Community Sample: Interagency Agreement and Release of Information (ROI) | Northern Colorado CoC

Coordinate regularly across the entire system

Don’t let fear of HIPPA stop you from providing people with the highest standard of care!

In the Northern Colorado CoC, as in many places, healthcare stakeholders are investing more and more in the social determinants of health. Healthcare systems are funding case coordinators, navigators, and community workers in unprecedented numbers, often increasing outreach capacity far above what housing providers have provided in the past — but they’re serving many of the same people!

Partnering with healthcare systems can be daunting because of the greater standard of confidentiality those systems are held to: the highly revered HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act).

The key to unlocking a strong partnership between healthcare and homeless services system is having the right Release of Information (ROI). The real key to Northern Colorado’s ROI/Interagency Agreement is that the language it adheres to enables them to have health care stakeholders — namely the care coordinators from their regional Medicaid plan — participate in case conferencing. All they have to do is have the client sign the ROI and each member of the case conferencing team sign the Interagency Agreement.

The Colorado statewide group was interested in disseminating this ROI to other BFZ communities in hopes that they copy this model to integrate their region’s health care case managers/outreach workers into case conferencing and/or HMIS use. 

To be completed by client:

To be completed by case conferencing team members: