10 must-have behavioral health EHR features

Why behavioral health practices must think differently about an EHR

When a behavioral health organization looks for an electronic health record (EHR) system, stakeholders should consider how well the platform could be integrated into the practice. Would it promote efficiency among staff and providers? Would it mesh with existing workflows and technologies? Would it help the practice meet its clinical, operational, financial and compliance goals?

It can be challenging to find an EHR that enhances behavioral health practices, but the right one can offer benefits that other record-keeping methods cannot.

By automating routine tasks and streamlining documentation, EHRs can help providers spend less time on administrative work and more time focused on patient care. That time savings may allow providers to spend less time after-hours on clinical and administrative work. Streamlined workflows can also help reduce administrative burdens that contribute to provider stress and dissatisfaction.

But not all EHRs are equal in how they might fit with behavioral health practices. To streamline decision-making when comparing EHR vendors, practices should use a checklist to determine whether platforms meet their needs and priorities.

Here are some important capabilities to consider:

Behavioral health templates and workflows

A general-purpose EHR can create extra work for behavioral health providers. Requiring providers to adapt their workflows to the system can actually reduce efficiency.

An EHR designed for behavioral health supports specialty-specific capabilities essential for psychotherapy, psychiatry and substance use disorder care. It can support telehealth appointments and group programs. It can also support integrated whole-person care.

The platform should also offer pre-built templates for common diagnoses, like depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder or substance use disorder. This saves providers time and avoids tedious repetition.

The system should also support narrative clinical documentation, a time-saving tool.

Behavioral health practices should ask vendors whether the EHR:

• Has specialty-specific capabilities to support behavioral health practices
• Includes pre-built or customizable templates for behavioral health diagnoses
• Supports narrative clinical documentation for behavioral health providers

Treatment planning

Behavioral health providers have obligations to securely document clinical notes and patient progress.

Providers should be able to use an EHR’s pre-built templates for common conditions to create patient treatment plans. These plans can allow providers and patients to monitor progress.

A behavioral health-focused EHR should also support time-stamped records and digital signatures to help document when care was provided, who completed the record, and when it was finalized. These details can support documentation integrity and audit readiness, including for telehealth encounters.

Ask vendors whether the EHR:

• Allows providers to add notes and treatment plans to templates
• Time-stamps records at every therapy session
• Enables providers to digitally sign clinical records

Integrated telehealth

Since the pandemic, behavioral telehealth has become more accepted as a standard method of care. It's a treatment modality that 80% of behavioral health facilities offer, according to a 2024 paper published in the journal JAMA Health Forum.

When evaluating solutions, behavioral health practices should consider whether the EHR has the capability to host and securely manage remote telehealth sessions. Providers may also want remote access to essential features.

In its first year of eligibility, athenaOne earned a 2026 Best in KLAS award in Ambulatory Behavioral Health for its telehealth therapy.¹

Ask vendors whether the EHR:

• Offers secure telehealth appointments for groups and individuals
• Allows providers to access essential EHR features from both desktops and mobile devices

Group therapy capabilities

Clinical documentation for group therapy can be complex and time-consuming. But an EHR can streamline the process.

An EHR designed for behavioral health should help eliminate the need for repeating notes in several patients’ clinical records. When prompted, the platform should be able to include similar information in each patient’s chart.

But the system should also make it simple for behavioral health providers to add clinical notes to a patient’s private record without fear of including that information in the records of all group participants.

Ask vendors whether the EHR:

• Allows providers to include the same summary in the records of everyone at group therapy
•  Makes it easy for providers to add additional notes to individual patients’ records

Patient privacy and consent

A behavioral health provider’s psychotherapy notes can contain sensitive information that isn’t intended for anyone else to read, other than that provider. These notes remain separate from the patient's health record.

All EHRs for behavioral health practices have encryption to protect sensitive patient data. But practices may want to look for an EHR that allows providers to keep psychotherapy notes siloed while including clinical notes in the EHR, where they'll be accessible to other providers.

All EHRs must be compliant with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). Behavioral health providers must also consider substance use disorder records covered by a federal law that's separate from HIPAA — called 42 CFR Part 2. Under that law, there are additional consent and redisclosure rules that behavioral health providers should work with their EHR on to make sure its requirements are appropriately addressed. Ask vendors whether the EHR:

• Allows providers to keep psychotherapy notes separate from clinical data in the EHR
• Includes features that facilitate compliance with 42 CFR Part 2

Patient access

Behavioral health practices need secure EHRs with user-friendly portals to promote patient engagement between sessions.

When evaluating EHR solutions, practices should consider whether the system has a secure patient portal that gives patients access to information such as clinical history, test results, medications, upcoming appointments and care plan details. A patient portal should prioritize transparency and engagement.

Ask vendors whether the EHR:

• Allows for a secure, user-friendly patient portal
• Supports appropriate access controls for sensitive documentation

Controlled-substance prescribing workflows

When behavioral health providers prescribe controlled substances, submitting prescriptions electronically is often safer and more secure.

