MyRCFE – A Mobile RCFE Administration Software Application

Lavinia Uruc

California State University, Monterey Bay

CST 499 – Online Directed Group Capstone

June 13, 2018

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Executive Summary

MyRCFE is an application that will help administrators of any Residential Care Facility

for the Elderly (RCFE) to manage their business from anywhere and it will feature a better

communication between different parties. This leads to a better productivity for the

administrators. The application will involve a great deal of research and a lot of implementation

work as it needs to feature a database, and a messaging platform. The main purpose of this

application is to ease the communication and information sharing between administrators,

caregivers and resident families.

This application will contain all the data regarding the residents of an RCFE, including

medication logs, care plans, all documents pertaining to an RCFE. Also, the application will

allow different parties to message each other through a messaging platform.

The main feature that makes this application unique is the messaging system and the data

sharing platform between families, administrators and caregivers. There is nothing at this time on

the market that features such an application as most of the applications are tailored either for

medication management or messaging.

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Table of Contents

Executive Summary 1

Introduction 4

Project Name and Description 4

Problem and/or Issue in Technology 4

Solution to the Problem and/or Issue in Technology 5

Evidence that the Proposed Project is Needed 6

Environmental Scan 6

Project Goal and Objectives 7

Project Goals 7

Project Objectives 8

Stakeholders and Community 9

Approach/ Methodology 10

Ethical and Legal Considerations 10

Project Scope 11

Timeline 11

Milestones 11

Resources Needed 13

Risks and Dependencies 13

Final Deliverables 14
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Design 14

Functional Decomposition of the Project 14

Selection of Design Criteria 15

Usability Testing/Evaluation 16

Target Audience for Usability Testing 16

Client-based Testing Results 17

Team members 18

Conclusion 18

Bibliography 20

Appendix A – Usability Test Plan 21

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Introduction

Project Name and Description

This Capstone project is for ‘MyRCFE’, a mobile software application for property and

care management that will be tailored to Residential Care Facilities for the Elderly (RCFEs).

This application will very useful for administrators, families, and caregivers of an RCFE. In a

business that is management intensive, a productivity tool becomes highly critical to a successful

daily operation.

Problem and/or Issue in Technology

The Residential Assisted Living business is a growing industry that faces significant

challenges in the area of property and care management. This industry has become highly

regulated by the State of California. Families demand a high level of care for their parents. RCFE

administrators interface with multiple caregivers, health care providers, California Department of

Social Services (DSS), supply providers, residents and their families, to make sure that the

proper care is given to residents on a 24-hour basis. Every resident has specific medications and

a care plan that is provided by the on-staff caregivers. Changes in a resident’s medication and

care plan are communicated by health care providers to the RCFE administrator. Changes in a

resident’s condition are communicated by the caregivers to the RCFE administrator, who in turn

communicates this to the health care providers and the resident’s families. The RCFE

administrator coordinates these ongoing changes by updating the care plan, communicating new
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tasks to caregivers, keeping the residents’ families up-to-date, and/or making requests to the

families. This results in a management intensive business that needs a comprehensive resident

care management solution. Without an effective tool, the RCFE administrator is required to visit

the facilities more often than necessary and invest a significant amount of time in communicating

tasks to caregivers. Also, making sure these tasks are executed and completed can be challenging

without such tool.

Solution to the Problem and/or Issue in Technology

Existing software solutions do not integrate the different areas of the RCFE

administration. They are intended for larger facilities with larger management budgets, they do

not provide messaging capabilities and are not caregiver friendly. In addition, these software

solutions are not tailored to the nature of RCFEs. This is a significant problem as RCFE’s have

different legal requirements than the larger facilities and therefore use different DSS forms,

documents, and business processes.

The solution proposed is a mobile software application that allows an RCFE

administrator to keep track of resident profiles, care plans, medications, caregivers on duty, and

care task assignments.

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Evidence that the Proposed Project is Needed

There is a complex interaction between the above stakeholders and the messaging

capabilities of the application are needed to facilitate the communication of the ongoing changes

of a resident’s condition.

Environmental Scan

Currently the marketplace offers a variety of care management applications. Some

applications are focused only on medication management, some are focused on care plan

management. Others do provide multiple features including client profile, medication

management, medication orders, calendar, to-do lists, contacts, and photos.

