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Foothold Expo 2016
FootholdConnect Events
Highlights from the Project Pipeline - Letter from the CEO
What's New in AWARDS
Topaz Signature Pads Update
Tip of the Month - Using Client Search to Locate Household Members
This Month on the Foothold Blog
In 2014 we Went Places and last year we Solved the Puzzle. This year, Foothold Technology's Expo is back and we're Cultivating Growth.
While Foothold, and the Expo, have certainly expanded since our first seeds were planted, it is our community of providers, the industry we work in, and the tools and technologies we use that are germinating. With the blending of Behavioral and Primary Healthcare, and technology integrating itself into service provision, it is important for all of us to understand how we can feed off of these changes.
Join us at Expo 2016 for a day of collaboration, exploration, and information with like-minded peers from the Foothold Community. We'll look at the ways in which AWARDS has grown, discuss industry changes, and have some fun along the way. Let's grow together!
Early Bird & Team Tickets On Sale Now! Click here to purchase your tickets today!
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For more information on upcoming FootholdConnect events, please go to the FootholdConnect button on the AWARDS Opening Menu page, or visit the Upcoming Events page of the Foothold Technology web site.
And don't forget... If you've missed any recent FootholdConnect events, you can access the recordings for those in Online Help here!
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Highlights from the Project Pipeline - Letter from the CEO
We are pleased to provide you with a special installment of "Highlights from the Project Pipeline," where CEO Marlowe Greenberg offers an update on our 2015 successes and 2016 development plans here at Foothold Technology.
I want to take this opportunity to bring you up to date on the goings on here at Foothold, and share an overview of the scope of work we have set for ourselves in 2016.
Foothold Technology continues to spread the word about the benefits of using AWARDS. As part of our outreach we attended or presented at over 65 conferences across the nation. Special thanks go out to the clients and partners who presented with us this year: Jennifer Weeber of Hazard Perry County Community Ministries, Liz Smith of Unity House Cayuga County, Cindy Skinner of Focus on Youth, Patrick Germain of Project Renewal, John Kulesza of Collaborative Support Services of NJ, Steve Duke of Baltic Street AEH, Jenna Tine of Goodwill Industries of Greater NY & Northern NJ, RaeAnn VanGundy of Kendall County Health Department, Debbie Pantin of VIP Community Services, Mary Woods of Woods SeniorCare Consultants, Erin McDonnell of COTS, Marge Vezer of SAIL, Hilary Melton of Pathways Vermont, and Pamela J Russo of Catholic Charities Diocese of Allentown. We also made a huge splash at the CSH Summit and launched our first "Voices of" campaign around supportive housing. "Voices of" is a collection of perspectives from the industry and their thoughts on why they do what they do, the struggles they're seeing within the industry, the tools they use, and where they see things going. We have seen tremendous success from our client and prospect community and are looking to launch many more "Voices of" campaigns in 2016.
2015 was also a very busy development year at Foothold, with new features and enhancements on many fronts. Most notably, the new Home screen was deployed, introducing AWARDS users to the new look and feel that will be incorporated incrementally throughout the entire application over the months to come. Along with the Home screen, we converted the Employers module to the new look and added new features there such as the search feature and breadcrumbs. This project was the culmination of a tremendous amount of work on the part of many staff at Foothold, and we are extremely excited about the transition! Another notable addition in 2015 was the Forgot Username and Password links now available on the AWARDS login page, and used in conjunction with the new Security Details feature. We hope you are all as excited as we are about putting the ability to manage forgotten usernames and passwords into the hands of the end users. And based on valuable feedback from many of you, we worked hard to enhance our Medications module and develop the MAR in AWARDS. With new features like a build-it-yourself MAR with electronically signable administration records, warnings and audit messages for a variety of medication administration quality control issues, and new options in Medications data entry, our users are able to bring their medications tracking to a new level in AWARDS.
Our monthly releases included a tremendous amount of HMIS-related updates, on-going enhancements to ReportBuilders, and many important enhancements to BillingBuilder, including the long awaited BillingBuilder ReportBuilder. Users were also excited to utilize the new Contacts module, Availability View in Calendar, and an array of new Interoperability features like Care Plan file exports for Health Homes and a variety of new Import Tools like Roster and Entitlements. If you haven't already registered, be sure to join us for the January 21st webinar "FootholdConnect - The Best of 2015."
2015 was also a year of great company growth at Foothold. On the Training front, we broadened the types of webinars we present for FootholdConnect events and continued to build the library of recordings in AWARDS Online Help, available here and here. Additionally, we completed our sixth round of AWARDS Certification courses and began our seventh!
Our Quality Assurance team made large scale updates to our Online Help system to reflect great new changes to AWARDS, including the new Home screen, and began an improvement project to make finding information in Help even more user-friendly.
Our Client Services division spent a good part of the year refining processes as they relate to new customer implementations of AWARDS. It's been a very busy year guiding customers through the beginnings of the transition to managed care, exchanging data with Health Homes and Health Information Exchanges, transitioning to the second year in a row of HMIS Data Standards changes and the ongoing work of maintaining compliance across all regulatory bodies.
And at the crux of all the development work we do, our Application Development team had a very productive year, with lots of large-scale projects completed related to the redesign effort along with those focused on regulatory compliance. We have a tremendous development agenda for 2016, with our flagship project being the ongoing revamp of the entire application, allowing your work to flow intuitively and efficiently from Home. In the first quarter of the year, we will release 20 sub-modules in the new look and feel - bringing most of the Medical module into the fold. We'll then turn our attention to all of our modular Menu pages, creating a significant navigational win by transforming them into the new look and feel. After that, it's on to the Face Sheet and the modules embedded there, as we start to build out our new client view, which will allow you to work with a single client's record in its entirety all in one place.
