3 Steps to Achieving Next-Generation Technology That Delivers Total Service Delivery Cost Clarity

The push toward value-based care has created a greater need than ever before for behavioral healthcare executives to be able to accurately measure how their organizations are performing. Beyond the direct costs, new, mandated alternative revenue models demand an understanding of the total costs of delivering services, which may include healthcare, housing, job development for people in recovery and other programs, as well as overhead costs.

Like many healthcare providers, behavioral health leaders used American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 stimulus funds to modernize their technology systems. Often, however, only electronic medical records (EMR) systems were updated. Financial and other information across diverse services typically remains segregated in program-specific systems. Use of outdated, manual data integration methods further shrouds performance clarity, making total service delivery costs difficult, if not impossible, to attain.

Behavioral health leaders will only be able to achieve real-time performance reporting, actionable data analysis and higher-quality, more personalized patient care by adopting next-generation technology that enables automation, integrated connectivity, and comprehensive data visibility. This reality, propelled by the pressure to deliver value-based care, has added new urgency to the modernization of behavioral health providers’ technology functions.

The most powerful results will arise through a digital operations platform (DOP) approach. DOP, a term coined by Forrester Research, provides data visibility across a behavioral healthcare organization through best-of-breed, next-generation systems integration. A DOP is characterized by its adaptiveness for fast-changing organizational needs; built-in artificial intelligence (AI); and accessibility for interactions beyond the browser, Forrester says.

A DOP can illuminate the total cost of care, allowing behavioral healthcare executives to easily track, for example:

• Cost per treatment
• Revenue per patient
• Revenue per physician
• Profit and loss per location
• Profit and loss per alternative payment model contract

3 Steps to Adopt Next-Generation Technology

While behavioral healthcare leaders may well understand the need for and general benefits of next-generation technology implementation, they also may resist the process as they bump up against limited budgets and training resources and perceived steep learning curves for professionals whose plates are already full. These constraints are manageable and the results fulfilling, however, when decision makers take 3 measured steps to address the challenge.

Clarify the organization’s greatest needs. In the move toward next-generation technology implementation, behavioral health organizations may benefit most from enterprise resource planning (ERP), customer relationship and human capital management, patient scheduling and revenue cycle management systems. However, no individual technology selection is valuable unless it helps to achieve organizational goals. Before making specific product choices, leaders should develop a strategic plan that identifies the most pressing problems technology could solve.

Greater access to real-time regulatory reporting and organizational performance data are commonly at or near the top of the list. Organizations with multiple locations will need to understand site-specific performance and profitability for both health and non-health-related services. Other goals could include:

• Confirming the organization’s desired patient and employee experiences;
• Incorporating non-financial operational data into the reporting model;
• The ability to merge data available in EMRs with indirect cost information accumulated outside of EMRs; and
• Clarity on how to accurately allocate those combined costs.

The strategic plan, which illuminates the crucial needs technology can address, allows desired outcomes to be identified upfront and establishes those goals as a basis for technology decision making. This initial, disciplined step substantially reduces the risk that behavioral healthcare organizations will invest in inadequate solutions—and leads to a result that enables data to be connected in usable ways.

Seek a partnership with a technology advisor. Technology obstacles are generally what prevent behavioral healthcare practitioners from truly understanding their cost of delivering services. These leaders may reasonably feel apprehensive about researching and analyzing the variations between available technology options.

A platform-neutral technology advisor—differentiated from a software publisher, accounting firm or any other vendor that has only a single solution to sell—eases the process, first by thoroughly reviewing and understanding the behavioral care organization’s desired outcomes and, second, by solving the technology and data flow issues.

As a partner dedicated to achieving the behavioral healthcare entity’s goals, the advisor can source appropriate technologies on the organization’s behalf and develop a short list of ideally matched alternatives. The advisor should also vet recommended solutions to ensure both their suitability to the need and their publishers’ long-term commitment to the products.

Throughout the evaluation process, the advisor should provide insights and help the organization consider compliance, audit, annual reporting, and other requirements as decision making progresses.

Establish a technology roadmap. Behavioral healthcare organizations, often nonprofits, rarely have enough budgetary and staff resources at their fingertips to purchase and install all their desired technology at once. A technology roadmap:

• Summarizes the long-term business strategy and vision,
• Identifies the products that will be adopted over time to support the strategy; and
• Establishes an incremental timeline and budget for full implementation.

The roadmap, which the advisor partner can assist in developing, allows behavioral healthcare executives to prioritize their technology investments within available budgets. They thus can address the biggest business challenges—as identified in the strategic plan—first, while ensuring the complete, planned technology implementation both stays on track and is fully accomplished over time.

The roadmap can evolve, giving the organization an opportunity as each phase is completed to:

• Ensure planned next steps remain appropriate and will maintain advancement toward the project goals,
• Review learnings that may suggest needed changes to the plan; and
• Determine whether any priorities or timing should be adjusted.

Alternative funding models are placing increasing pressure on behavioral healthcare organizations. Putting next-generation technology infrastructure in place—as part of a DOP—will allow leaders to understand how their organizations are performing, streamline their operations and achieve better financial outcomes. An objective advisor can help navigate the technology landscape with the organization’s best interests at the forefront, ensuring the final results achieve the goals.

Tom Thornton is healthcare practice director at Net at Work.

The views expressed in Perspectives are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Behavioral Healthcare Executive, the Psychiatry & Behavioral Health Learning Network, or other Network authors. Perspectives entries are not medical advice.