by Rachna Bagdi on January 14, 2025
In the past year alone, nearly 60 million people in the United States experienced a mental illness, according to Mental Health America. That’s just over 23% of the American adult population in need of care.
Meeting this demand — especially within a fast-paced healthcare environment with changing regulations and population needs — puts intense pressure on behavioral health facilities to adapt. The only way to continually keep up in this evolving medical landscape and provide top-tier service is to have access to the right data at the right time and have the ability to effectively and efficiently analyze this information.
Comprehensive mental health records provide a clinic with crucial data that contributes to optimal care, but only advanced technologies like electronic health records (EHRs) with built-in artificial intelligence (AI) solutions can collect, organize, and asses that data at scale and at high levels of speed. Organizations that choose EHRs with included mental health case management software have a distinct advantage not only in attaining more positive outcomes but also running a more efficient and financially healthy operation.
Let’s take a closer look at how a robust solution ensures you can get the most from your clients’ mental health records.
Analytical Benefits of an Advanced EHR
According to a 2022 review of 971 distinct studies, around 80% of the studies indicated a positive connection between a medical facility adopting an EHR and boosting their financial and clinical outcomes.
But what about the other 20%? A large-scale review like this reveals that not all EHRs are created equal, and not all EHRs offer clinics the same kinds of features and benefits.
For behavioral health, all EHRs offer organizations a solution for managing and storing mental health records. Enhanced EHR solutions, however, also grant access to the real-time insights clinicians need to provide high-quality care, prevent mental health crises, improve backend operations, and much more.
Considering that advanced EHRs give mental health, substance use disorder (SUD), and intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) providers:
- Immediate data access. EHRs tailored to behavioral healthcare can be customized to provide data and insights relevant to mental health diagnoses, treatment, and client progress. Clinicians can view and securely share data with partnering organizations in real time to better ensure smooth workflows and enhanced care coordination.
- Customizable dashboards. Bespoke clinical and administrative dashboards offer facilities intuitive data visualizations and business intelligence reports.
- Ability to identify trends and gaps in service. Machine-learning solutions can analyze large datasets quickly, which helps clinicians predict mental health needs and pinpoint care gaps.
- Better client monitoring. By analyzing client progress according to custom risk scoring rules, EHR data tools can flag when clients are at risk for straying from their medication and treatment plans. By leveraging included mental health case management software, these tools help create a clearer picture of the client’s journey.
- Efficient reporting capabilities. The right EHR can not only collect data, but it can also organize insights into accessible reports, which is particularly helpful for certified community behavioral health clinics and other facilities required to submit annual reporting.
3 Ways to Make the Most of EHR Data and Analytics
Having an EHR with innovative capabilities to leverage mental health records, data, and reporting can make all the difference in a behavioral healthcare operation’s performance — and in clinicians’ abilities to provide quality care. But it’s vital to understand how to make the insights you gain from this information actionable in service of reaching and exceeding organizational goals.
Here are three ways behavioral health organizations can use data to boost staff, provider, and client experience, and enhance performance on multiple fronts.
1. Improve Care Delivery and Outcomes
In a whole-person approach to treating clients, the timeline for care doesn’t just cover when a person walks through the physical or virtual doors of a facility. It also includes preventive measures and post-treatment monitoring. Healthcare provider data and EHR analytics can help with both.
As TechTarget notes, robust analytics and predictive modeling solutions enable providers to spot health disparities across populations and identify high-risk clients. Some EHRs with integrated AI solutions take this a step further to quickly scan quantitative and qualitative data inputs to identify population-based health-related social needs (HRSN) or spot anomalies that could impact clinical outcomes within providers’ notes for each therapy session.
On the operational side, key data can improve a clinic’s caseload prioritization, one 2023 study shows. Enabling better, faster preventive interventions and more accurate client monitoring, EHRs with embedded healthcare provider data like clinical notes can help organizations improve patient outcomes and experiences.
2. Save Time and Boost Productivity
One of the biggest benefits EHR data and mental health records offer organizations is time savings. Real-time operational and clinical data allows clinics to more effectively:
- Triage clients before and after therapy sessions according to need and risk
- Stay current with ever-shifting compliance requirements
- Streamline inefficient workflows
- Spot what’s working and what’s not to increase overall efficiency
According to a 2022 study, EHR analytics also have been used to reduce the time providers spend managing their inboxes.
With providers spending an average of about 13.5 hours per week on clinical documentation alone, according to a Nuance study, AI-powered tools that use data to spot inefficiencies and help with documentation take significant burden off providers.
3. Support Long-Term Financial Health
Many EHRs use data analysis to improve revenue cycle management, enabling clinics to avoid costly errors and catch and address outdated billing codes that could result in claim denials or delays.
These advanced systems give clinics quick access to critical billing and healthcare provider data that not only helps them keep track of payment processes but also identify operational issues that might be costing the clinic revenue. Budgetary data analysis offers insights into where and how clinics are spending their money, while customizable claims rules enable facilities to track clients by payer type. Providers can use mental health records, mental health case management software, and other EHR data to better understand their current financial state and better prepare for future costs.
Finding the Best Solution Tailored to Your Facility’s Needs
To make the most of clinical and operational data, providers should look for an EHR tailored to the mental healthcare field. Purpose-built EHRs offer the right data at the right time, empowering clinicians to make the right clinical decisions at each therapy session and staff to make the right administrative decisions.
Core Solutions’ Cx360 platform is a central source of administrative and clinical tools, many of which are powered by AI to collect and analyze data in real-time. With this solution at providers’ fingertips, clinics can save time, enhance the clinician experience, and support high-quality care delivery.
Contact us to learn more about how the Cx360 platform can give your clinic access to the real-time, game-changing insights you’ve been looking for
