Future-Proofing: Top 5 Ways AWARDS Can Power Your Superpowers

Since Foothold was founded in 2000, the power of our system, AWARDS, has grown due to the never-ending array of reporting features we’ve been adding to it. As we work with providers to prepare for the new requirements of Healthcare Reform, we thought it would be helpful to offer this run-down of some of the greatest attributes of AWARDS today that can help “future-proof” your agency to survive and thrive in the new landscape of care. For instance, did you know…

AWARDS Can Give You An Agency-Wide View Of ALL Programs AND Do Your Billing.
AWARDS is ideal for virtually every service type, with hundreds of multi-service agencies using the system as a single electronic chart for the following programs and more:

• Mental Health
• Substance Abuse
• Intellectual/Developmental Disabilities
• Homeless and Housing
• Employment and Training
• Youth and Family

Want to streamline your billing? Our BillingBuilder module allows users to configure billing files for dozens of payers in addition to the direct link to Medicaid and Medicare already built into the software. Your agency’s clinical and programmatic data—from an unlimited number of programs—can flow seamlessly from the Services module into BillingBuilder, from which you then create claims to be paid.

AWARDS Is Interoperable With Any Health Information Exchange (HIE).
What if all the specialists involved in your client’s care were connected, and you could see a complete record of your client’s history across the spectrum of providers in your community? At Foothold, we took proactive steps to prepare our providers to be part of this vision of client-centric care. We established a partnership with the global leader of HIE technology and integrated their software platform with AWARDS. Because of this partnership, AWARDS users have the ability to participate in any Health Information Exchange by sharing data securely through the single portal of our Interoperability Center.

AWARDS is one of very few EHRs with this capability, making the most advanced technology available to providers that couldn’t afford this level of sophistication on their own.

AWARDS Is Federally Certified As An EHR For Meaningful Use.
If you have an Eligible Professional (EP) on your staff (a Psychiatrist, Doctor or Registered Nurse),you may be able to collect $63,750 per EP through the Federal Meaningful Use incentive program. (Five EPs? That’s $318,750!)

As a certified EHR (Electronic Health Record), AWARDS includes all the features needed for you to demonstrate Meaningful Use, as well as reporting tools to track accomplishment of the specific objectives. As a Foothold client, you will have dedicated staff and an array of materials to help you make sense of the transformative behavioral healthcare landscape and to walk you through the implementation of the core and menu-set measures that will qualify you for the incentive funds.

AWARDS Is An HMIS (Homeless Management Information System).
Even if you don’t serve a homeless population, it may interest you to know that AWARDS has the ability to coordinate the services of different agencies across a particular continuum (community, county, or state) in order to report on the number of unduplicated homeless persons in the community as mandated by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).

If you are already using AWARDS as an HMIS, why not bring the ease of reporting that AWARDS offers to the rest of your programs?

AWARDS Is Grounded In Our Work With 850+ Agencies In 24 States For 13+ Years.
AWARDS originated from three large social service agencies in New York City. We formed Foothold Technology in 2000 and now work with more than 850 providers across the nation, ranging in size and scope of services. With our service model, your agency benefits from the best practices of all the agencies within the Foothold community. This focus is most evident in the series of Builders we’ve developed–FormBuilder, ReportBuilder, ExportBuilder–which empower staff at all levels of your agency to translate the good work that you do into objective, measurable data.

At Foothold, we’re driven by the desire to help our clients advance their mission to empower people in need. We are proud to support our agencies with the tools to create a platform for growth that’s strong and agile enough to face whatever changes are sure to come. To learn more, don’t hesitate to contact us.