Mirah: Rewriting The Tenets Of Behavioral Health With Measurement-Based Care

The consensus is clear: measurement-based care (MBC) improves patient outcomes and is the minimum standard of care behavioral health clinicians should provide.

MBC is the process of routinely using outcome measurement to guide treatment decisions. As an evidence-based strategy, MBC allows providers to review the scores and trends in outcome immediately and provide feedback to their patients.

So, why aren’t more behavioral health providers using MBC in their practices?

Some of the biggest obstacles to implementing MBC in a behavioral health setting have been technological in nature. Many data collection tools and standards of care are designed with physical health conditions in mind. As a result, the field of behavioral health technology is ripe for innovation and investment.

Mirah, a comprehensive and innovative MBC solution, is leading the way in demonstrating the power of MBC in behavioral health practices.

With Mirah, patients can self-report their symptoms prior to their next session by completing clinically relevant assessments. Providers can then review patient feedback and monitor progress through a user-friendly interface. The aggregated data can be analyzed by organizational leadership to inform and improve behavioral health services and promote evidence-based practice.

Previous attempts to implement MBC solutions have been widely unsuccessful, largely because they fail to interoperate with existing electronic medical records. Solutions that require duplicate data entry or clinicians to remember another set of login details are unsustainable. Mirah has found a way to overcome that technological barrier.

By integrating seamlessly with EMRs, Mirah enables clinicians to access assessment data from the EMR without requiring duplicate data entry. This technological breakthrough makes it possible to implement MBC effectively and efficiently. “We deliver insights to clinicians in 15 seconds that do not disrupt their workflow,” shares Hugh Barrigan, CTO of Mirah. By collecting data and feeding it back to clinicians in a coordinated, useful, and seamless way, the use of Mirah allows the voice of the patient to be heard in the treatment planning and decision-making process, which leads to improved outcomes.

However, technological challenges are only one obstacle to implementing MBC; there are also practice-based and organizational barriers. Driven by the desire to make behavioral health the gold standard for accountability in healthcare, Mirah’s approach addresses these as well.

Barrigan says, “Our platform is built from the ground up to facilitate organizational change, patient engagement, and patient-centered communication rather than only acting as an analytics tool. That’s one of the fundamental reasons Mirah works.” In essence, Mirah is designed with the vision to change the way that behavioral healthcare is practiced.

Mirah takes a holistic approach to implementing its comprehensive and turnkey solution for customers. They interact directly with stakeholders at every level of the organization to ensure that the implementation becomes an internal initiative. Rather than coming in as external trainers, Mirah commits to guiding the kind of organizational mindset and culture shifts that allow MBC and patient-centered care to truly become the standard.

Their work begins by building consensus and setting expectations at the top of the organization. Leadership buy-in is the number one predictor of whether or not an MBC solution implementation will be successful. Moreover, MBC implementation often fails when providers perceive it as an administrative burden rather than embracing MBC as a critical tool to support a patient-centered approach. Therefore, the final piece of Mirah’s solution is a comprehensive clinician coaching and education program to contextualize their platform within the evidence-based theory of MBC. In doing so, they draw a direct line between MBC and improved patient outcomes to garner both clinician and leadership support.

Our platform is built from the ground up to facilitate organizational change, patient engagement, and patient-centered communication rather than only acting as an analytics tool. That’s one of the fundamental reasons Mirah works

The multi-pronged solution Mirah offers has been remarkably successful. During the transition period to Mirah, one customer saw a 120 percent improvement in depression remission among their patient population. At the same practice, no-show rates dropped by 25 percent over the same period.

As MBC rises to prominence in behavioral healthcare and takes its place in training curricula, the demand for sustainable solutions to deal with implementation challenges is only going to increase. With a willingness to see the big picture and pursue creative solutions to solve these problems, Mirah has secured its place as a leader in the MBC space.