The Hampden County CoC HMIS and Data Committee met on December 19, 2019.
Present: Deborah Merkman (City of Springfield), Dave Havens (MHA), Pamela Cook (Gandara SHINE), Jeff Langlois (Providence Loreto), L. Viviana deJesus (Homelessness Provider Consultant/Independant Contractor), Laura Saponare (Catholic Charities), Angel Middleton (HRU Lighthouse), Jennifer Lucca (Samaritan Inn)
POLICIES AND PROCEDURES – VARIOUS COMPONENTS
Over the last several months, the Committee has been working on creating/updating the CoC’s HMIS policies and procedures. The Committee had finalized portions of this work, but has been unable to reach resolution on issues regarding data sharing. Specifically, providers have indicated that the ideal system for data sharing would enable sharing of basic identifying and demographic data on a standard basis (with a signed release of information) but allow any participant to choose to specifically allow or not allow sharing of data regarding mental health, substance abuse or HIV status. In order to make this happen, our HMIS must allow users to individually lock and unlock individual items for sharing. This requires us to have the functionality within our HMIS, and this is something that the City is working on with ETO.
The Committee decided that, rather than continue to let all policies and procedures stall while we work on this issue, we should proceed with implementation of the parts that the Committee has finalized, and return to the policies on data sharing once we have the functionality that supports the way we want to be able to share data.
PRIVACY, SECURITY and DATA QUALITY PLANS
The Committee endorsed the Privacy, Security and Data Quality Plans that have been developed. These plans may be accessed through links below, and they are also posted on the CoC Corner -Hampden County CoC page on this Network site.
POLICIES AND PROCEDURES
The Committee is still reviewing and finalizing the DRAFT CoC HMIS Manual. The Committe hopes to approve it at the Committee’s January meeting, and forward it to the Board of Directors for approval at the January 24 Board meeting.
NEXT MEETING: Thursday, January 16, 2013, 11 am to noon, Springfield Office of Housing, 1600 E. Columbus Ave., Springfield, MA
