FY 2022 HMIS Data Standards Changes – Important Update!
Updated Timeline for HMIS Data Standards Changes
As announced in previous newsletter articles, the Fiscal Year (FY) 2022 Minnesota and HUD HMIS Data Standards go into effect on Friday, October 1, 2021. Please read on for important information about delays to certain components of the federal data standards changes and what that means for you. This article also includes important information about how these changes will impact reporting timelines and report availability.
What is being delayed?
Any federal (in other words, non-Minnesota specific) data elements that were going to be changed or added on to the system by our software vendor will not be added to HMIS until 10/8/2021 at the latest, barring any unforeseen issues. This means the wording changes to the HUD universal data elements of Gender, Race, and Ethnicity and the new and changed HUD CoC, HOPWA, and HHS RHY program specific data elements will not be available in Community Services (formerly ServicePoint) on 10/1/2021 as previously announced.
All data collections forms will reflect the FY 2022 HMIS Data Standards and will be available on 10/1/2021, which users must begin using as of 10/1/21 to make sure all required data elements are collected and can be entered when the new/revised questions become available in HMIS. If your agency maintains your own versions of data collection forms, those forms must be revised to reflect the changes as of 10/1/21.
Does your agency do live HMIS data entry (i.e., no data collection forms)? There will be a temporary text field added to the Universal Profile assessment to record a client's selected Gender options, if the response option was not available prior to the FY 2022 Data Standards. ICA will provide more information about this temporary solution on 10/1/2021 on the FY 2022 HMIS Data Standards Changes website.
When will HMIS be updated?
ICA will be reviewing the 5.14.00 upgrade from our software vendor with the FY 2022 HMIS Data Standards changes as soon as it becomes available to us to ensure it meets the standards and quality we expect for Minnesota's HMIS. Our expectation is that we will be able to take the 5.14.00 upgrade no later than the end of next week (October 8, 2021), barring any unforeseen issues. ICA will send out a news alert as soon as we have an updated timeline for the upgrade that will apply the federal FY 2022 HMIS Standards to our site.
Minnesota Data Elements
Changes to MN universal data elements and MN program specific data elements are still going live on October 1, 2021! For a reminder of what those changes are, you can revisit a previous newsletter article, 2021 MN HMIS Data Element Changes, or refer to the Supplemental Guide - FY22 HMIS Data Standards Changes document.
Impact on ART Reports
As with every year’s HMIS data standards changes, ART reports must be updated with the new data standards. What that means is that when ICA takes the FY 2022 upgrade from our software vendor, all ART reports will be temporarily outdated. This will look different in every report, so we want to give our users a heads up about these changes! When you run reports, they will likely successfully complete, but many reports may contain inaccurate information, such as inflated ‘Missing’ counts and values.
If you run reports regularly or have a report due date falling within the first 2 weeks of October, we would recommend pulling them before the end of the day on October 4.
ICA will utilize the REPORTcollection, as we have done in past data standards updates, to indicate what is outdated, what needs updating, when we anticipate updating each one based on a triage, and when that update is complete.
For interested users, you can read up on how the Reporting & Evaluation team approached the FY 2020 changes by checking out this past newsletter article.
Upcoming CoC APR or ESG CAPER or Deadline?
We recommend that communities with ESG CAPER/CoC APR deadlines near the end of September and beginning of October submit their reports into Sage before October 1, 2021 to avoid any unnecessary delays caused by transitions to the FY2022 versions of the report and changes in Sage. Beginning October 1, 2021 Sage will only accept the FY 2022 versions of the ESG CAPER and CoC APR. WellSky, MN’s HMIS software vendor, plans to have the FY 2022 versions of the ESG CAPER and CoC APR available sometime during the week of October 11, 2021, so ICA is anticipating that the FY 2022 versions will not be available in the MN site until October 16, 2021, at the earliest.
Coordinated Entry APR
When Minnesota’s Community Services (formerly ServicePoint) site takes the 5.14.00 software upgrade, the FY 2022 Coordinated Entry APR will become available for use. Beginning October 1, 2021, Sage will accept the FY 2022 Coordinated Entry for annual submissions and SSO-CE grant holders for the CoC program should use the new report from that date onwards.