A sizable number of people in the U.S. — about 42.5 million — have an anxiety disorder. Now, consider a person with undiagnosed anxiety: They know something’s wrong when the level of disruption to their daily life suggests they need to see a mental health provider. This same individual also experiences chronic back pain and struggles with a family history of substance use. They just got laid off from their job and live in a rural area with a pervasive healthcare provider shortage.
Who should treat them, and how?
In the whole-person health model, this person wouldn’t be relegated to seeing only one provider. Instead, a primary care physician, an orthopedic specialist, a mental health professional, a substance use clinic, and other necessary providers would work together to treat this person holistically — all while using data-informed insights about how the person’s environment and other important factors impact their overall well-being.
To effectively execute the whole-person health model, these providers need an electronic health record (EHR) that facilitates strong relationships and communication, enabling everyone involved to more efficiently provide, manage, and oversee treatment and support at every step of the client’s journey.
The whole-person health model recognizes the interconnectedness of an individual’s emotional, mental, physical, and social health. Under this model, a mental health provider would contact a primary care doctor to understand the client's physical health conditions and then assess whether these conditions may connect to the client's mental health. Furthermore, the mental health provider can collaborate with the primary care doctor on treatment planning and make more informed care decisions that lead to better overall physical and mental health outcomes.
The success of such a model requires streamlined care coordination and collaboration. A comprehensive review of studies on whole-person health found that the approach leads to care and quality-of-life improvements including:
While many providers recognize the importance of whole-person health, they often struggle to establish the workflows and technological infrastructure that enable and maximize the benefits of the approach. Without an advanced EHR with the right capabilities, care coordination can fall flat. Here are six key EHR features to support whole-person, holistic care.
Meeting a client’s individual needs requires providers to first understand those needs. To enable whole-person healthcare, you need an EHR that not only gives you quick access to real-time data but also enables you to seamlessly share necessary information with other providers within the care continuum.
As one study found, strong data reporting and sharing can help promote provider collaboration, improve clients’ well-being, and boost client outcomes within a whole-person healthcare model.
An advanced EHR with robust data processing and reporting features allows you to capture, organize, and store data on client outcomes, treatment adherence, medication management, staff performance, finances, insurance claims, and billing to deliver more holistic care.
According to a foundational study, socioeconomic factors — such as equitable access to affordable healthcare, food stability, housing stability, neighborhood air quality, transportation, and more — impact about half of all health outcomes. In other words, whole-person care isn’t complete without an accurate and comprehensive assessment and understanding of health-related social needs (HRSN).
Providers should look for an EHR with embedded HRSN tracking tools. Core Clinician Assist: HRSN Tracking, for example, scans provider notes and client-provided insights to flag HRSN.
This artificial intelligence (AI)-powered tool then surfaces the information at the point of care, enabling all providers across the continuum to access the data. What’s more, providers can use the in-platform communication features in Core Solutions’ Cx360 EHR to discuss HRSN and other client needs before and between appointments.
Data sharing is just one component of a streamlined provider network that supports whole-person health. Complete care coordination means facilitating provider connection and communication at every step of a client’s care journey.
With the right EHR — like Cx360 — providers can achieve this by:
Find an EHR that fosters in-platform collaboration, particularly for creating and managing treatment plans and ensuring alignment around key issues like medication management. A strong EHR allows providers to access clinically validated assessment tools and work together to design treatment plans tailored to each client’s unique needs.
Provider communication and collaboration are critical to whole-person healthcare. But what supports and powers those efforts are strong care tracking capabilities.
Invest in a solution that automates tracking on behalf of all providers within the care journey and uses different tools to keep providers in the know on the issues that matter for achieving optimal care delivery. In the Cx360 platform, for example, providers can set alerts with customizable risk scores to automatically identify comorbidities and the possibility of negative outcomes.
Tracking and co-managing comorbidities is particularly essential for whole-person health, as it allows specialists to recognize the relationship between mental and physical health. An EHR that automatically spots these relationships — and enables providers to easily and securely share comprehensive client records to act on those correlations — helps enhance overall health and wellness.
Caring for the whole person requires establishing and consistently following clinical guidelines across care facilities. An advanced EHR like Cx360 enables leaders to customize training, workflows, and data-collection protocols, ensuring everyone follows the same procedures at every step.
The platform also provides intuitive, secure, and insightful outcome tracking/monitoring, treatment, and clinical dashboards, providing clinicians within a care network with access to the most current evidence-based practices and insights.
In the whole-person health model, care doesn’t stop when the client leaves the office. All providers need tools to monitor medication management, treatment adherence, and other essential steps for improving outcomes beyond the initial appointment.
Adopt an EHR that takes much of this administrative burden off your staff’s plates. Core’s Cx360 platform comes with embedded, automated task triggering and accountability tracking to better ensure clients refill prescriptions and attend follow-up appointments. With these capabilities, providers can keep clients progressing toward positive, long-term outcomes.
As providers increasingly recognize the relationship between mental and physical health, more are implementing holistic care delivery to improve treatment outcomes. But caring for the whole person — rather than specific aspects of a client through siloed operations — requires the right tools for streamlined collaboration across practices. That’s where an advanced, all-in-one solution like the Cx360 platform makes all the difference.
Request a platform demo today to learn more about the capabilities that can enhance and elevate your organization’s efforts to deliver whole-person healthcare.