In the area of care management, one application stands out, CareZone (CareZone

Software Application, n.d.). This application provides basic medication tracking and basic

resident file management. However, it’s clearly not comprehensive enough to meet the needs of

an RCFE management tool.

Other applications, such as MediSafe (Medisafe Software Application, n.d.), focus on

medication management. This application allows for tracking of medication schedules to

document when a medication was taken. The main issue with this application is that it does not

comply with the DSS regulations, which requires that the records use a timestamp for when the

medication was administered and who administered the medication.

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These and other applications have multiple issues as described below.

● Applications lack messaging capabilities that an RCFE requires to facilitate the

communication between the involved parties, administrator, caregivers, and

resident families.

● Applications do not provide a way to work with multiple customizable categories

of tasks for each type of end-user.

● Applications do not allow for customizable resident file management that includes

the typical RCFE file components: Physician’s Report, Signed medication order,

incident reports, etc.

Project Goal and Objectives

Project Goals

The main goal of the application is to use current messaging technology to bring

caregivers/administrator/resident families together in a more collaborative environment. This

results in closing the communication gap between these parties to simplify the assisted living

business management.

This software application aims at providing a comprehensive care management solution

that specifically targets the needs of an RCFE business.

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Project Objectives

o Reduce the number of calls/texts from/to caregivers/administrator/families that

are intended to communicate a resident’s change in condition

o Simplify communication by allowing for ‘group’ messaging when multiple

parties (administrator/caregiver/family) need to be kept in the loop

o Reduce the number of calls/texts from administrators to caregivers that are

intended to communicate a task or a follow up on a task

o Allow for documenting a resident’s critical change in condition that can easily be

inputted and reported to the DSS in the legal format required by title 22 law

o Automate the reporting of resident incidents to the DSS by automatically emailing

a DSS-formatted incident report to the assigned Licensing Program Analyst

(LPA)

o Reduce the legal liability by having incident information in the case of a lawsuit

o Centralize the information of a resident including their name, SSN, facility where

he/she resides, family contact phone number and email address, move in date,

dietary requirements, care plan, doctor orders, medical cards, doctor appointments

o Simplify medication management by centralizing medication information,

keeping track of medications, alerting the administrator before a resident runs out

of a medication

o Quickly and easily provide medication tracking information to a DSS LPA in the

format that title 22 requires in the case of an audit

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o Simplify the RCFE/resident family relationship management by allowing the

RCFE administrator to place a request to a family

o Simplify employee management by allowing the RCFE administrator to place a

request to a caregiver and keep track of it

o Centralize caregiver information by providing a caregiver profile

o Simplify the tracking of facility supplies orders including food, care supplies, and

cleaning supplies

Stakeholders and Community

There are approximately 7,500 RCFE’s licensed in the State of California alone. These

facilities are in great need of a care management software that meets the goals and objectives

described in this project. With the assistance of the MyRCFE application, the administrator of an

RCFE can be more productive in managing the day-to-day operations. This application can also

enable a company to growth to multiple facilities with a higher number of residents and better

care quality. Without the proper care management tool, administrators can become overwhelmed

with multiple requests from care providers, resident families, residents, caregivers, etc.

MyRCFE has 3 end users. The first is the administrator, who primarily uses the

application to send messages to caregivers and resident’s families. The administrator’s

management tasks are supported by the different functions of the application such as medication

and incident tracking. The second end user is the caregiver, who receives tasks or messages from

the administrator. The caregiver can also post medication order requests to the administrator.

He/she can create a facility supply order request. Lastly, the resident’s families will use this
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application to receive notifications on their parent’s condition, doctor orders, or requests for

buying needed resident supplies.

Approach/ Methodology

This application will be developed using object-oriented programming with Java. The

target platform for this application will be Android and the IDE will be Android Studio 3.0.1

(Android Studio, n.d.). The application will store data in the No-SQL database FireBase

(Firebase documentation, n.d.). The target device for this mobile Android application is a

consumer cell phone, the Samsung Galaxy S7.

