Sample Case Study

MRI/OAARS CASE STUDY

Founded in 2002, Montfort Renaissance resides in Ottawa, Ontario and is a francophone community health organization offering mental health, addiction, and housing services to a population of over 5000 recipients. They have 10 fully functional centers staffed with over 840 employees and are characterized by their adherence to best practice. MRI is the regional coordinated access for addiction, bringing anyone seeking treatment for addiction through their program for assessment. They partner with law enforcement to coordinate service for those who have committed crimes as a result of their mental health disorder, working to find treatment alternatives that keep them stay out of jail. As of 2019, MRI also provides support services and socio-recreational activities for seniors

MRI focuses its efforts on data-driven assessments of their clinical activity, only implementing programs that pass their required analysis, best practices review, and their environmental scan to ensure they are offering services that are needed in the community.

EMHWare interviewed MRI/OAARS’ Director of Service Access to Recovery, Steven Vachon who stated: “We [MRI/OAARS] have a dependency on proper data collection, information sharing, and software.”

MRI has been a partner of EMHWare for more than 5 years. Challenges with their old software lead them to search for a new solution that could enable them to work with addiction and mental health.

What Lead MRI to Search for New Software?

While the software that MRI was using prior to EMHWare provided baseline support to their organization, they found themselves in need of more support in order to broaden their services efficiently and effectively. In order to provide addiction services, MRI needed the ability to connect to certain databases. At the start of their search, OCAN was transitioning to the standard for functional assessment procedures and needed to be used by mental health agencies.

“We needed software that could integrate that assessment process [OCAN] and connect to the central database [IAR].”

This began their search for another software solution.

Why did they Choose EMHWare over the Competition?

Starting in 2012, MRI/OAARS began surveying similar organizations across Ontario regarding what software they were using. After communicating with a total of 16 organizations, 14 of those 16 were using software, and 2 out of those 14 were using EMHWare.

“We always do an environmental scan. We looked for that ability to connect data and it was reassuring to hear and see how flexible the software [EMHWare] was as far as its capacity to build integrated forms. From these forms, we are able to extract data that was compatible with what we needed. These were all factors that influenced our decision.”

What Results Have They Seen Since Implementation?

Vachon listed and described several positive results that their organization has seen since implementing EMHWare:

• 1) Simple to Use

For their staff that is less technically savvy and more focused on human interaction, Vachon described that the use of multiple different software was complicated, causing administrative tasks to be tedious and time-consuming. MRI did an analysis of time spent on administrative duties in the past and found that 20-30% of their staff’s time was being used in this way.

“We needed a way to bring this [administrative] process closer to the clinical process.”

EMHWare helped to provide peace-of-mind throughout this side of their job as it was simple to use, even by those who were not technology savvy, returning time back to their clients.

• 2) Data Collection and Reporting

With OCAN needing to be updated minimally every 6 months, MRI needed tools to help them collect and report data in a simpler format. Vachon stated that “OCAN in EMHWare is well done.” EMHWare highlights needs, that do not have enough support, as a priority, giving MRI the basis of a care plan.

“Gradually the use of EMHWare became more integrated into the clinical track.”

Discussing the benefits of an integrated workflow, Vachon described the positive impact of completing a care plan and OCAN responsibilities simultaneously, creating a more efficient and productive administrative workflow.

He then goes on to discuss how EMHWare helps them use quality reporting tools in the management part of their organization to support funding requests. This software enables them to create a simple case data form that is completed each time a practitioner does an intervention. The creation of these custom templates enables MRI to report on things like the number of practitioner intervention within 6 months as well as other important data.

The collection of data also enables MRI to show gaps in services. For example, they used their data collected from EMHWare to reflect the need for a women’s stabilization program in their region. Through quality reporting, MRI was able to receive funding for such a program.

“The flexibility and versatility of the software make it easier to adjust it to our needs and we can really use the reporting capabilities for funding and for a better clinical impact.”

• 3) Interoperability

Vachon went on to describe that EMHWare was advantageous in terms of cost benefits in the fact that they could have a software solution that was tailored directly to their needs. Over the province, there existed 50 different software that failed to interact with one another. Without the ability to communicate, they could not exchange minimal data sets.

“The solution was to have a distributed EMHWare solution. If we gave them access to a subset of the data, and a billing solution with EMHWare, we can take on the responsibility of paying for the extra licenses.”

MRI sat down with EMHWare and came to an agreement that was satisfactory for both parties, giving their organization an extra 25-30 licenses, yielding amazing results on their end.

“We had 25-30 parties entering data into a central data repository that was a central database for up to 3000 clients a year. This is tremendous.”

• 4) Flexibility

“EMHWare and its flexibility have been the biggest strength for us.”

EMHWare interfaces with IAR, DATIS, and OCAN to help organizations perform the necessary assessments, collect data, and report data. Fit with customizable options to help your organization meet its needs, this software solution is flexible enough to help you reach your individualized goals.