News

Echo’s 9th Annual Peer to Peer Summit kicks off this Sunday in Portsmouth, New Hampshire and continues through Wednesday October 5th.   The Summit is a gathering of Echo staff and customers to share ideas, attend sessions, and network.

This year’s summit is highlighted with two plenary sessions from national speakers:  On Monday, Chuck Ingoglia, Vice President, Public Policy for the National Council for Community Behavioral Healthcare, will be speaking on current trends in the industry around Health Homes, Funding challenges and much more.   On Tuesday, Thomas Novak from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services will be addressing the audience with the CMS perspective on hot topics such as meaningful use and funding.

“We’re excited to have both Chuck and Tom join us this year” noted Echo’s Director of Marketing, Paul Kirsch.

“The conference has always been about information sharing and with so many sessions this year focused on EHR implementation, Meaningful Use, HIE and other industry issues, it’s great to also gain the National perspective from both Chuck and Tom.   We also have a lot of new faces at this year’s conference.  Attendance is up over 10% from last year.  We appreciate our customers commitment to the event.”

About Peer to Peer

Late in 2002, The Echo Group started to discuss a new event for its customers. Some initially described the event as a “user group”, but as the event took shape, we began to believe that it could be much more and chose a name accordingly… The Peer to Peer Summit.

Peer to Peer has continued to evolve, becoming an event where customers, and Echo staff share insights, learn from each other, and find new ways to challenge their organizations to improve.

D & E Counseling Center in Youngstown, Ohio has received $21,500 by attesting to first year meaningful use regulations under the ARRA HITECH Act EHR incentive program.  They are thought to be the second behavioral health organization in the United States and the first behavioral health organization in Ohio to qualify for these funds designed to promote the use of electronic health records (EHR).  D & E offers services focused on children at three locations including a recreational therapeutic camp.  Their work with children and adults includes general outpatient counseling, psychiatry, community support, crisis intervention, early childhood services, school-based services and intensive outpatient programming.

D & E Counseling has worked with The Echo Group’s Clinician’s Desktop and Revenue Manager Software for a number of years and was able to utilize data from Echo’s completely certified electronic health record and billing system to address reporting requirements for funding.  Joe Shorokey, D & E’s Clinical Services Director stated he attended several web seminars hosted by Echo in preparing to apply for funding and that the process was relatively easy for his organization.  “It was approximately an 8 week process from the initial application to receiving payment.  We reported encounter data collected through Echo’s software for several 90 day periods to demonstrate that we qualified by delivering an adequate level of Medicaid funded services”, stated Joe, “The State requested additional details several times and we were able to provide them with the necessary data from our Echo database.”

Mr. Shorokey went on to say that his organization was already collecting many of the data elements required by meaningful use regulations, such as vital signs, and saw a smooth transition to adopting the meaningful use requirements. “We utilize Echo’s product through the cloud and look forward to using incentive funding to upgrade technology for community based staff including new laptops and licenses of a new Echo product called travelEHR to provide mobile EHR functionality.”

“Here at Echo we believe our customers represent the leading behavioral health organizations in America,” said Joe Viger, Vice President of Business Development at The Echo Group.  “This is validated by now having two customers receive EHR incentive funding.  D & E is certainly one of those organizations leading the way with not only progressive management, but also innovative programming for children.  This is a great example and inspiration for Echo’s 100+ customers in the Ohio and other customers nationwide.”

SAN RAFAEL, CA – Marin County Mental Health has selected The Echo Group’s ShareCare™ software.  Marin County will be using the product to establish an integrated billing solution, including critical California requirements like CalOMS, OSHPD, CSI, and Short Doyle II.  They will be migrating from Echo’s Insyst product to ShareCare Fiscal and InfoMc’s eCura to ShareCare MCO for Managed Care.

Marin County is located in the North San Francisco Bay Area of California.  Marin County Community Mental Health Services (CMHS) provides a complete range of mental health services for children, adults, and older adults. Our multilingual, culturally competent staff provides on-site treatment for acute and chronic mental disorders, life crisis and other disabilities that occur concurrently with mental disorders.

“We are very pleased that Marin County Mental Health has decided to upgrade their systems by taking advantage for Echo’s product suite. They have been a valuable customer over the years and we are happy that we continue to receive unwavering executive support from the County. There is a strong commitment from the County and Echo staff to ensure a seamless and successful migration”, said Fasi Siddiqui, President of the California Division of The Echo Group.

