The On-Line Provider Merge functionality will allow the Merge Administrator the ability to select two Home Providers (Foster Care, Adoption or Kinship) and merge these two records together. The Merge Administrator is given the ability to select which components of the provider record they would like to keep as the most current and active information. All other information is retained in the history.
The Merge Administrator security will originally only be given to State staff. Once the state has been able to develop a comprehensive training on this functionality and presented the training to county users; then the security will be available to a select group of county users.
As many counties are aware, a mass merge was previously run whenever a new county converted into SACWIS. This mass merge was designed to alleviate the large amount of duplicate provider records in SACWIS. However, due to this process being automated, many records were not merged. Also, this automation caused many post-merge issues that later required a series of data fix clean-up activities to be initiated.
The mass merge caused duplicate provider types, erroneous provider type effective and end dates, and incorrect recommending agencies. The On-Line Merge allows the user to select which provider type and recommending agency they deem as currently effective.
At times, the mass merge forced the incorrect linking and unlinking of Description of Home (DOH) and Description of Family (DOF) records.
On-Line Merge allows the user to select which Description of Family and Description of Home is most recent and should have copy link available.
Active Provider Members were end-dated and populated on the member history during mass merge. On-line Merge will retain the household members that are linked to the Description of Family that the User Selects. If no Description of Family is available, then the user is able to select the set of applicants to retain. All members that correspond with the selected applicants, will remain active.
Previously during mass merge, there were instances when incorrect payee information was retained. In the On-Line merge process, the user is able to choose which payee information to retain as active.
The On-Line Merge process will be executed daily as an overnight batch process. The batch process will pick up any merge requests that are at least 24 hours old and attempt to complete the merge process. For example: if we submit a merge at 4:00PM on Thursday 02/05/2009, the batch process would attempt to merge these two providers in the Friday after-hours (02/06/2009) batch job. The application has a notification built in that will send an e-mail to the Merge Administrator and Fiscal Supervisor of the recommending agency of the duplicate provider that will be part of the merge request. This 24 hour time-line allows the two counties to communicate with each other in case there is concern regarding these two records being merged. Either county who owns the home can then notify the State Provider Team that the merge request should be cancelled.
Prior to submitting a Provider Merge request, it is absolutely critical that an effort is made to thoroughly review the provider records under focus to ensure that the provider type, provider status and provider type status information is correct. If any of these areas are not correct, please correct these prior to requesting the merge. ONCE EXECUTED, A COMPLETED MERGE REQUEST CANNOT BE REVERSED!
In order to complete the merge process, the SACWIS Provider Team is requiring specific data from the county requesting the merge. This information is to be sent through the Help Desk as a SACWIS Problem Report and/or attached to a SACWIS Problem Report. A sample spreadsheet has been attached as to how the information can be sent in to the Help Desk. If multiple providers are asked to be merged please limit the request to 5 providers per request.
In the provider merge process, the merge process will determine which provider ID to keep as the retained ID. This number will not always be the lowest number or the number that the current recommending agency is utilizing.
In circumstances when two different agencies own the foster care and adoptive records for a provider; we will keep the foster care number because it will have the current certification span.
Applicants Full Names
Include Date of Birth (DOB) and Social Security Number (SSN)
Please Note: Due to State Law, we are unable to merge unmarried foster parents with a adoptive record as there can only be one adoptive parent as Applicant 1 on this home. Merging the 2 records would change the family members roles and how the family shows in the system.
Please include application date received for each provider type
Current Certification and Approval span for each provider type (FC, AC)
Recommending agency for each Provider Type
Date of most recent DOH
Date of most recent DOF
If a DOF is chosen to remain as the ’r;active’ DOF this will determine the Applicant 1 & Applicant 2 that will be retained for the record.
All other members associated with the chosen Applicant 1 & Applicant 2 will remain active when the record is merged.
Date of most recent Initial home study per provider type
Date of most recent Re-cert/update/amendment for each provider type.
Payee Information-if applicable
Payee Name
Payee Address
Effective date of Payee information
Requests being sent in to the Help Desk will be worked on by the Provider Team based on Priority. At this time we will be working on Active Provider Records that are currently part of a County’s workload and active private agency homes. At least one of the provider records asked to be merged must be in ’r;active’ status. When these Provider Merge requests are completed then we will begin work on closed providers.
The SACWIS Provider Team is requesting that all agencies submit the name/ e-mail address/ and phone number of a county person who will be the On-Line Merge Contact Person. This person needs to be very knowledgeable regarding provider, home studies and licensing. The provider team will communicate with this person whenever any questions arise regarding a merge request. This person does not have to be on the Help Desk approved caller list for your county.