Best mental health EHR

The best mental health EHRs offer features and workflows specific to the needs of behavioral health specialists. While many EHRs claim to be built with mental health practitioners in mind, most practice EHRs are software tools created for primary care practitioners or other medical professionals and there will likely be a difference in codes, reporting requirements, regulations and how data is classified.

Ultimately, that could mean that feature sets for psychiatrists, counselors and other professionals are limited and could result in behavioral health providers spending time shoehorning an EHR to fit their needs. Not ideal.

If you’re a behavioral health professional managing your own practice or an administrator for a large group practice looking for the best mental health EHR for your business, understanding the unique needs of mental health professionals as well as how different users interact with a mental health EHR is critical.

• Clinicians use mental health EMRs to schedule, document, bill, provide services, communicate with clients and manage their practices.

• Administrators for larger group practices use mental health EMRs to manage business tasks such as reporting and admin around insurance claims.

• Clients use mental health EMRs to complete onboarding forms, to read policies, schedule appointments, access telehealth or finish homework assignments as part of their therapy.

In addition to identifying and maximizing features, you’ll also want to get a full vision of the costs associated with the best mental health EMRs. For example, be aware of any extra fees for additional users and whether add-on features that come with a cost are beneficial to you and your practice outside of monthly subscription costs.

Ideally, you want to find that balance between optimally using features that matter most to your practice without paying for features that you don’t need. It’s A LOT to take in!

To make your search and decision less challenging, we look at some of the best mental health EHRs and examine what they have in common as well as their stand-out features. We’ll also look at various price points and whether these software companies offer a free trial of their mental health EMR, a critical component in determining whether a software solution is best for you and your business.

Common features for the best mental health EMRs

Many of the best mental health EMRs come with a list of ‘standard’ features that typically include:

• HIPAA compliance
• Scheduling
• Notes and documentation
• Billing and invoicing
• Insurance management
• Practice management
• Cloud-based

Best best mental health EMRs

We’ll be looking at four of the best mental health EHRs including TheraPlatform, Consol, Valant and ICANotes.

TheraPlatform

What is it? TheraPlatform is an all-in-one EHR, practice management and teletherapy solution built specifically for private practice therapists. TheraPlatform, a Los-Angeles-based software company was founded in 2017 by a therapist and product features are informed by emerging technology (AI) as well as customer feedback.

Who’s it for? TheraPlatform offers functionality for behavioral health specialists who are solopreneurs as well as for large group practices that require powerful advanced features such as reporting and multi-location scheduling and filtering.

Highlights

• Wiley Treatment Planner: Save time writing notes by quickly creating evidence-based treatment plans by choosing from over 1,000 prewritten treatment goals, objectives and interventions. What took hours will now take minutes.
• Speech-to-text technology: Upload audio or video or record telehealth sessions and transcribe them with a few clicks of a button.
• AI empowered onboarding process: With innovative optical character recognition (OCR) and Natural Language Processing (NLP), mental health therapists can extract information from client documents like driver's licenses and insurance cards automatically. Clients just upload a picture of their document and data is automatically extracted from the cards and securely saved in the client’s chart.

• Efax options: HIPAA-compliant efax is a convenient, secure, low-cost alternative to traditional faxing. Incoming and outgoing documentation is sent via efax and securely stored for future access.

• Automated billing and claim validation: Save time and speed up payments with automated billing. Create and submit claims in batches using real-time validation and minimize denied claims or automate to avoid manual work.

• Client portal. Empower clients to schedule, complete and sign forms, and view invoices all on the secure client portal. Educational resources are also available for clients.

• Customer feedback response: Excellent customer service and the ability to request features are just a few of the ways we interact and respond to our customers.

• Teaching tools: A TheraPlatform exclusive, mental health therapists can use features such as a built-in whiteboard, interactive screen sharing with live annotations and document upload and storage (including audio and video files such as YouTube videos) that can be shared and used during live sessions (Advanced plans.)

Counsol

What is it? Short for Counseling Solutions, Counsol is based in Orlando, Fla., and was founded in 2011. Its solutions are specific to therapists working in the mental health industry.

Who it’s for: Counsol is built for solo practitioners as well as small group practices focused on providing mental health services in the United States.

Highlights:

• Electronic prescriptions: Prescriptions can be easily sent to a client’s pharmacy with medications checked against their current medication and allergy list. Potential interactions are identified by pop-up alerts. Additional information is available to providers through clickable alerts and additional information.

• Client journal: Available to clients to write in their personal journal anytime through their secure account with the ability to share with therapists or save as private.

• Counselor directory listing: Ability to list your practice in a searchable directory for additional exposure.

Valant

What is it? Valant was co-founded in 2005 in Seattle by a psychiatrist

Who it’s for: Valant was built for modern solo psychiatric and therapy practices, small group, large group and multi practices as well as billing agencies.

Highlights:

• Measurement-based dashboards: Provides a built-in library of rating scales and measures integrated with smart automation to distribute data across workflows to help mental health professionals provide more data-based care.

• E-labs: Through Labcorp and Quest Diagnostics, mental health providers can run lab orders directly from documentation to the lab of your choice. Once results are available, you’ll have the ability to easily add them to a client chart.

• White-glove customer service: New customers are assigned a support representative for onboarding.

ICANotes

What is it? Founded in 1998 in Annapolis, MD., by a psychiatrist, ICANotes is fully configured for mental health and addiction treatment.

Who is it for: Mental health providers such as psychiatrists, psychiatric nurses, psychologists, clinical social workers, counselors, LMFTs, group therapists and psychotherapists. Inpatient and outpatient.

Highlights:

• Assessment library and ability to build screeners: More than 75 electronic rating scales for children and adults and resources for behavioral health assessment guides. Ability to create health screening questionnaires.

• Accessible customer service: Customers receive unlimited 1:1 web-based training sessions plus free 24/7 access to experts through chat, phone and email, plus multiple scheduled training events for instruction on various features without charge.

• Multiple compliance designations: HIPAA, HITECH Act, Joint Commission, Meaningful Use, Medicare, Medicaid, MIPS, CARF.

Choosing the best Mental health EHR for your practice

There’s no shortage of mental health EHRs for your practice, so, how do you decide which Mental health EHr best fits your practice?

To recap:

• Understand pricing. Examining pricing beyond the monthly subscription rate will minimize surprises and help you better manage revenue and expenditures. A high monthly subscription price doesn’t mean that you are getting all of the features you need. Think about what add-ons are worth paying for? If a feature can save you time, it may be worth the additional fees. Will you need to add users in the future and are there fees associated with scaling? Are there fees for canceling your subscription?

• Features: Most mental health therapists are looking to save time on admin tasks like scheduling and billing. Also consider other administrative tasks specific to you. For example, do you spend a lot of time on documentation? If so, would Wiley Treatment Planner be worth it to you to save time? Do you want to expand into telehealth? If so, how interactive would you like that experience to be?

• Free trials: One clear way to understand whether a mental health EHR is right for you is through a free trial. Many, but not all EHRs, offer clinicians a free trial to test their features and determine which features are most important to you. Typical trial periods last 14 to 30 days. Trying out a product before committing will help you save time and money in the long run.

Mental health EHRs can help you manage operational tasks from documentation to billing and scheduling. If you’re just starting a mental health practice, the best mental health EHR can help you evolve your business by providing the tools you need to do more in less time.