SAMHSA & ONC Launch Behavioral Health Information Technology Initiative

The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) and the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) will work together to invest more than $20 million of SAMHSA funds over the next three years in an initiative to advance health information technology (IT) in behavioral health care and practice settings. 

Health IT adoption among behavioral health providers currently lags behind other providers. This is due in part to their ineligibility to participate in health IT incentive programs, such as those under the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. Lack of access to health IT and associated higher-level capabilities and efficiencies (e.g., patient access, notifications, clinical decision support, care planning, data exchange, analytics, and reporting) impact behavioral health providers’ ability to provide access to treatment through tools such as telehealth. It also limits integration of behavioral health data with primary care and other physical health entities, posing a major barrier to the interoperable exchange of behavioral health data across the care continuum.

To address these challenges, the Behavioral Health Information Technology (BHIT) Initiative will identify and pilot a set of behavioral health-specific data elements with SAMHSA’s Substance Use Prevention, Treatment, and Recovery Services Block Grant (SUPTRS BG) and Community Mental Health Services Block Grant (MHBG) grantees. The data elements will be coordinated via a new USCDI+ domain for behavioral health to improve the effectiveness and reduce the costs of data capture, use, and exchange for behavioral health providers.

This initiative is responsive to new ONC analysis of American Hospital Association survey data from 2019 and 2021, that found that 86% of non-federal, general acute care hospitals had adopted a 2015 Edition certified EHR; in contrast, only 67% of psychiatric hospitals had adopted a 2015 Edition certified EHR. Furthermore, ONC analysis of SAMHSA survey data from 2020 shows that psychiatric hospitals lag even further behind in adoption of interoperability and patient engagement functions.