIS version means: Select which NEMSIS version you want to use for the data and validations. AngelTrack is version-agnostic and can render your PCRs in any version you wish... but normally you'll want to use the default ("Auto") version for your state, which is determined by its published schematrons.
Translation
A NEMSIS XML document represents most of its data as seven-digit ID numbers, plus some textual data for names, street addresses, and comments. These ID numbers look like this:
- 4230001 = Transport by this EMS unit
- 4230005 = Transport by another EMS unit
- 4230013 = No transport
These are just examples, there are thousands of these ID numbers within the NEMSIS spec.
To make it easier to read and understand the NEMSIS XML loaded in the workbench, it can translate these ID numbers to their friendly text meanings.
However, once you translate a NEMSIS XML in this manner, you cannot then validate it, because the friendly texts are not legal XML content.
Validation
The NEMSIS Workbench allows you to perform two types of validation:
- XSD Validation, which compares AngelTrack's XML output against the NEMSIS spec to ensure that all required datafields are present and well-format; and
- Schematron Validation, which applies business logic to the data to catch inconsistencies, for example a schematron might check that a unit's time arrived on-scene is not later than the time it went enroute.
XSD validity is AngelTrack's responsibility. Your crews have no control over it. If you ever see an XSD validation error, please report it to AngelTrack Support.
Schematron validity is primarily the responsibility of your crews... however, it is possible that a state schematron rule is impossible to satisfy, in which case the problem is jointly the responsbility of:
- The state trauma registry who promulgated the rule;
- AngelTrack LLC; and
- The crew filling out the report.
It is hard to decide who is at fault when a schematron rule is impossible to satisfy; they must be investigated on a case-by-case basis.
Schematron Validation Choices
The workbench allows you to apply any available schematron to the loaded report. Here is what the choices mean:
- EMS national schematron is the nationwide standard data validation rules promulgated by NEMSIS TAC, which always apply to all reportable EMS calls.
- EMS state schematron is the data validation rules promulgated by your state trauma registry, which typically publishes a new version once a year or thereabouts.
- EMS agency schematron is the custom data validation rules you create for just your agency, using the Custom Data Validation Rules feature in AngelTrack. You may not have one of these configured yet, in which case this validation option will be disabled.
- DEM national schematron is the nationwide standard data validation rules for agency demographic data (aka "DEM"), which is the block of data about your employees, stations, vehicles, facilities, and medical protocols, automatically reported to your state by AngelTrack.
- DEM state schematron is the data validation rules for agency demographic data promulgated by your state trauma registry. Most states do not publish a schematron for DEM data.
The workbench allows you to select any schematron you like, and apply it to the loaded XML data to see what it says.
Testing Your Agency Schematron
After you've selected some rules from AngelTrack's library and created your agency custom ruleset, you can test it against real PCR data, using the workbench.
To do this, you must have a few trip IDs in mind to test against. The trips in question should be reportable (i.e. BLS+) trips where the crew at least made patient contact... or whatever is the circumstance you are targeting with your custom data validation rules.
In the workbench, type each trip ID into the field, click "Load EMS" to retrieve the XML, select the "EMS agency schematron" as your validation option, and then click the "Validate" button.
Repeat that for each trip ID. If your custom rules are targeting a peculiar situation, be sure to also test them against regular transports, to make sure they don't trigger a false-positive for ordinary situations.