Why Consider Electronic Health Records?

Utilizing Electronic Health Records can offer many benefits, especially for mental & behavioral health and substance use agencies. There are additional benefits as well.

• Increase productivity by providing precise analytics
• Minimize the redundancy of data
• Improve client care
• Connect the various departments of an agency in a cohesive workflow
• Streamline reporting
• Maximize remittance

Staff Analytics, Metrics, and Reporting

One of EHR’s most potent benefits is providing analytics about your clinicians’ productivity and habits. Mental health EHR should offer tracking & reporting for several areas. Some of these include the number of clients seen in a particular time frame and how many notes are outstanding. Additionally, it is essential to know if providers are late in releasing their notes.

This type of data is vital for the organization’s health and can enhance the efficiency of services. It enables management to identify any areas of weakness or challenge, to support your providers’ success better. Otherwise, you can’t empower your clinicians with the needed tools, support, training, or accountability to meet their deliverables.

Reporting & tracking also encourage management to recognize and reward team members who are excelling. It eliminates the murkiness of typical performance reviews. It offers concrete verification for staff promotion or assistance. These tools give you enhanced, measurable control over your organization’s daily operations and empower it to thrive.

Connecting All the Pieces

With PIMSY, when a client checks in, the front desk staff can access many functions. They can take a payment, print a statement, check insurance eligibility, and ensure the intake packet is complete.  They may also get any needed documents signed, right from the calendar. The data is at the fingertips of the person interacting with the patient in real-time.

Past the front desk, the billing in PIMSY is driven by session notes. Providers can create a progress or assessment note from the calendar. If the authorizations are unavailable for the session, they won’t be able to use that CPT code. It won’t even show up, helping to ensure that you only bill for eligible sessions. As clinicians release session notes, the authorizations are automatically decremented.

On the billing side, all session notes have automatically been converted into invoices and are ready to be billed. Since the notes also contain lots of other details, there is no invoice to be created. It’s already been generated by the note itself.

All the biller has to do is verify the details, batch the invoices, and send them electronically for reimbursement.

Cohesion, Efficiency, Reporting

This type of data sharing connects the pieces into a cohesive whole, streamlining workflow. This reduces the need for duplicate information entry. Tasks that once took hours can be reduced to a few button clicks.

This can make reporting a breeze. With a robust EHR, you can seamlessly extrapolate that connected data into detailed reports. This gives you both a bird’s eye view of operations and lets you drill down into the nitty gritty details. Try doing that on paper!

Things to be Aware of when Considering an EHR

While implementing EHR can be very beneficial, there are a few things to be aware of when considering systems:

Quality

It can be hard to measure, but ensure that any program you consider fits your agency’s unique needs. With so many choices, finding a system that supports your organization’s workflow is more possible than ever.

High-Level Training

A powerful tool like mental health EHR is only as valuable as your ability to wield it effectively & efficiently. As you talk to EHR vendors, find out how they handle training: is it included in the price? Does the department organize it? Does every employee have to attend? Consider re-training your team on completely new processes, and then find out how the vendor supports that challenge.

Sound & Straightforward Implementation

Switching from paper (or a legacy EHR) to a new electronic system in a thriving practice is akin to changing the tire on a moving car. Make sure that any EHRs you consider can produce a validated process for the implementation transition. Ask for references who can vouch for the EHR’s ability to assist in this complex process.

Mental Health EHR Resources

For more things to consider when considering behavioral health EHR, visit our EHR Resource Center. For more details about PIMSY, check out our demo video – or contact us: 877.334.8512, ext 1 | hello@pimsyehr.com