Valant Review: EHR Software for Mental Health Practices

Valant Cost

Valant does not publish pricing, but it's safe to assume that it's more expensive than the newer solutions on the market built for smaller practices. We estimate that it costs roughly $200-250 per month per user. Valant only offers annual contracts.

Additional costs are:

Cancellation: Valant only offers annual contracts.

Table of Contents

• Full Review
• Cost
• Key Features
  • Client Intake
  • Scheduling
  • Online Patient Portal
  • Plans, Notes & Charts
  • Billing & Invoicing
• Is Valant right for you?

Full Review: Valant EHR Software for Mental Health Practices

Valant Medical Solutions was started in 2005 by CEO David Lischner, M.D. The company serves thousands of private, public and enterprise practices throughout the United States with its cloud-based, HIPAA-compliant SaaS solution. According to Valant, the company was founded to streamline administration and empower what’s most important: improving outcomes. The company currently has 67 employees and is based in Seattle, Washington.

Valant's solution is built to help organizations enhance patient engagement, outcomes measurement, and increase revenue. The company offers four packages:

All packages are complete EHR and practice management systems. The desktop version in each package offers a full set of features including scheduling, clinical notes, file management, billing & invoicing, and a patient portal. Financial and productivity reporting are commonly cited strengths of Valant's platform.

In the Prescribers Suite, Valant has integrated screening forms and questionnaires, which are built to help you meet the requirements of the most stringent evaluation and management codes while reducing unnecessary data entry. ePrescribing is also integrated directly into the system. This feature allows you to check, refill, and renew medications from several places within the application. Many of the newer tools on the market do not support ePrescribing.

Overall, Valant is a tested, reliable option for medium to large practices that value an integrated ePrescribing solution, the ability to track patient outcomes, and do not mind a slightly older user interface without telehealth functionality. The older software does come with some drawbacks, such as only working with certain web browsers (i.e. Firefox and Outlook). Many companies tend to select Valant over newer solutions because it works for both therapists and psychiatrists; it is also more user-friendly than Athena or Cerner.

Key Features

Below, we'll discuss some of the key features of Valant, and how they would benefit your practice. We'll also share some photos of the actual product to give you a sense of its design and architecture.

Client Intake

Valant provides features to benefit your client intake workflow. Your team can use the system to check patients in and send intake documents. Through the portal, patients are able to complete forms at home. You can also send initial assessments to patients during intake to establish baselines.

Scheduling

Valant's appointment scheduling tool allows your team to manage everything from one place. Clinicians can also schedule follow-up appointments from the patient's chart. Appointments contain the fields shown in the image below:

The calendar interface can be viewed by day, week or month. You are able to filter the calendar view by provider, facility and other criteria. One drawback is that the calendar only syncs one way, which means you need to log into Valant to make changes to your schedule.

Online Patient Portal

Valant offers a useful patient portal that will save your team time and enhance your client experience. In the portal, clients can:

One drawback is that patients are not able to schedule appointments through the portal. However, the company has said that it will make major updates to the portal in late 2019. Here is an example of what a patient would see when logging into the Valant portal:

Plans, Notes and Charts

Valant comes with templates for treatment planning, notes, and charts. many of which were built specifically for psychiatrists. Here is an example of a questionnaire that is integrated into Valant:

The company designed its documentation workflow to save time and improve documentation habits. When a patient arrives, the provider opens the mobile notes interface shown below to see the patient's chart. As you can see, this view shows all progress notes, intake notes, telephone notes, and other data specific to this individual patient. To help you save time, Valant makes old data available for reuse; relevant information will pull forward from previous sessions. Valant also automatically generates text narratives that can be edited and exported into a professional document.

Billing and Invoicing

For billing, you have the option to use Valant's clearinghouse or your own claims processing vendor. The system supports automatic charge creation to help you improve billed revenue. Valant does allow ERAs from claims processors, so you can more easily determine how much you were paid along with explanations in the cases you were not.

The appointments contain payment and co-pay information. After an appointment is complete, your team can collect the co-pay and record the payment into the system.

Is Valant right for you?

Valant's system provides the most value for mid-to-large practices with psychiatrists who benefit from its more sophisticated feature set and ePrescribing capability. The system also contains many advanced, nice-to-have features that are not present in many newer systems, such as the auto-generated clinical narratives. However, Valant is also slightly older than other options on the market, as you can see from the images of the interface. An important drawback is that it only functions in certain browsers and is not as mobile-friendly. The system is more expensive than newer alternatives, but is also more user-friendly than options like Athena and Cerner. If you are interested in getting a demo of Valant, visit its website here.