The tracking of HMIS referrals and outcomes is a critical component of Detroit’s HMIS data collection process. It is a requirement of several grants, impacts COC scoring, and is used heavily in data analysis to determine the percentage of clients referred that received services and to calculate the total length of time from referral to housing.
Unfortunately, it is becoming increasingly difficult to adequately analyze referral data due to the various data quality issues identified below:
- Project entry dates occurring BEFORE the referral date (for non-ES projects)
- Clients referred but no outcome is recorded by the receiving agency
- Clients with project entries that are missing referrals, either because the referral wasn’t recorded in HMIS at the front-end or (more often) the client transferred from one project to another, but no referral was made in HMIS.
NOTE: The service provider that is making the referral is required to enter the referral in HMIS -- even if the receiving project is within the same agency.
- Clients referred and accepted by a project, but no project entry is created, either because the client was returned to CAM and the referral outcome wasn’t updated, the provider opted not to create an entry (in the case of security deposit/HCV clients), or because the provider is behind on data entry, or because the client has refused services.
NOTE: Security Deposit/HCV clients must be tracked in HMIS the same as any other RRH client. After the security deposit is made and the HMD is recorded, the client can be exited from the project if they are no longer going to be receiving any services.
Please speak with your HMIS data entry staff regarding the issues identified above so that we can improve the data quality surrounding this element and ensure more accurate reporting moving forward.
Review how to run the referral report and updating referral outcomes in the attached job aid