Cleaning Data for CIHI Delivery

For many regulatory authorities, the annual CIHI report can be a tedious and time-consuming process.

Data must be captured, processed, submitted, and potentially cleaned and resubmitted multiple times.

Unlike generic association management software, Alinity is specifically designed to address the unique needs of regulatory authorities, such as annual CIHI exports.

With the optional Database Management module , CIHI exports are simplified and streamlined.

Using Database Management, you can easily schedule your annual snapshot, automatically validate data and clean any errors until it meets known standards, download CIHI-formatted records for delivery, and, if necessary, correct any additional errors identified by CIHI and resubmit, all from within the Alinity system.

In this video, we’re going to demonstrate how you can use Alinity to clean any errors prior to delivery to CIHI.

 Cleaning your CIHI data

It’s good practice to get your data as clean as possible prior to any deadlines. The more data maintenance you perform throughout the year, the less you’ll need to complete after your freeze date.

At this point, you should’ve already taken your snapshot of the database and it’s time to start correcting known formatting errors. To learn how to use Alinity to take a snapshot of your database, check out our prior post.

You can view all the relevant information about your snapshot by going to the Snapshot tab in the Database Management options tree, then selecting your most recent snapshot, where you can see the description you typed in earlier, when the data was last verified, and when the job codes for registrants were last updated.

Importantly though, you can also see a list of records that don’t currently meet known CIHI requirements.

There are many reasons why some registrants may produce errors in the export, and different ways of correcting them. We’ll go over a few of the most common, but virtually all errors will be corrected in one of these two ways.

Missing code errors

Note that you can Search for specific records as normal, but you can also search the text of the error messages to locate only registrants who have the same error. For example, if a new location was added to your system but an ISO code wasn’t specified at that time, only records missing an ISO code will show if you search for “ISO” with the Sear.

Once you’ve identified the error, you can mass correct it by updating the appropriate information.

Start by selecting any of the registrants that has the particular error, then going to their entry in the extract. Locate the error, in this case an empty Province/state code, and click on the field label. Alinity will take you directly to the appropriate screen in a new browser tab where you can fix the error.

Enter the missing ISO code, click Save, then return to the Snapshot details where you can click the Update Coding button. With the updated ISO coding in place, you can validate the snapshot again and all the registrants with that error will be corrected.

Qualifying education errors

For other types of errors, such as qualifying education errors, you have to update the registrant’s record in the main system as well as in the snapshot to keep everything in sync. The snapshot is its own separate file, so updating the snapshot record won’t update our system.

You can update the registrant’s record the usual way (by going to the people page and searching for them), or just by clicking on their name in the error list, which will take you directly to their summary. Once there, you can add their qualifying education (or whatever relevant information is missing). Then you can return to the snapshot, enter the registrant’s snapshot record, and update the field with the required information. This way, both the CIHI snapshot and your database are updated.

Continue cleaning using either of these methods until all the errors in your system have been removed.

Once the data has been cleaned and validated so there are no more known errors, you can download the export for delivery to CIHI. Make sure you click the blue CIHI download to get the actual file. The green download is used for reports about your current search only.

Finally, in the event CIHI requires additional updates, you can always return to the snapshot, search for the registrants you need, and make the appropriate changes. Just remember to update the information in both the snapshot and the registrant record to keep everything in sync.

CIHI reporting can present a serious technical challenge for organizations relying on generic software. As an association management solution designed specifically for regulatory authorities, Alinity offers a simplified solution. For more information about the CIHI export process or other features of the Database Management module, contact us and we’ll be happy to answer your questions or set up a free demonstration.