EHR Systems for Mental Health Providers
Are EHR systems worth it for mental health providers? Only if you want to work more efficiently and provide better results to patients.
It’s hard to overstate the benefits that electronic health records have brought to physical and mental healthcare practices. In particular, EHR systems for mental health providers have solved many pain points specific to behavioral health management.
Here’s why a behavioral health EHR could be your new best friend—and why it matters to your patients.
Increase Administrative Efficiency
Time is a precious commodity when you’re caring for a full roster of clients. Whether you have staff or practice on your own, there’s plenty of admin work to go around.
Mental health EHRs with strong integration features are the best chance at making that work go faster. When you can do all your daily tasks from within one system, you don’t waste time logging into new programs throughout the day and managing data transfers between software solutions. Instead, you can access more patient data quickly.
Plus, EHRs can streamline common processes. Easy scheduling features and billing systems should help you get common tasks done quickly.
Enable Measurement-Based Care
It’s become increasingly clear that measurement-based care yields better results for patients. But one of the challenges of measurement-based care is managing the work of distributing, collected, scoring, and evaluating symptom rating scales and outcome assessments. You need a streamlined system to stay on top of it.
Mental health EHRs can help. Systems that are built to integrate outcome measures can help you easily send the forms online and even populate the results right into your records. Providers can walk into each session already knowing their client’s progress since last time. In addition, some EHR systems for mental health providers already also have a library of measurement-based forms to choose from, so you can select exactly what you need for each patient without having to hunt them down elsewhere and build the online form yourself.
EHRs like Valant go a step further and display the results of a patient’s outcome measures over time in graph format. Provider and patient have the opportunity to view trends and evaluate how well treatment is working.
Evaluate Practice Performance
Reporting features in an EHR give you the insights of a personal business adviser without the hassle on your part of collecting and interpreting data.
Flexible reporting systems should be able to help you see, for example:
- Which diagnoses have the greatest rate of improvement at your practice, and which diagnoses may require more professional development from your staff.
- Which providers are most productive and get the best results with patients.
- Whether your caseload is equally balanced with topics that you find interesting or that you specialize in.
- Which referral sources are sending you the most business.
- Trends down or up in revenue.
- …and so much more!
An overview of your practice’s outcomes is key to growth and essential to keeping a good reputation among your referral network.
Valant Has Everything You Need
Valant software was built by mental health providers, for mental health providers. Our EHR includes all the features you need to make work easier, so you can focus more on patients and less on administrative tasks.
Clinical Documentation
Imagine completing your progress notes by the end of each patient session. How much time could you save?
Valant’s note-taking feature allows you to pull information from previous notes, so you don’t have to waste time recreating the same information again and again. You can carry forward last appointment’s diagnoses and medical information, billing information like CPT codes and provider name and demographic info, and results from outcome measures.
It also has an automatic narrative generating feature so that you can record common narratives with one click. They’re editable so you can adjust them per patient as needed.
Valant software has a convenient template that guides you through all the necessary steps of writing a progress note.
Outcome Measures Integration
Valant was designed from the ground up with the intention of supporting outcome measures as a major component of the therapy process. Although you don’t have to utilize outcome measures to use Valant, those who do will find the implementation process almost effortless. Patients, too, appreciate the ease of filling out assessments with the click of a button online at their convenience.
Valant allows you to:
- Send rating scales and outcome measures to clients ahead of their visit via the patient portal
- Auto-score data and populate it directly into your clinical notes
- Access a library of outcome measures forms
- Chart patient outcomes in chart format to show them their progress visually
Integrated Credit Card Processing
The ability to process credit card payments online saves everyone time and hassle. Abandon your desktop terminal and third-party processor and instead keep client card information saved to their account for easy payments. Staff can enter card information just once and never again, or clients can enter it themselves on the patient portal.
This reduces the opportunities for error in payment processing. It also makes data more secure, because staff don’t have to handle cards at each payment session or take card data over the phone. Card numbers are stored in Valant’s encrypted system, impervious to data breaches and office theft.
Detailed Performance Reports
A full suite of flexible reporting features bring business growth and practice health well within your reach. Valant reports can show you:
- Which clinical notes have incomplete documentation
- Outstanding payments from clients and insurance companies
- Productivity and revenue metrics per provider, per facility, or for the practice as a whole
- Which diagnoses you/your providers have success treating, and which you need to improve on
- Who is referring you, and where most of your clients come from track critical details of your practice management, and it also supports the creation of personalized reports so you can zero in on things important to YOUR specific practice.
Our reporting feature is highly customizable so you can create reports that reflect the data most important to your situation.
Get All the Benefits of an EHR at Your Practice
If an all-in-one practice management system could make your practice better, consider Valant’s EHR. It is designed to make your workflow smoother and support providers as they do the crucial work of treating patients.
Why struggle with inefficient systems and hodgepodge third party solutions for every task? Let Valant take the hassle out of your workday and get back to focusing on patients. Contact Valant today.
