The Ultimate Guide to Behavioral Health EHR Selection

Further hallmarks of behavioral health EHRs that support effective care include:

• Customizable alerts that help route clients by risk according to configurable risk scores. The system steers providers to clients who should be triaged for immediate care and provides appropriate follow-up.

• Communication features that improve care coordination, client safety, and clinical outcomes. EHR client portals further engage clients by facilitating communication with the care team and access to screening and monitoring tools that they can share with the care team. 

Tips for Aligning Your Behavioral Health Organization Around Data

Behavioral health providers can take several steps to improve their organization’s use of data to achieve the three core areas of benefit discussed above.

Accurate and Complete Charge Capture

Under fee-for-service contracts, accurate and complete charge capture is essential. Behavioral healthcare revenue cycle solutions should assist with coding, apply coding updates using rules-based processes, automate bill generation, and facilitate complete claims submissions. EHRs should also have medication management and e-prescribing features that support more accurate billing, particularly mental health billing, with standardized prescription records. 

Insurance Eligibility Verification and Prior Authorization 

Behavioral health services often require prior authorization before they can be covered, which can add another layer of complexity to accurate and timely billing. Advanced EHRs can verify eligibility in real time, reducing delays, inaccuracies, or claims denials that can contribute to
bad debt.

Easily Customize Collections

Behavioral healthcare revenue cycle solutions need to be able to integrate collection policies, administer payment plans, and facilitate self-pay collections with minimal manual intervention. The right behavioral health billing solutions use rule-based features to help customize financial statement setup, track payments to date, and ensure billing timeliness. 

Customizable Alerts

Pre-built alerts can help meet regulatory requirements, such as the Physician Quality Reporting Initiative (PQRI), as they notify providers that they need to complete associated data elements. The right EHR can maximize the organization’s visibility of its performance and enable it to stay flexible enough to verify ever-changing data requirements. 

Facilitating Effective Measurement-Based Care 

Outcomes-based payments require providers to have an accurate assessment of the client’s health before and after care. EHRs offer providers complete access to client records at the point of care, as well as workflows that incorporate screening and assessment tools to effectively document changes in health status. Look for a system that allows the provider to securely send assessments to clients during their initial evaluation process, on a specified schedule, and on an ad hoc basis. 

Risk-Based Modeling

Analytics and predictive capabilities are essential in behavioral healthcare revenue cycle solutions as the industry’s focus shifts toward tying together clinical outcomes and financial performance. Risk stratification features enable providers to not only better serve their clients, but also forecast revenue and resource allocation based on various risk scenarios.

Increased Accuracy

Coding and documentation errors can lead to billing issues, potential concerns with regulatory authorities, and jeopardized client health and privacy. With training, your staff learns how to input correct information consistently.

Greater Productivity

When providers and staff are unsure how an EHR works, they’re likely to spend extra time finding the documents they need, which reduces efficiency and can create delays between client visits. Once your team learns how to navigate the system, they can use it comfortably and with confidence.

Better Client Care

Accurate documentation and increased efficiency are two factors that contribute to a higher quality of client care. Successful EHR implementation supports care coordination, minimizes repetition, and reduces contradictory treatment protocols.

Higher Return on Investment

You want to ensure you get the maximum return on the resources you put toward EHR implementation. Teaching your team how to use the platform effectively makes them more likely to leverage all its capabilities.

Consider these training strategies to better ensure your team makes the most of the system:

• Role-based training: For this strategy, each staff member learns to use the EHR to enhance their daily tasks and assignments.

• Process-based training: This form of training helps employees understand how workflows function in the new EHR, which enables them to learn the nuances of the platform for enhanced use.

• Super user training: Super users are team members who learn the EHR inside and out, stay current on the addition of new features and other changes, and then provide training and ongoing support to other staff members. 

Consider the following when creating your training plan:

• Skill assessment: Determine your staff’s level of computer literacy and include foundational computer skills training for those who need it.

• Who you need to train: Identify who should receive training and the number of sessions needed to deliver effective training.

• How you'll train: Decide whether you’ll set up online training sessions and/or have an outside EHR vendor trainer lead sessions. Consider what resources your team will need, such as user manuals and quick-tip cheat sheets.

• Training goals: Create goals that guide your team and encourage them to master specific EHR features before moving on to new elements.

• Location: Determine whether you’ll host training sessions online or on-site and consider whether you have the space to adequately train multiple people simultaneously.

• Deadlines: Establish a timeline for your behavioral health EHR implementation, giving team members — especially super users — enough time to build their confidence with the system.  

Billing and Collections

Compared to physical healthcare, billing for behavioral health services is far more difficult to standardize, as these services typically require different types of treatments, session lengths, and care coordination across multiple partners. In behavioral health, providers often struggle to balance treatment with adequate reimbursement when client needs exceed insurance coverage. 

