“Right away, when a patient walks into a large hospital
seeking alcohol or substance abuse treatment, you’ve lost them,” states Mr.
Lebman. “They get the sense that it’s no loner personal, it’s no longer about
them.”
In other words, patients become disengaged.
That’s why Mr. Lebman and several other substance abuse
treatment facility leaders in the Rochester area started RecoveryNet 13 years
ago. RecoveryNet began as a project to save Rochester’s community based
substance abuse treatment centers. Since then, it has evolved into an
innovative collaborative of 10 behavioral health providers, leveraging the
power inherent in numbers to make a difference.
RecoveryNet’s main goal is to advocate for and protect
community based substance abuse treatment as a care option for patients. The
collaborative accomplishes this through several objectives. The first objective
is to ensure uniformity among clinical documentation in use by all
RecoveryNet partners. This allows the collaborative to track and measure
outcomes among each individual partner agency as well as across the
collaborative as a whole.
With the help of a grant from SAMHSA, RecoveryNet was able
to mobilize all partner agencies to decide on and implement a common format for
all clinical documentation. Additionally, the grant provided funds toward the
implementation of an electronic medical record.
Three years after RecoveryNet began, the collaborative
implemented Netsmart’s Tier, an EMR geared toward behavioral health care.
Immediately after the implementation of Tier, one of the first health
information exchange endeavors RecoveryNet embarked upon was an exchange
between the Tier application and Monroe County’s Addiction Recovery Employment
System. The Addiction Recovery Employment System, or ARES, is a web-based
application that links to the County Department of Social Services. The
exchange automated the electronic reporting of RecoveryNet’s ARES client
outcomes directly into ARES.
Soon after, the collaborative was awarded a grant from New
York State’s HEAL 5 initiative. The grant provided the resources to set up and
administer cloud computing capabilities to the smaller RecoveryNet partner
agencies that did not have the infrastructure in place to host the EMR locally.
Additionally, the grant provided funding for the implementation of a
RecoveryNet IT helpdesk.
The collaborative recruited a helpdesk technician, a
database developer / administrator, and a network administrator to provide
daily EMR support to partner agencies. Additionally, the RecoveryNet IT team is
tasked with keeping tabs on any changes required in the EMR due to changes that
occur at the state or federal level.
“This allowed the collaborative to bring EMR expertise in
house, allowing us to improve the quality and timeliness of service to the
partner agencies,” states Mr. Lebman.
Besides the economies of scale leveraged by having all
partner agencies on the same EMR, the collaborative provides cost savings and
efficiencies in other areas. For example, smaller partner agencies that do not
have the resources to manage their revenue cycles can contract their billing
functions to the larger partner agencies. Additionally, all partner agencies
can take advantage of trainings, consultations, and knowledge transfer from
other partners.
“The cost of these types of activities is included in the
monthly fee all partners pay into the collaborative,” states Mr. Lebman.
Currently, RecoveryNet is implementing a primary care clinic
on-site at one of the larger partner agencies. The clinic is slated to open
this fall. The clinic will provide primary and OB/GYN care on site. Other
RecoveryNet partner agencies can refer their clients to the primary care clinic
while still continuing to provide substance abuse treatment services for the
patient.
“We’re essentially building a patient-centered health home
for our patients,” says Mr. Lebman, “That way, there’s no wrong door when
patients come to us seeking treatment.”
This “no wrong door” approach works well for the other
services the partner agencies provide.
“If a woman with children and unstable housing walks into
one of our outpatient substance abuse treatment clinics for treatment, we might
refer her to the residential substance abuse treatment program at another
partner agency instead,” says Mr. Lebman.
Perhaps the most useful thing to come out of RecoveryNet is
the ability to track, measure, and report outcomes because in today’s behavioral
healthcare environment, it’s all about outcomes.
“We know our programs work,” says Mr. Lebman, “But by
working together, we can measure and report on the tremendous impact we have on
the over 7,000 patients we see each year.”
For more information, please visit: http://www.asapnys.org/PDF/HealthcareReform/RECOVERYNETSMART.pdf
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