Finding the right EHR means asking the right questions. When searching for an EHR, you likely have a list of criteria that is important for your practice. Perhaps you want to ensure the platform utilizes current technology, is intuitive, or enables efficient reporting and payments.
On the surface, it can be hard to distinguish the differences between the platforms you’re evaluating. You need to know what questions to ask that break through the hype and get to the crux of the product.
EHR Technology Checklist
We’ve compiled a list of questions to ask when evaluating EHR and Practice Management software vendors.
- Are they architected for a public cloud (e.g. Amazon Web Services) environment or a hosted in a private cloud (e.g vendor managed servers)?
- How quickly are they producing new, high-quality features that are going to be relevant for your specialty? For many EHR platforms that serve multiple specialties, new features tend to be geared towards the most profitable specialties, offering nothing new for those using their platform for behavioral health.
- When was their foundational technology infrastructure built? Was it within the last 10 years? When was the last time their EHR software was re-written, rather than just versioned?
- How is their EHR deployed? By client-server, web-hosting, or cloud-native?
- As you grow (more clients, providers, etc.), how does their EHR scale and how does that impact you?
- Does their EHR offer group therapy functionality designed for behavioral health?
- How is the patient experience? Does their EHR provide an intuitive patient portal for all interactions with your practice?
- What kind of telehealth technology does their EHR use? Is it natively integrated, secure, HIPAA-compliant, and easy-to-use? Does it support individual and group therapy?
- Does the EHR offer support for efficient treatment planning?
- How long is their training program? How much product documentation do they provide? How much of it is dedicated to navigating their user interface (UI)?
- What is their process to create or change forms, workflows, logic and/or data captured? What are the related costs and typical turnaround times?
- Does their EHR allow you to manage prospective patients? Can you match patients and providers without lots of manual work?
- How predictable are your costs? What is included and what costs extra in their pricing model?
- What is the composition of their company? How many employees are engineers, support staff, sales, etc.? Which is the largest team? How does this affect their technology and/or the support you would receive?
Searching for the right EHR can be time-consuming, but finding the right fit for your behavioral health practice is critical and can save your practice countless hours of efficiency in the long run. This EHR technology checklist is a good place to start. Then, make sure you and other stakeholders within your practice take the opportunity to see a live demonstration of how the software will operate for a practice like yours.
If you would like to evaluate Valant’s Behavioral Health EHR Software, we would be happy to show you a demo and answer any these questions – as well as any other questions you may have.
