Advantages of a tech-enabled psychiatric practice
Technological advances have led to a significant transformation in the healthcare industry, further accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic. These advancements have led to better clinical outcomes, which is why clinicians of all kinds are taking advantage of technology-enabled care. Tech-enabled care includes telehealth, telemedicine, mHealth, digital health, and eHealth services.
While the integration of digital technologies can serve as an advantage to all health care specialties, a significant increase in mental health issues and a lack of access to treatment has made it clear that psychiatry would significantly benefit from tech-enabled care. Some experts even believe that technology-enabled care will be the defining advancement of mental health services in this generation. The integration of technology and mental health care offers new ways of providing and receiving clinical treatment, monitoring progress, and increasing understanding of psychiatric illnesses.
Technology and mental health
Many psychiatry practices still use outdated processes, but Talkiatry is different.
Technology is an integral part of our mental health innovation strategy, and we are committed to providing clinicians with the advanced technology-enabled tools they need to deliver the highest quality of care. Robert Krayn, Chief Executive Officer at Talkiatry, explains this approach:
“Talkiatry doesn't just buy technology off the shelf and stitch it together—our software development team builds solutions informed by our psychiatrists, that do not exist in the marketplace today. As an example, the development of our clinical dashboards is guided by what our psychiatrists consider to be the most important clinical information to improve care. We employ data scientists who collaborate with our psychiatrists, working to understand the clinical question they are trying to answer. The data scientist helps us build relationships between data elements. The result is more meaningful and relevant information.”
With this tech-enabled approach, clinicians have the opportunity to recognize patterns based upon evidence-based care—and identify which interventions are most effective and result in improvements that help our patients feel better faster. In addition to our custom solutions, Talkiatry utilizes a range of tools like an integrated EHR (Electronic Health Record), physician-to-patient messaging, telemedicine, and direct lab integration. Each of these solutions empowers our clinicians to track and gain insight into their patient populations while also saving time, making better clinical decisions, and enabling them to provide improved clinical outcomes for patients.
We strongly believe that the future of mental health care lies in tech-enabled care solutions. Here are just a few of the many advantages we've experienced using the latest technology in our psychiatric practice model.
Advantages of a tech-enabled practice
Better meet the needs of your patients
Tech-enabled solutions give clinicians access to information that allows them to meet their patient population’s needs better. At Talkiatry, this includes a wealth of clinical data that offers clinicians the ability to understand individual patients and their panels as a whole. To capture this data, Talkiatry regularly administers clinically validated scales (such as the PHQ-9 and GAD-7) online for patients to complete outside of appointments. This allows clinicians to spend more time in appointments caring for the patient and less time doing paperwork.
Thanks to our highly skilled in-house technology team, we can explore population data in a single, integrated system that provides a 360-degree view of patients' care. Clinicians can use Talkiatry’s data to gain insight into individual patients and their patient population. For instance, a clinician could monitor and review the progression of recovery for all of their patients and easily spot outliers. They can also pinpoint more specific data, such as comparing the acuity of depression symptoms in patients who take a particular medication or patients with a specific diagnosis. In addition, detailed patient outcome data is readily available in the patient chart, so clinicians can easily access it. With all of this information at hand, doctors can often predict problems before they happen, sometimes without even seeing a patient.
Improve the quality of patient care
EHRs can facilitate workflow and improve the quality of patient care and patient safety. Talkiatry’s EHR is fully integrated with lab work, telemedicine, messaging, and prescribing on one platform. Our proprietary technology uses evidence-based scales to track patients’ progress over time—all inside the EHR. Our lab integration even offers notifications and makes test results available for patients to access 24/7.
Talkiatry clinicians can choose the patients they want to work with, thus increasing the quality of patient care. Our assessment pre-screens and only matches patients to clinicians with the appropriate training, experience, and interests in treatment modality and diagnoses. As a result, clinicians' job satisfaction increases because they don't have to treat patients who don’t match their skills and interests.
Serve more patients by increasing efficiency
With only about 30,000 active psychiatrists in the United States, efficiency is especially valuable in psychiatric care. Talkiatry's technology-driven approach to high-quality mental health care enables clinicians to provide treatment efficiently and at scale. For instance, our clinicians use physician-to-patient messaging to handle routine health issues more efficiently, allowing them to accommodate more patients who need care. This is just one of the solutions that aid us in our mission to increase access to mental health care for more people.
Talkiatry also provides internal communication tools that allow physicians to maintain a seamless collegial and collaborative work environment, even when working remotely.
Provide quick and secure test results
At Talkiatry, you’ll receive test results efficiently and securely through a direct lab integration with Quest and LabCorp. As a result, patients and clinicians no longer have to wait for labs to mail or call with test results. Instead, results are posted on the app as soon as tests are complete, available to patients and providers to access 24/7. This also helps patients receive the care they need promptly.
For all of these reasons and more, the fusion of technology and mental health is at the core of our daily operations. By streamlining mental health care with tech-enabled solutions, we are breaking new ground in psychiatry. As new technology emerges, Talkiatry will continue to ensure its team has the technological tools needed to provide the most advanced clinical care.
Join the Talkiatry team
We’re growing our practice and looking for talented psychiatrists to join our team.
Talkiatry is one of the largest, most innovative groups of in-network psychiatrists in the New York area and is quickly expanding to other states. As a single-specialty practice that was built by psychiatrists, for psychiatrists, Talkiatry knows the unique challenges that this profession faces. A collegial, collaborative workplace, Talkiatry offers clinicians a unique sense of camaraderie and shared values. There are also training and research opportunities available for continued professional development.
We take great pride in our talented team of clinicians and work proactively to provide them with the tech-enabled tools, support, and staff they need to deliver the best patient outcomes.
Do we sound like a good fit for you?
We are solving America’s mental health crisis, one psychiatrist at a time. Learn more about the benefits of working with Talkiatry and view our open psychiatrist jobs here.
Talkiatry is a mental health practice, and our clinicians review everything we write. However, articles are never a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. If you think you may need mental health help, talk to a psychiatrist. If you or someone you know may be in danger, call 911 or the National Suicide and Crisis Lifeline at 988 right away.
Dr. Austin Lin is a double board-certified adult and addiction psychiatrist who has been in practice for over 9 years. At the center of Dr. Lin’s clinical approach is a strong emphasis on establishing trust and using a collaborative approach to help patients develop an individualized and cohesive plan so that they are able to achieve their goals.
Dr. Lin's practice focuses on medication management. Typically, he offers this in conjunction with supportive therapy, motivational interviewing, and/or cognitive behavioral therapy in 30-minute follow-up visits. Occasionally, Dr. Lin may recommend that additional therapy is needed and ask that you bring a therapist into your care team in order to provide the best outcome.
Dr. Lin received his medical degree from St. George’s University School of Medicine. He went on to complete his residency in psychiatry at Harvard South Shore, an affiliate of Harvard Medical School, where he served as Chief Resident and earned his 360° Professionalism award. He then had additional training in Addiction Psychiatry through his fellowship at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center. After completing training, Dr. Lin has worked as an Addiction Psychiatrist and Director of Adult Services in the Trauma and Resilience Center (TRC) at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth). He specialized in treating patients with a history of depression, anxiety, trauma, and substance use disorders.
Dr. Lin has held an academic appointment at UTHealth, and he has spent his professional career supervising and teaching medical students and psychiatry residents.
