Good Processes Drive Success. A Good EHR Drives Good Processes
At their best, well-designed processes can make work easier and organizations more efficient. At their worst, poorly designed processes can make even relatively simple tasks frustratingly difficult to accomplish and sink productivity.
Behavioral Health and Human Services organizations are extremely process-driven, with a multitude of protocols, requirements, metrics, and standards across multiple services and service levels, plus additional rules and requirements for billing and reimbursement. Their ability to improve processes, however, is limited by the capabilities of their Electronic Health Record (EHR) system.
Reducing Redundancy and Variability in Processes: How an EHR Can Help Bring Order out of Chaos
One of the keys to improvement is reducing redundancy and variability in processes. As this OPEN MINDS article notes, “Unfortunately, the health and human service field has more variability than standardization—in both clinical services and administrative practices.”
Bringing standardization and order out of the chaos requires several important things of an EHR software:
A Single Platform
The ability of Behavioral Health and Human Services organizations to reduce and standardize their processes is severely limited if their EHR connects to a number of disparate external resources for functions like:
Users have no choice but to follow the processes unique to (and often log in and log out of) each separate system.
A Flexible and Configurable EHR
While Behavioral Health and Human Services organizations are required to report on a growing number of clinical and performance metrics, many of these metrics draw on common data points. A flexible, configurable EHR enables organizations to identify common data points and structure their processes and reporting so these data points populate different performance metrics automatically. This standardization reduces data entry and administrative monitoring.
Intelligent and Intuitive Design
Existing processes can be improved if the EHR is designed in an intelligent and intuitive manner. Among other things, intelligent and intuitive processes can be configured by role, so users have to navigate only what’s relevant to them and their work. And processes can be configured so that they present all of the relevant information and requirements needed for users to move from one step to the next seamlessly.
The SmartCare™ EHR Solution is designed with Behavioral Health and Human Services organizations in mind
Streamline’s SmartCare™ is a next generation enterprise EHR platform developed specifically for the Behavioral Health and Human Services market. Its single, unified platform manages all types of services across all levels of care in a single application. Its open architecture structure is flexible and configurable. Its intelligent design understands user roles, preferences, and workflows intuitively, which promotes ease of use and efficiency.
SmartCare™ enables organizations to streamline and improve their processes to increase productivity and, ultimately, improve care.
Are you interested in learning more about the SmartCare™ EHR platform? Request a demo today.
www.streamlinehealthcare.com
