Finding, Choosing, and Implementing an Electronic Record: A Video Series of One Agency’s Journey

Here at Foothold, we spend a lot of time putting ourselves in the shoes of our clients. There are a thousand moving parts that all must align in order for an agency to accomplish its mission of providing supports and services to those in the community. While we don’t like to think of finding and implementing an electronic record as a burden, the process is undeniably time-consuming, expensive, anxiety-producing, and pretty much a part-time job in and of itself.

Coming from the human services sector, we know quite a bit about the mindset and processes involved in implementing something as massive as an electronic record; however, no one puts it in words better than an agency that has actually gone through it. In an effort to gain an agency’s perspective on the decision to implement an electronic record, I recently traveled down to Miami, Florida to interview the team at Fellowship House about their process, their doubts, their struggles, and their successes. Fellowship House is a private, nonprofit psychosocial rehabilitation center for individuals who experience severe and persistent psychiatric disabilities including those with co-occurring substance abuse disorders. It serves the Miami-Dade and Monroe Counties in Florida.

Following my thought-provoking conversations with the Fellowship House team, we thought other agencies across the nation would benefit from hearing the candid depictions of each stage in the process. We created a video series documenting the story of how Fellowship House found, chose, and implemented Foothold Technology’s AWARDS software, our easy-to-use electronic record designed for human services agencies. Watch here.