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Behavioral Healthcare Leaders at National
Summit
Formulate Nationwide Information Management Strategy
Washington, D.C., October 7, 2005 -- More than 140
behavioral healthcare leaders met in Washington, D.C. on
September 29-30 to begin laying the foundation for a nationwide
information infrastructure for behavioral healthcare services.
Participants included representatives from the major behavioral
health professional and trade associations, government, provider
organizations, consumers, standard-setting organizations, and
business groups.
The
“National Summit on Defining a Strategy for Behavioral Health
Information Management and Its Role Within the Nationwide Health
Information Infrastructure” was co-hosted by the Software and
Technology Vendors’ Association (SATVA) and the Substance Abuse
and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA). SATVA is a
national trade organization whose member companies provide most
of the software that helps run management and clinical
operations for mental health and substance abuse agencies.
SAMHSA is an agency of the U.S. Department of Health and Human
Services (HHS).
Tom
Trabin, Ph.D., executive director of SATVA, said, “SATVA is
proud to partner with SAMHSA in sponsoring and organizing this
historic event; for the first time ever a comprehensive group of
the nation’s behavioral health care leaders met to plan a
nationwide strategy for behavioral health information
management.”
Presenters included informatics experts from both general and
behavioral healthcare: David Brailer, M.D., HHS National
Coordinator of Health Information Technology; Mark Rothstein,
M.D., Privacy Subcommittee Chair, National Committee for Vital
and Health Statistics; several senior officials from SAMHSA and
SATVA; data and informatics experts from the National
Association of State Mental Health Program Directors, the
National Association of State Alcoholism and Drug Abuse
Directors, and the Veterans Administration Healthcare System;
and other national informatics experts.
Six
areas were identified prior to the Summit as essential for
advancing a nationwide information management strategy for
behavioral health. The Summit program was organized into
intensive workgroup discussions that focused upon these six
strategic areas:
-
Developing and
maintaining nationwide behavioral health informatics
standards;
-
Developing and
maintaining nationwide initiatives to facilitate increased
adoption of electronic health record systems (EHRs) by
behavioral health services and their participation in health
information networks;
-
Addressing issues within
behavioral health organizations to improve their
implementation and effective use of information management and
electronic health record systems;
-
Addressing the
complexities of reimbursement, regulatory and reporting
requirements;
-
Addressing issues for
consumers and their family members and for clinicians and
other service providers related to adoption of electronic
health record systems;
-
Facilitating
interconnectivity and information exchange between mental
health and substance abuse treatment and prevention, and other
service systems
The
workgroups generated more than 60 recommendations for
consideration, many of which will eventually form the basis for
a nationwide information management strategy for behavioral
healthcare. While it is not possible to predict which
recommendations will be advanced in the coming months, several
are noteworthy:
-
Behavioral healthcare
perspectives should be represented within general healthcare
standard-setting organizations, and all EHR and regional
health information network programs initiated through HHS and
its agencies;
-
Behavioral health and
human services should not be regarded as just another
specialty, but as a field with some unique requirements for
software design and information management;
-
Incentives, funding
mechanisms and regulatory relief should be provided to enable
behavioral healthcare organizations to widely adopt EHRs;
-
A public-private and
broadly representative behavioral health group should be
formed that can coordinate and harmonize data standard work
pertaining to behavioral health care and coordinate incentive
strategies for widespread EHR adoption;
-
Informatics
standard-setting and policy-making initiatives should involve
behavioral health consumers and family members;
-
The culture of provider
organizations should encourage greater promotion of data-based
management;
-
Broad-based workforce
training should be provided regarding the implementation and
use of clinical software;
-
Basic clinical
specifications for a behavioral health EHR should be defined
and serve as the core of a broader set of behavioral
health-specific software certification standards;
-
Legal issues should be
clarified and in some cases changed to facilitate appropriate
information sharing across service systems for care
coordination and service improvement.
The Summit Planning Group
composed of officials from SAMHSA and SATVA will meet later this
month to review and prioritize recommendations from the Summit
workgroups, identify existing policy-making and standard-setting
committees that can advance many of the recommendations, and
examine approaches for recommendations that would otherwise not
be addressed within existing committees. Members of the Mental
Health Statistics Improvement Program (MHSIP) Policy Group are
preparing recordings of the Summit
presentations, including the workgroup recommendations, for
posting on
www.mhsip.org and
www.satva.org. The Summit Planning
Group will convene a meeting of the workgroup co-leaders in six
months to review progress with the
Summit
recommendations. For more information about the Summit and its
co-sponsors, contact either Dr. Tom Trabin at 510-236-6868 and
visit
www.SATVA.org, or Leah Young or Shelly
Burgess, SAMHSA press office at 240-276-2130 and visit
www.SAMHSA.gov.
About SATVA
SATVA is
a non-profit trade association of the leading software companies
providing information technology solutions to the behavioral
health and human services community.
About SAMHSA
SAMHSA,
a public health agency within the U.S. Department of Health and
Human Services, is the lead federal agency for improving the
quality and availability of substance abuse prevention,
addiction treatment and mental health services in the United
States.
# # #
Media Contacts:
Dr. Tom
Trabin
510-236-6868
SAMHSA
Press Office
240-276-2130 |
