EMR adoption in the healthcare industry has been on a rise after the implementation of the HITECH Act (2009). However, behavioral health lags in such adoption, especially the smaller organizations, which has in turn negatively affected the patient care of behavioral health patients.

One of the major reasons for such a slow adoption is staff resistance. The behavioral health staff feels that the EMR increases the workload as it is too complex, and does not have the necessary functionality needed for operation and an optimal workflow. This has led the staff to store data both manually and digitally with some of the data on paper and the rest in EMRs.

Such retention practices are causing incorrect and inconsistent storage of data and creating challenges such as duplicate entry, double documentation, scanning and transportation of documents, and reliance on patient or clinician recall for inaccessible EHR information.

Even if most behavioral health decided to implement EMRs due to statutory mandates, the lack of interoperability between the EMRs, caused the behavioral health staff to find themselves confronted with challenges such as:

  • Searching records in various historical systems.
  • Remembering the passwords and menu configuration for multiple systems.
  • Accessing and processing the data while maintaining the current operational data in the new systems.

These challenges contribute to behavioral staff burnout, which causes negative consequences for patient care and destruct operational workflows.

According to a KLAS report, organizations using behavioral health EMRs report some of the lowest satisfaction scores of any market segment.

Even if the behavioral health organization decides to address such challenges by converting and migrating their historical records into their new system, the go-forward system might not be compatible with the data format of the data in legacy systems and cause other challenges. This would in turn require the maintenance of legacy systems with unconverted data at additional costs. Such is not feasible for behavioral health, which already has low operating margins.

Also, behavioral health must ensure that their healthcare data is retained in compliance with HIPAA and other legal requirements.

  • Federal laws such as the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) require that any records associated with HIPAA be retained for a minimum of six years starting from when the HIPAA-compliant policies were first implemented.
  • The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services cites 42 Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) to establish the minimum of a 7-year retention period for medical records following the Date of Service (DoS).
  • Each state in the US also has its own set of retention laws to be followed by healthcare facilities. Such state laws usually mandate that legacy data be retained between the duration of five to twenty-five or more years, depending on the state the organization is in, and the patient’s age.

 

Our Solution

Triyam helps behavioral health organizations extract, convert, and migrate some data to the new EHR or archive their legacy data from multiple systems to the new system or to Triyam’s recommended archival solution, ‘Fovea EHR Archive ®.’ If the historic data is archived to Fovea, the archive can be integrated with the new system for quick access to both historical and operational data that can be used for measurement-based care, and to improve the quality and availability of healthcare reporting to state agencies, Medicaid, and Medicaid plans, amongst others.

  • Fovea can be the one-stop solution for all the problems faced by the behavioral health organizations.
  • Data from multiple systems can be archived into Fovea, thus providing a single unified platform and excellent interoperability for accessing accurate historical data.
  • As our solution is vendor-agnostic, any type of data can be archived in it. This eliminates the maintenance of legacy systems, which can then be decommissioned, resulting in significant cost savings for the behavioral health organization. Additionally, Fovea enables an increase in Return on Investment to organizations.
  • Archive paper records by converting them to scanned documents and images.
  • The SaaS model supports creating statistical reports, dashboards, and graphical analysis tools, with the ability to drill down into the data using Business Intelligence. This feature can help the behavioral health staff to improve patient care through more advanced reporting and disease surveillance.
  • Fovea is a configurable application that can be modified according to the needs of the behavioral health organization.
  • Financial balances of behavioral health organizations can be kept track of and managed in Fovea by actions such as winding down AR, posting payments, editing, and reprinting claims for resubmission, bulk upload collections and remittances, printing patient statements, etc.
  • Fovea is HIPAA-compliant and SOC2-certified and can be used to manage data as per retention requirements. This helps eliminate concerns related to the data privacy of behavioral patients.
  • Fovea has extensive capability to connect to external systems via API interfaces; whether it is connecting to the new EHR/ERP or for Single Sign-On.

The Single Sign-On (SSO) feature in Fovea can help behavioral health staff reduce time on their EHRs, as the functionality provides them with the ability to acquire historical data from multiple systems instantly by simply logging into Fovea from their current EHR. This makes a very easy Release of Information and downloading workflow for the users. Thus, through SSO, the behavioral staff can save time searching through multiple EHRs and enjoy seamless interoperability between the go-forward EHR, Fovea, and the legacy systems. This would also help automate and streamline provider workflow. Additionally, Fovea can integrate with third-party systems, such as pharmacy and lab systems.

As Fovea is a cloud-based solution, it allows behavioral health organizations to securely access data anytime and anywhere on a PC, iPad, or mobile device and share information with other healthcare providers, patients, insurance companies, regulators, and auditors as needed.

Related: About Fovea EHR Archive

How Triyam helps Behavioral Health Organizations

Triyam has provided such data management solutions for various behavioral health organizations. Choosing Triyam’s team of experts as your partner provides the extensive experience needed to help your organization meet its data management requirements.

Our team performs data migration, conversion, and archival, based on retention guidelines and organizational needs, with collaboration with the facility at every step of the project. We ensure that our customer’s data is managed in a way that would provide their behavioral hospital with a higher return on investment, improve their workflow, and help them manage their data in the long run with an optimal data management strategy.

Interested in Triyam’s data management solution for your behavioral health organization?

Reach out to our team at Info@triyam.com or give us a call at 855-663-2684