Why Your Behavioral Health Organization Needs an EHR Assessment

Using an electronic health record (EHR) is integral to the success of your behavioral health organization — from patient care to staff productivity and revenue cycle management.

But has your EHR kept up with your behavioral health organization’s demands as it has evolved alongside changing patient needs, payer expectations, and regulatory requirements?

Find out with an EHR assessment.

Is Your EHR Properly Optimized?

You might think that an EHR should work “out of the box,” so to speak. But optimizing an EHR to your behavioral health organization means making sure the system is set up to properly support your unique needs and goals.

When that happens, you typically see benefits like:

Better patient care: With an optimized EHR, your clinicians can easily input notes, complete assessments, update treatment plans, and document other vital information, as well as quickly pull up this data when they need it.
More efficient workflow: When you identify ways to minimize redundancies and eliminate workarounds, you ensure that your staff is interacting with your EHR as effectively as possible.
Fewer denied claims: EHR optimization ensures that your billing rules are set up properly so that your billing team is submitting “clean” claims.
Enhanced management of your revenue cycle: In today’s data-intensive world, no behavioral health organization can expect to achieve revenue cycle excellence without a fully optimized EHR.
More productive staff: You can’t expect your staff to function at the highest level if they don’t have the tools they need and that those tools align seamlessly with clinical processes.

The bottom line: an optimized EHR is essential for the best performance from staff throughout your behavioral health organization.

What Is an EHR Assessment?

An EHR assessment is a comprehensive process that involves conversations with individuals from all parts of a behavioral health organization. The goal of these conversations is to identify gaps between what the EHR should be doing for the organization and what is actually happening.

For example, if staff members haven’t been properly trained to make the best use of the EHR — or if their reporting requirements have changed since the EHR was implemented — they may have developed time-consuming or otherwise inefficient workarounds outside the system.

“We do an end-to-end analysis to determine where the pain points are. We talk to people throughout the organization. And then we develop tailored recommendations to optimize the system,” said Tim Carpenter, Vice President of Consulting at SimiTree Behavioral Health.

Carpenter and his team have extensive experience assessing EHRs. When they perform an EHR assessment, the feedback and guidance that they provide is customized according to the specific needs, challenges, and business objectives of each behavioral health organization that they work with.

The team can also provide whatever level of support the organization needs to implement their recommendations.

“Depending on what the client prefers, SimiTree Behavioral Health can do some or all of the work.” Carpenter said.

How SimiTree Behavioral Health Can Help

SimiTree Behavioral Health offers comprehensive EHR assessments that are tailored to the specific needs of each organization. Our consultants are not affiliated with any EHR software companies and provide objective recommendations that are in the best interest of your organization.

If you’re looking to improve your organization’s revenue and workflows, don’t hesitate to reach out to us with the contact form below or call us today at 866.839.5471.