Validation Processes

After using the Finish button to begin completing your Patient Care Report, the report will be checked against state and national rules for patient care reports during a process called the "Validation Process". 

There are two steps in the Validation Process:

1. AIM Validation Process
   1. During the AIM Validation step, all mandatory fields that are configured as required in Patient Care Setup > Field Configuration Setup are checked for completion.
   2. Answer choices such as Not Applicable or Not Recorded will satisfy completion of required questions during this process, though depending on the state validation rules, some questions set to Not Applicable or Not Recorded may require other answer choices to successfully validate.
      1. For example, if the user selected 'Yes' for Possible Injury within the Situation Tab, but recorded the Cause of Injury in the Injuries Tab as 'Not Applicable', this may pass the AIM Validation since the Cause of Injury field is technically answered, but in the next step of the Validation Process, the state and national rules may trigger an error or a warning to illicit an answer for the Cause of Injury field. This happens with many fields that the state/national rules determine should be answered based on the answer choices of related questions (like Possible Injury in this example).
2. State/National Validation Process
   1. During the State/National Validation Process, your patient care report will undergo a more thorough check to determine of all of the data in the patient care report is compliant with state/national rules for patient care reports. 
   2. There are two types of validation messages that can be received during this process:
      1. Validation Errors: These messages are listed in red and will need to be fixed in order to complete the report.
         1. Receiving an error indicates that your report is missing information or may contain contradictory information in terms of how the encounter was documented. 
         2. This is considered the more difficult step of the validation process. Adjusting Patient Care Setup > Field Configuration Setup can assist with eliminating validation errors/warnings that consistently appear during the completion of your patient care reports. 

1. 1. 1. 1. Users can click most validation messages to be directed straight to the field/section where they can be resolved. Otherwise, contact AIM Support directly and we can connect directly to your computer to resolve the validation issues with your PCR.
      2. Validation Warnings: These messages are listed in purple and will not stop your patient care report from completing. However, if your patient care report has a substantial amount of warnings, it may cause issues when submitted to the state. For best practices, resolve all validation issues with your PCR.
         1. Users can click most validation messages to be directed straight to the field/section where they can be resolved. Otherwise, contact AIM Support directly and we can connect directly to your computer to resolve the validation issues with your PCR.

1. 1. Validation messages are caused by the state/national rules for PCRs. If you are not submitting your patient care report to the state, then you are able to bypass these errors/warnings. Contact AIM Support for more information. 

When the validation process is complete, your patient care report will typically submit to the state. However, this does not always occur such as in the event that your Quality Assurance process is configured to require a QA Review prior to exporting to the state. Certain profiles not needed to be sent to the state can be configured to not send to state and avoid the State/National validation process entirely. Contact AIM Support for more information. 

State Export Errors

Sometimes, when your ePCR is in the process of sending to the state, errors can occur referencing that your patient care report failed to send to the state. This typically happens for one of a few reasons:

1. Network-related issues, such as a loss of wi-fi connectivity, were encountered. 
2. The state repository service is down or experiencing intermittent problems. 
3. Your AIM System is not yet ready to send data to the state repository..

If your patient care report encounters an error sending to the state repository, in most cases your ePCR will not advance to a Finished or In Review status until the data can send to the state successfully, depending on configuration settings.