Ethical and Legal Considerations

It is the purpose of this application to improve the RCFE administration by sharing

resident information between the parties involved. Even though the application will not be used

in a facility that provides medical care, it does deal with sensitive health-related information.

Therefore, the features offered by the application raise several ethical concerns. These are

derived from storing and sharing private resident information, such as medications taken, health

incident reports, doctor’s orders, health condition change reports, to mention a few. This

information will be available to the administrator and some of it to the resident’s family and

caregivers. If misused, or shared improperly, the resident’s privacy can be put at risk. For

example, if the medication schedule of one resident living in one facility is accessed by a

caregiver working on a different facility, the resident’s privacy can be affected negatively.
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Compromising a resident’s privacy is an ethical issue that an RCFE needs to address with

specific business policies. The MyRCFE application must comply to these policies.

In addition to the ethical concerns, there are legal implications because of the Title 22

state law that regulates RCFE’s in the State of California and other federal laws governing online

privacy and online health records. It’s critical that the application’s requirements define what of

all the resident’s personal information can be accessed and by whom because of its sensitive

nature. These requirements will aim to produce an application that is compliant with such laws

and shares information only to an authorized end user.

Project Scope

Timeline

Total project duration of 8 weeks. Project starts on March 24, 2018 and ends on June 17,

2018.

Milestones

This table represents the initial milestone proposal.

Task Name Duration Start End

Requirements Analysis 5 days Sun 04/22/18 Thu 04/26/18
Design 5 days Fri 04/27/18 Thu 05/03/18
Implementation 24 days Fri 05/04/18 Wed 06/06/18
Testing 8 days Thu 06/07/18 Sun 06/17/18
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This table represents the actual schedule of the project.

Task Name Duration Start End

Competitor App Research 2 days Sun 04/22/18 Mon 04/23/18
Impl. Technology Research 1 day Tue 04/24/18 Tue 04/24/18
UI Prototyping 4 days Wed 04/25/18 Sat 04/28/18
Video Ad Creation 1 day Sun 04/29/18 Sun 04/29/18
Requirements Analysis 1 day Sun 04/30/18 Sun 04/30/18
Design 2 days Mon 05/01/18 Tue 05/02/18
Implementation/Testing 41 days Fri 05/03/18 Wed 06/13/18
Client Testing 1 days Fri 06/01/18 Fri 06/01/18
Final Report Compilation 1 days Tue 06/12/18 Tue 06/12/18

The actual schedule above shows changes to the original milestone proposal in the

previous section. Additional initial phases had to be completed after I acquired more knowledge

of what approach was needed to complete the project. A competitor app analysis was needed to

better understand how to differentiate my application from the competitors. Also, a research

phase for training on Android Studio was necessary. The requirements analysis was shortened by

putting additional effort in UI prototyping and implementation phase was longer than the

expected 26 days. The testing was done not as a separate phase but at the same time as the

implementation to allow for the project’s completion by the final deadline.

Some tasks such as video ad creation and client testing were unaccounted for in the initial

proposal which had an impact on the timeline as well.

In regards to the budget, the cost of the video creation software Animoto (Animoto, video

creation software, n.d.) was an additional cost not included in the initial evaluation of the project.

A lesson learned is that project estimation needs to add padding to include unexpected

tasks, expenses, or tools to complete the work in the given timeframe.

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Resources Needed

● An Android device to test the application. A Sumsung Galaxy S7 will be used.

● A personal computer with Windows 10, 3 GB RAM, 2 GB of available hard drive space

● Android Studio 3.1.2 installed

● Micro USB cable for connecting phone to the personal computer.

● Android Virtual Device (AVD) manager

● Android 6.0 (Marshmallow) SDK platform

● Firebase libraries and Firebase account for the application to communicate to the No-

SQL/Cloud based database Firebase provided by Google (Firebase documentation, n.d.).

● Animoto for video ad creation (Animoto, video creation software, n.d.).

● PDF writer software to convert Word document to PDF for assignment submission

● Pluralsight training website access (Pluralsight, Software Training Website., n.d.)

Risks and Dependencies

This project requires specific technical skills in the area of mobile development with Java

and Android Studio platform. Extensive research in this area will need to be done to be able to

complete the project. This research will have to account for the short period of time that has been

allocated for this project. The pluralsight.com website (Pluralsight, Software Training Website.,

n.d.) will be used to gain knowledge where needed.

