Small mental health practices are common throughout the country and are a crucial part of the behavioral health infrastructure in the United States. They include physicians, therapists, nurses, and administrative officials who must collaborate to provide the best patient care possible. While efficient collaboration is essential, antiquated systems of recording, filing, and retrieving patient information can bog down this effort.
The best electronic health record (EHR) system for small practices will benefit coordinated patient care by reducing the administrative strain for all members. In doing so, the platform not only aids the service providers but also improves the quality of care for patients.
Mental and behavioral health EHR systems are crucial for small practices because they can help streamline administrative processes. Despite this, some mental healthcare providers harbor negative feelings toward these systems, perhaps due to previous encounters in primary care settings. However, current mental health-focused EHR platforms are more intuitive and specifically tailored to be used in a behavioral health setting.
Indeed, one study by Jung et al. involved interviewing various behavioral healthcare providers on the use of a new behavioral health EHR. One psychiatrist said, “This mental health care EHR is more comprehensive and more relevant to psychiatry. With other EHR systems, relevance to psychiatry is not high. […] This is more relevant, and I find it comprehensive, easy to use, and navigate it very well.”
Practices should take advantage of EHR systems explicitly designed for mental healthcare settings, as they can manage the type of care and documentation found in small behavioral health practices. They’re also intuitive and easily navigable.
Additionally, the best EHR for small mental health practice can reduce time spent on administrative tasks. For instance, this system can provide access to patient documents and create faster ways to collect patient information. In the Jung et al. study, one clinician said, “What we have now is efficient and it’s cut a lot of time out because we used to have to sign all the notes then go and put them all in the charts. That was terrible. It just took forever.”
An EHR system cuts this burden by efficiently collecting and storing patient information. It can also facilitate collaborative care by enabling multiple providers to view patient records simultaneously and even remotely. This eliminates the need to physically walk to wherever the records are filed and cuts out conflicts where two providers need access to the same document at the same time.
One of the biggest pain points that small practices face is billing. Myriad insurance providers decide how much of a patient’s bill to cover on a case-by-case basis, and a practice must collect any necessary copays from patients. Most EHR systems include billing software, which can benefit small practices by enabling them to generate and submit claims quickly and easily. A study of thirteen small or solo health practices that utilized EHR platforms found that virtually all the providers used the systems to assist in billing.
As the mental health field has trended toward holistic mind-body care, a single doctor cannot outperform a dedicated team of therapists, nurses, social workers, psychiatrists, and primary care doctors. Mental health EHR systems enable such multidisciplinary care by providing a platform for different providers to securely view records from their peers. A study found that “[a]doption of EHRs by behavioral health systems and solo practitioners may yield promising outcomes for patients, particularly outcomes related to improved understanding about co-occurring health conditions and implications for comprehensive health care.” EHR systems support the endeavor toward comprehensive and multidisciplinary care by having a single platform to store and exchange documents between different fields.
In addition to supporting patients by improving access to multidisciplinary care, the best mental health EHR systems can reduce patient costs. People with mental illness have higher rates of coexisting medical conditions, lower life expectancies, and healthcare costs that can be two to three times greater than people without mental health issues. Therefore, it is vital to find creative ways to reduce patient costs.
In the Jung et al. study, it’s argued that “[i]f medical information is shared and managed between medical institutions, this problem can be effectively managed by reducing duplicate prescriptions and proactively detecting and intervening in psychiatric problems.” Therefore, an EHR system is critical to minimizing the costs to patients seeking comprehensive care from various institutions.
Finally, EHR platforms can benefit patients by increasing the ease of access to telehealth for patients and providers. In their paper, authors Zhang and Saltsman argue, “For people experiencing serious mental illness, telehealth has the potential to improve quality of life and general mental health, reduce depressive symptoms, build more confidence in managing depression, and increase satisfaction with mental health and coping skills compared to treatment offered in-person only.”
For those with a substance abuse disorder, access to telehealth has made positive and measurable impacts, including reduced alcohol consumption and increased tobacco cessation. EHR systems enable these crucial telehealth sessions by providing a platform where patients and therapists can meet securely over an internet connection. An EHR system with a built-in telehealth platform can help providers easily and safely coordinate patient sessions.
The best EHR for small mental health practice benefits service providers because it can streamline tedious processes and save providers time and effort. It can also offer an improved standard of patient care by enabling comprehensive care, reducing patient costs, and enabling patient access to telehealth.
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