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FAQs: Connect

Kevin U
  • Updated

How do I acknowledge a Connect message?

A Connect message can be acknowledged from the Connect screen or the People Listing screen. See Acknowledging Connect Messages for more information and instrucitons. 

Why does a resident now have NPO as their diet?

Possible Reason 1:

This typically means the following scenario has occurred:

  1. The resident/patient had an LOA, and your EHR system processed the LOA as a discharge, which triggers the Connect interface to the EHR to archive the profile in your MealSuite account.
  2. When the resident was readmitted, the your Connect interface setting of When a person is readmitted is to assign the default diet order, which is often NPO, as that is the lowest risk option for safety reasons. 
  3. The resident/patient in the EHR is not assigned an active diet order, and as such their profile in your MealSuite account is not updated and therefore will continue to be NPO.

Because your account is using a Connect interface to pull in diet order assignments from your EHR, manually assigning their diet order in your MealSuite account will not be permanent. You instead must assign diet orders in your EHR. The Connect interface will then perform a synch to update the diet order in your MealSuite account.

Possible Reason 2:

If you have a Connect interface with PointClickCare (PCC), it could be that the diet order was put on hold. If the diet order is put on hold in PCC, then the Diet, Texture and Fluid fields will populate with NPO. When the on hold status is removed from the diet order in PCC, then the Connect update process will return the previously-assigned diet order to the MealSuite resident/patient profile. 

You can confirm if a diet order is on hold for a resident/patient profile by clicking their PointClickCare tab and scrolling to the Diet Order section, where the status is listed. 

Possible Reason 3:

Check the Connect interface diet order mapping to ensure that an EHR diet order is not mistakenly mapped to NPO. If so, remap the diet order as necessary. 

How do I investigate the message details sent from the EHR?

You have the ability to investigate the EHR message details to learn what changes were made, when the changes were made, and who acknowledged the message. See the following article for more instructions: Investigating Changes Made to a Profile from the EHR

Why would a message have "No changes made"?

Certain demographic data that is updated in the EHR, such as preferred name, insurance information, and next of kin, is not applicable to a resident/patient profile. When such non-applicable updates are made in the EHR, it can trigger a message to Connect containing "No changes made" in the message details. 

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Does Connect support multiple diet orders from an EHR profile?

At this time, only the PCC Connect interface supports multiple diet orders for a profile, but only for informational purposes, meaning only the primary diet order is used to control what foods are served on the resident's/patient's personal menu (i.e., multiple diet orders are not considered in personal menu calculations). For more information, see Multiple PCC Diet Orders.

The MealSuite system currently does not support multiple diet order logic for resident/patient profiles, but this logic is currently in development. When multiple diet order logic is released, it will be able to accept multiple diet orders via PCC Connect. 

New rooms/beds have recently been added to our facility. How do I add these in our MealSuite account?

When a new room/bed has been added to your EHR system, then that new room/bed is not automatically created in your MealSuite account via Connect.

Only when a resident/patient is admitted to the new room will Connect be informed. Because the new room is not yet in your MealSuite account, Connect requires you to resolve the room mapping by selecting the Create New Room option, which automatically creates the new room/bed in the MealSuite account. 

See Resolving Connect Messages for more information. 

Why is a person's name in black font rather than a link on the Connect screen? How do I fix that? 

A person's name in black font on the Connect screen is an unmapped person in the MealSuite account, meaning they do not have an existing profile in the system. You can resolve an unmapped person via the following options: 

  • Create a New Person - creates a new profile in your account.
  • Ignore Message - the message that the unmapped person is associated with will be ignored. This is a useful option for a person who is an outpatient or who has been discharged (thereby allowing the system to accept a re-admit if needed). 
  • Ignore Person - ignores current message and all future messages for the unmapped person. 

See Resolving Connect Messages for more information. 

A resident/patient is active in our EHR system but is no longer showing in my MealSuite account. How can I get their profile back?

In this scenario, it often means resident/patient profile was archived because it received a discharge message from the EHR.

You can confirm if the profile was archived by opening the People Listing screen, and using the Status filter to display all archived profiles. For specific instructions, see Locating Archived Persons. 

If the profile is archived, then you can unarchive the profile. For specific instructions, see Unarchiving a Person. 

I don’t want to have to acknowledge all these update messages. Can they be acknowledged automatically?

