EMR-Bear, a Web-based electronic health record for the behavioral health field, grew out of a very personal need. When Dr. Jim Heneghan began his rural psychiatric practice in 2004, he logged more than 300 driving days in one year traveling from remote clinic to remote clinic. As parents of young children, he and his wife, Jay Galvan Heneghan, realized that they needed a more sustainable way to se
rve rural communities and began the process of building his practice via tele-medicine. In 2006, they started to search for an electronic health record that would allow Jim to have access to all of his client information from any computer with Internet access. Unfortunately, there was no product in the market that offered robust, comprehensive tools and features specifically designed for behavioral health practices. In 2008, they met Andres Paglayan, a software developer specializing in health care management services, and they were in business! Pairing Andres's knowledge of agile software development with Jim's expertise in system-based behavioral health care, they developed an electronic health record software-as-a-service that can serve the particular needs of community mental health organizations: billing and claims management, customizable clinical forms, 'smart' scheduling, electronic prescriptions, case-load management, and more. Today, EMR-Bear is being used to manage a wide range of behavioral health services, including out patient therapy, psychiatric services and medication management, treatment foster care, behavior management services, case management, community-based educational and mentoring programs, respite services, and residential treatment centers. EMR-Bear is developed by Tigerilla, LLC, which specializes in applying agile software development principles to solving complex management needs.
