All addiction-treatment program guides
Software for the co-occurring program you already staff
SAMHSA defines co-occurring disorders as the coexistence of a mental-health disorder and a substance-use disorder. An EMR serving this work should help authorized team members coordinate relevant information without assuming that every role may open every note.
What to know
Co-occurring-care programs need psychiatric and substance-use information to inform the same plan while respecting access rules for each record. A staff member may need a complete note, a limited summary, or no access, depending on their role and permitted purpose. Our EMR brings patient information into a unified file. Your program’s forms, permissions, services, and payer requirements shape how that file and its billing handoffs should be configured.
Coordinated care without assuming one chart, one permission set, or one claim
Consider a hypothetical outpatient case involving a substance-use disorder and a mental-health diagnosis. A psychiatrist records an assessment, a counselor completes an addiction-focused assessment, and a prescriber reviews the medication history. The EMR should connect the information permitted for care while enforcing approved access rules; one role might receive a summary or alert rather than another discipline’s complete note. Each service may also have distinct benefit, authorization, charge, or claim requirements. The operational test is whether the service delivered, required supporting documentation and, when applicable, the correct authorization align with the submitted claim. If separate systems are retained, test how authorized information, corrections, and status changes move between them.
SAMHSA describes co-occurring disorders as any coexistence of a mental-health disorder and a substance-use disorder, not one prescribed pairing. ASAM describes its criteria as a framework for assessing medical, psychological, and social needs, developing an individualized treatment plan, and matching a person to an appropriate level of care; it also identifies co-occurring capability as an expectation for addiction treatment programs. These principles support coordinated care but do not require one record, planning document, permission set, authorization, or claim. Configure and test the EMR against the program’s actual services, roles, payer arrangements, and permitted information flows.
What a co-occurring program needs from the EMR
Connected assessments with governed access
Psychiatric and addiction-focused assessments should be connected to the appropriate patient and course of care when the program is authorized to use them together. Test whether an authorized clinician can find the relevant history without duplicate intake work and whether restricted material remains restricted.
Role-appropriate visibility across disciplines
Access design should reflect the organization, the records involved, the user’s role, and the permitted purpose. HHS explains that Part 2 protects specified records maintained in connection with federally conducted, regulated, or assisted SUD programs or activities. Its final-rule summary permits a single consent for future treatment, payment, and health-care-operations uses and disclosures and says Part 2 records need not be segregated or segmented, while separately maintained SUD counseling notes require specific consent. The fact sheet does not determine whether Part 2 applies to a particular organization or record. Demonstrate complete notes, summaries, alerts, amendments, and restricted records under each intended role rather than relying on a general promise of a shared chart.
A reconciled medication history
Authorized prescribers need a medication history they can review across relevant psychotropic and substance-use medications. Our EMR includes prescriptions, medication orders, protocol orders, medication history, contraindications, MAT, and controlled and psychotropic substances. Define who may enter, change, reconcile, and view each part of the record, particularly when an outside source or more than one prescriber is involved.
Coordinated planning without forcing one plan
Test whether appropriate mental-health and substance-use goals, reviews, and updates can be coordinated or cross-referenced for authorized users. The workflow should also preserve separate plans or episodes when the program, service structure, access rules, or payer arrangements require them. For example, a relevant medication change might create an authorized summary or follow-up task without exposing the full source note.
Billing records that preserve service-specific requirements
Psychiatric and substance-use services may follow different benefits, documentation rules, billing units, authorizations, or claims. The EMR and billing workflow should preserve those distinctions while linking each billed service to required supporting documentation and, when applicable, the correct authorization. Test how corrections propagate, how a no-authorization-required service is represented, and how staff identify mismatches before submission.
The caseload the clinical lead already runs
Clinical leads may need to identify open cases, upcoming psychiatric reviews, and incomplete addiction assessments without receiving access to every underlying note. Evaluate whether permission-aware worklists or reports can answer those questions and whether data from separate modules or systems reconcile reliably.
Connecting co-occurring-care records in Sunwave
We bring admissions records, assessments, treatment plans, and billing into our EMR. Our revenue-cycle tools add authorization, claim-status, error-review, and reporting workflows. For a co-occurring-care program, the implementation discussion should specify the psychiatric and addiction assessments you use, access to sensitive records, and what information needs to pass to billing. Any additional modules or interfaces should be identified in that plan.
A practical review uses your actual roles and service mix. Bring a hypothetical case with a psychiatric assessment, addiction assessment, restricted note, medication update, care-plan change, and corrected charge. Your privacy team can define the intended access; your clinical and billing teams can then work with us to review the required configuration. Include services with different authorization requirements so those differences remain visible.
Frequently asked questions
Which roles should participate in the demonstration?
Include the people who perform intake, addiction counseling, psychiatric prescribing, clinical supervision, utilization review or billing, and access administration. Give each participant credentials matching the proposed role and have them work with the same hypothetical patient. This reveals whether summaries, worklists, edits, and downstream billing data behave differently from full clinical notes—and whether those differences match the intended workflow.
Which edge cases should the demonstration include?
Use scenarios such as a changed consent or access instruction, a staff member moving to a new role, an amended assessment, an outside medication added during reconciliation, a restricted note, a corrected service date, and a claim returned for correction. Include services with different documentation and authorization requirements. For each scenario, verify what every role can see, what changes downstream, which history is retained, and who receives an exception or follow-up task.
How is co-occurring care different from MAT or IOP?
Co-occurring describes the presence of both a mental-health disorder and a substance-use disorder. It is not itself a level of care. ASAM’s framework distinguishes levels of care by setting, staffing, service intensity, and other characteristics, while medication treatment may be one component of a person’s care. Evaluate both the cross-disciplinary coordination workflow and the documentation, scheduling, medication, access, and billing requirements of the services the program actually provides.
How should the team score the demonstration?
Create a pass-or-fail row for each workflow before the demonstration. Record the initiating role, expected access, source record, required handoff, downstream billing effect, exception owner, and evidence observed. Mark configuration, integration, module, and contract dependencies separately. A scenario should remain unresolved when the team sees only a slide or verbal assurance instead of the configured workflow.
Sources and product pages
- SAMHSA — Co-Occurring Disorders and Other Health Conditions
- ASAM — The ASAM Criteria
- HHS — Fact Sheet: 42 CFR Part 2 Final Rule
- Sunwave — Behavioral Health EMR
- Sunwave — Revenue Cycle Management
Confirm current product configuration, packaging, integration, and contract details before purchase.
Plan your co-occurring-care workflow with us
Tell us where your psychiatry, counseling, medication, care-planning, and billing workflows meet. We can use those handoffs to discuss the record, permissions, and interfaces your program needs.