Last month, I had the privilege of attending a webinar put on by AAIDD in conjunction with the Coleman Institute for Cognitive Disabilities and the Institute on Disability and Human Development.  Both of these institutes have really great data on I/DD Home and Community Based Services throughout the US and really give a complete picture on what's going on in our industry as a whole.  This blog post will focus around what I learned regarding the services and needs of individuals with I/DD as they have trended over the last 30 something years.  There are some really promising trends that were uncovered in the webinar and also some that pose challenges to providers across the country.  

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Tags: Home Care Industry, Home and Community Based Services, Waiver Services

The Difference Between EMRs and AMPs

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Tags: EHR, Provider Agencies

If there are any Seinfeld fans out there, you'll remember an episode in which Newman, Jerry's mailman neighbor, has a breakdown because "the mail never stops, it just keeps coming and coming!"  Trainings at a provider agency are similar - they are a constant.  Between your new hire trainings and your annual, semi-annual renewal of other trainings, your staff is always in training mode.  For the people at the agency that have to manage everyone's training and keep track of it all, it can be a stressful and never-ending task.  Good trainers are patient, organized and accessible without software.  Give them a software tool to manage trainings and you would be amazed at how much more you can do with trainings!  Below is a short list of the 5 benefits of tracking trainings in a disability provider software, such as an agency management platform.

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Tags: Staff Management, Implementation

If you are like most provider agencies that are not using an agency management platform, you most likely have a variety of software products in use that varies from department to department.  And you would not be alone.  In a 2011 survey that we conducted with over 1,600 respondents, the majority (over 60%) of provider agencies are not utilizing a comprehensive software system, such as an agency management platform.  What's the most common way agencies are tracking information?  The overwhelming majority of agencies (93%) use Microsoft Excel.  Second most common way - Microsoft Access.      So what does this mean?  It means that even though agencies might be described as "paper based", they are using software products to help manage their data.  It also means that everyone that's using Excel or Access probably has their own spreadsheets or databases stored on their local hard drive.  The point here is that information is not shared across department boundaries with this type of software.  I'm sure you've probably seen at your agency a spreadsheet that someone has on their computer and even the way the spreadsheet looks is totally different than the ones you create.  There's no standardization; it's kind of like the wild west of data management.  Here are some problems with this method. 

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Tags: Provider Agencies, Paperless / Cloud Based