Four County Mental Health Center Takes Action
Challenge | Four County Mental Health Center, Inc., a community services provider based in Independence, KS, with locations around the region, was settling into its brand new Credible Behavioral Health EHR implementation when it was awarded a CCBHC expansion grant, with an accelerated GoLive timeline.
“Our previous EHR was being sunset, and we wanted a new partnership, new capabilities, and a new level of self service, independence, with a platform that we could manage and update ourselves. We got to put that into action when the CCBHC approval came through,” said Steve Denny, Deputy Director for Four County.
Solution | Using the self-service capabilities of the Credible EHR, Four County leadership and staff expanded and updated their Credible EHR workflows, forms, reporting and analytics to support their new CCBHC programs, services, and compliance requirements. The configurability and flexibility of the form’s builder allows Four County to modify forms easily to support any modifications in workflows they may need to make to further improve the outcome of the CCBHC measures. The “advanced search” feature of Credible allows the system administrator to build simple queries for “on the fly” reports using real time data about both the clinical and the operational outcomes.
“As of today, we’ve had a CCBHC grant for two years,” said Jodi L. Hayse, Chief Operations Officer and Chief Wellness Officer for Four County. “Moving forward, we will be able to sustain what we have built, and continue to offer our expanded programs and services. To date, we have expanded staff, and enhanced and created an ACT program, patient navigation, care coordination, and data and analytics.”
“Jodi and her team worked through some radical changes to our billing matrix to get us ready for the PPS billing, which will allow us to sustain everything we built under the grant. The Credible EHR gave us the flexibility to start our GoLive before we went through this transformation, and to adapt as needed for where we are now,” Denny said.
“Our teams did a lot of costing work to ensure that what we built, we could continue to sustain. We need the expanded capabilities to continue to deliver the expanded services,” Hayse said.
“Four County has the leadership and the staff support to plan for change, and the Credible EHR platform supported this rapid and extensive updating of their clinical documentation, reporting, analytics, and revenue cycle management as they digitally transformed their organization,” said Mary Givens, CCBHC Program Manager for Qualifacts Systems, Inc.
CCBHC Programs and Services Expansion Success | “The interval between service completion and the approval date has gotten consistently better over the two years since we went live on the Credible EHR. The reporting tools we have available to us give us data and visibility into where resources are going, where they are needed, how outcomes are tracking, and how we can serve people more effectively,” Hayse said. “Our new CCBHC crisis program has been well received and well attended by the community. We have successfully used the Credible Plan for our integrated treatment plan, which supports CCBHC criteria. We have seen success in serving additional members of the veteran community and the active service military community. Above all, we have improved our time from first contact to access to care through our CCBHC services.”
The specific “Intake to Evaluation” measure is a key measure to demonstrate a CCBHC’s success at granting greater access to care. Credible allows for many points of access including routine admission or urgent or emergent admission. Setting up a client in the Credible system is efficient and takes only moments to establish. Once “active” in the system, the user can easily navigate through the intake process using custom forms (built by the CCBHC) and form groups which ensure all the steps of the workflow are completed.
CCBHC Clinical Documentation Success | “Building on our pre-CCBHC implementation, with a consistent focus on workflows and mapping those workflows out and making them available to end users and trainers has been really instrumental in this transformation,” Hayse said.
“We went live with the Credible EHR as we planned, and when the CCBHC approval came, we were able to add all the new elements needed to comply with CCBHC criteria to the Credible Plan,” Denny said. Four County was able to add the elements to the Credible plan to support the criteria for an integrated, interdisciplinary treatment plan.
“The flexibility of the Credible EHR treatment plan gave Four County the freedom to add efficiently add new CCBHC elements themselves, trackable as data and reportable through analytics, while their inhouse commitment to workflow optimization and compliance satisfaction got them to where they needed to be,” Givens said. “Forms can be easily updated, while the use of form groups packages workflows by program or service or persona, with required fields as needed to support consistency in data collection, reporting and analytics.”
CCBHC Remote, Hybrid, and Home and Community Based Services Success | “An enormous benefit of the Credible EHR is the portability of it, that it’s web-based, and offers mobile capabilities, so our people can access it from wherever they are,” Hayse said. Concurrent documentation, connected through the web interface has reduced the documentation completion time from as high as two days or a day and a half to less than a day.”
