Home | Business News | Browse by Publication | B | Behavioral Healthcare

Forming a proactive data strategy: information management needs to be an organization-wide concern.

Article Excerpt
New billing processes, reporting requirements, and accreditation standards present behavioral healthcare leaders with multiple data management challenges as they juggle competing priorities. This article presents some key issues facing organizations as they begin using electronic data more and more, as well as key characteristics of those that successfully manage electronic data.

Specific electronic data management challenges can be state- or-region-specific. For example, Oklahoma and Ohio each have statewide electronic systems through which all persons served in the public behavioral healthcare system must be registered. In Ohio data from client and staff outcomes surveys must be sent electronically to regional boards and then to the state.

Such new data processes and requirements add to existing requirements related to clinical, medical necessity, and risk management documentation. In some organizations, the implementation of new data-reporting systems may occur separately from the development of clinical systems. In other words, clinicians and their charts might exist in one reality, while the organization's electronic data exist in another, so each system evolves separately.

Behavioral healthcare organizations should take a step back and consider the ways that developing these systems concurrently can enhance the entire agency and its daily clinical processes. Although some are implementing a full electronic medical record, most find themselves in a limbo--trying to bridge the gaps between their existing paper records and...

View this article FREE - Now for a Limited Time, try Goliath Business News
Free for 3 Days!