by Mike Lardieri, LCSW on September 3, 2024
EHR solutions are a significant investment for behavioral healthcare organizations, whether making an initial purchase or transitioning from one system to another. The good news is that the right EHR can provide a considerable return on investment (ROI). Beyond its impact on the bottom line, a behavioral health EHR can save time and resources, improve processes, and help with staff and clinician retention.
Identify technology competencies that will best serve your behavioral health organization with our Ultimate Guide to Behavioral Health EHR Selection.
How do you determine ROI? Financial considerations extend beyond the initial purchase. An EHR's total cost of ownership includes maintenance, staff training and support, data migration, and more. That’s why you must have a clear and complete understanding of your investment.
Key Aspects to Examine in EHR Systems for Behavioral Health
As your organization evaluates different EHR solutions, consider the following areas to help determine ROI.
Billing and collections
Behavioral health billing can be complex, due in part to a large variety of billable services. The types of treatments, length of sessions, and coordination of care across multiple partners generally make behavioral health services more difficult to standardize than physical healthcare. Clients’ needs may exceed what an insurance company is willing to cover, leaving providers to balance effective treatment with adequate reimbursement.
The rules and regulations that surround behavioral health billing are also continuously being updated or changed, which means providers must be aware of these shifts and adjust their billing processes as necessary. As they try to keep up, many providers fail to collect all that’s owed to them, leaving dollars on the table that could mean the difference between an organization being in the red or the black.
Inefficient or incorrect documentation can make billing and collections even more thorny. Services not coded and documented properly can lead to denials and additional staff time spent on appeals and claim corrections which translates into higher costs. Delays in correcting and appealing the claim can lead to delays in payment as clients wait to learn what they owe. Often, the more time that passes, the less likely clients are going to pay their bills. Missing a payer’s filing deadline also leads to loss of payment. All of which negatively affect the practice’s revenue.
The best EHR systems for behavioral health can improve the billing and collections process and impact ROI in a few ways. For one, they reduce the risk of human error that can occur with manual coding. There are over 69,000 codes in the ICD-10-CM — much more than one person can be expected to memorize. EHR solutions, particularly those with machine learning technology, can rapidly review this information and ensure the right code is entered for the right service and the claim is accurate. Submitting a clean claim expedites the payment process and ensures that the payer and client pay the correct amount. An EHR can also standardize intake processes to collect client information and pre-authorizations upfront. These capabilities not only improve the financial stability of an organization and reduce administrative costs, but they also influence client satisfaction, which in turn can lead to improved retention.
Clinical efficiency and provider retention
One of the benefits of an EHR for therapists and other providers is that it can automate existing manual processes, such as intake forms and client histories. The minutes and hours spent collecting this information can eat into the amount of time a provider can spend with clients and the number of clients they can treat. Freeing them to do more of what they do best is likely to increase provider satisfaction and retention, drive stronger productivity, and improve the organization’s bottom line – all critical success factors amid an ongoing behavioral health provider shortage
The ability to submit forms digitally further improves efficiency, allowing the client to fill them out ahead of time, and that information is updated automatically in the EHR. EHRs with behavioral health templates can also allow providers to document common symptoms more quickly than filling them in manually, while customizable workflows and forms likewise save time.
Finally, ambient dictation can bring operational improvement and better care delivery together. Core Clinician Assist: Documentation allows behavioral health providers to record client sessions, receive summaries, and see symptoms that natural language processing (NLP) identifies across all providers’ notes, helping inform more targeted treatment and care plans that contribute to more positive outcomes.
Business intelligence
Even though healthcare organizations generate a lot of data (30% of the world’s data volume, according to the most recent research), less than 60% of it is used for critical decision-making.
This data can and must be mined for valuable insights that can improve client care and business operations. Integrating business intelligence (BI) into EHR systems for behavioral health enables better care coordination and risk stratification, including identifying clients who are likely to be a no-show or who will require follow-up care due to being high risk or having a gap in care. BI can also alert providers to potential medication interactions and aid in the development of treatment plans. The best EHR solutions will have standout data visualization, analysis, and reporting capabilities to make the most of the information at hand.
This level of sophistication can help improve care delivery and client experience and reduce errors that could lead to costly medical malpractice lawsuits – which impact not only an organization’s finances but its reputation and that of its clinicians as well.
Value-based care and reimbursement
With the healthcare industry’s steady transition to value-based payments, providers must be able to prove that they are improving clients’ outcomes and experience to collect as much value-based payment as possible. Value-based care has six key elements:
- Safe
- Timely
- Effective
- Efficient
- Equitable
- Patient-centered
EHRs can help providers meet these elements. As more organizations explore the use of behavioral health integration (BHI) models focused on delivering complete, effective, client-centered care, they can greatly benefit from an EHR for therapists, clinicians, and other providers that supports care coordination through capabilities and features like in-platform communication, scheduling, and diagnostic tools. They can also treat clients more equitably and safely by understanding their specific social circumstances, or social determinants of health (SDOH). Integrating screening for their health-related social needs (HRSN) increases the provider’s insight into the client and allows the provider to focus on those symptoms that are most important to the client. Core’s Clinician Assist: HRSN Tracking relieves the provider burden on data collection and allows them to use their time to focus on the client and provide better outcomes. This all contributes to more targeted care that improves both individual outcomes and population health.
Cloud-based benefits
One of the most significant benefits of cloud-based EHR solutions is that they eliminate the need to manage on-premises servers and hire IT staff to support this technology. Depending on the size of the practice and its client load, staffing and hardware costs can quickly add up and possibly grow significantly year over year. With cloud-based solutions, the EHR is managed remotely by the vendor. Freeing up the money that would have been spent on managing in-house servers and staff means those resources can be used elsewhere, such as technological advancements to make a facility more competitive as a care provider and employer.
Better Understanding the ROI of a Behavioral Health EHR
An EHR's total cost of ownership may look daunting at first, and you may question whether EHR solutions are justified. However, it’s important to know that adding EHR capabilities to your technology stack is a worthwhile investment that will help your clinical, financial, and administrative operations run as efficiently and effectively as possible. For a custom look at the ROI potential for your behavioral health EHR, reach out to Core Solutions today.
