Integrated Care 2024
How Well Do Behavioral Health Organizations Feel Vendors Support Integrated Care?

“We are building everything in-house to do the things our current system doesn’t do. We decided to bring these tasks in-house because the more vendors we have, the harder it is to manage them. Our current vendor is not easy to integrate with, so we end up having to have workarounds.” —Chief strategy officer

Behavioral health organizations report two main hurdles to providing integrated care: (1) acquiring an additional documentation solution for primary care and (2) achieving integration with a billing solution for reimbursements. Most respondents are investing in EHR and billing solutions to help overcome these challenges, and they report looking to their current EHR vendor to provide the tools they need. One reason for this is that some respondents worry that behavioral health vendors won’t be able to provide high-quality primary care functionality; some also feel stuck with their current EHR vendor due to tight budgets. In general, interviewed customers feel vendors measured in this report struggle to some degree to meet organizations’ functionality and integration needs. Epic customers (hospitals or facilities connected to larger health systems) and NextGen Healthcare customers (FQHCs and midsize behavioral health organizations) highlight the integration between behavioral health, primary care, and revenue cycle platforms; respondents also cite possible integration with a wide range of third-party applications. Qualifacts and Netsmart similarly offer modules for both behavioral health and primary care. These vendors have the largest number of independent behavioral health customers in this report sample, and respondents note integration challenges (e.g., cost, speed, syncing) with third-party tools and express concerns around scaling. Across vendors, many interviewed organizations still need to leverage third-party tools (i.e., telehealth, value-based care, patient engagement, RPM) to better support integrated care strategies. (For more on how third-party technologies are being used for integrated care, see below.)

Outside of EHR solutions, some behavioral health organizations are employing third-party technologies to fill gaps in their integrated care strategies. Respondents who consider non-EHR solutions most often look to telehealth platforms and analytics solutions that support reporting and screening. Telehealth is a top consideration for behavioral health organizations and is one of the easiest ways for them to implement integrated care because patients can connect with clinicians for basic services that don’t require in-person consultations. Regarding telehealth solutions, some respondents report deploying Microsoft Teams or Doxy.me due to the ease of implementation. Solutions for reporting and screening can also benefit organizations’ integrated care needs as they help organizations tackle quality/regulatory reporting and receive HRSA funding. Respondents using a reporting/screening solution most often report using Azara Healthcare, as the population health platform can support their reporting needs and help them gain federal funding for integrated care. Other solution types that can help organizations achieve integrated care include point-of-care dictation solutions, pharmacy solutions, billing solutions, and integration tools.

Some respondents choose not to answer particular questions, meaning the sample size for any given vendor or solution can change from question to question. When the number of unique organization responses for a particular question is less than 15, the score for that question is marked with an asterisk (*) or otherwise designated as “limited data.” If the sample size is less than 6, no score is shown. Where textual content relies on limited data, the vendor name is marked with an asterisk. Note that when a vendor has a low number of reporting sites, the possibility exists for KLAS scores to change significantly as new surveys are collected.