Assigning Rules to Products

Rule sets that have been created using the CER editor can be categorized and assigned to products. Rule set categories provide administrators with a facility for filtering and sorting rule sets. There are three types of rule sets that apply to the determination of client eligibility and entitlement for care and protection products:

• Eligibility and entitlement rules are normally related to or defined by legislation. These are the rules needed for the system to know whether or not a client is eligible, and if so to what the client is entitled.
• Key decision factor rules are used to provide visibility on key pieces of real world information that has changed as part of eligibility and entitlement processing. By assigning a key decision factor rule set to a product, the significant factors that were involved in determining the client's eligibility such as a change in total household income, can be displayed in the graphical representation of the determination created as a result of the eligibility and entitlement rule set associated to the product. Case workers can use this information to understand more about why an eligibility and entitlement determination turned out as it did.
• Decision details rules are used to provide a user-friendly explanation of how eligibility and entitlement was determined. These rules can be designed by an agency as required to display any information that is desirable to display to users, for example, a list of countable assets or a hyperlink to supporting information. Custom pages can be designed to display the information that is determined by these rules. Case workers can use these decision details rules to match their understanding of the real world information to the system's determination of eligibility and entitlement.

The assignment of rules sets to products is done through the creation of a product period. The product period defines the timeframe over which rule sets are applicable for the product. An example of a product period is the 2010 calendar year.

Product periods can be open-ended, i.e., only one product period need be defined for a product, and can be applied indefinitely. When a product period is defined, the administrator can associate rules (eligibility and entitlement, key decision factor, and decision details rules) to the product period. Administrators must assign an eligibility and entitlement rule to a product period and can optionally assign key decision factor and decision details rules. As part of assigning rules to products, an administrator can also specify the value of product attributes that are used in eligibility determination processing. For more information, see Configuring Eligibility Determination Processing. Only published rules will be used when determining eligibility and entitlement within a case.

For detailed information on assigning rules to products, the settings that are used in eligibility determination processing, and publishing rules see the Cúram Integrated Case Management Configuration Guide.