One of the biggest areas of concern when looking at dd provider software is the cost.  The cost of the software is obviously important in the decision making process but to zoom out, what does the investment look like in terms of purchasing computers, tablets and smartphones?  Also, what type of technology works best in home and community based settings?  With our experience, we have seen the type of technology that works best in the different settings.  Again, it's not just the software that's important - how your employees access it is crucial as well.  Below is a guide to help you understand the type of technology investments you'll need with dd provider software, or more commonly known as agency management platforms.

In most cases, if you are an providing agency implementing a new technology you are going to receive push back from your staff.  What you find to be cutting edge and highly beneficial for your agency, your staff could find threatening.  Especially with staff that has limited exposure to computers and technology, the idea of implementing technology at your agency could be extremely earth-shattering.  So how can you motivate staff in home and community based services to use technology? We have some ideas that we'll share below, but it's important to note that the best to motivate is not through threats or negative reinforcement.  If you keep it positive and make it internal in terms of personal growth, technology and change will be embraced a lot deeper!

The idea of moving from a paper based agency to a computer system seems overwhelming for most providers.  It is definitely an exercise in change management as we have recently written about.  One of the pluses to getting everything off of paper and into a system is the ability to track everything in one platform.  Before, with paper, you could track things on forms or in different binders but that information is basically trapped on the paper.  If you stop and think about everything that you track for a client, from service notes to emergency contacts to units authorized, if you were tracking that in a single system as opposed to pieces of paper you would have tremendous data on every client you served and be better able to serve that client.  So to answer the title of this blog post, you can track everything that you're tracking now on paper.  The only difference is you can do a lot more with the information once you've noted it.  Let's examine some areas of tracking.

In a follow up to last month's blog post regarding a recent study that was co-sponsored by the Coleman Institute for Cognitive Disabilities and the University of Illinois at Chicago's Department of Disability and Human Development, this post is going to focus on the study as it relates to state trends.