Keeping a treatment program running through COVID
When COVID shut its doors, an outpatient mental health facility needed its program online, and compliant, fast. I built a custom system that turned it into online classes, with secure records, clinical notes and billing behind it.
Client
Outpatient mental health facility
Location
Bakersfield, California
My role
CTO, on staff
Timeline
First patients in 6 months, fully back in 1 year
The problem
COVID stopped in-person treatment overnight. For an outpatient facility with 20 to 30 patients, every day closed cost thousands of dollars, and they had to reduce staff just to get through the move online.
Everyone agreed the program had to go digital, but nobody had worked out how. I was brought in with a problem, not a plan: take the program online and keep it compliant.
The process
How the project went, step by step.
01
Learn
Before building anything, I learned how medical billing works, so the system would bill correctly and store patient data the way healthcare rules require.
02
Convert
I turned the in-person program into self-paced, timed online classes. Each patient signed in to their own account and worked through the program from home.
03
Simplify
I built templates for clinical notes, so each nurse or case worker only had to worry about their own notes, not the whole record.
04
Restart
Patients started coming back about six months in. We restarted slowly, training staff and finding clients again, and the facility was fully back in business within a year.
The solution
A custom system I built from scratch: patients register on the facility's WordPress website, then take the program online in their own account. Behind it, the staff have clinical notes, billing and patient records in one place. Patient data is stored securely, and every time someone opens it, it's logged.
Because each nurse and case worker spent far less time on paperwork, a small team could care for more patients. The facility could restart lean and grow from there.
The treatment program, rebuilt as self-paced, timed online classes
A personal account for every patient
Registration through the facility's WordPress website
Clinical note templates for nurses and case workers
Billing that follows medical billing rules
Secure patient records, with every access logged
The results
4×
more patients each nurse could support
6 months
until patients were back in the program
1 year
from closed doors to fully back in business
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