The challenges faced by behavioral health providers differ from almost any other specialty. Treating mental, behavioral or addiction problems poses unique challenges that can’t be approached the same way as other medical fields.
That’s why many medical software solutions aren’t very effective for mental health practices. They simply don’t have the necessary functionality, so mental health institutions must either customize software themselves or look for specialized options.
Luckily, today there are software systems that have all the features necessary for mental health practices. Both electronic health records (EHR) and electronic medical records (EMR) systems have proven to work very well for behavioral practitioners.
It’s essential for mental health practices to embrace the new technology that’s available. Otherwise, they risk falling behind the competition.
How Can Mental Health Software Help Your Practice?
According to the Behavioral/Mental Health Software Market Report by Markets and Markets, the many more behavioral/health facilities have started adopting an EHR or EMR. The behavioral health software market is expected to grow to $2.31 billion by 2022.
What’s more, another survey by Behavioral Healthcare Executive shows that the majority of behavioral health practices that adopt software are happy. More than half of EHR users both use the software daily and are satisfied.
And these results aren’t surprising.
Both EHR and EMR solutions offer a wide range of benefits for behavioral and mental health care providers. In particular, they provide ways to automate daily tasks and spend more time with patients.
Here are just a few ways that modern EHR software solutions can help make your day-to-day operations more efficient:
Information Sharing Made Simple
The biggest benefit of EHR software is that it allows you to instantly share vital information about patients, treatment plans and more. This allows you to significantly improve doctor communications and find the best treatment options. In short, you increase the quality of service provided to your patients.
Another way that it increases efficiency is by providing multiple methods for inputting data. This is not only convenient for practitioners, but it also makes the tedious process of data entry much more manageable.
Psychologists might find the voice dictation method beneficial, as it allows you to dictate their notes directly into the system instead of manually filling out forms.
Finally, with the help of a centralized database and input methods, it’s possible to quickly sort and search through the data. This feature helps you find whatever information you need quickly.
Better Medication Management
A reliable system for monitoring prescription drugs is crucial for every mental health and behavioral health practice. Luckily, today’s EHR solutions come with a variety of tools designed to make the task as simple as possible.
It allows you to track medications in real time, minimizing the risk of prescription errors. Doctors can place orders directly from the system, making the process fast, easy and, most importantly, accurate.
Easy Access
In the field of mental health, instant access to vital patient information is absolutely essential.
Practitioners often face life-threatening situations that require them to go through patient files in order to maximize the chance of helping a patient.
With the help of a comprehensive software solution, it’s possible to access patient records from any device that’s connected to the internet. This allows mental health specialists to provide much better crisis response services.
Which Software to Choose?
While there’s little doubt that EMR and EHR software are very beneficial to mental and behavioral health professionals, it’s still important to choose the right solution to ensure that all the essential features are available.
Here are a few options that have been proven to be very effective:
Celerity
Celerity is a comprehensive EMR solution that comes with a range of features. It can help mental health practices employ more efficient and reliable processes for intake, clinical charting, treatment progress and much more.
While it was initially designed for chemical dependency treatment specialists and is a market leader in that particular field, it’s very popular among mental and behavioral health institutions as well.
What makes Celerity great is its user-friendly interface, which comes with a long list of powerful administrative, clinical and financial features.
One of the features that stand out is the ability to enter group notes in a single screen and quickly assign them to individual client records. Celerity also includes Integrated Progress Notes which link to the treatment plan automatically by pulling in problem statements and goals.
There’s a long list of other features which are all meant to make life easier for mental and behavioral health professionals. But to understand just how confident Celerity is in their product, you can take a look at their six-month money-back guarantee. If you’re not completely satisfied for any reason, you can take advantage of this guarantee.
Kareo
Another robust solution is Kareo, an integrated electronic health record (EHR) and practice management solution. This system has all of the functions that mental health professionals need to run an efficient practice.
It offers a wide range of specialty-specific EHR note types and visit templates, along with fully integrated tools that can handle everything related to scheduling and billing.
While it’s not developed exclusively for behavioral or mental health practices, the fact that it has 50+ behavioral health and psychiatry notes and templates shows that these specialties were taken into account when it was designed.
With the help of Kareo’s custom templates, it’s much easier to create treatment plans using goals, medications, patient instructions and psychological tests.
Kareo understands that today’s mental health practitioners need access to medical and other records on the go, so it’s also easily accessible from most Apple devices.
Valant
If you want a solution that’s designed with behavioral health practices in mind, you can’t go wrong with Valant. It was tailor-made for mental health professionals like therapists and psychiatrists.
The software features an intuitive and easy-to-use interface that makes managing complex processes much easier. Valant’s interface was designed to be as simple to use as a mobile app, but that doesn’t mean that it cut any corners when it came to features.
The software provides numerous tools that streamline workflows such as appointments, reminders, billing and much more. The convenient documentation and data entry processes ensure that practitioners spend less time filling out forms and more time visiting patients.
Another way that Valant strives to utilize all available technology is by making data a priority. The data model allows you to visualize real-time data such as clinician notes before quickly generating a wide range of reports.
As you might have guessed, Valant is a modern and flexible web-based solution that works well for behavioral health practices of all sizes. It’s easy to access with a mobile device, allowing patients to complete assessments using the web-accessible Patient Portal.