In the post reform era, the amount of change facing behavioral health organizations is unprecedented. From service delivery to reimbursements and outcomes reporting, behavioral health organizations need to re-visit their operational strategies in order to stay competitive in the new value-based health care environment which combines physical and behavioral health.

At the intersection of all these changes lies the behavioral health organization’s electronic health record (EHR) which serves as the information backbone to the continuum of care for the client. Due to the critical role of the EHR, many behavioral health organizations have already begun to assess their 1st generation EHRs and are now undertaking the effort to implement 2nd generation EHR platforms. These organizations understand that a change in their EHR is necessary due to the aging technology architectures associated with these older EHRs. While enhancements to these older EHRs can be made, it is in an effort to keep them current — not to modernize the overall technology in order to better serve the evolving needs of the behavioral health organization.