Mental health care is a pervasive need for communities all across the country. But not every community — or even every individual — faces the same pathway to care.
Whether they reside in a care desert or face systemic barriers that prevent them from seeking care, many individuals from marginalized backgrounds simply don’t receive the care they deserve. And if or when they are able to access care, many people of color, LGBTQ+ people, and other disenfranchised groups are often confronted with unconscious biases that impact the success of their overall treatment.
Driving equity in mental health means adopting the right tools to support all clients — regardless of their identity, location, or background — in accessing high-quality mental health care. As the backbone of such an operational infrastructure, an advanced electronic health record (EHR) can provide the capabilities clinicians need to offer culturally competent, equitable mental health care.
Mental health is shaped by the interaction of biological, psychological, social, and cultural factors. Each person’s lived experience, including their social environment, cultural identity, and access to resources, uniquely influences their mental health. These sociocultural elements mean that each mental health care client experiences the care system and the world around them differently.
A study from health policy organization firm KFF found that more than half (58%) of Asian, 54% of Black, and 50% of Hispanic respondents reported experiencing at least one type of discrimination in the past year. Another study notes that the young people from underserved groups face higher rates of poverty, childhood adversity, and discrimination — all of which make them more susceptible to mental health issues.
Despite facing increased exposure to mental health risk factors, people from Hispanic (40%), Black (38%), and Asian (36%) communities receive mental health care at significantly lower rates than their white peers (56%), according to KFF. This gap in treatment access can lead to prolonged distress, worsened clinical outcomes, and increased reliance on crisis care rather than preventive interventions.
Similarly, the more than 120 million people who live in mental health provider shortage areas also face difficulties accessing the care they need. This is especially troubling considering suicide rates are higher in less densely populated areas and that 50% of all American Indian and 25% of military veterans — two populations that experience elevated risk factors — live in rural areas, according to the American Psychiatric Nurses Association.
In addition to disparities in care access, equity in mental health care is also a financial issue for clinics. Deloitte reports that, “If left unaddressed, mental health inequities could lead to about $14 trillion (in U.S. dollars) in excess costs between now and 2040.”
The data is clear: Clients need equitable pathways to more culturally competent care. And providers need tools to deliver it. Here’s a look at how an advanced EHR can better support equity in mental health while driving organization-wide efficiency improvements.
Meeting the needs of every client starts with understanding the health-related social needs (HRSN) that impact their daily life. HRSN are social factors — including financial stability, nutrition, and access to housing, food, and transportation — that affect a person’s physical and mental health.
Top solutions like the Cx360 platform come with integrated, artificial intelligence (AI)-powered tools that can review clinician notes and population data to flag HRSN to providers. With this real-time data, mental health providers can make more informed mental health diagnostic assessments and better target interventions to specific client needs, helping reduce barriers to care while improving treatment and support. Once the AI solution identifies HRSN, it can then track those factors over time to ensure clients are receiving the equitable care they need. This continuous, data-driven approach supports proactive care planning, helping clinicians adjust interventions as clients’ needs evolve, ultimately ensuring sustained access to equitable and effective treatment.
Solutions like these are essential for providing equitable individualized care, but they’re also vital to understanding larger population trends. Top mental health EHRs can review massive public health data sets to spot those trends, uncover widespread biases, and pinpoint inequities, supporting early identification of factors that might impede a client’s ability to access and receive care.
The right EHR can help providers examine their own unconscious biases, which often connect with social stigma. Unconscious biases in mental health care can present in various ways. Examples of bias in mental health include assumptions based on stereotypes, differing clinical judgments about symptom severity based on a client’s racial or cultural background, or favoring certain client groups over others. These biases can lead to disparities in diagnosis, treatment recommendations, and therapeutic rapport.
Many of these examples of bias in mental health happen without the provider’s awareness. But top EHRs offer cultural competency resources to support clinicians in examining their own assumptions and reducing bias in care. Providers can access educational materials for better understanding cultural barriers, then use emerging AI tools to employ captioning, language translation, or sign language interpretation to better connect with clients from different backgrounds.
Integrated telehealth capabilities can empower clients to participate in care no matter their location, which is particularly important for those in rural or healthcare provider shortage areas.
With a robust EHR, clients can schedule appointments and meet with mental health providers via a secure portal. Providers, on the other hand, can make their availability transparent to clients — a critical step for building trust with clients who might have misconceptions or hesitation around participating in care.
Through a robust telehealth platform, providers can also track their session time and document session notes while interacting with clients. These automated features free up clinicians’ time, allowing them to focus more on their clients and build strong relationships in the process.
Strengthening care coordination across providers and settings is essential to increasing the accessibility of mental health while enabling more holistic, individualized care. Through a coordinated provider network, clients can enter mental health care via associated providers, such as primary care providers, crisis centers, community centers, or other specialists.
Strong EHRs offer integrated communication capabilities that enable providers across the care continuum to work together to deliver treatment and support for a client. Providers can share health data securely, discuss individual client needs, or offer cultural competency resources to help each other better understand a client’s background and needs. This care coordination and real-time data sharing, bolstered by interoperable EHR systems, allows clinicians to track progress, adjust treatment plans collaboratively, and provide evidence-based interventions tailored to each client’s evolving needs.
An advanced EHR platform like Core Solutions’ Cx360 can give clinics these enhanced capabilities — plus AI-powered tools, customizable workflows, mobile features, and compliance tracking — all within one central location. From aiding mental health diagnostic assessments to minimizing unconscious bias to boosting cultural competence, the Cx360 platform’s integrated features empower improved equity in mental health.
Ready to improve your clinic’s cultural competency and support equity in mental health care? Request a Cx360 platform demo today.