New in April: HMIS Zoom Support, ROI Updates, and more!

March 2023

Welcome to the spring edition of the HMIS Newsletter. Read below to stay up to date on all the HMIS April happenings as well as view our April Fool's surprise! As always, please let us know if there is anything you'd like to see in our newsletters to support you.

In partnership,

Wendy, Tina, Kai, Rae, Glenn, and Ashley

Q: I recently had an employee leave our organization. Do we need to tell you?

A: Thanks for asking! Yes, it is important that you let HMIS know if any of the HMIS users on your staff are no longer employed at your organization. Not only is this a part of the HMIS Partner Agency Agreement, but this is part of our shared responsibility of keeping the information in HMIS safe and secure. Please let us know about this user's change of employment status within 48 hours.

Do you have a question for HMIS? Email us your question with "Ask HMIS" in the subject line and look for the answer in an upcoming newsletter!

Ask HMIS

SSF's HMIS Department kindly invites you to join our weekly Virtual Open Office Hours. The Virtual Open Office Hours are to support all HMIS Users. For your convenience, we have sent all HMIS Responsible Staff an Outlook calendar invite. This is to serve as a reminder to take advantage of this opportunity when HMIS questions & issues arise. Please find all current and active Zoom Links on our website.

Introducing the Great ROI Roundup of 2023!

As you know, every client in HMIS must have an active Release of Information (ROI) in order to share client Personal Identifiable Information (PII) with other Participating Agencies (e.g, to send/receive referrals for shelter or housing programs). Historically, cleaning up ROI errors has been a part of the Annual Security Audit. This year the ROI errors are part of a much bigger effort to simplify the HMIS ROI process. We will be running several campaigns to obtain missing ROIs and make corrections to invalid ROIs in the system. We recently sent out an E-Blast about the changes we have made to the ROI categories. Please review it if you didn't get a chance to read it yet.

We will be sending out our first ROI campaign soon. We will be asking you all to obtain missing ROIs, correct age-related ROI errors, and upload any Signed Paper Document ROIs you have entered into the system. HMIS is offering a weekly support hour to provide guidance and assistance. We look forward to working closely with our community partners to honor our clients’ privacy and rights.

We are nearing the end of this long process. We will be reporting our community’s Sheltered PIT and HIC data to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) at the end of this month. They will use our data to determine the size of our homeless population and weigh what additional resources we need to serve the clients in our community. Thank you again for your collaboration and support. We couldn’t do this without you and the amazing work you do every day!!

PIT and HIC Information Sheet

Introducing More Job Aids!

These job aids are brief training materials created to empower you to complete regular HMIS tasks independently. We plan to release new job aids each month. Please check out these links below. You will find all of our job aids in the HMIS Training section of our website.

Training Materials

Meet the HMIS Team

In honor of April Fools, we wanted to share our HMIS Team Nicknames! We are thrilled to be apart of such a dynamic and hardworking team and continually make it a primary goal to support the professional development of HMIS Users. We hope that our silly nicknames will inspire you and your team's creativity!