Here When Needed Most
During moments that matter most, we're the system Marylanders and state agencies count on. Whether that's informing people about an emergency alert, helping hospital patients access ongoing behavioral health support post-discharge, or connecting a family to food.
Maryland Information Network is the designated administrator of the State's health and human service information infrastructure. We support health, aging, and behavioral health priorities across the state.
During Fiscal Year 2025, we focused on projects that:
- strengthened access to the 211 system
- connected underserved populations
- demonstrated measurable value to state partners
Marylanders count on a strong health and human services system to find help when they need it.
More than 1.1 million connections were made last fiscal year, helping Marylanders connect to information and community resources. Four times as many people made those connections digitally. We're meeting people where they are, and innovating digital pathways to help.
Care Coordination
This program, often called 211 Press 4 Care Coordination, plays a critical role in helping individuals with behavioral health needs avoid a hospital overstay and reduces readmissions by connecting them to community-based care.
The program made meaningful progress, strengthening its systems, growing our team's leadership, expanding partnerships, and improving how care is coordinated across Maryland.
Better systems, better support
We introduced ConnectCare to track referrals in real time, improve follow-up, and ensure no one falls through the cracks. It helps patients get connected to care faster, reducing delays and providing data to inform future system-wide improvements.
Stronger partnerships
211 Press 4 Care Coordination re-engaged partners and expanded relationships with hospitals, community providers, and state agencies. These partnerships ensure people leaving the hospital are connected to the right community resources. That may include behavioral health support, social services, or continuity-of-care services.
Real progress, real impact
This program is positioned to expand its impact in the year ahead with better data, clearer processes, and deeper partnerships to reduce administrative burdens and costs for hospitals and to support Marylanders during critical moments of need.
Partner:
Hospital Transition Program (HTP)
This one-year pilot program helped reduce preventable hospital readmissions among Medicaid- and Medicare-eligible older adults and adults with disabilities. These populations experience higher hospital use and face significant barriers to accessing community-based support.
Care coordinators provided hands-on support, including:
- paperwork and insurance navigation
- state waiver enrollment
- providing access to medical supplies and in-home services
When high-need, high-cost populations receive the right support at the right time, both health outcomes and cost savings improve.
This program led to $1.5+ million in net savings by reducing preventable readmissions. That eased financial pressure on hospitals facing readmission penalties and lowered costs for payers.
22:1
Return on Investment
Sustained engagement is critical to maximizing impact. Utilization and costs rose 120 days post-discharge, after the support ended. Together, we can enhance dignity, independence, and change lives through innovative programs like care coordination.
HTP Changed Lives
Secured long-delayed approvals for the state waiver program
Improved emotional well-being
Provided patients access to therapeutic services
MdReady Text Alerts
This program provided statewide multilingual emergency text alerts to over 190,000 subscribers. Crucial information during local emergencies, extreme weather, and flood warnings was delivered faster and more personally, allowing users to choose their location(s) and language for receiving emergency alerts.
With 185 languages available, the inclusive and accessible upgrades made Maryland the first state to offer this many individual language preferences in an emergency alert system.
"In an emergency, clear and fast communication can make all the difference, and this upgrade will help save lives, improve safety across the state, and help ensure we leave no one behind.”
-Russell J. Strickland, secretary of MDEM
Due to federal funding cuts, the program ended in June 2025. This underscores the importance of sustained investments in 211 and emergency communication infrastructure to maintain and expand this proven, high-impact capability.
Partner:
Maryland's No Wrong Door
We enhanced how older adults and adults with disabilities connect to services across the state by advancing the No Wrong Door initiative in partnership with the Maryland Department of Aging.
The program:
- Expanded the MAP database by adding resources from local AAAs.
- Strengthened engagement with the Local Area Agencies on Aging (AAAs) through engagement sessions and community resource coordination.
- Optimized the MAP Help Line by improving the reporting structure and data accessibility through the development of a data dashboard.
These foundational steps will help lay the groundwork for more streamlined service coordination and improved statewide data visibility.
Partner:
211 Health Check
This was the first and only statewide proactive, weekly mental health check-in program to support Marylanders as part of the state's behavioral health system. 211 Health Check offered supportive check-in calls, offering early intervention for individuals experiencing stress, anxiety, depression, or isolation.
Strengthening Behavioral Health Before a Crisis
The weekly checkpoints stabilized vulnerable populations before crises escalated, and complemented existing crisis response services like 988.
Utilization grew 22% in the final year, demonstrating strong demand and impact.
More than 68,462 supportive check-in calls were made, reducing pressure on crisis systems through early stabilization.
Proactive behavioral health engagement can reduce costs, prevent crises, and align with Maryland's long-term behavioral health system goals.
Sustaining Support Through Change
Despite its success over the last four years, federal cuts accelerated the wind-down of the program. A structured transition strategy ensured that participants remain connected to alternative supports through 988 and other state resources.
