Five essential EHR features for behavioral & mental health practices

Behavioral and mental health practices require unique EHR features compared to other specialties or general medical practices. More specifically, they have different requirements regarding how they use clinical data.

As noted by the Journal of the American Board of Family Medicine, the primary differences between each practice’s EHR requirements rest in the type of data they use:

"Behavioral health and primary care differ in their language, classifications, codes, data reporting requirements, and regulations."

These practices collect more intensive data resulting from screening tools and from ongoing treatment. Further, they largely depend on effective care coordination across clinical settings and patient engagement to achieve positive clinical outcomes, but are also subject to more data privacy laws that go above and beyond HIPAA’s requirements.    

Mental health EHR requirements vary depending on the scope of care, clinical setting, and patient population. Despite these diverse needs, there are two main levels of features that mental health practices should consider when selecting an EHR: core and advanced.

The American Psychiatric Association’s Committee on Mental Health Information Technology has developed guidelines to help practitioners select the right EHR. The organization provides a thorough overview of the core and advanced EHR requirements that mental health practices should look for.

Core requirements

The organizations instruct mental health practices first to consider basic functionality, which includes the ability to create bills, write basic progress notes, track patient medications, and schedule appointments.

When moving beyond this core functionality, mental health practices' EHR requirements will depend on whether services are delivered through a solo practice setting or a group practice. For the former, basic functionality may be sufficient, whereas in the case of the latter, more advanced features may be needed, such as the ability to send claims electronically or order and send prescriptions electronically.  

Advanced features

The organization also notes that outpatient mental health clinics or those offering inpatient services will require a full-featured EHR containing much of the functionality described in this document.  

Lastly, for those organizations that accept Medicare/Medicaid, it is important to consider the quality measures issued by CMS as part of their value-based reimbursement program. As such, a practice should make certain its behavioral health EHR features allow for quality tracking and reporting.

Organizing mental health EHR requirements

The APA offers a straightforward method for selection teams to organize mental health EHR requirements. The organization identifies 2 sets of requirements:  User and Systems. User requirements involve functionality that an EHR user will require during daily work.

User requirements are divided into 7 major functions:  

• Appointments
• Billing
• Clinical charting
• Order entry
• Patient access
• General documentation
• Reporting

Systems requirements involve EHR functionality that can be best described as the portion which keeps the system running and protects clinical data from being lost or compromised by third parties.

5 mental health EHR requirements

Given the recommended core and advanced features and user and system requirements, behavioral and mental health practices should look for EHR systems aligned with these unique needs. When selecting an EHR, the following five EHR features should be viewed as essential to providing quality care:   

1. Care coordination: Practices must be able to coordinate with other providers, making the ability to share records vital. Mental illness often co-occurs with chronic conditions like obesity, diabetes, or cardiovascular disease. For comprehensive care, a mental health practice should be able to seamlessly share EHR records with other providers.

2. Billing coordination: Just as coordinating care is an important aspect of behavioral and mental health services, an EHR with practice management capabilities can eliminate some of the administrative problems these practices face.

3. Clinical decision support tools: These tools help behavioral and mental health practices by integrating clinical data to offer alerts, reminders, diagnostic support, and guidelines. They streamline patient monitoring and assessment, ensuring more informed care decisions.

4. Medication management and monitoring: As mental illness often occurs comorbid with physical illness, behavioral and mental health practices must rely on EHR features which allow them to monitor the medications patients are taking and be alerted if the risk of a harmful drug interaction is present.

5. Patient engagement: An EHR that supports easy communication between patients and providers can improve treatment compliance, especially with medications. It should also let patients manage appointments and include a simple, user-friendly messaging system.

To summarize

While many EHRs offer similar core functions, specialty practices, like those in behavioral and mental health, must consider their unique patient needs.

An EHR should do more than just meet immediate requirements; it should also support the practice's long-term strategic goals, whether that means improving services, expanding into new markets, or adding new service lines.