THINK TANK | 2017 Highlights from the Foothold Technology Project Pipeline

Hello readers,

I wanted to start off the new year by taking some time to highlight some ways we strive to provide our valued customers with a true vendor partnership. While we are very proud of AWARDS, we take even greater pride in the comprehensive services we offer our customers, above and beyond the actual software tool.

Before I dive in, however, I would be remiss if I didn’t highlight some of our hard work on AWARDS in 2017. Most noticeably, we made continued strides in our ongoing efforts to update the look and feel of AWARDS. We worked on various state and federal regulatory and billing requirements, and are very proud to announce that we were officially approved as a 2015 Federally Certified Edition EHR by ONC, as well as a qualified HCBS Vendor in New York State! As you know, the 2015 Edition is the most recent MU specification. The AWARDS Interoperability Center also continued to grow with additional RHIO connections, and ongoing work to keep us up-to-date for Care Coordination models rolling out across the country.

As the only Behavioral Health EHR in the HIMSS Electronic Health Record Association (EHRA), our voice is critical and we make sure it is heard loud and clear. Recent areas of focus for this group have been supporting common data standards, using technology to improve care and efficiencies, as well as developing EHR codes of conduct to set standards for how EHRs should operate with consistency. I’m excited to attend HIMSS18 later this spring. Be sure to check back for updates as I’ll be sharing some thoughts and lessons learned following the event.

In addition, we also focused a great deal of attention on information sharing and collaboration with our customer community. Customers partnered with us to deliver presentations at conferences and events across the country, joined educational webinars, and hopefully you saw some of our many blog posts, which highlighted these varied efforts. In March, we joined associations from across the nation to celebrate Developmental Disabilities Awareness Month, and in June we awarded three Foothold Technology customers with Impact Prizes for their innovative use of AWARDS and their data. We are also enjoying our behind the scenes support on a project with NJHMIS and Rutgers University to use Medicaid and homeless data to drive policy, support decision-making, and provide a deeper analysis of outcomes. And hearing from our customers about how they are using data from AWARDS to advocate for change in their communities has been especially exciting this year, like this story highlighting some examples in Michigan and Florida, a podcast from Sequel Alliance Family Services in Idaho, this video series featuring Fellowship House in Florida, as well as this story highlighting how partnership among agencies in Nevada created some new found success and the opportunity to learn from each other. We’re grateful for the impact our customers are creating in their communities and we look forward to sharing more of those stories in 2018.

And of course 2017 also saw a continued focus on security, with much time and energy going into ensuring our systems and our customers’ data are safe and secure. As we move into an age of ever increasing cyber security threats, security has been and continues to be a high priority for everyone at Foothold. This past year we expanded our ongoing security work beyond internal initiatives to help educate our users as well. If you didn’t see them already, I shared a few tips you might find helpful, which you can access here.

We are looking forward to continued partnerships in this new year, as we tread together through this constantly changing behavioral healthcare landscape. We greatly value the critical work you all do every day, and are committed to continuing our advocacy work, information sharing, and software development efforts on your behalf.  

That’s all for now. 

Sincerely,
Marlowe Greenberg, CEO