“During the remote phase of COVID, the accessibility from anywhere was huge for us,” Hayse said. “We sent everybody home with Chromebooks to continue delivering services without disrupting care. We have provided care beyond our four walls for a long time, but never to the extent that Credible enabled us to early in the pandemic, by being browser based with mobile capabilities.”
CCBHC Virtual Care Success | “COVID gave us an opportunity to expand our open access model, and Credible supported our practice of allowing clinicians to support caseloads virtually in rural locations. As we ramped up these capabilities under the pressure of the pandemic, we built new processes in Credible for registration and documentation so that no matter where a person and a provider are, they can be connected, and the services can be provided.”
CCBHC Outcomes, Reporting, and Analytics Success | “Credible has enabled us to gather data that demonstrates very positive outcomes, including number of days from the first point of contact to the comprehensive assessment, which is a critical measure of providing services to people in crisis,” Hayse said. “It’s one of the major benefits and strengths of Credible, over where we were previously.
CCBHC Revenue Cycle Management and Billing Success | “Being able to rebuild our revenue matrix within the Credible EHR ourselves for PPS has made it possible to go forward in a sustainable way,” Hayse said. “Grants have an endpoint, but we are positioned now to keep delivering the programs and services we built, with the staff and capacity we added.”
Ready for Continued CCBHC Success | Four County’s scope has increased to include more than 40 service programs designed to meet the unique needs associated with across age ranges and mental and behavioral health challenges.
“Four County was aware that efficient workflows were necessary to capture the outcomes data that drives organizational success, and satisfies CCBHC compliance requirements,” Givens said. “Hands-on collaboration between leadership and staff supported their CCBHC transformation, from front desk and intake processes and workflows to clinical documentation, crisis workflows and the NOMS workflow. They accomplished all this under the guiding principle of collecting data while reducing time spent on tasks, and increasing visibility of trends.”
“The flexibility of the Credible EHR platform gave Four County the tools they needed to update, change, and adapt workflows and documentation across the organization when their grant approval came through, and when their programs and services grow and change in the future,” Givens said. “Their next innovation cycle is focused on building out dashboards for outcomes using the Credible suite of Business Intelligence tools, leveraging the smart forms they have already created.”
About Four County Mental Health
Our Mission | Four County Mental Health Center is dedicated to providing accessible, innovative services in partnership with individuals, families and our communities.
Our Vision | We envision healthier communities as we help individuals and families improve their lives. Collaborating with community partners, we sustain a robust range of services that are accessible because we help people where they live and work. We continue to be innovative as we identify new and special needs, develop programs, train our staff, and deliver services. We will expand our use of state-of-the-art technology to extend our capacity and enhance the quality of service. We will continue to develop well-trained, dedicated staff within a supportive, challenging, and personally rewarding work environment.
About Qualifacts
Qualifacts is one of the largest behavioral health, human services and rehabilitative services EHR vendors in the country. Its mission is to partner with customers with technology and services that enhance their ability to deliver quality care, exceptional outcomes and improve the lives of the individuals they serve. With more than 20 years of experience, its products and services help customers achieve interoperability goals, optimize efficiency, improve productivity, and maximize reimbursement. The company provides three EHR platforms– CareLogic, Credible and InSync – while collaborating to build an even brighter future for customers and their clients.
Solely focused on Behavioral Health & Human Services for 22+ years, we are the largest behavioral health-only focused vendor of EHRs, with the resources and stability to invest to meet the needs of customers.
¼ of all the CCBHCs in the country use our EHR platforms to drive differentiated results in three critical areas:
- PROVE & IMPROVE QUALITY: Through advanced clinical tools, workflows, real time outcomes measures, and advanced analytics, you will be able to not only prove quality, but also drive quality improvement.
- INCREASE EFFICIENCY & PRODUCTIVITY: Through configurable forms, workflows, intelligent work-listing, alerting, mobile applications and integrations, your team will be able to increase productivity.
- INCREASE REVENUE & REDUCE COST TO COLLECT: An intelligent, rules-based billing system ensures that claims are submitted accurately the first time, that denials can be addressed quickly and efficiently, and payments can be taken in multiple setting and posted accurately.
About the Credible Behavioral Health EHR Platform
Credible EHR software is easy to use and provides easy access to data whether you work in the Clinical, Financial, IT, or Executive department.
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