Electronic health records, or EHR, is used by both small and big medical offices to maintain track of patient information and identify broad spectrums in the community they serve. A mental health EHR application is essential for psychiatrists to ensure efficient psychiatry medical billing. An EHR program that you have neglected to modify is the last thing you want to burden your personnel with. Finding a committed psychiatry EHR software provider with a strong track record of maintaining and improving its program is a better alternative than attempting to recreate the wheel.
Although it might be challenging to find the best EHR, practice management, and medical billing solutions for your psychiatric business, if you keep these aspects in mind, you will be able to find a better platform to outsource your billing.
Why is Psychiatry Medical Billing Indifferent?
Psychiatrists typically charge for therapy, psychological evaluations, drugs, and other treatments of this nature, and they frequently do so based on the number of hours of service rendered rather than a single service. Nearly all specialties have major challenges with prior authorizations since 86% of doctors say the administrative burden is high or extremely high. However, because their support personnel is typically inadequate or nonexistent, psychiatrists confront extra challenges. Finally, if your practice has been using telepsychiatry for visits, you have probably seen some sudden changes to billing capabilities during COVID-19. It is understandable that psychiatrists could struggle with their billing workload given all of these factors to take into account. To the greatest extent feasible, automation of the workload requires the identification of essential characteristics and solutions.
Must-Have EHR Features for Psychiatry Medical Billing
1-Customizable & Built-in Medical Forms
Every psychiatrist has their own preferred clinical note-taking routines, thus your EHR must allow you to modify existing templates or create new ones from scratch. Make sure your electronic health record provider at least has pre-built behavioral health forms like:
- PHQ-9 questionnaires,
- Bio-psycho-social assessment forms,
- MSE forms,
- GAFs associated with your subspecialty.
You may still make changes to existing templates if you'd like to, saving you the hassle of having to make your own in the EMR.
2-Electronic Medical Prescription
E-prescription is perhaps the most effective approach for psychiatrists to give medicine to their patients with ease. In order to increase productivity, chosen medications and pharmacies should be maintained in the platform so that providers may transmit or refill prescriptions straight from their EHR. You should be able to rely on your eRx software in your EHR whether you are prescribing antidepressants, antipsychotic drugs, sedatives, mood stimulants, or other pharmaceuticals. Additionally, the platform must be EPCS compliant to avoid any fraudulent activity.
3-Mobile Responsive EHR
Mobility is a vital element in determining how well your EHR supports more intimate interactions. You can spend more time seeing your patients if you can swiftly and covertly manage your clinical documentation on an iPad or iPhone. For maximum workflow flexibility, look for EHR software that functions well on your phone, tablet, or computer. If the software is cloud-based, you will be able to access your EHR from any location.
4-Speech Transcription
Typing may take more time than is appropriate for your appointment times, and pausing to take notes may interfere with how patients are interacting with you. A medical speech-to-text feature in an EMR, however, can eliminate a significant amount of your day's typing. Make sure the EHR firm you are considering has created the tool to learn your accent and speech patterns as you dictate more notes because some dictation technologies are not as good as others. Then you may just sit with your iPad on your lap and talk to your patient.
Some EHR software providers like Transcure have a specific application named ‘’Data capturing App’’. This app can be integrated with psychiatry EHR to perform operations more smoothly.
5-Perpetual Templates
Persistent templates are a requirement since psychiatrists frequently treat patients for extended periods. It is unlikely that a patient with depression you are treating would have a significant change in their state between visits. Persistent templates allow you to submit their information once for the clinical note and have it automatically populate in subsequent sessions.
Key Takeaways
You need competent billers and coders, but you also need someone to look at the broader picture. Is your cash flow getting better? What changes may be made to expand your practice? A committed psychiatry billing service provider can guide and identify potential areas for optimization. These frequent updates in your EHR will help you streamline your medical billing. Despite the complexity of medical billing for psychiatrists, utilizing the best features of EHR software will save you time and money.
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