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Final Deliverables

● Capstone Final Report

● Usability Test Plan

● MyRCFE application source code

● Database design

● Demo including screenshots of the different features of the application

● Final video presentation of the application

Design

Functional Decomposition of the Project

Module Functionality

Care Plan Management This module documents all care needs of a resident and

specific information utilized by the caregivers to provide

daily activity assistance, such as food preferences or

allergies.

Messaging The messaging module connects the resident’s family,

caregivers, and administrator by providing the means to

send and receive messages on a mobile device. It also

manages notifications of various kinds.

Resident Profile Stores resident’s information such as name, date of birth,

conditions, family contacts. This module makes this

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information available to caregivers and administrators.

Medication The medication management module keeps track of the

Management
medications of a resident and it’s used by caregivers to

document the medications provided to a resident. The

administrator uses this module to oversee the handling of

medications by the caregivers and to determine when new

orders are needed.

Task Tracking Keeps a list of tasks that are assigned to a caregiver and

their status. This is used by the administrator to issue

requests to caregivers and track the progress of these

requests.

Selection of Design Criteria

The selection of the design criteria for the MyRCFE application is driven by two non-

functional requirements.

The first is the availability of the application to the caregivers and administrator

anywhere and at all times. Caregivers, in particular, work in a dynamic environment that requires

them to go from room to room to assist residents or from the staff room to resident’s room to

hand medications. Administrators are also very mobile and need access to the application while

visiting multiple facilities and on the road. The application needs to allow for messaging from

anywhere. This makes the application a great candidate for a mobile implementation.
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The second design criterion is driven by the often lack of computer skills of caregivers or

family members, who are at an older age and are not tech savvy. This requires the application to

provide an extremely simple and user-friendly interface.

Usability Testing/Evaluation

Target Audience for Usability Testing

The MyRCFE application is aimed at administrators, caregivers, and resident’s families.

Administrators typically own one to three assisted living properties and manage the business

every day operations. Administrators are interested in an application that can help them in

providing care to their residents and ease the communication with caregivers and the resident’s

families. Caregivers are in constant communication with their administrator in regards to the

needs of residents. The last audience groups are the families of the RCFE’s residents. Families

designate a member, who is most likely in their 50’s or 60’s, and who is typically the daughter or

son of the resident. The application will be used by the designated family member to get updates

of their parent’s daily care and needs.

Mr. Jose Apesoa has been chosen to perform client-based testing as he owns an assisted

living business and is familiar with the needs of this type of company. His background will help

in identifying areas of improvement in the application.

Below is a list of tasks that my client will be performing as part the test targeting the

above audiences:

● Designated Family Member Tasks:

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o Register on the application and login. Is it a simple and quick process?

o Browse from login to messaging module. The goal is to determine if the

application is user-friendly and provides easy access to messages

o Send a message to the RCFE’s administrator

o Check for existing messages

● Administrator tasks:

o Send a message to a caregiver

o Create a resident’s profile

o Enter medication schedule for a resident

o Create a task for a caregiver

● Caregiver tasks:

o Check task list

o Mark task as done

Client-based Testing Results

A two-hour testing session was setup. First, an introduction to what the MyRCFE

application does was given and a context for what the need is for this software in the assisted

living business. Then, testing tasks were provided and explained in order to facilitate the testing

session.

Refer to Appendix A for a table which contains the client’s feedback and observations for

each of the testing tasks performed.

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Team members

This is a project that I will be doing by myself and I am responsible for

completing all the tasks.

Conclusion

Administrators of residential assisted living facilities face significant challenges in the

management of these properties as they facilitate a complex communication between multiple

caregivers, health care providers, LPA, residents, and their families. These businesses are

management intensive, requiring constant oversight by the administrators to ensure that the

proper level of care is provided to residents.

Currently the market place offers a variety of applications to assist with care and

medication management. However, there is no comprehensive solution that accommodates these

capabilities and a messaging platform all in one application. In addition, there is no application

that targets specifically RCFE properties and allows RCFE administrators to manage these

properties for compliance to the DSS Title 22 law.

