WellSky Article – 5 Steps to Better Outcomes from Your Provider Network
Your community-based organization depends on service providers to achieve your mission. Yet managing a provider network effectively is challenging! It’s often hard to get past feel-good anecdotes and impressions, and make decisions based on objective results. Gerry Leslie, HMIS Project Director for Michigan Coalition Against Homelessness, shared this 5-step plan to implement a data-driven approach that can improve the lives of people in your community. 1. Establish key measures When developing goals, it’s important to distinguish between outputs and outcomes. Outputs are what you do. Outcomes are what you achieve. Outputs are meaningless if they don’t lead to outcomes, which indicate whether you are getting the job done. While this can be a challenge for providers, define measures based on outcomes whenever possible. It’s best to focus on standard measures that everyone in your field uses. It’s tempting …
