North Central Health Care (NCHC), a mental and behavioral healthcare center, will launch Cerner EHR at its three behavioral health facilities in Wisconsin.
This EHR implementation aims to provide NCHC clinicians with up-to-date patient information on a single platform to improve patient care.
This partnership comes at an opportune time, during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Since the spread of the coronavirus, a recent Kaiser Family Foundation poll showed that 45 percent of adults have had their mental health negatively impacted due to the uncertainty of the virus. Cerner said the pandemic has magnified the need for health IT to help treat mental health.
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“We look forward to working with North Central Health Care to support their mission to provide compassionate and high-quality care for people with mental and behavioral health needs,” said Adam Laskey, vice president of Behavioral Health at Cerner.
“The timing couldn’t be more relevant with the current coronavirus pandemic – and the recovery phase to come – causing unprecedented levels of demand on behavioral health organizations like NCHC. Our unified solution seeks to make it easier for providers to deliver the integrated and accessible care necessary, including in virtual settings, to support patients on their recovery journey.”
The behavioral healthcare facility will now promote interoperability through the EHR platform across its psychiatric, rehabilitation, community treatment, and emergency departments.
“It was extremely important for us to choose a system that aligns with our strategic imperative – to provide quality care that is consistently superior and adopts advanced technologies that help us reimagine our environments to truly be patient-centered,” said Michael Loy, CEO of NCHC.
“Cerner’s technology platform will help deliver an improved engagement with our patients, while providing our team of talented professionals with a user-friendly system that seamlessly improves outcomes across our multitude of programs.”
With the EHR implementation, NCHC faculty and its patients can utilize Cerner’s patient portal.
Patients will be able to direct message providers, schedule appointments, and gain full patient data access. Providers and patients will also be able to utilize telehealth capabilities through the online portal for remote therapy sessions.
NCHC will also use Cerner’s revenue cycle management platform to improve its financial operations and link patients’ clinical and financial data into a single EHR record.
This implementation occurred just months after a recent KLAS report highlighted that a majority of customers using a behavioral health EHR vendor are dissatisfied with the overall product. However, Cerner’s Millennium Behavioral Health stood out as an outlier.
Customers reported timely and responsive support from the vendor and they were also pleased with the product’s integration and interoperability efforts. Customers also said they were satisfied with the vendor’s software updates, partnering abilities, and responsiveness to the customer.
But on the other hand, EHR implementations and training were common complaints for Cerner customers.
“Three of the five interviewed organizations who have deployed Millennium within the last two years report a poor implementation experience, and some customers had to redo the Cerner training or provide their own because Cerner’s was inadequate or ineffective,” wrote the KLAS authors.
“Additionally, over half of respondents say the product lacks some behavioral health–specific workflows and functionality, especially for the outpatient setting,” they continued.
While Cerner Community Behavioral Health (Anasazi) achieved the highest score, customers said Cerner does not plan to develop the product and most plan to move to Cerner Millennium.
Both Epic Systems and MEDITECH offer a behavioral health platform. However, most customers have to access the platform through a third-party or through EHR optimization.
Source: EHR Intelligence