A trend in the behavioral health and human services industry over the last several years has been a push to provide whole-person care (WPC) to individuals and clients. Without treating the whole person, treatment tends to become fragmented. This goal of WPC has become attainable largely due to the use of electronic health records (EHR) and collecting and sharing data about clients.

Electronic health records (EHRs) can be an effective tool, even the most important one, for health organizations seeking to provide whole-person care (WPC) to clients.

In whole-person care, medical professionals and behavioral counselors consider not only all of the client's physical health problems, but also their mental and behavioral conditions, social setting and economic status.

As the behavioral health and human services industry has continued to trend toward focusing on people they serve as whole people rather than on their specific health conditions, entirely new sets of challenges have arisen in support of this model. In the delivery of "whole-person care" (WPC), providers take a broader look at a person's health issues, including their mental, emotional and physical health. Read on to learn how the trend toward WPH provides comprehensive care more efficiently.

Happier and healthier clients, reasonable health care costs, clearer business performance goals, enthusiastic staff and greater consumer satisfaction are only some of the benefits of harnessing your EHR and becoming a data-driven organization.

It might be a trendy buzzword, but becoming "data-driven" is growing increasingly important for healthcare providers. Proper application of data analytics can reduce overall expenses while helping improve patient care.

Why have an expensive tool if it is not going to be used to its full capability? It's like spending a thousand dollars on the newest smartphone, and then only using it to make phone calls. This is the conundrum for behavioral health care organizations that use electronic health records (EHRs).

If you are like the many organizations that believe “data” is your most important asset, then you would agree that securing your most important asset is critical. The chances are you know of someone or some organization who has been recently impacted by a computer security incident in the last year. According to Statistica (1),the number of data breaches in the United States amounted to 1,244 with over 446.5 million records exposed. How do you ensure your vendor has taken all the right steps to protect your data?

We often hear words like ‘intuitive’, ‘easy to use’ etc. in marketing literature from EHR vendors. But what do these words really mean, and how do you know the software you are purchasing will be usable and adoptable by your staff?

This blog post was originally written by Sarah C. Threnhauser and published on OpenMinds.com.

For the past couple years, our team has tracked the intersection of managed care and Medicaid services for consumers with an intellectual/developmental disabilities (I/DD). At last count, 50% of Medicaid consumers with I/DD receive their health and behavioral health benefits through Medicaid health plans and 15% of those consumers have their LTSS services delivered via managed care models (see State Medicaid Programs With MLTSS: The 2016 OPEN MINDS Update, What Are The Major Provisions Of The 2016 CMS Medicaid Managed Care Final Rule?: An OPEN MINDS Market Intelligence Report, and VBR & I/DD-The Wave Begins).