Leaders of behavioral health organizations need access to key reports with specific data points related to their clinic operations. The reports should allow leaders to track and analyze areas of opportunity as well as help to identify where to focus their efforts for continued growth.
This speaks to the benefits of having access to performance measurement reports — and it’s why ClinicTracker offers these kinds of reports as part of our clinic management system features. Rather than having to hunt down and sort through siloed data tied to clinic performance, ClinicTracker leverages centralized data in our EHR software to automatically create reports based on the performance metrics you want to measure.
The best way to understand the value of clinical performance reports is to understand what all you can measure without any disruptions to your behavioral health workflows.
Active Intakes & Patient Sessions Per Day
Monitoring the number of patient intake and sessions within a specific time frame not only speaks to the demand for your services, it provides insights into your efficiency.
Low patient intake and patient session numbers can be a sign of manual processes slowing down workflows. This data can be the justification for talking with clinical staff about the time they’re spending gathering and tracking patient data like medical history — bottlenecks that can be streamlined with online patient scheduling and online form completion tools.
Kept vs. Missed Appointments
It’s not an uncommon scenario for a patient to miss a healthcare appointment. In fact, the average missed appointment rate in North America clocks in at 27%. While these no-shows directly impact the care of that patient, it also indirectly affects other patients’ access to care as seemingly filled appointment spots go unused. All the while, mental health professionals are left with wasted time and fewer profits.
If you notice a considerably high number of missed appointments, there is value in a conversation around automated appointment reminders, if they’re not already in use. After all, 38.1% of patients said that a text message could have helped prevent them from missing a scheduled appointment.
But there’s also a larger conversation to be had. Missed appointments can be a product of social barriers, and with the right strategies, behavioral health clinics can help patients overcome these hurdles. By offering telehealth services, for instance, clinics can make it easier for patients to get to appointments without having to drive miles from their place of employment.
You can also use this data to identify patterns in patient populations who are “frequent flyers”. Clinics can then make it a priority to check-in with these populations on a more regular basis and provide them with other community resources to offer further support.
Unbilled Appointments
No behavioral health clinic wants to be in the position of leaving money on the table. But naturally, it happens — and timing is critical in making good on those profits for services rendered. Case in point: The likelihood that a clinical practice will collect on delinquent accounts depreciates by half a percent every day past the 90-day mark.
Monitoring the number of unbilled appointments provides a glimpse into the overall health of your revenue cycle management. Paired with customizable reports that break down claims and payments by insurer and patients, clinics can keep a better pulse on revenue in the pipeline and accelerate the accounts receivable process.
Patient Credit Balances
While we’re talking about the finances of a behavioral health clinic, it’s also important to think about patient credit balances. Credit balances may be a typical part of the revenue management lifecycle for healthcare providers, but as balances age, they can not only mislead clinics about their financial status; they can also raise compliance concerns.
Automatically reporting on patient credit balances keeps behavioral health clinics on the right side of the fence. At the same time, clinic management system features like an 835 ERA Module help automate the posting of payments to patient accounts and reduce the chances for manual errors that result in overpayments and credit balances.
Unsigned or Missed Progress Notes
Progress notes are a critical part of every interaction a behavioral health professional has with their patient. But when a progress note is unsigned or missed, it becomes a compliance issue. That’s because regulators can view an unsigned or missed progress note as a session that didn’t really happen because it wasn’t documented. And that can in turn be used as evidence to report on fraudulent billing.
Being able to track these issues with progress notes helps you stay ahead of costly compliance issues. Seeing as how paper progress notes are more prone to missteps, it’s beneficial to be able to digitize and customize progress notes so professionals can capture the patient data they need, in the format that they need, everytime.
One Clinic Management Software for All Your Needs
Performance reports are just one of many valuable clinical management system features you’ll find with ClinicTracker. Where most practice management systems fall short, our user-friendly, customizable clinic management software actually makes everyone's job easier at your behavioral health practice.
You'll have the means to:
- Improve operational efficiency in the management of electronic health records
- Give patients online booking options through a patient portal, and streamline the management of appointment schedules
- Maintain better oversight of your financial records and the billing process with integrated billing software
- Create customized workflows that ensure accurate and legible records for compliance purposes
