Every year the Samaritan Institute holds their annual conference. The talk tracks this year focused heavily on tele-behavioral health as well as EHR selection, implementation and clinical workflow. Our CEO, Kristin Walker, was asked to present with Dr. Carol Pitts on electronic health records. The sessions were full and they had a line of people waiting to talk to each of them at the conclusion of the presentations.

The importance of working with vendors that have the proper credentials in behavioral health was part of the discussion. They also discussed the travails but necessary journey of moving from a Behavioral Health EHR that ceases to meet the needs of a behavioral health agency to one that is designed as an enterprise-wide and browser-based EHR.

What is a Community Mental Health organization to do when it is time to make the switch from one Behavioral Health EHR to another?

They start planning.

They outline what isn’t working about their current system and plan out their goals for transitioning to a new EHR that can better handle their needs. Sometimes the first jump into an electronic health record system is successful only in that it transitions the agency off a paper-based system and educates the staff about what kinds of features they want in a new system.

The Fundamentals of Mental Health Service Evaluation

The Samaritan Institute has partnered with Advantage Consulting, LLC and everythingEHR to provide a series of FREE webinars, The Fundamentals of Mental Health Service Evaluation.

Session One: Treatment Goal Setting

Overview: The interactive webinar will introduce a three prong evaluation model for mental health service organizations. We will discuss the core elements of successful evaluation programs and focus on the development of effective and efficient treatment goal setting as the first prong of the model. The presenter will discuss how to balance client centered goal setting with the need for consistency and rigor in establishing measurable goals.

As part of our commitment to The Samaritan Institute we have asked our colleagues to host a series of webinars designed specifically for behavioral health providers.

 Samaritan Network Webinar Offerings

 The Samaritan Institute has partnered with Advantage Consulting, LLC, everythingEHR, and Roy Huggins of Person-Centered Tech to provide FREE webinars to the Samaritan Network on topics related to HIPAA and Technology, Fundamentals of Mental Health Service Evaluation, as well as Electronic Health Record Systems.

The first offering, “HIPAA and Security” will be held on Monday, December 15; with more to come in early 2015, including a four part series related to “Planning and Implementing Clinical Outcome Measures Activities.” While you are encouraged to attend the live sessions in order to participate in the question and answer dialogue, the webinars will also be recorded for viewing as your schedule allows. Ongoing consultation in these areas continues to be available to Centers as needed.   Kristin Walker of everythingEHR will be moderating all of the sessions below.