It’s unusual to be in the behavioral health business without some sort of problem with an Electronic Health Record (EHR).
In 2013 associates and I helped two large nationwide chains, and two small, New York City non-profit clinics select EHRs. Yes, there are still agencies out there that don’t have computers on the professionals’ desks. Practically all behavioral health agencies have billing systems (if they didn’t they’d have big trouble getting paid by insurance, Medicaid and Medicare), but the clinical side of the business is still lagging behind. That’s problem number 1. 
Also in 20113 we helped a state mental health system design an EHR, a large Wisconsin county develop an entire reporting system and a number of smaller community substance abuse and mental health clinics implement new software systems because they needed professional help. A number of helping professionals have access to EHRs but aren’t using them because of failed or incomplete implementations. That’s problem number 2.
A number of behavioral health agencies we help have EHRs that just don’t act as advertised. We were not surprised to learn this. There are a number of contributing factors; software salespeople may not understand programmers’ descriptions of new features or functionality; software support departments constantly lose people because eventually anybody can get tired of listening to complaints all day; and finally, agency brass just can’t forecast the revenue to invest in fixing software problems. Optimizing software is problem number 3.
The crowd I work with is top-notch and resolve all three of these problems.
Recently our group was approached by a software company who needed our help with a product they recently purchased. We felt flattered.
I was happy to hear an EHR vendor indicate that he liked my style; I’m working with that company now on an EHR implementation. That’s a big complement…satisfying customers can be easy compared to getting a kind word from a software vendor.
When a software vendor sells out to a corporate conglomerate and most of the employees either abandon-ship or are “downsized” (AKA “chosen a different career path” because they don’t fit in with the new management style), MindHealthBiz and associates work well with vendors and have resources to complete a failed implementation or deliver software support and programming services that seem to no longer be available from the software company (even web services, which seems to be troublesome in this industry).
We’re here to help. Take a look around the site. If you want to know more about MindHealthBiz and the software selection, implementation and optimization services offered, connect with me at info@ehrsio.com.
-T.
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