Happening at the House

Happening at the House

Just over a week ago, San Diego County was placed in the COVID-19 purple tier, which requires the state’s most restrictive pandemic preventive measures on the part of individuals and organizations. At Heartland House we have continually employed painstaking practices to protect the safety of our clients and staff. Ours is a layered approach that includes the wearing of masks, social distancing, staggered mealtimes, reductions in meeting group sizes and fastidious cleaning of our common areas and residences. Additionally, we have treated our entire facility with a macrobiotic anti-viral surface compound.

To support isolation and social distancing, Heartland House has enhanced our delivery methods so that we are able to provide comprehensive services to those new clients who are in our containment apartments awaiting clearance to enter our main facility. Moreover, we are progressively procuring and implementing telehealth (remote health communications) technologies that allow individuals in different locations to interact and transmit information. At present we are using telehealth to conduct assessments, individual and group counseling, case management and staff meetings. Though still in the early stages of developing our telehealth capabilities, we are energetically striving to leverage telehealth to the fullest. To that end, we are deeply grateful to the San Diego County Health and Human Services, Behavioral Health Services Department for providing Heartland House with funding for telehealth equipment and technical assistance. This hard-working agency has helped make our telehealth transition as seamless as it can be.

Looking Ahead

Here’s what we’re working on at The House….

• We’re making plans for the Heartland House Annual Banquet, scheduled for Saturday, March 21, 2021 at the Bahia Resort & Hotel. While greatly disappointed that we had to cancel our 2020 event, we’re excited to be giving it another try. We’re looking for silent auction items, so please contact us (link to generic email?) if you have any items that you are able to donate.
• We are industriously building our telehealth capability. Through generous donations we have secured tablet computers and video conferencing/multimedia center equipment that we will soon be installing. To support our additional hardware, we are putting the finishing touches on the installation of underground data cables to enhance the IT system bandwidth to our main house, containment apartments and our temporary offices.
  Through Sierra Healthcare Foundation Heartland House has been awarded a grant provided by the State of California Department of Healthcare Services for licenses to a state-of-the-art Electronic Health Record (EHR) software application that features a telehealth client portal. The EHR program will allow our staff to provide and document the services rendered to each client and have ready access to key information, all in an information-secure environment. This technology is a game-changer that will significantly streamline our administrative processes.