Using Multiple Assessments in HMIS (FAQs)
Readers may recall our recent announcements about some major changes to how assessments are showing up in Community Services - activating the ability to have multiple assessments show up within each provider. Our system configuration team has been working hard to roll out these changes across over 1800 providers in HMIS. This feels a bit like chipping away at marble, but we're making progress! So far we've activated the changes for 73% of our providers and we're on track to complete this task by the end of the month.
Read on to see some of the FAQs we've been seeing around this change!
What will I see once these changes have been activated for my providers?
When you first create an Entry for a new client or household, the primary assessment you see will be called "MN Core: Entry for PH" (or ES or TH etc). This will automatically show up and you will simply complete all the questions presented there (so nothing all that different!).
Once you have completed that data entry, hit Save. Then scroll back up to the top and look for any funder-specific assessments within the "Select an Assessment" area. Depending on what funding your program has (HUD CoC, DHS Housing Support, MN Housing FHPAP, and so on…), there will be funder-specific assessments available to click on.
Then you just click on each of those and complete the remaining questions and Save.
It seems like I have A LOT of assessments showing up in that Select an Assessment box. How do I navigate through that?
It is true - some providers will have a lot of assessments there. If you are creating an Entry, then you only need to do the ones with the word Entry in the title (for most providers, there are 1-2 funder-specific assessments). If you are creating an Update/Interim or Exit, then similarly you just look for the assessments with that word in the title. There is a little scroll bar on the right-hand side, so definitely scroll down if you aren't seeing the right assessment at the top.
Additionally, if your Entry/Update/Exit assessments aren't showing up at the top of that box, you can contact our Helpdesk and our team can make a quick back-end adjustment. (As we've updated providers, we have tried to keep those Entry/Update/Exit assessments in the 1/2/3 positions, but we may have missed that in some instances!)
So what's the purpose of those other assessments even being there?
Some providers do have additional assessments assigned and most providers also are able to view their region's CE assessments as well. If you identify any assessments in that box that you actually don't ever utilize, you can reach out to Helpdesk and we can take a look at removing them. We don't want to make sweeping assumptions about what all providers do or do not need access to, so we're happy to engage in dialogue to make a particular provider's assessment list as manageable as possible.
I don't know what funding my program has - should I know that?
When an agency requests a new provider be created in HMIS, whoever is submitting the information has to tell us what funding sources are at play. So we set up the provider, and assign the assessments, based on that. Not all end users are necessarily going to know what funding is going into their programs, and that is probably just fine in most instances. It is each agency's responsibility to notify us of any changes in funding sources so that we can keep your providers up-to-date and make sure we have the right assessments activated. If you do think there is a funding source that does not appear to be represented (or should no longer be represented), then it may be worth bringing that up with your organization's leadership so the right person can reach out to us with an update.
One other helpful resource to bookmark is our "What is a provider?" article. This article breaks down the components of a provider's name - this is a very useful way of figuring out which funding sources are actively applied to your provider!
What if we're missing an assessment or there are ones we don't actually need?
Absolutely reach out to our Helpdesk and we can make those updates ASAP.
Why do my funder-specific assessments still have all the same questions as the Core assessment? I thought those were going to be a lot shorter!
Good eye! This is a very temporary inconvenience. Once we have finalized the configurations across all the providers, we will go back in and remove those now-duplicated questions from the funder-specific assessments. We anticipate completing this by the end of October - thank you for your patience!
As always - if you have any other questions or run into anything that looks "not quite right", reach out to our Helpdesk and we'll take a look under the hood!