Top 6 Ways to Optimize Your New Behavioral Health Practice with DMS

Written by Kimberly Crespo | Apr 12, 2024 3:18:00 PM

Congratulations on your new practice! While there are so many points on which to focus your attention, from marketing to setting up the space, to becoming familiar with new clients, one thing is certain—you need a system to organize health records and forms.

Start Right with DMS

Document management software is set up to deliver exactly that. You can use it to optimize your new behavioral health practice in ways that go beyond simple organization. Here are the top six:

1. Streamline Administration Duties: Document management software is built for document automation and streamlining administrative tasks, removing time-consuming work from the plates of behavioral health clinicians and freeing them to focus more on patient care. If you’re wondering how to search for a document most efficiently, this technology can help. It will digitize and standardize patient records, make forms searchable and legible, create barcodes with accurate patient health information (PHI), simplify sharing among users, and automate workflows. By reducing the time and money associated with manual paperwork and other administrative burdens, document management software enables higher levels of care with document workflow automation.

2. Boost Data Accessibility and Security: With a new behavioral health practice, patient data must be easily accessed by authorized healthcare professionals, whether in your office or through external parties. With document management software, this information can be accessed 24/7 from any device. A good DMS will also include protective layers that ensure absolute security, like access control, two-factor authentication, end-to-end encryption, and other important security features. Not only is this important for your practice’s adherence to HIPAA regulations, but it also engenders trust from your patients, which is an invaluable asset.

3. Enhance Care Coordination and Collaboration: One of the DMS’ superpowers is its ability to seamlessly connect healthcare professionals within and outside of an organization. It is designed to facilitate communication and collaboration among healthcare teams, including physicians, nurses, therapists, and social workers. The best document management software can be configured to enable secure messaging, real-time patient information sharing, and care coordination workflows. It features document version control so the latest documents are always being used. Not only does this encourage more cross-departmental collaboration, but it also closes any communication gaps and ensures alignment among those responsible for providing holistic care to patients with behavioral health needs.

4. Ensure Compliance: Good document management software also helps your new practice adhere to all HIPAA regulations. The previously mentioned document version control ensures users are accessing the correct document so that your office stays compliant. Additionally, it can generate audit trails to see who accessed what information and when—in the event that there is an issue.

5. Deploy Analytics: Advanced analytics and decision support tools integrated into the DMS empower HIMs and healthcare providers to make data-driven decisions. These tools can analyze patient data, identify trends, and provide actionable insights that enhance clinical decision-making. For example, predictive analytics can help identify patients at risk of relapse or adverse outcomes, enabling early intervention and personalized treatment plans.

6. Facilitate Telehealth and Remote Monitoring: As telehealth becomes more popular and the Internet of Things (IoT) more pervasive, DMS also helps enable strong virtual care and remote monitoring that can be critical for good behavioral health outcomes. The best document management software can facilitate telepsychiatry visits, virtual therapy sessions, and remote patient monitoring by providing access to important documents across devices and outside of the office. This expands access to care, particularly for patients in rural or underserved areas, and improves patient engagement and satisfaction.

Use DigiDoc to Get Your Practice off the Ground

It’s true you have a lot on your plate right now. With the proper implementation of a tool like DMS, much of that work can be managed by the technology, which can streamline administration duties, boost accessibility and security, enhance care coordination and collaboration, ensure compliance, deploy analytics and facilitate telehealth and remote monitoring. The potential for increased productivity is huge. With these six strategies, DMS can make both the opening and the continued growth of your new behavioral health practice a success. Talk with us today about how DMS can help your business now.

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