NorthSight Recovery is an evidence-based behavioral health agency in Arizona that specializes in diagnosing complex mental health, co-occurring problematic substance abuse, and social determinants of health. It approaches treatment through data-driven modeling supported by analytics.
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 drive innovation and efficiency.
He continued: “This is exacerbated when it comes to behavioral health, more than ever, given the challenges of addressing the US mental health crisis plus substance abuse. record form of opium throughout Arizona and the United States as a whole.
“There are many reasons for this disparity, but behavioral health’s lack of incentives provided by the Health Information Technology for Clinical and Economic Health Act of 2009 certainly caused many facilities lag behind in terms of technology and funding.”
NorthSight facilities initially tracked results manually and lacked an integrated data platform. This fact creates analytical obstacles to answering basic clinical and operational questions. For example, the social determinants of health up to 50% of county-level variation in health outcomes.
“And factors such as housing and transportation are important in the treatment of substance use disorders,” explains Bloom. “Studies show that housing and case management reduces overall SUD treatment time by 7.5 days, resulting in significant cost savings and improved care experience.
“The problem: We need to track these important SDOH factors and link them to the results,” he continued. “The paperwork doesn’t work and we can’t objectively quantify or examine the data. And as an institution prides itself on helping customers build a strong foundation for long-term recovery. For a long time, we’ve had trouble scaling our evidence-based treatments and identifying those who need our supportive housing options most.”
PROPOSE
The provider Sunwave Health proposed a cloud-based, substance use disorder EHR technology. It includes an advanced data approach that absorbs, 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 interpret missing pieces and help identify anomalies,” he explains. “Simply put, the platform manages the entire process, from lead acquisition to ongoing patient acquisition and engagement.
“Implementing cloud-based EHR technology enables us to successfully work towards holistic human health and increasingly responsible care models as behavioral health faces scrutiny. and potential financial penalties for underperformance and underreporting.”
Jeremy Bloom, NorthSight Restoration
He continued: “With multiple modules that can work together, all of our data is in one place with the same data source and ease of use. “This single-source implementation has helped us achieve dynamic reporting and insights across the entire treatment journey.”
MEET CHALLENGES ONLY
NorthSight Recovery uses technology and data in every aspect of an organization.
“We asked what our most significant constraints were – whether they were related to care, reimbursement, compliance or finance,” Bloom said. “And how can we do more with the solution on the backend to help our employees spend less time managing these tasks?
He continued: “We implemented EHR so that people could apply insights into the data and illustrate its value. “We built our own data warehouse, mining 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 referred from primary care, NorthSight needs to ensure that they have the referrer and payer information recorded and completed in the patient record. And it needs to confirm the patient’s referral, financial and background information is correct, the system will fully activate, providing staff with a complete view of the patient’s history.
“Furthermore, we set thresholds for data quality and patient records; anything between 95% and 100% is green, anything between 90% and 95% is yellow and anything below 90% is red,” noted Bloom. “So it’s helpful for our leaders that anything yellow attracts attention because it becomes problematic. There’s a training problem.
“There’s a problem somewhere, so let’s start looking at that,” he added. “And if it’s red, from a compliance standpoint, we’ll do a root cause analysis and internally plan corrective action to fix that internally and no surprises. if we are externally audited,” he continued.
From a care point of view, behavioral health is very subjective. There is no blood test to say that a patient is bipolar. Especially with underserved populations with complex trauma, mental health problems and substance use co-occurring, diagnose someone within 20 minutes, says Bloom. Care planning is not possible.
“So what we’re trying to do with the data is look at as many data points as we can to unify some understanding of who’s in front of us – allowing us to understand individual needs and really solve them,” he added.
RESULT
NorthSight Restoration Bloom says it has saved a lot of money and time from a financial and operational perspective.
“More importantly, however, as an institution with evidence-based treatment models, we have been empowered with data and technology to more effectively track outcomes, ensure Our clinical interventions and services are more impactful and successful in the long run,” he explains.
“By leveraging the EHR, we can hone in on those key SDOH factors and measure the results,” he continued. “For example, by 2022, 92% of our customers experience SDOH-related challenges. And 94% of customers said satisfied or very satisfied with their services, 68% were unemployed at entry. hospital and got a job within 90 days and 60 percent of the employed with no education earned a GED.”
From a timeline perspective, NorthSight Recovery also improved referral-to-acquisition time to less than two days, with an average of 1.47, and received 90% of customer referrals within a week.
“Previously, with manual tracking, we simply could not measure these factors that are important in terms of time of care and recovery, and these results should reveal implications,” Bloom said. our efforts this year.”
“Best part: We seamlessly connect all this data to our health communications, helping to foster care coordination and transparency among healthcare stakeholders to manage treat SUD better and meet patients right where they are on their treatment journey,” he added.
Results and accountability are more important than ever. Current regulatory changes encourage activities that expand access and allow “data-driven approach” to program management and evaluation. And last year saw the expansion of the Certified Community Behavioral Health Clinic (CCBHC) program, expanding innovation models, while continuing to improve data collection and reporting. Whether.
“So deploying cloud-based EHR technology allows us to successfully work towards holistic and increasingly accountable healthcare models as behavioral health has to be,” Bloom said. faces increasing scrutiny and potential financial penalties for underperformance and inadequate reporting”.
“But even beyond these regulatory changes, we are more prepared and empowered to efficiently access patient outcome data,” he continued. “And I attribute much of our success and where we are today to cloud-based EHR.”
TIPS FOR OTHER PEOPLE
“We’re all doing the best we can and we’re all going through a very difficult time,” Bloom notes. “Despite it all, we’re all trying to make an impact. So we need to do the best we can with the data we have on current developments in behavioral health.
“Using data and technology like cloud-based EHR can help reduce waste and maximize capacity when resources are tight,” he advises. “By harnessing the power of data through a solution designed to address the complex challenges inherent to addiction treatment and behavioral health, you can build a culture based on on data and data intelligence to improve all metrics and measurable impact.”
The way forward, he added, will require many vendors to rethink current methods, find efficiencies and digitally transform to do more with less.
“That means deploying innovative technologies, such as cloud-based EHR, that can quickly and efficiently identify areas of loss and opportunity in your ecosystem,” he concludes. “.
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