Imagine you have a patient diagnosed with both depression and diabetes under the care of his primary care physician while receiving inpatient behavioral health treatment. In a perfect world, your team would have access to his full medical records to understand his overall health, but electronic health records (EHRs) haven’t traditionally been built for this. You’re stuck playing catch-up with phone calls and faxes—and incomplete information.
The tides are turning. Integrated behavioral health EHR systems provide a new way forward, closing the gaps and streamlining operations and care delivery by connecting with internal systems throughout the healthcare enterprise:
- Departments
- Roles (nurses, doctors, pharmacists)
- Ancillaries (labs, imaging, and so on)
- Third-party partners (as necessary)
The future of healthcare is here. Interoperability elevates behavioral healthcare from the inside out, connecting your organization and enabling collaboration with external entities. Lean on an integrated EHR to share information between healthcare providers, patients, public health agencies, and payers.
We’ll show you how EHR integration delivers on the specific needs of behavioral health, including streamlining communication, improving care coordination, and driving treatment plans and patient outcomes.
UNDERSTANDING THE CURRENT LIMITS OF BEHAVIORAL HEALTH EHRS
From where we stand now, behavioral health is trailing technologically, still using paper and outdated EHR software. Organizations have struggled with integration because the model prior to Meaningful Use and mandates for interoperability were siloed. As a result:
- Behavioral health EHRs weren’t built for interoperability.
- Behavioral health didn’t have EHR standards in place.
- Organizations have been forced to use EHRs that don’t suit behavioral health.
Most of this stems from a lack of federal funding. Behavioral health was excluded from the 2009 HITECH Act, and public entities that lack private funding are generally allocated the lowest budget by government organizations. This results in a domino effect on operations and care delivery.
REWORK
Clinicians don’t enjoy repeating themselves, and patients get just as frustrated going through the same motions. But without an integrated EHR, you’re left asking the same questions over and over, while patients take the same screenings and redo eligibility paperwork.
INABILITY TO COORDINATE CARE
Think about how hard it is to share patient records—and multiply it. As the systems organizations use lag behind behavioral health’s needs, it’s that much harder to collaborate across different agencies, between public and private entities, and up or down levels of care.
What would this look like in a scenario where a patient in private outpatient care has a crisis that results in state inpatient care? Their records won’t be available because even if the private outpatient care had some form of EHR system, it probably wouldn't be up to par with and be able to “talk to” the state system to share data—the budget just wasn’t there.
GAPS IN CARE AND WORKAROUNDS
Paperwork over patient care? Administrative activities are vital, but without an integrated EHR, behavioral health organizations work long hours on wasted activities. Reentering data in multiple places—such as Excel sheets and the EHR—and fighting with workarounds to execute key tasks pulls clinicians away from care, causing delays, gaps in security, noncompliance, and errors.
AN INTEGRATED SYSTEM CAN CHANGE EVERYTHING
The right EHR can seamlessly coordinate behavioral healthcare and drive positive outcomes. You just have to let go of legacy processes. Integrated EHR software brings everything together, from clinicians to treatment plans.
STREAMLINES COMMUNICATION
Stop playing phone tag. Implementing an integrated EHR system improves both internal and external communication with instant access to information.
Clinicians receive timely alerts and key updates, such as lab results, all inside the system. This centralization reduces the noise of time-consuming phone calls, tracking down hard-copy messages, and manually tracking down information. The result? Time savings, up-to-date patient data, and efficient care delivery.
ENHANCES CARE COORDINATION
Once the EHR software is fully integrated throughout behavioral health settings, it supports the entire patient journey. Every department, facility, organization, and level of care can access and add patient data, removing delays that could stifle patient care.
Consider what must happen when patients transfer between units during inpatient care. Medication reconciliation is mandated to understand and adjust the patient’s meds, and the process has always been manual and time-consuming. With an integrated EHR, organizations can automate the process with electronic reconciliation and share any changes with nurses, pharmacists, and healthcare team members.
PROVIDES CHECKS AND BALANCES
EHR integration provides helpful safeguards during care, offering access to data and quality metrics as a fallback. As you go through your workflows and processes, it’s easier to see if something's missing and check items off your list.
For instance, if certain actions aren’t completed before a patient is set to be discharged, they shouldn't be discharged. Instead of having crucial information hidden away in a nurses’ station, it’s available in front of you. You can follow your own policies and procedures better when you align your EHR business rules and electronic alerts with your defined next steps.
IMPROVES TREATMENT PLANS AND PATIENT OUTCOMES
Such synchronization makes it that much easier to create and maintain the Golden Thread—that seamless record of the patient care journey. Inside an integrated EHR, treatment plan updates flow from individual notes to the next draft of the treatment plan.
Teams can use the treatment plan as a living document inside the EHR to reduce manual processes. Data gets entered once and moves correctly across various records, following the patient through their care journey, being updated as needed, and reducing redundant data entry.
In the end, you wind up spending less time and effort on administration to focus on what matters: patient care. Better documentation and treatment planning inside a focused EHR elevates care delivery, driving quality, continuity, and consistent patient outcomes.
JUNO HEALTH IS AT THE FOREFRONT OF INTEGRATION
Behavioral health has been at a disadvantage in documentation and technology for long enough, stifled by budgetary concerns and forced to make do with EHR systems that aren’t made for its unique needs. Ditch the rework and workarounds for an EHR that’s made to be made yours.
Juno EHR is ahead of the game, redefining how it’s played. We don’t have to apply new standards to old tools or do internal mappings to format information properly because the software is built for your needs.
Our integrated EHR uses HL7 FHIR APIs as a starting point and is capable of adhering to all new standards through ONC certifications. The software is architected for standards other vendors still have to adapt their systems to—and we can show you the difference! Get in touch today to see the value of Juno EHR for Behavioral Health and drive better outcomes.