Specific segments within behavioral health need an EHR with software certified by the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) for electronic prescribing with two-factor authentication (which requires the provider to confirm their identity in two different ways electronically). This helps minimize the risk of dispensing errors and helps providers comply with state and federal regulations relating to controlled substances, so patients receive the correct medication at proper dosages.

The platform should also incorporate compliance checks to help minimize patients’ risk of harmful drug interactions, cross-referencing new prescriptions with existing medications.

Ask vendors whether the EHR:

• Lets providers submit prescriptions electronically for controlled substances
• Incorporates DEA-certified software for two-factor authentication
• Offers compliance checks to improve the prescribing process

Interoperability and care coordination

Behavioral health practices often need to coordinate care of patients with other providers like primary-care physicians, medical specialists, emergency departments, hospitals, and social workers. These organizations often need an EHR that can exchange patient data and surface relevant external clinical data without burdening providers with manual reconciliation.

The system’s data-sharing capabilities should also help reduce redundant information from patients’ records. It should have the capability to comb through physician notes and extract relevant patient data to add to the clinical workflow.

Ask vendors whether the EHR:

• Can easily exchange external data across different EHRs
• Saves providers from manual reconciliation of external patient data
• Deduplicates external data to prevent redundancies in patient records

Billing and revenue cycle management

An EHR should enable behavioral health practices to document the duration of therapy sessions, time-based coding and recurring visits for different provider types and care settings. It should be able to manage workflows that accommodate payer-specific behavioral health requirements.

An EHR for general medical practices may not recognize carve-out plans — when a patient's health insurance company uses a third-party administrator to oversee behavioral health benefits.

The right EHR should be designed with the needs of behavioral health practices in mind to properly document and support multi-encounter billing for patients in ongoing therapy. The platform should integrate with practice management tools to support workflows for billing and revenue cycle management solutions.

It should have embedded features to fully document the care, providing billing teams with the necessary documentation to support claims, and prompt users for missing authorization information. It should allow practices to create cleaner claims, leading to a more efficient billing process.

Ask vendors whether the EHR:

• Has the ability to properly document in support of multi-encounter billing
• Integrates seamlessly with tools that the practice uses for revenue cycle management
• Recognizes and manages carve-out plans, when patients' primary health insurance doesn't cover behavioral health care

Customer support

Some EHRs don’t give subscribers much training or support. When providers use the platform independently, they can overlook features designed for value and efficiency. Practices should consider looking for EHRs that offer customers training during onboarding and throughout their subscription.

A 9-to-5 customer-support framework can’t accommodate practices with extended or nontraditional hours. An ideal EHR platform should provide around-the-clock support with helpful live agents. Hold time should be minimal.

Ask vendors whether they provide:

• A comprehensive onboarding program for their EHR solution and ongoing customer support and training
• Live customer service representatives with extended hours

After identifying the capabilities that matter most to them, practices can use these criteria to consistently compare behavioral health EHR options. athenaOne® for Behavioral Health is designed to support many of these needs across clinical, operational, and financial workflows.

How athenaOne for Behavioral Health aligns with key evaluation criteria

Behavioral health organization stakeholders seeking an EHR that supports their needs should consider athenaOne for Behavioral Health. It offers:

• Behavioral health templates and workflows: athenaOne has behavioral health-specific workflows that providers can tailor to their preferred working style.
• Treatment planning: athenaOne offers integrated treatment plans, enabling behavioral health providers to embed patients' treatment plans directly into session notes to support better care coordination. Providers can document their goals, interventions, progress, and next steps, to help eliminate duplicative work.
• Integrated telehealth: athenaOne is fully integrated with athenaTelehealth, which is designed to support HIPAA-compliant telehealth visits.
• Group therapy capabilities: athenaOne’s platform can schedule, host, document, and bill for group meetings — including grief therapy, intensive outpatient programs or partial hospitalization programs.
• Patient privacy and consent: athenaOne has safeguards for electronic protected health information and has features designed to enable practices to comply with HIPAA and 42 CFR Part 2.
• Patient access: athenaOne’s patient portal lets patients schedule appointments, receive teletherapy and send providers secure messages.
• Controlled-substance prescribing workflows: athenaOne has Electronic Prescriptions for Controlled Substances certification, enabling e-prescribing for controlled substances.
• Interoperability and care coordination: athenaOne’s ChartSync feature parses, deduplicates and surfaces external clinical data at the point of care.
• Billing and revenue cycle management: Many athenaOne customers enjoy a clean claim rate greater than 99.3%, which is above industry self-reported claims of 95–98%.²
• Customer support: athenaOne offers live support 24/7 via phone, chat, and email, typically with less than a 2-minute wait.³

Learn more about how athenaOne for Behavioral Health helps behavioral health practices manage documentation, telehealth, billing workflows, and care coordination.