Yes. You can set up your account to automatically acknowledge certain message types. When a message type is automatically acknowledged it means you do not have to manually acknowledge the message. For more information and specific instructions, see Setting up Automatic Acknowledgement of Messages.

I have an Action Needed message on the Connect screen, but when I click on it, nothing happens. What should I do?

If nothing happens when you click an Action Needed button, then contact MealSuite Support via chat, or submit a ticket, or send an email to support@mealsuite.com.

My resident came back from LOA yesterday, but their profile still says Leave of Absence. What do I do?

When a patient or resident returns from a LOA, the return date may not have been entered in the EHR, or the return date is processed as invalid. Regardless, you can easily mark the person as back on-premise via their profile. To do so, see Manually Marking as Person as On-Premise. 

My patient went to the hospital for an appointment and when they came back their menu customizations disappeared. How do I get the customizations back?

This typically means your EHR system processed the person's initial absence as a discharge, which triggers Connect to archive the profile in your account. Upon readmission, Connect receives an Admit message for the profile, and the Connect settings in your account for an Admit message are to assign the default diet order, which is often NPO. For NPO, personal menu customizations are not copied over. 

To return the personal menu customizations to the person, you will have to reassign a diet order (diet type/texture type/fluid type) on their profile. To do so, see Assigning Diet Order (Diet Type, Texture Type, Fluid Type) to Person. Once a diet order is assigned, the personal menu customizations will be restored. 

Note, however, if you assign a diet order that was never previously assigned to the person, then the system will prompt you to copy the customizations from a previously-assigned diet order to the new diet order. For more information and specific instructions, click here.

Is race or ethnicity captured by Connect?

For the PCC Connect interface, yes. The Ethnicity field in PCC maps to the Ethnicity field in the resident/patient profile.

For a non-PCC Connect interface, the race or ethnicity is not captured. 

Why am I being asked to resolve rooms when they already exist in the system?  

Sometimes the EHR system sends room data differently for the same room (e.g., "Room 112-1" vs "Room 112, Bed 1"). This causes Connect to recognize it as a new room, and thus prompts you to resolve the room. You can map the EHR room to the existing MealSuite room by selecting the Map EHR room to existing room option. For more information and specific instructions, see click here.

How are meal plans affected by a resident who is marked on a leave of absence (LOA) in their EHR?

If a resident is marked as LOA in the EHR, then Connect will mark their resident profile as LOA in the Core system as per standard functionality. When a resident is marked as LOA, their meal plan stays assigned. Therefore when they return from an LOA, they can continue to use their meal plan.

How are meal plans affected by a resident who is marked as discharged in the EHR?

If a resident is discharged in the EHR, then Connect will archive their resident profile in the Core system as per standard functionality. As such, their meal plan will be unassigned. 

How do I ignore/stop non-food allergens such as medication applying to a profile?

For a non-food allergen that is coming through in a Connect message from your EHR, you can select the Ignore Allergy option when resolving the message. To do so, Resolving Allergen Data Mapping Issues. 

How do I stop emails coming from Connect?

The system cannot be configured to stop email notification messages coming from Connect. However, to prevent the messages from residing in your main inbox, you can create a rule in Microsoft® Outlook® that automatically moves the messages to a designated folder. To do so, see the following article: Creating a Microsoft® Outlook® Rule for Connect Email Notifications.

If terminology/nomenclature/names change in the EHR that are currently mapped to their corresponding entities in MealSuite, will that affect the mapping?

No. The mapping will not be affected because those mapping relationships already exist. 

Why did the room information not update to the room that is assigned in the EHR?

Room updates occur with a transfer patient message or an admission message. If the room is not being updated for the patient/resident, review the room mapping to ensure the correct room is being assigned in your MealSuite account. It also could be the room is set as ignored in the room mapping. 

Why did this resident not get admitted into my account?

For a resident to be admitted into your MealSuite account, one of the following messages needs to be received:

Why was this person archived/discharged but they are still active in the EHR?

A discharge message for the person will archive the associated people profile in MealSuite. Note that for most facilities the Connect setting of When a person is discharged from EMR, their profile is is to archive the profile when an discharge message is received; the other option for this setting is to delete the profile. 

Why do I have two residents with the same name and two profiles in MealSuite?

A duplicate resident can be the result of manually creating a person profile. Another reason is that both profiles are valid except there can be differences in the following information: MRN, spelling of the first, middle and last name, and date of birth.