The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration and the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology have launched a new initiative to advance health information technology in behavioral healthcare, HealthITbuzz reported Monday.
The Behavioral Health Information Technology, or BHIT, program will receive up to $20 million in SAMHSA funding over the next three years to identify a new set of data elements specific to behavioral health.
Under the BHIT initiative, SAMHSA and ONC will pilot the data sets with recipients of the Substance Use Prevention, Treatment, and Recovery Services Block Grant and Community Mental Health Services Block Grant.
The program will create a new U.S. Core Data for Interoperability Plus domain for behavioral health to coordinate the new set of data elements to enhance the effectiveness of data capture, use and exchange among behavioral health providers.