Alongside that, the majority of new feature development will be in the new framework, including the new PlanBuilder, which is well underway. The PlanBuilder is one of the more exciting pieces of functionality that we will be releasing. Service Plans are at the core of the work you do with your clients every day. Our current Service Plan module has been in need of a makeover to both evolve with the times as well as give you the flexibility to design your own plans. The new PlanBuilder module will do just that. PlanBuilder will allow you to add the fields you need, as well as create your own plan schedule, and all within a new interface that will greatly ease the process of interacting with Service Plans in AWARDS. The PlanBuilder will give you the ability to assign a goal to a specific program from a Care Plan, greater reporting with a ReportBuilder, integration with assessments and ease of use so you can continue to focus on the important work you do with your clients.
The landscape within which we all work is shifting rapidly and throwing new requirements and expectations at you at a faster rate than is comfortable to most. But rest assured that we at Foothold are tuned in to your changing needs and are working hard to make sure AWARDS can keep up with you!
That's all for now. Please feel free to drop me an email if you are so inclined.
Sincerely,
Marlowe Greenberg, CEO
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As we have done in previous months, we are continuing to make available a new set of useful features and functions to users of AWARDS. As always, this round of upgrades is provided free of charge to all AWARDS users and is described below. If you have any questions, please feel free to ask your local Help Desk or your Foothold Client Services representative. We hope these enhancements improve the way you use AWARDS and provide services!
HMIS System Performance Measures Report
A new System Performance Measures report has been added to the Fiscal/Program module in HMIS databases. This report is designed to help HMIS system administrators evaluate the performance of an entire Continuum of Care; specifically, it evaluates all of the HMIS projects in an entire CoC on the following metrics:
Because this report is very extensive and may take a while to run, the "Send In Messages" option is checked off by default. The report also includes optional Individual Detail and Excel file links.
The System Performance Measures report is only accessible by users in the "CoC Executive Officer" and "Local CoC Admin" user groups.
ReportBuilder Enhancements
As part of our ongoing effort to make AWARDS ReportBuilders as comprehensive and user-friendly as possible, several enhancements have been deployed to the ReportBuilders listed here:
Demographics ReportBuilder
Employees ReportBuilder
Service Contacts and Progress Notes ReportBuilders
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We wanted to provide an update regarding issues with using Topaz signature pads in AWARDS and our ability to support them. We've been able to duplicate recent issues reported by some of our users who work with Topaz signature pads in Internet Explorer 11, and have isolated them to a piece of Topaz's code that receives input from the signature pad when you click the "Draw" button in AWARDS. Likewise, we've found that our own signature pads no longer work on their own demonstration page.
We've been in touch with Topaz regarding the issue, but as an immediate workaround, we encourage users to use the available "Touch" option, which is available by default in AWARDS databases, if you're not already doing so. That will enable staff and consumers to sign with any device - such as a mouse when using a computer or a finger when using a touch-enabled device like a tablet. We also encourage you to take a look at a recent letter written by our CEO, Marlowe Greenberg, in the December 2015 edition of FootNotes that addresses concerns around Topaz and our plans for the future with regard to electronic signatures.
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Looking Ahead...
There's a lot in store for HMIS in 2016. Later this month some minor updates are planned for the Point In Time Report. A new CoC APR report is ready to be released as soon as HUD gives the green light. And we are currently developing new functionality for Coordinated Entry Systems such as a new Waiting List Builder that will be released in the next quarter.
Chronically Homeless Definition
You may have seen HUD released an updated definition of Chronically Homeless. AWARDS has actually already been using this new rule. Old records are not changed unless you update a client's admission record.
Three criteria must be met to be considered Chronically Homeless:
1. Disabling Condition = "Yes"
and
2. One of the following must be true:
a) Client entering from the streets, ES or SH = "Yes"
b) The HMIS Project Type of the project the client is being admitted to = "Emergency Shelter," "Street Outreach," or "Safe Haven."
and
3. One of the following must be true:
a) Approximate Date Started = more than 1 year prior to the admission date
b) Number of times homeless = "4 or more" AND Total number of months homeless on Streets, ES, or SH = "12" or "more than 12"
Look for "Version 4" of the saved ReportBuilder Format for checking Chronically Homeless values to be added to the HMIS ReportBuilder soon.
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Tip of the Month - Using Client Search to Locate Household Members
Did you know that for programs using Household functionality to record information about household members, the Client Search feature in AWARDS can be set to find those members, even if they have not been admitted to a program?
When this option is enabled, clicking on Client Search and entering search criteria (name or initials, SSN, and/or Birthdate) that match household members will bring up a list of matches that includes those household members and indicate the name of the primary client.
When viewing Client Search results that include household members, if the household member is not admitted as a client but the staff member has chart access to the program(s) where the primary client is admitted, the name of that client will display as a link that will take the user to the Client Information page where they can navigate into various parts of the client's chart records.
The option to include household members in Client Search results is turned on at an agency-wide level. If it's not already in place at your agency and you would like it to be, please contact your Foothold Client Services representative or the AWARDS Help Desk, and refer to "cfg-household-search.".
And for more information about Household functionality, please click here.
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This Month on the Foothold Blog
Check out the latest entries from the Foothold blog!
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https://demodb.footholdtechnology.com/help/?11678 - January 2016
