by Rachna Bagdi on November 5, 2024
In the past year across the United States, almost 60 million people have experienced a mental illness and over 45 million have had a substance use disorder (SUD), according to Mental Health America. To help ease some of the financial pressure on providers and increase access for the many people not in treatment and/or uninsured, the federal government has invested millions of dollars in new and expanded services for these disorders.
Such investments are important steps, but the high number of people needing these services, coupled with an ongoing staffing crisis, demands providers lean more on behavioral health software to expedite the delivery of treatments and support. With over 70% of community health centers reporting staffing shortages that include mental health professionals and health professional shortage areas showing widespread need for these providers throughout the country, electronic health records (EHRs) with innovative functionality are an imperative to helping overcome or at least diminishing the negative impact of these and other challenges. These platforms help automate tasks, enhance productivity, and increase the accuracy of diagnoses and the effectiveness of care plans enroute to more positive health outcomes.
Consequences of Not Prioritizing Behavioral and Mental Health Software
Slow adoption of behavioral health software and platforms specifically designed for specialties like mental health has left many behavioral health and intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) providers lagging behind peers in other service lines on multiple fronts. Consider this: Federal data shows that just 6% of mental health facilities and 29% of substance use disorder treatment centers across the country use EHRs, and there is even less data on their adoption in one other critical area of behavioral health: care for people with IDD, who, as of 2019, numbered more than 7 millionin the United States. Conversely, nearly 80% of office-based U.S. physicians and 96% of non-federal acute care hospitals have implemented these systems.
Across all behavioral health and IDD, providers rely heavily on outdated, paper-based operations that expose them to many challenges and risks, including:
- unnecessary administrative burden that can harm provider well-being and introduce human error, all of which may exacerbate already long wait times (a major pain point for clients) and leave clinicians less time for direct care delivery;
- far fewer data-driven insights that can inform improved operations and more accurate clinical decision-making, which are critical to achieving better client outcomes and supporting population health;
- subpar care coordination, potentially leading to inconsistent treatment, fragmented clinician guidance, and duplicative work;
- inability to keep up with reporting value-based care requirements, which can jeopardize appropriate reimbursements;
- poor client satisfaction and engagement due to issues like a lack of telehealth, remote care, and self-service client portals;
- legal and data security trouble stemming from lackluster safeguards of private information and laborious recordkeeping; and,
- stunted financial success, innovation, and business growth because of revenue cycle inefficiencies and the high monetary and resource costs of manual workflows and processes.
These shortcomings make a strong case forbehavioral health software not as an option but as a “must” for providers nationwide.
What Behavioral Health Software Brings to the Table
EHRs, mental health software, and related solutions can save users time and speed up productivity. When those tools are created specifically for behavioral health and IDD, they’re like a partner in optimizing the client care journey at each step. Let’s look at one of the most notable difference-making features and functionality.
Automation
While 46% of the nation's health workers have reported that they often feel burned out, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), further data from the National Council for Mental Wellbeing shows that 62% of the U.S. behavioral health workforce has experienced moderate to severe levels of burnout. Behavioral health software can eliminate many headaches and frustrations from the very beginning of a facility’s interaction with a client by automating appointment scheduling, intake, and client/provider communication, all while also assisting with tasks further along in the treatment and support processes, like clinical documentation, care plan creation, and ongoing care coordination.
Templated and customized workflows
The right EHR can put an end to a common problem for organizations pursuing maximum efficiency: the excessive trial-and-error approach to software adoption that inundates employees with a new system to learn every few months. By supplying templated workflows that can be tailored to user needs through editable forms, a leading EHR will allow staff and providers to retain the familiarity of existing systems and routines while ensuring workflows meet evolving needs and process changes.
Diagnostic support and risk stratification
The accuracy of a mental health, substance use disorder, or IDD diagnosis can be impacted by many factors, from cognitive bias to lack of objective biological tests to short-sighted assessments arising from deficient client self-awareness or overemphasis on short-term events. Advanced AI tools like Core Clinician Assist: Symptom Tracking can scan provider notes to surface hard-to-identify symptoms and connect them with relevant, and potentially stronger, diagnoses. In crisis situations, EHRs can also help properly triage patients most in need of urgent care using clearly defined risk scores.
Clinical support
Relying on memory or paper-based systems is a risky way to follow and document treatment progress using evidence-based practices. Behavioral health software like EHRs can make it easy to embed these practices in the delivery of care and guide clinicians in conversations with clients and decisions on changes to a care and support plan.
Billing and revenue cycle management
The complexity of billing codes and claims is far easier to handle when software — particularly an AI-backed platform — is programmed to recognize them much faster than humans, and these systems can expedite filing as well. Without digital assistance, providers are at a far greater danger of delays, denials, lengthy appeals processes, and stifled cash flow.
Configurable dashboards
Data is a central driver of the success and improvement of modern healthcare, so behavioral health providers must have technology that helps them employ measurement-based care (MBC). Yet, many providers fail to integrate it into their clinical operations. With easy-to-use dashboards, practitioners can far more easily track and report on important metrics, allowing them to use MBC to continually learn, enhance care, attain more positive outcomes, and position themselves as industry leaders.
Benefits of a Comprehensive Behavioral Health EHR
Whether your behavioral health or IDD operation is small and growing or large and well-known, having behavioral health software that encompasses all the features highlighted in this piece will set you up for short- and long-term success. Whether your providers need assistance with mental health, substance use disorder, or IDD diagnosis; quicker documentation and closer analysis of all provider notes; or automation of patient-facing interactions, you can invest once in an EHR without worrying about needing to add solutions to it down the line. To learn more about Core’s all-in-one behavioral health platform, Cx360 EHR, schedule a demo today.
