How we came to like computers. (use of computers at a drug treatment center)

Computerized treatment. Although to many in the treatment world these two words seem incongruous, they made a lot of sense to me and to my business partner and husband. Will Dennett, when we opened our adult outpatient treatment center in May of 1990. We wanted to apply solid business and customer service principles to a treatment center, its employees, and its services. We knew from the beginning this would involve computers -- we just were not sure what it would look like.

In the fall of 1991 we were contacted by Greg Sweeney of PMSi, a fledgling computer software company. He asked about our interest in software to help us manage both our clients and our client accounts. We were enthusiastic about what we heard, having failed at our own attempts to computerize our growing client load on our personal computer with over-the-counter software.

We worked through the financing of the deal. with a delivery date of January 1992. Since we are always trying to change and improve our systems, this leap came as no culture shock to our staff, who found our enthusiasm to be infectious. January arrived and so did our new computer and software. The day it was delivered we had a PMSi representative on-site to set up and install the program. I received about three hours of training, and then intended to train the clerical and counseling staff on what I thought each should know.

Then we began to feel the pains of pioneering.

The original software program had been written specifically for the California Drinking Driver Program. If putting the data in was difficult, pulling it out as we needed or wanted it for our Washington agency and its requirements was even more challenging.

We called PMSi and they set to work on the translation to "Washington-ese." In the meantime. we struggled on, with management, clerical, and counseling staff all feeling frustrated with the translation difficulties. A couple times the company sent a representative to teach me personally how to do a couple of non-kosher tricks, but this only added to the frustration of my clerical staff, who were destined to manage the system. I became a bottle-neck, because I alone possessed the knowledge and insights needed to trick the program. What's more, I hesitated to share my new knowledge with my staff for fear it would necessitate large-scale un-training in the future.

So we waited. A few months later PMSi installed the results of their ongoing reinvestment in the software (and their listening to their customers, needs), and I had a program that worked.