Providers also need to keep pace with ever-changing billing regulations and often fail to collect all that’s owed to them. And improperly coded or documented services quickly lead to denials or additional staff time spent on appeals and claims corrections. All these elements negatively impact the practice’s revenue. 

Advanced EHRs can help solve these billing and collections problems by using machine learning technology to rapidly review the more than 69,000 codes in the ICD-10-CM and enter the right code for the right service. An EHR can also standardize intake processes to collect client information and pre-authorizations upfront. These capabilities help improve an organization’s financial stability by reducing administrative costs and driving client satisfaction and retention.

Clinical Efficiency and Provider Retention

In manual systems, providers often devote hours to collecting client information — time that could otherwise be spent directly treating clients, which significantly impacts the organization’s bottom line.  

A strong EHR can automate existing processes like securing intake forms and client histories. In fact, clients can submit forms digitally through an advanced EHR, and providers can use behavioral health templates to efficiently document common symptoms and customize workflows to further save time. 

Other AI-powered tools like ambient dictation or documentation can bring operational improvement and better care delivery together. These tools automate note taking, help connect symptoms to potential diagnoses, and inform more targeted care plans that contribute to positive outcomes.

Business Intelligence

Recent research found that healthcare organizations generate nearly 30% of the world’s data volume. Yet, they use only 57% of that data for critical decision-making. 

Integrating business intelligence into EHR systems enables behavioral health practices to gain key insights that can improve client care and business operations. Business intelligence tools can strengthen care coordination, enhance risk stratification, and aid in the development of treatment plans. The best EHR solutions have standout data visualization, analysis, and reporting capabilities to reduce errors that could lead to a variety of costly problems. 

Value-Based Care and Reimbursement

As the healthcare industry steadily transitions to value-based payments, organizations are increasingly concerned with the model’s six key elements:

• Safe
• Timely
• Effective
• Efficient
• Equitable
• Client-centered 

EHRs can help providers meet these elements by supporting care coordination through capabilities like in-platform communication, scheduling, and diagnostic tools. These capabilities are particularly useful for organizations adopting behavioral health integration (BHI) models focused on delivering complete, effective, client-centered care. 

By identifying health-related social needs, EHRs also help providers offer more equitable, accessible, and culturally competent care. AI-powered HRSN tracking solutions relieve providers of data collection burdens and contribute to more targeted care that improves both individual outcomes and overall population health. 

Cloud-Based Benefits

EHRs can eliminate the need to manage on-premises servers and hire extensive IT staff to support this technology, which are costs that can quickly add up and are likely to grow year over year. Cloud-based EHRs are managed remotely by the vendor, freeing up money for value-adding services or capabilities like technological advancements to make a facility more competitive as a care provider and employer.

You should expect your behavioral health EHR vendors to highlight:

• Workflow management. Pre-built workflows should interface with other systems and be easy to change to reflect shifts in clinical guidance or billing procedures.

• Flexible platform and care access. Providers should be able to quickly access information through their EHR via mobile devices or communicate with clients through secure channels.

• Risk stratification. EHRs should help providers identify clients in need of urgent care by rapidly reviewing customizable risk scoring rules. 

Ask your EHR vendor about platform features that improve collaboration, such as:

• Streamlined scheduling. The EHR should make it easy to plan, sequence, and rearrange client appointments, regardless of whether they’re delivered in person or via telehealth.

• Information sharing. Advanced EHRs should allow providers to use role-based access to easily view and share accurate and up-to-date client information, from clinician notes to assessments and progress reports.

• Direct provider-client communications. Behavioral health EHR vendors should make it simpler for providers to foster strong partnerships with clients. With the right EHR, clinicians can send screenings and assessments to clients before an appointment and use a variety of communication methods to enhance client engagement. 

Ask potential vendors about how their EHRs employ AI solutions to:

• Guide providers through evidence-based practices and clinical decision-making

• Scan session notes to spot symptoms and inform potential diagnoses

• Alert providers to care management outliers

• Support HRSN-based care for various populations

Ensure the vendor you choose:

• Uses role-based access controls, end-to-end encryption, penetration testing, incident response plans, and other standard security practices.

• Secures client-facing applications, like portals and communication channels.

• Has certifications like HITRUST, ONC Health IT, SOC 2, and HIPAA to back up their security claims.

• Applies patches, monitors threats, and exchanges cybersecurity insights with peers to implement security hygiene best practices.

A strong EHR should support and manage business, financial, and operational performance, so ask your EHR vendor about toolsets like:  

• Revenue cycle optimization, with codes tailored to your organization, rules-based claims generation, and dashboards for tracking denials, missing pre-authorizations, and performance.

• Robust reporting capabilities, such as real-time data analytics, customizable reports, and role-based permissions.

• Target costing analytics that give providers the ability to share data with their general ledger to identify the total costs of care.

• Consolidated payer records that track third-party financial agreements and offer efficient billing, claim generation, and validation.