May is observed as Mental Health Awareness Month in the United States, a time to shed light on the significance of mental wellbeing. A patient’s experiences during mental health treatment and counseling can significantly impact medical outcomes.
A study in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association emphasizes the need for a more patient-centered, collaborative approach to strengthen patient engagement. Patient engagement is crucial for achieving better outcomes and fostering a supportive care environment.
By integrating comprehensive care solutions, mental health and behavioral health practices can adopt greater patient engagement, streamline operational workflows and can deliver improved patient outcomes. Here are five essential patient engagement tools that every behavioral health practice should consider implementing.
1. Integrated Behavioral Health Solutions
eClinicalWorks offers a suite of tools vital for creating a holistic approach to patient care.
The eClinicalWorks Behavior Health Module integrated within our EHR offers:
Goal Tracking: Assign and monitor patients’ progress toward personalized goals. To enhance patient engagement and accountability, making patients active participants in their care journey.
Automated Care Plan Reviews: The automated care plan reviews set reminders to ensure that patients and their care teams stay aligned on treatment progress.
Patient and Care Team Signoffs: Capture crucial signatures electronically, securing commitment and understanding from all parties involved.
Group Visit Documentation: Simplify the process of scheduling and documenting group sessions, allowing for comprehensive and collaborative care delivery.
For patients looking for structured support without hospitalization, eClinicalWorks’ outpatient care solutions are invaluable. These include therapy and skills training for substance use disorders and co-occurring mental health issues, regular counseling and consultations, and flexible scheduling to accommodate patients’ lifestyles.
“As an outpatient behavioral care center, we need specific tools to manage treatment plans and medication. With the eClinicalWorks EHR, we now have customizable, intuitive dashboards and workflows to meet our clinical, administrative, and billing needs. eClinicalWorks also automates processes like patient registrations, scheduling, intake, and patient communication. This will allow us to offer better and faster care, which is our top priority.”
2. eClinicalWorks 24-Hour Inpatient Behavioral Health Care
Inpatient care is a critical component of behavioral health services, and eClinicalWorks has developed a comprehensive inpatient system to optimize patient management processes.
Dedicated Intake Notes: Streamlined workflows for triage, nursing, and providers ensure that patient care is efficient and tailored.
Structured Screenings: Facilities can utilize standardized or customizable scoring systems for detailed interpretation and optimal care.
Patient Tracking: Assigning patients to specific rooms, beds, or recliners allows for precise tracking and enhanced monitoring.
Customizable Progress Notes: Shift notes, BIRP (behavior intervention response plan) notes, and group visit documentation are fully customizable to support diverse roles.
Safety and Treatment Plans: Facilities can create individualized plans or select from pre-set options for consistent patient care.
Bed Management: Efficiently manage bed availability and cleanliness, ensuring readiness for incoming patients.
Comprehensive Discharge Processes: Aid in creating safety plans, treatment plans, and more to ensure a seamless transition.
“The eClinicalWorks 24-hour behavioral health care solution easily integrates with our systems, supporting interoperability, documentation, and improving staff satisfaction, which helps to improve patient outcomes. It has made our workflows so much easier and helps our providers deliver a full circle of care.”
healow Telehealth Solutions, is a comprehensive telehealth platform offered as an integrated EHR service by eClinicalWorks, to meet the needs of behavioral and mental health practices.
Improve Access: It reaches existing patients who live far from doctor’s offices and new patients unable to find a provider in their area.
Convenience: It offers at-home visits to reduce patient anxiety and stigma of visiting a clinic. Also, it helps practice to lower no-show rates.
Ease of Use: Patients and providers can simply start the visit through a link, conduct on-demand audio/video calls, schedule appointments online, send previsit questionnaires, document comprehensive progress notes, and collect data from wearable health devices.
4. Sunoh.ai – AI Therapy Scribe
AI Therapy Scribe like Sunoh.ai re-emphasizes compassionate care as it acts as an invisible companion, documenting details during sessions. This technology integrated within the eClinicalWorks EHR, allows therapists to focus on patient narratives without disruptions, providing enhanced patient-centered care.
Real-Time Transcription: AI therapy notes ensure real-time documentation, keeping patient data current and relevant.
Accurate Documentation: It mitigates errors associated with manual documentation and ensures consistent record-keeping.
Enhanced Engagement: The uninterrupted patient-provider interactions lead to enhanced care and better outcomes. This ensures the therapeutic relationship deepens, as patients feel heard and understood.
healow Genie, AI-powered contact center solution will soon be available to eClinicalWorks users, to help their patients schedule appointments, pay bills, request referrals, or medication refills. The AI medical receptionist will offer 24/7 access to vital health information via voice call, text, or chatbot ensuring each call is answered immediately with zero waiting time. This will help transform patient engagement by:
Balanced and Quality Interactions: The natural-language processing (NLP) technology will ensure a balanced approach where patients feel heard and valued, improving patient satisfaction.
Intelligent AI Assistant: The AI agent can determine when a patient has a complex question that requires detailed interaction and escalates such calls to office staff or on-call provider.
After-Hours Care: By fielding calls on nights, weekends, and holidays, connecting patients with on-call providers, and creating summaries useful for follow-up care, healow Genie will ensure patients receive care on-demand care.
“By leveraging AI call solutions to streamline operations and support our team members, we will ensure faster and more accurate responses to patient inquiries, maintaining the personal connection that is central to our approach.”
Together, we can make a difference in mental health care
Incorporating these patient engagement tools can significantly enhance the effectiveness and efficiency of behavioral health practices. By implementing these technologies, behavioral health practices can ensure that they are meeting their patients’ needs and providing the highest quality of care possible.
