The six regional psychiatric hospitals in the state will soon have a new electronic health record system, Ohio Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services (OhioMHAS) Director Lori Criss said Wednesday.

Criss told the Senate Community Revitalization Committee that implementing Epic Systems in the hospitals will enhance data security, improve the state’s ability to build data into patient treatment, help communicate with local partners during intake and discharge, and enhance staff and patient safety.

“We’re grateful for the General Assembly’s support of this work. We will be the first state with a psychiatric hospital to implement this state-of-the-art software,” Criss said.

After the meeting, Criss told Hannah News that the new system will standardize processes across all six hospitals.

“The record is being built so that all six hospitals will be using the same electronic health record, which means that all of the protocols around admissions and discharges, pharmacy management -- it will elevate our quality and consistency across our hospitals,” she said. “It will also allow us to communicate better with our referral sources and more easily bring people into our care. It also helps us with discharge planning, to make sure people are connected to ongoing care when they leave, and aren’t just referred to ongoing care. So it helps a lot with patient outcomes.”

Criss also said OhioMHAS is working with the Data Ohio Portal (DOP) to develop a dashboard that will allow users to access publicly-funded treatment service claims at the state and county level.

“This is based on a dataset that OhioMHAS curates, which combines behavioral health-related (including mental health and addiction) data from two sources -- claims data supplied by the Ohio Department of Medicaid for providers that are certified by OhioMHAS and are participating in the Medicaid program, and claims data collected from the ADAMH boards for non-Medicaid behavioral health-related services,” she said.

Criss said her department has also launched a Behavioral Health Data Forum, which aims to help administrators across the system learn about how they can use data tools to support their practices.

“These data forums are open to anyone who wishes to attend. The goal is to expand awareness of these available datasets and data tools, build data literacy and capabilities, and share promising behavioral health data practices from around the state,” Criss said. “In fact, at the last forum, it was suggested that OhioMHAS improve accessibility to currently available public behavioral health data resources. We took this feedback and created a search tool, which operates like a table of contents for all of our dashboards and reports. This new, user-friendly tool should be available to the public by the end of this month.”