Partner:
Building Resilience
Our nonprofit played a central role in coordinating outreach, capacity-building, and increasing accessibility of resources that can help children thrive.
Helping Children Thrive
The project supported families, caregivers, communities, organizations, and state employees with training, tools, strategies, and resources that were grounded in brain science, resilience, and trauma-informed best practices. It helped advance the state's efforts to foster safe, stable, and nurturing relationships and environments for children.
We raised awareness of the enhanced Maryland Essentials for Childhood website, highlighted its Brain-Building Toolkit and resilience infographics, and connected organizations and families to community resources powered by the 211 Community Resource Database.
Trauma-Informed Training
The initiative also expanded and strengthened our long-standing partnership with the Maryland Department of Health. We coordinated trauma-informed training for state leaders, held a community forum on resilience, and aligned new stakeholders, including Local Management Boards and Local Care Teams, bringing the training and tools to them and engaging them in continued conversation about building resilience in communities throughout Maryland.
Partners:
Expanding Access to Resources
In addition to administering the 211 system, one of our core responsibilities is to maintain and expand access to resources, ensuring that residents and policymakers have accurate, real-time information. We actively maintain information about 7,168 programs. Each one represents a critical connection point.
During this fiscal year, we focused on improving both public access and policy visibility for emerging needs by:
- strengthening our data quality
- expanding coverage
- enhancing usability across thousands of agencies and programs
- aligning data across systems
- launching new legislative dashboards
We made these improvements by strategically focusing on 4 partner projects. Learn about each of these programs.
Kinship Care
We turned data into action for kinship families, helping stabilize family-based care and improving outcomes for children.
By identifying service trends and resource gaps, we were able to provide more targeted support and outreach to connect kinship caregivers more quickly to financial, legal, and emotional support resources.
These interventions increased program visibility and strengthened pathways to family stability and long-term resilience.
Partner:
988 Support
The 988 website connects Marylanders in crisis to community resources. A major upgrade expanded equitable access to crisis intervention, substance use treatment, and harm reduction resources across the state.
This initiative strengthened Maryland's behavioral health network and improved coordination of care, making it easier and faster for those in crisis to find support, reducing service gaps, improving response times, and positively impacting lives.
Also, we're gaining valuable insights to guide the state's behavioral health strategy.
Partner:
Reentry Resources
This partnership strengthened support for incarcerated and returning citizens and their families by developing a way for these individuals to find critical reentry, housing, and legal resources to meet statewide needs. Integrated into the 211 Community Resource Database, individuals can quickly and easily access what they need to reduce recidivism and enhance family stability.
As we continue to expand this resource, the insights we gather will turn information into impact and accountability into measurable results for Maryland communities.
Partner:
Connecting Moms
We expanded the statewide database to better reflect the full continuum of services supporting mothers, infants, and families. Our resource data curation team ensured every resource is accurate, comprehensive, and properly categorized to ensure search functionality and referral efficiency when MCH's customized resource database launches in FY 2026.
We also added new resources to strengthen early intervention networks, expand access to food banks and family support services, connect families to community clinics, and care coordination programs.
These resources will help advance better health outcomes and stronger starts for children statewide.
Partner:
Maternal and Child Health (MCH)
Innovation For Changing Needs
Innovation is advancing how we connect Maryland. Our connections have grown 32% since Fiscal Year 2024, with 4 times as many Marylanders choosing self-service and digital channels as dialing the helpline. There's a clear shift in how Marylanders are engaging, and we're delivering new programs that leverage technology to deliver equitable pathways to help.
Call Data Chart
More than two-thirds of referrals fall into the top three referral categories (housing, behavioral health, and utility assistance).
141,293
Housing Referrals
116,794
Mental Health/Substance Use Referrals
87,826
Utility Assistance Referrals
42,962
Information Referrals
How We Can Strengthen the System
Maryland Information Network (MdInfoNet) established a statewide information and intelligence asset that can scale to meet Maryland's goals of digital first and real-time insights. With the infrastructure, statutory authority, and proven operational record, MdInfoNet can lead this opportunity. However, the system needs sustainable, predictable funding streams to maintain service continuity.
The next phase of work will extend capacity and innovation to enable new digital pathways that improve insights and outcomes through:
- Self-Service and Digital Navigation – Launch guided triage tools across web and text to expand reach and enable real-time service matching statewide.
- Interoperability with DoIT and State Systems – Implement a shared technical architecture and reporting standards with DoIT, ensuring that new and existing agency platforms connect to 211 infrastructure without duplicative builds.
- Outcome Tracking and Intelligence Layer – Expand referral outcome tracking with hospital and agency partners to strengthen closed-loop reporting and generate actionable insights for population health.
- Predictive Insights for Policy and Response – Deploy real-time dashboards and analytics that enable early detection of unmet needs, surge activity, and service gaps supporting data-informed allocation and policy.