recently an issue came up on the boards. I thought it would be nice to address it but in a positive way.

recently I posted that in my location we dont do paper work when a client comes to us needing forms ie social security forms filled out. one replied asking what kind of people are we and accused those professionals including me where I am of denying someone support.

So I thought it would be nice to show each other that its ok to be different and its ok to have mental health services that are set up differently. There is no right or wrong.

Here where I am the mental health community, physicians and hospital are in the middle of a recession. we have had to make hard decisions.

Some mental health agencies, physicians offices, schools, businesses have had to file for bankruptsy

others have had to shut their doors due to lack of funds.

Some have had to lay off their employees.

others have had to make the hard decision of deciding which clients with what mental disorders they could no longer see in favor of not cutting services and not laying off their treatment providers.

others have had to make the hard decision of cutting the least used services and in favor of keeping their doors open for all their clients.

the hospital and crisis center where I am opted for the last one because it affected the least amount of clients, and those that it does affect we offer a new way to do those things.

example we cut out doing paper work in favor for computers.

it frees up three hours per client per session of manually signing in to the file room, manually locating the clients file among hundreds of thousands of files, and then manually writing up each session,

when agencies like welfare and social security need information for their forms we used to have spend anywhere between 3-3 hours to do all the above then read through the persons whole file, some of which have been coming to us for years, and then summarize that persons vast problems and diagnoses into a Brief" diagnosis, and treatment being used, the persons GAF (Functioning level)

with the recession and lack of funds and more people needing mental health services because they lost their jobs we now dont do paper work, our alternative is -

we converted all those paper files to computer files. now that three hours of manually updating someones file is converted into a bout 5-10 minutes of sitting down at the file rooms computer, logging in to the mental health data base, typing in clients name then using the computerized form type up the session.

Having our clients files on computer also better serves the client because we can right then when the client asks to see their file locate the file by doing a computer search on the data base, do a computer search of their file for that one item they want, then press print. client has their file or item they asked about in a matter of one to 2 minutes vs three hours of our time. converting our filing system to computers is also cost effective to the client at no charge to them.

now with a computerized filing system when clients need forms to be filled out for their physicians, welfare, social security and others all we have to do is sit down at the computer, log in to the data base, do a search for the clients file, then click on fax to the other agencies fax number and they have the clients complete file in a matter of minutes vs the three hours of locating the clients file, reading the file, summarizing and hand writing on the form what is needed then send it through the united postal service (what is now commonly called snail mail for a reason it can take days to weeks for people to receive stuff this way,)

by converting our vast paper files on each client to computer files we can better help our clients, spend more time with those clients and offer better services that they may need. for example before when we had to allocate time for filing and paper work we can now offer advocate services such as accompanying the client to hearings, take a client to a food shelf if they need food and other hands on advocate type things.

I know to some doing things by computer vs paper trails and paper filing, paper forms can be scary because its a change and confusing to those who dont have this kind of system,

but arent we all different and dont we all have different mental health systems that are set up in different ways than each others?

this person sees a private treatment provider, that one sees a county treatment provider, this doctor doesnt prescribe this and that doctor says I have that not this, and this country uses this term when we use another one.

so how is your mental health system set up?