Blog in Healthcare & Interoperability

The Time to Bridge Tech Inequities in Mental Health Care is Now

Digital disparities can impede communication and care across the healthcare system, and this divide is perhaps most obvious in behavioral and mental health settings. Strengthening clinical data exchange across this divide is a driving focus at Consensus Cloud Solutions, as we recognize the role of tech equity in reaching healthcare’s most vulnerable populations.  Recently, I...
Blog in Healthcare & Interoperability

Making Referrals Work in Small Practices

A client comes into your behavioral health practice complaining of constant fatigue and brain fog. You hear them out, ask a few questions, and decide it’s time to loop in their primary care provider (PCP). After the session, you fax over a referral. From there, you’re left in the dark. Did the other office get...
Blog in Healthcare & Interoperability

The Behavioral Health Workflow Fix an EHR Can’t Give

Behavioral health providers want the same thing every care team wants: more time with clients, less buried in paperwork. Yet the general-purpose electronic health records (EHRs) that many small practices adopt weren’t created with therapy-first workflows in mind. Instead, they were designed for structured data like billing codes and compliance checkboxes, not the long-form narrative...
Blog in Healthcare & Interoperability

Striking Alignment Around Health Tech Investments

Healthcare leaders have a plethora of priorities to balance. Between patient care, outcomes, access and equity; labor shortages and staff burnout; care coordination across specialties and settings; the impact of inflation on the bottom line; and the rapidly advancing array of tools used to address all these needs — the modern healthcare juggling act is...
Blog in Healthcare & Interoperability

Nursing Home Software: Shifting from Clinical Documentation to Care Coordination

What do you think is the biggest impediment to successful transitions of care from hospitals to a skilled nursing facility (SNF)? If you said, “incomplete patient information,” you’re not alone. While about 80% of SNFs have adopted electronic health records (EHR), true interoperability remains elusive, creating dangerous gaps in data sharing. A recent survey of...
Blog in Healthcare & Interoperability

The Cost of Doing Nothing: What Manual Workflows Really Cost Skilled Nursing

Many skilled nursing facilities (SNFs) still rely on manual workflows, and they cost more than you think. The reason for using these processes isn’t resistance to change. Instead, it’s a lack of interoperability. Even though 8 in 10 post-acute facilities use electronic health records (EHRs) regularly, data sharing remains a challenge. When EHRs don’t connect...
Blog in Healthcare & Interoperability

SNFs Are the Blind Spot in Healthcare Interoperability

A 78-year-old Medicare patient is discharged from the hospital to a skilled nursing facility (SNF) after hip surgery. The hospital’s electronic health record (EHR) system contains detailed notes about her new medication regimen, her mobility restrictions, and a pending cardiac consultation.  But when she arrives at the SNF two hours later, her care team receives...