Documentation Challenges in Behavioral Health

Automation technologies may have grown by leaps and bounds over the past few years, but that has not done away with the need for documentation, which continues to be a challenge in the healthcare area. This is endemic to the healthcare industry as a whole, but is all the more prominent in a section of this industry: behavioral health.

Why this is so is that there are issues in the operational and the ethical aspects of behavioral health that pose problems for professionals in the area. Some of these could be:

When is it appropriate to be vague in a clinical note in order to protect clients?
Should parents of minor clients have a right to access clinicians’ records?
How should practitioners respond to subpoenas that demand disclosure of records?
Under what circumstances should clients have access to their own records?
It is in exercising their professional judgment and documenting in areas such as these that healthcare professionals face challenges. A webinar on January 23 from MentorHealth, a leading provider of professional training for all the areas of healthcare, will place these issues in the right perspective.

Frederic Reamer, professor in the graduate program, School of Social Work, Rhode Island College, will be the expert at this webinar. To register for this webinar, please visit Mentorhealth .

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The expert at this webinar will offer an overview and in-depth examination of most of the compelling documentation issues in behavioral health. He will encourage them to explore high-risk ethical issues and practical strategies that are designed to protect clients and practitioners.

Dr. Reamer will help the participants think about the various challenges relating to documentation in the healthcare areas. Implementing the practical steps he will suggest at this webinar will help these professionals manage ethical issues skillfully and minimize risk. Professionals in the healthcare sector who deal with documentation in behavioral science, such as psychologists, social workers, mental health counselors, marriage and family therapists, psychiatrists, and psychiatric nurses, will find immense value from this learning.

Dr. Reamer will dedicate a good part of this webinar to the core areas of behavioral health documentation. These include the relevant ethical standards, statutes, regulations, and case law, and national practice standards. Dr. Reamer has gained knowledge of these areas while being an expert witness and ethics consultant in a large number of court cases and licensing board cases throughout the US and abroad.

Dr. Reamer will help the participants of this webinar explore these core topics:

The content of documentationr
Documentation wordingr
Credibility issues related to documentationr
Accessing confidential recordsr
Record retentionr
Responding to subpoenasr
Managing records in integrated health settings.
These are the areas he will cover at this session:

Documentation challenges in behavioral health: Compelling examplesr
Common documentation challenges: A typologyr
Documentation decision-making: Ethical and risk-management considerationsr
Documentation protocols to protect clients and practitioners, and prevent litigation and licensing board complaintsrn—————————————————————————————————————-

About the expert: Dr. Reamer chaired the national task force that wrote the code of ethics adopted by the National Association of Social Workers. Author of more tha
20 books and 140 journal articles, encyclopedia entries, and book chapters, Dr. Reamer has been a social worker in correctional and mental health settings who specializes in professional ethics.

Reamer has been an expert witness and ethics consultant in more tha
100 court (litigation) cases and licensing board cases involving ethical and risk-management issues.

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