Cloud-based EHR helps NorthSight Recovery make big strides on SDOH – TechToday

NorthSight Recovery is an evidence-based behavioral health agency in Arizona specializing in complex mental health diagnoses, problematic substance abuse, and social determinants of health. It approaches treatment using data-driven modeling driven by analytics.

THE PROBLEM

“NorthSight Recovery was founded with the intention of prioritizing technology and tools equally,” said Jeremy Bloom, CEO of NorthSight Recovery. “Healthcare is years behind other industries in leveraging technology and data to advance innovation and efficiency.

“This is exacerbated in terms of behavioral health, now more than ever, with the challenges of addressing America’s mental health crisis exacerbated by record opioid addictions in Arizona and America at large.” it continued.

“There are many reasons for this disparity, but the absence of behavioral health incentives provided by the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act of 2009 undoubtedly left many facilities behind the technology and funding line.”

NorthSight facilities initially tracked results manually and did not have an integrated data platform. This reality created analytical obstacles to answering basic operational and clinical questions. For example, the social determinants of health up to 50% of county-level variation in health outcomes.

“And factors like housing and transportation are important in substance use disorder treatment,” Bloom explained. “Studies indicate that housing and case management reduce the overall length of SUD treatment by 7.5 days, representing significant cost savings and an improvement in the care experience.

“The problem: We needed to track these critical SDOH factors and link them to outcomes,” he continued. “Paper records are inefficient and we wouldn’t be able to quantify or objectively examine the data. And as a facility that prides itself on helping clients build strong foundations for long-term recovery, it hindered our ability to to scale evidence-based treatment approaches and identify those most in need of our supportive housing options.”

PROPOSAL

Vendor Sunwave Health pitched its cloud-based EHR technology for substance use. It included an advanced data approach that ingests, connects and cleans data from multiple sources, Bloom said.

“When data is missing or of lower quality, the solution can leverage advanced data science algorithms to account for the missing pieces and help identify anomalies,” he explained. “Simply put, the platform manages the entire process, from lead capture to admissions to ongoing patient engagement.

“Implementing cloud-based EHR technology allows us to successfully work toward whole-person health and increasingly accountable models of care as behavioral health faces increasing scrutiny and potential financial penalties for underperformance and underreporting.”

Jeremy Bloom, NorthSight Recovery

“With multiple modules that can work together, all of our data is in one place with the same data source and ease of use,” he continued. “This single-source implementation has helped us achieve dynamic reporting and insights throughout the treatment journey.”

SUM UP THE CHALLENGE

NorthSight Recovery uses technology and data in every facet of the organization.

“We asked what our most significant pain points were: were they related to care, reimbursement, compliance or finance,” Bloom said. “And how can we work hard with the backend solution to help our staff spend less time managing these tasks?

“We implemented the EHR so that people could apply the information in the data and illustrate the value of it,” he continued. “We built our own data warehouse, leveraging data from the solution so that each of our departments has its own dashboard with thresholds for data points and KPIs.”

For example, if a patient is a primary care referral, NorthSight must ensure that it has the referral and payer information captured and complete in the patient’s record. And it must confirm that the patient’s reference, financial information and background are correct, which the system fully enables, giving staff a complete view of the patient’s history.

“In addition, we establish quality thresholds for patient data and records; Everything between 95% and 100% is green, anything between 90% and 95% is yellow, and anything below 90% is red,” Bloom noted. “So what this does for our leaders is that anything yellow draws attention as it has become problematic. There is a training problem.

“There’s a problem somewhere, so let’s start looking at it,” he added. “And if it’s red, from a compliance standpoint, we do a root cause analysis and a corrective action plan internally to fix it internally, and there are no surprises if we get audited externally,” he continued.

From a care point of view, behavioral health is very subjective. There is no blood test to tell if a patient is bipolar. Especially with underserved populations with complex trauma, co-occurring mental health issues and substance use issues, diagnosing someone in 20 minutes and formulating a plan of care is impossible, Bloom said.

“So what we’re trying to do with the data is look at as much data as possible to assimilate some consistency in understanding who’s in front of us, that allows us to understand individualized needs and really address them,” he added .

RESULTS

Recovery from NorthSight has seen tremendous time and cost savings from a financial and operational perspective, Bloom reported.

“Most importantly, however, as a facility with evidence-based treatment models, we have been empowered with the data and technology to track outcomes more effectively, ensuring that our services and clinical interventions have more impact and long-term success,” he explained. .

“By leveraging the EHR, we were able to dig deeper into these crucial SDOH drivers and outcome measures,” he continued. “For example, in 2022, 92% of our clients had challenges related to SDOH. And 94% of clients reported being satisfied or very satisfied with their services, 68% were unemployed at intake and got a job in 90 days, and 60% with no education got a GED.”

From a chronological perspective, NorthSight Recovery also improved its referral-to-intake time to less than two days, averaging 1.47, and saw 90% of client referrals within a week.

“In the past, with manual tracking, we simply would not have been able to measure these crucial time-to-cure and recovery capital factors, and these results will inform our efforts this year,” Bloom said.

“The best part: We connect all this data seamlessly with our health information exchange, which helps drive coordination and transparency of care between health care providers to better treat SUD and know where patients are in his treatment journey,” he added.

Results and accountability are more critical than ever. Current regulatory changes incentivize practices to expand access and enable a “data-driven approach” to program management and evaluation. And last year saw an expansion of the Certified Community Behavioral Health Clinic (CCBHC) program, the extension of innovation models, and continuous improvements in data collection and reporting.

“Therefore, implementing cloud-based EHR technology allows us to successfully work toward whole-person health and increasingly accountable models of care as behavioral health faces increasing scrutiny and potential financial penalties for underperformance and underreporting,” Bloom said.

“But even beyond these regulatory changes, we are better prepared and empowered to effectively access patient outcomes data,” he continued. “And I attribute a lot of our success and where we are today to cloud-based EHR.”

ADVICE FOR OTHERS

“We’re all doing the best we can and we’re all going through a very difficult time,” Bloom noted. “Still, we’re all trying to make an impact. So we have to do the best we can with the data we have about the current evolution of behavioral health.

“Using data and technology like a cloud-based EHR can help minimize waste and maximize capacity when resources are scarce,” he advised. “By harnessing the power of data through a solution designed to address the complex challenges inherent in addiction treatment and behavioral health, you can cultivate a data-driven and informed culture that improves all measurable metrics and impacts” .

The way forward will require many providers to rethink current practices, find efficiencies and digitally transform to do more with less, he added.

“This means implementing innovative technologies, such as cloud-based EHRs, that can effectively and quickly identify areas of loss and opportunity in your ecosystem,” he concluded.

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