Effective mental health care is more than diagnoses and treatment plans. It must start with a strong provider-client relationship built on mutual respect, collaboration, trust, empathy and understanding.
This relationship — the therapeutic alliance — has been shown to improve mental client engagement and participation as well as clinical outcomes. When providers and clients are aligned and on the same page, they can work together to establish and reach care goals while building trust and transparency through their ongoing rapport.
Clinics looking to strengthen the therapeutic alliance between their providers and clients need an electronic health record (EHR) to uphold the practices that help foster such a critical relationship. With the right EHR for mental health, providers can implement the processes and nurture the connections that boost outcomes.
Let’s take a closer look at how an advanced EHR can strengthen the provider-client relationship.
According to the National Institute of Mental Health, only about half of the roughly 59 million adults with mental health conditions in the United States received treatment in 2022. Financial and insurance obstacles are a serious hurdle to care for many. Unfortunately, data from Mental Health America shows that even people who begin treatment may still face challenges that ultimately derail their care journey. Nearly one-quarter of these individuals have unmet needs. They’re insufficiently served by clunky systems, lack of available treatment types, a shortage of providers, and disconnects between mental health systems and other areas of care. They may not feel close connections with their providers, which can hinder the desire to continue pursuing treatment and support.
These experiences may lead to frustration and feel like a heavy burden for clients. But in a strong therapeutic alliance, the provider and client share responsibility for successful treatment. The provider supports and guides the client, and the client actively participates in their own healing. An EHR for mental health can support such collaboration by reducing headaches that have the potential to disrupt and derail this process.
With an advanced EHR, clients can access scheduling tools, documents, and appointment reminders directly from their dashboard. Clients and providers can easily schedule routine appointments or impromptu check-ins, better ensuring the consistency necessary for forging an effective relationship.
Systems like Core Solutions’ Cx360 platform offer embedded telehealth capabilities to enable every client — no matter where they live — to access care from a broad array of providers who offer the treatment types they need and want, when and how they need them. Care coordination capabilities allow a client’s providers to communicate and share information in real time, helping keep clients and providers working hand in hand.
Trust and engagement are central to all aspects of mental health care — including nurturing a resilient therapeutic alliance. Trust can quickly erode when providers are inaccessible or don’t respond to client questions. According to the National Alliance on Mental Illness, failing to engage clients causes many to drop out of care altogether. An astounding 70% do so by the end of their second visit.
A top EHR for mental health can facilitate communication and connections critical to the therapeutic alliance. Clients and providers can ask and answer critical questions and collaboratively prepare for upcoming sessions through the platform. Thanks to this accessibility, client confidence in their providers is more likely to grow and strengthen. Through the EHR, clients can also access educational materials that explain their condition, symptoms, and next steps in their treatment, or learn about proven therapeutic techniques. As clients become more comfortable with their mental health and care journey, they may feel more comfortable engaging and sharing information with their providers.
Verywell Mind reports that two of the four core elements of an effective therapeutic alliance concern transparency around care and treatment plans: setting realistic expectations and agreeing on goals.
However, aligning on clear, transparent care expectations and goals requires providers to develop a strong understanding of a client’s symptoms as early as possible. Technologies backed by artificial intelligence (AI) are helping with this process.
The Core Clinician Assist: Symptom Tracking tool — an AI-powered feature embedded in the Cx360 platform — aids in diagnostic processes by leveraging mental health data science. It rapidly reviews massive datasets, notes from counseling sessions, and medical coding systems like the 10th edition of the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-10) to connect hard-to-spot symptoms with potential diagnoses to enable faster, more accurate, and more transparent treatment.
A therapeutic alliance is nothing without empathetic engagement. According to STAT, empathetic engagement involves “active listening with an increased focus on understanding and validating another person’s emotional experience.”
But empathetic engagement is difficult to achieve when providers’ minds are preoccupied by administrative burdens like taking notes during counseling sessions and tackling billing and compliance tasks. Ambient document technologies take much of this burden off of providers, enabling them to spend more time focused on client needs and giving them insights for targeted conversations. For example, physicians at the University of Michigan Health shaved off 10 minutes per client on recordkeeping and used that time to further engage their clients during visits.
Core’s Cx360 GO, as an example, is an AI-backed solution that saves providers critical time while supporting empathetic clinical engagement. This on-the-go tool allows providers to securely hold clinical sessions anywhere and then upload transcriptions into their mental health EHR in seconds. In addition to helping identify symptoms and possible diagnoses, Cx360 GO enables providers to be more present and engaged during clinical sessions, building trust and respect to help improve outcomes.
Mental health needs in the U.S. are rapidly increasing and becoming more complex. To make an impact in addressing this widespread need, mental health providers must have tools that help engage clients empathetically and accurately diagnose and care for them using AI and mental health data science. An EHR for mental health can support therapeutic alliances and enhance counseling — for the betterment of both client and provider.
Core Solutions’ Cx360 platform is custom-built for mental health care facilities and providers. With AI-powered features, an intuitive and secure dashboard, and embedded best practices, it offers clinics a technological infrastructure for nurturing the provider-client relationship. It’s an all-in-one solution that sets the foundation for driving better outcomes, one client at a time.
Reach out to learn more about the Cx360 platform and how it can help you build trusting, respectful, and long-lasting relationships with your clients.