Update on the Current Change Healthcare Outage

Click here for Therapy Brands FAQs

How Can I Use an All-In-One Behavioral Health EHR to Streamline My Substance Use Recovery Clinic?

Reading Time: 6 Minutes

Grow your business with intelligent digital tools that let you do more in less time

Substance use recovery (SUR) has evolved dramatically over the past decade.

Previously, people struggling with addiction often only had the choice of a residential program, group therapy, or outpatient counseling. But many SUR clinics now offer all this, in addition to medication-assisted recovery, case management, peer support, and more.

Some behavioral health clinics are even taking a truly comprehensive approach to patient care by combining several specialist mental and allied health services within the same practice. It’s not uncommon now to see one clinic offering services as diverse as psychiatry, clinical psychology, applied behavior analysis (ABA), occupational therapy, and family therapy.

The challenge is the logistics of operating a mixed-service SUR or behavioral health clinic is incredibly complex. For example, there are often different billing requirements, clinical standards, and practice regulations between professions and service types.

Fortunately, with an intelligent all-in-one behavioral health EHR, you can streamline all the operations of a substance use recovery or behavioral health clinic, no matter the size or diversity in service offerings.

Let’s take a look at how.

What Operations Can a Behavioral Health EHR Simplify?

A behavioral health electronic health record (EHR) can simplify virtually every area of practice in a substance use recovery clinic.

From appointment scheduling to counseling session notes and behavioral health billingthe right EHR solution makes everything easier.

To give you an idea of what tasks a behavioral health EHR could help your clinic with, here’s a list of the features in EchoVantage:

1.   Comprehensive Practice Management Software

Run your entire practice (or group of clinics) on one platform. No more transferring data between software or training staff to use multiple programs. Everything you need, all in one place.

2.   HIPAA-compliant Patient Portal

Our secure, self-service patient portal allows clients to book and reschedule appointments independently, fill out intake forms, and pay bills online. This allows patients to take control of their care and reduces the need for administrative resources.

3.   Visual Health Record

One of the biggest complaints about behavioral health EHRs is that they’re too complicated and difficult to use. EchoVantage provides the only visual Continuum of Care timeline in the behavioral healthcare industry, making our software incredibly intuitive and easy to understand.

4.   Dynamic Forms and Clinical Templates

Accurate documentation is an essential component of clinical work, but that doesn’t mean it should be time-consuming or tedious. The dynamic, customizable forms and clinical templates in EchoVantage can be used for patient notes, assessments, goal tracking, and more.

5.   Billing Workflows

Our integrated billing tools make the entire process of insurance claims and patient billing a breeze. From tracking CPT codes to auto-generated client invoices—our behavioral health EHR automates and streamlines every step of the process.

6.   Reporting and Analytics

The extensive financial and clinical reporting tools in EchoVantage allow you to monitor clinical productivity, track treatment progress, show outcome measures, and flag appointments and clinical documents with missing CPT codes.

7.   Medication Assisted Therapy

Innovative substance use recovery clinics are increasingly offering psychiatric medication management and medication-assisted therapy (MAT) as part of their core treatment services. When e-prescribing and MAT features are integrated into a behavioral health EHR, medical providers, and allied health clinicians can work alongside each other to co-manage clients. For examples of this in action, read our case study on How Texas is Using Substance Use Treatment Telehealth.

8.   Bed Management

Inpatient therapy is expensive and difficult to access, so a behavioral health EHR needs to incorporate an effective bed management system. With EchoVantage, our software tools allow you to maximize bed utilization, resulting in more care being delivered and increased revenue.

9.   Secure Telehealth

It’s a must to offer telehealth these days. But a patchwork solution that’s not secure and difficult to use won’t benefit patients or therapists. EchoVantage has a HIPAA-Certified telehealth add-on that operates within our secure patient portal.

10.        Revenue Cycle Management (RCM) Tools

With automated eligibility checks, streamlined billing processes, and advanced financial reporting, EchoVantage makes it easy to manage every step of RCM.


Get a free demo of EchoVantage today!


Why Is an All-In-One Solution Important?

As you can see from the list above, there are a lot of moving parts within a behavioral health EHR. And to realize maximum efficiency gains—these all need to work together seamlessly.

For example, there’s no point in having a self-service intake process for clients if administrative staff or clinicians then have to manually transfer the data somewhere else. Likewise, electronic notes only save time if they can be completed on any device from anywhere while automatically populating billing and claims information into the client’s EHR.

Finally, when your staff only have to learn how to use one software program for all of their daily operations, they are likely to spend much less time on non-billable administrative duties.

Service Types and Professions Covered

A key benefit of EchoVantage is that it is flexible enough to be used across many different practice types—not just substance use recovery.

Within practices, it can be used by all clinical and non-clinical staff, including therapists, doctors, nurses, allied health clinicians, billers, administrators, and executives.

Examples of Mixed-Service Practices

Some examples of mixed-service practices that could benefit from a behavioral health EHR like EchoVantage include:

  • SUR clinics that offer individual counseling, group therapy, and community case management
  • Community mental health clinics that provide medication management, psychotherapy, and assertive community treatment from a unified group of mental and behavioral health providers
  • Inpatient and residential services running several different program types, like detox, residential rehabilitation, and 30-day programs
  • Group allied health practices where clinicians such as speech therapists, occupational therapists, psychologists, and physical therapists work in collaboration or individually
  • Family support services that assist with issues such as foster care, intellectual disability/developmental delay, youth residential programs, and parenting support
  • Specialty therapy practices, providing services like employee counseling programs,  specialized therapies (e.g., treating phobias, veterans, ABA), and critical incident response 

This list is far from exhaustive. You can tailor our all-in-one, customizable behavioral health EHR to suit any group of healthcare providers working in a physical clinic, virtual clinic, or network of practices.

Benefits of a Good Behavioral Health EHR

Everyone within a substance use recovery clinic benefits when a practice uses a good behavioral health EHR.

  1. Clients get prompt access to high-quality, coordinated care
  2. Staff can efficiently complete their daily work with minimal frustration from cumbersome IT and administrative procedures
  3. Clinic owners can expand their service offerings, increase revenue, and reduce staffing overheads

Choose A Partner Who Understands Your Needs

Operating a substance use recovery clinic is complicated enough already. When you’re expanding and adding new services, the last thing you need is to worry about whether your behavioral health EHR can keep up as you start growing.

Because EchoVantage is made by therapists, for therapists, we understand what support behavioral health businesses need to improve productivity and grow. No matter your size or goals—we’ll be there with you every step of the way as you achieve your goals and change your clients’ lives.   For over 40 years, we’ve been supporting businesses just like yours to be clinically efficient and financially strong. So book a demo today to see how we can help.

Author
Date

Share

Related Posts

Search

Search