Behavioral Health EMRs typically include:
- A variety of features, such as client/agency charts.
- Medication monitoring (with automated safeguards against drug-to-drug and allergy interactions).
- Patient portal software.
- Billing, scheduling and reporting.
Streamline your practice management with an EHR allowing easy client charting using SOAP and BIRP note templates. Reduce no-shows with appointment reminders and offer a secure, HIPAA-compliant client portal for communication in and out of the office.
Patient Portal
Patient portals allow patients and physicians to communicate electronically. Physicians can respond to questions or concerns from patients through the doorway and integrate these responses into visit notes. This decreases the number of phone calls to the physician and provides a way for other care team members to answer routine questions, schedule appointments or help with any other patient issues that do not require direct attention from the doctor.
Patient portals also allow patients to send appointment reminders and schedule yearly checkups online, which reduces no-show rates. Additionally, they can access educational materials, test results and billing information, saving time by preventing patients from calling the office with basic questions that could be addressed in a session. The system can also include a message center where clients can leave messages for providers.
E-Prescription
Behavioral health programs often struggle with complex administrative tasks such as authorization, documentation, insurance verification, billing, scheduling, and prescriptions. An effective behavioral health EMR system can help simplify many of these responsibilities.
E-prescribing is a process that allows physicians to transmit prescriptions for most drugs directly to pharmacies electronically. This can reduce prescribing, refills and faxing errors, improving adherence by enabling patients to get their medications faster.
In addition, many e-prescribing systems allow prescribers to check whether the medication they are prescribing is on the patient’s drug benefit formulary and to provide a list of other available drugs for them to choose from. This can further enhance adherence and help avoid costly medical errors due to unprescribed medication. Many e-prescribing systems also have drug-drug interaction checking capabilities.
Integrations
EHRs allow practitioners to work with their patients while automating many administrative tasks that consume time. This frees up mental health counseling professionals to focus on their patients.
Behavioral healthcare organizations must often comply with complex regulations and high caseloads. An effective EHR system helps them manage and improve daily operations and patient care by automating insurance verification, appointment scheduling and documentation maintenance.
Integrating an EHR with a telehealth platform also allows users to take credit card payments during sessions through an easy-to-use video interface, reducing no-shows and improving overall revenue potential. Integrated systems also help to reduce manual data entry by allowing information to flow between multiple components. These features reduce the need to switch between different software systems, ensuring the data you receive is always accurate.
Reporting
Behavioral health EMRs typically have many reporting capabilities that help streamline processes and increase efficiency. These tools include client status updates through the patient portal; detailed graphs about prescription effectiveness; and automated safeguards that monitor drug-to-drug and drug-to-allergy interactions, something far more difficult for a malicious hacker to do with paper charts that aren’t encrypted.
Some behavioral health EMRs also have scheduling features that track appointments by service type, location and staff member. This helps reduce double booking and streamlines the billing process. Finally, a robust Behavioral Health EHR will have built-in psychiatric CPT codes to create invoices when scheduling an appointment. This greatly reduces billing paperwork and errors for staff.
HIPAA Compliance
Behavioral health EMRs typically protect client & agency data far more effectively than traditional paper charts. They also reduce the time processing graphs, notes & facility documents takes.
The HIPAA Privacy Rule sets national standards to protect the privacy of individuals’ individually identifiable information relating to treatment, payment and healthcare operations. It establishes rules for obtaining individual consent before using or disclosing PHI, defines minimum necessary standards, and requires that covered entities and their business associates implement administrative, physical, and technical safeguards to ensure the security of electronic PHI (ePHI).
The HIPAA Security Rule also includes requirements for training staff in policies and procedures regarding a person’s right to access and amend their PHI and how to report violations. This is especially important during the 2019 novel coronavirus pandemic when HIPAA Enforcement Discretion applies, and temporary Notices of Enforcement Discretion may be issued.