Behavioral health and human services providers, like their clients, face and overcome new challenges every day. From a business-operations perspective, agencies face increased demand for services, staff shortages, increased compliance requirements, and must provide substantial care documentation and outcomes measures to governmental regulators. And on the clinical side, caregiver teams are dealing with increased demand, coupled with the fact that those individuals are presenting with an ever-broader array of service needs.
Expecting the unexpected is not new for behavioral health providers, which routinely pivot to meet new demands. For providers to routinely problem-solve and succeed in a challenging climate, they need to maximize every resource at their disposal, from their talented caregivers and support staff to the technology tools they deploy to meet their mission.
In today’s rapidly evolving, highly regulated care climate, the electronic health record, or EHR, platform has become an even more critical component of a provider’s ability to sustain and grow. In fact, it’s hard to overstate just how much the EHR is the IT backbone of the agency’s overall operations. In this article, you will learn how your EHR technology must broaden its scope to match agency evolution, increased demand, and staffing shortages.