This project implements MyRCFE, a mobile application that targets an Android cell

phone and is built based on the needs of RCFE properties. The main goal of the application is to

use current messaging technology to bring caregivers/administrator/resident families together in

a more collaborative environment.

Object-oriented programming was used for the implementation of the project. The

application is built with Android Studio and FireBase database.

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The application consists of 5 modules: care plan management, messaging, resident

profile, medication management, task Tracking. Its target end-users are administrators,

caregivers, and designated family members. Availability and usability are the driving criteria for

designing MyRCFE. This application must be able to run on a cell phone device to make it

available at all times and feature a user-friendly interface that can be easily navigated by end-

users who are often not tech savvy.

I envision this product’s future as a comprehensive mobile care management solution that

extends its current functionality to include medication refill reminders, title 22-compliant (Title

22 Law) incident reports, improved Android notification center features, messaging distribution

lists, interfacing with pharmacies for automation of order placement, incomplete task reminders,

to mention a few.

A lesson learned from this project is that the knowledge in the underlying implementation

technology is crucial to the quality of the final product. This level of knowledge can greatly

impact the project’s schedule. And, in some cases the desired outcome can be affected by the

ability of implement the UI in a way or another. In addition, it is extremely important to

prototype the UI before start coding the application. This allows the software developer to

understand the desired functionality and the overall flow of navigation in the entire application.

It is the ‘what’ that matters the most at the beginning of a project because ‘what’ becomes the

foundation of the application.

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Bibliography

Android Studio. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://developer.android.com/studio/archive

Animoto, video creation software. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.animoto.com

CareZone Software Application. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://carezone.com

Firebase documentation. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://firebase.google.com/docs/android/setup

Medisafe Software Application. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://medisafe.com/

Pluralsight, Software Training Website. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.pluralsight.com

Title 22 Law. (n.d.). http://www.cdss.ca.gov/inforesources/Letters-Regulations/Legislation-and-

Regulations/Community-Care-Licensing-Regulations/Residential.
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Appendix A – Usability Test Plan

Target Audience Task Results/Feedback

Family Member Register on the Positive feedback: The registration and
application and login processes are simple
login
Improvement areas: allow the user to stay
signed in so that multiple logins are not
necessary

Defect: in some cases the login incorrectly

redirects to the profile screen
Navigate from Positive feedback: easy navigation from
login to login to message screen
messaging
module Improvement areas: client needs a
notification of unread messages in the cell
phone main notification center

Add a fly-out menu that can help extend

menu options with icons or allow for
submenus
Send a Positive feedback: message can be quickly
message to the created
RCFE’s
administrator Improvement areas: Add a priority marker
as some messages may have a time
sensitive content

Add a ‘quick message’ box at the top of the

message list to reduce the number of clicks
needed to send a new message. The
recipient will be automatically populated
with the recipient of the last message
Check for Positive feedback: color coded items in the
existing UI make the message list easy to read
messages
Improvement areas: allow user to configure
the messaging list so that a first few words
from the content of the message is
displayed along with the title of the
message for quick viewing
Administrator Send a Positive feedback: simple process for
message to a sending a message
caregiver
Improvement areas: selection of recipient
needs allow user to have a favorite
recipient list to speed up the process of
selection of a recipient
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Create a Positive feedback: Most important resident

resident’s profile information is included in the profile screen

Improvement areas: reduce the amount of

typing by including dropdowns with
preselected common values
Enter Positive feedback: streamlined medication
medication input process
schedule for a
resident Improvement areas: the application needs
to identify who is logged in to prevent a
family member from navigating to the
medication management module
Create a task for Positive feedback: client pleased with the
a caregiver new task list item shortcut button feature

Improvement areas: add a category to the

task list

Add a feature to allow for multiple task lists

Caregiver Check task list Positive feedback: Task list is user-friendly

Improvement areas: Add a priority marker

to the task in order to communicate the
urgency of the tasks. This will help the
caregiver to prioritize specific tasks.
Mark task as Positive feedback: Application consistently
done keeps track of done/undone tasks without
defects

Improvement areas: Allow the user to

swipe left to quickly mark a task as
completed