“It was a pleasure working with Mr. Bruce Gurganus, Director of Marin County Mental Health Services and his staff through the selection and contractual process”, he added.

“Community Mental Health Services in Marin County has a long history with Echo’s Insyst product.  We thought the upgrade to the ShareCare product was a practical solution to improving our mental health information system.  It also allows us the flexibility to combine this software with other systems with which our clinical staff is already familiar. We look forward to a long and productive use of the new system,” noted, Mr. Gurganus.

ABOUT THE ECHO GROUP – Since 1980, The Echo Group has been developing enterprise software applications that have been used nationwide to address the needs of Behavioral Health organizations.  Echo offers a suite of Windows-based and Web-based applications for Administrative, Clinical EHR and Billing functions.   They also offer a suite of services, including Transaction Management Billing Services and Fiscal and Clinical Process Workflow Analysis.  The company is headquartered in Conway, New Hampshire, and also has offices in Lewiston, Maine, Powell, Ohio and Oakland, California.

Grand Lake Mental Health Center (GLMHC) in Nowata, OK has received the first installment of payments totaling $189,000 by attesting to meaningful use regulations under the ARRA HITECH Act EHR incentive program for their two psychiatrists and nurse practitioner.  They are the first behavioral health organization in the United States to qualify for these funds designed to promote the use of electronic health records (EHR).  Grand Lake is a comprehensive mental health organization delivering services  at seven locations to adults, children and adolescents.  This includes community integration, outpatient treatment, case management, crisis stabilization, coordinated inpatient care, and tele-medicine.

GLMHC has been a leader in Oklahoma mental health implementing progressive financial management and utilization of electronic health records.  As a result the organization was positioned to move quickly to access funding.  “A key element of our organizations ability to quickly capitalize on the opportunity for EHR Incentive funding was actually our billing system.  As a result of the quality data and reporting, we were easily able to provide the State with 90 days of financials for the three specified providers.  This allowed us to demonstrate the requirement of 30% Medicaid services immediately instead of having to wait for an additional 90 days and working to develop a reporting method.” said Larry Smith, GLMHC Chief Financial Officer.  Grand Lake utilizes The Echo Group’s Clinician’s Desktop and Revenue Manager EHR and billing software.

GLMHC has benefitted from the efficiency and clinical impact of using Clinician’s Desktop for many years and the organization is excited to be taking advantage of a mechanism to defray their investment and allow them to continue to invest in their electronic health records system.  ”We anticipate using these funds for continued development toward a fully integrated medical record as we implement the physical health components of the certified EHR.” said Charles Danley, GLMHC Chief Executive Officer.

“Grand Lake Mental Health Center is an extremely well run organization.” stated Joe Viger, Vice President of Business Development at The Echo Group.  “They consistently score excellent marks on evaluations and pay for performance initiatives in the State of Oklahoma.  In addition, they have completed an excellent implementation of Echo’s EHR now proven by their reward of meaningful use funds.  Staff have repeatedly been speakers at our user conference and share their skills and experiences freely.   They are an excellent customer partner and we are excited at their accomplishment!”

“We believe that GLMHC is the first behavioral health provider in the country to get paid Meaningful Use incentive dollars.” noted Paul Kirsch, Director of Marketing for The Echo Group.  “This is really great news for GLMHC and for all of our customers.”

About The Echo Group
Since 1980, The Echo Group has been developing enterprise software applications that have been used nationwide to address the needs of Behavioral Health organizations. Echo offers a suite of Windows-based and Web-based applications for Administrative, Clinical EHR and Billing functions. They also offer a suite of services, including Transaction Management Billing Services and Fiscal and Clinical Process Workflow Analysis. The company is headquartered in Conway, New Hampshire, and also has offices in Lewiston, Maine, Powell, Ohio and Oakland, California.

In February of 2011, Clinician’s Desktop™ was fully certified as an Ambulatory EHR, enabling organizations to utilize Echo software when applying for Meaningful Use funds for Eligible Providers.

For more information contact Paul Kirsch, Director of Marketing at paul.kirsch@echoman.com or visit www.echoman.com.

Related Information

Attend a Web Demo of Clinician’s Desktop, Our Fully Certified EHR

Getting Started with Meaningful Use – A Step by Step Guide

Echo Customer, Grand Lake Mental Health Center, is first Behavioral Health Provider to receive Meaningful Use Funds

The Echo Group is proud to be an affiliate member of the National Council for Community Behavioral Healthcare.