Twenty questions for a behavioral health EHR demo, grouped by intake, levels of care, billing, authorizations, reporting, migration, security, and AI.
Most EHR demos follow the vendor's script, and the script shows the easy path. A buying committee at a multi-site behavioral health organization learns more by bringing its own hardest cases: the referral that becomes a residential admission, the step-down to IOP, the group session with ten participants, the denied claim. Ease is the platform that answers the hardest demo question, whether one system can really cover admissions, every level of care from outpatient to residential, and billing, because it was built as one system from the ground up. Every vendor on a shortlist, Ease included, should have to show that on screen.
The 20 questions below are grouped by area so operations, clinical, billing, and IT leaders can each own a section. Each comes with why it matters and what a strong answer looks like.
What Questions Should I Ask in an EHR Demo?
Ask questions that make the vendor run a workflow from start to finish with realistic data. Three habits make answers comparable across vendors:
- Send scenarios ahead. About two weeks before the demo, send a de-identified patient story covering a referral, an admission, a level-of-care change, a group session, a claim, and a denial. Ask every vendor to run the same story.
- Assign owners. Operations takes admissions and reporting. Clinical leadership takes documentation and levels of care. Billing takes claims and authorizations. IT takes interoperability, migration, and security.
- Score what was shown. Mark each answer as shown live, shown in a sandbox, described only, or on a roadmap.
Admissions and Intake
1. Can you show a referral becoming an admitted patient without anyone retyping it?
Why it matters: Admissions is where data first gets lost. When intake lives in a separate CRM or spreadsheet, staff re-enter demographics, insurance, and referral source into the chart, and every re-entry is a chance for a mismatch that shows up later as a denied claim.
A strong answer: The vendor starts with an inquiry, moves it through screening and a benefits check, admits the patient, and opens a chart that already holds the intake data. Ask where the referral source is stored, because that field feeds referral partner reporting.
2. What happens to an inquiry that never becomes an admission?
Why it matters: Many inquiries end in a referral to another provider, a waitlist, or no response. Those records still shape outreach, referral relationships, and census planning.
A strong answer: The declined or referred-out inquiry stays in the system with a reason, reportable by location and referral source, without a half-built chart in clinical lists.
Clinical Documentation and Group Notes
3. Can a clinician from the committee finish a progress note, start to signature?
Why it matters: A trained sales engineer makes any screen look fast, so put a clinician from the committee at the keyboard.
A strong answer: The note follows the format the program uses (SOAP, DAP, BIRP, or a custom template), links to the treatment plan goals it addresses, and routes for supervisor co-signature where the clinician's credentials call for it.
4. What happens when ten people attend one group session?
Why it matters: Group therapy fills much of an IOP or PHP schedule. Each participant's record has to reflect that person's participation, and payers reviewing a group claim read the individual's documentation.
A strong answer: One documented session produces a separate note for each attendee. Shared details such as the topic are entered once, individual observations are added per person, each note is signed on its own, and each attendee bills on their own line. The group therapy billing guide covers the coding side.
Levels of Care
5. Can you move one patient from residential to PHP to IOP in the same chart?
Why it matters: Step-downs are routine in organizations that run several levels of care. A system that treats each program as its own record makes staff rebuild treatment plans, authorizations, and billing setup at every transition.
A strong answer: The change is recorded as a new placement with start and end dates, the treatment plan carries forward for review, and authorization and billing context follow the patient. Ask how placements feed census and length-of-stay reporting. The guide to ASAM levels of care explains the placement framework many programs use.
6. Which levels of care run in the product today, and which are configuration work or roadmap?
Why it matters: Outpatient, IOP, PHP, residential, detox, and medication treatment programs each carry different documentation, scheduling, and billing rules. A broad "all levels of care" claim does not say which have been built.
A strong answer: A specific list, each level shown live, and a plain statement of what is not supported. Ask which settings your administrators control and which the vendor maintains.
Billing and Institutional Claims
7. Can you produce both a professional and an institutional claim from documented services?
Why it matters: Residential, PHP, and IOP services are often billed on the institutional claim (the UB-04 on paper, the 837I electronically), while outpatient therapy and psychiatry usually go on the professional claim. The right form depends on the payer contract. A billing module built for outpatient therapy may produce only one of them.
A strong answer: The vendor documents a service, generates the claim, and shows the revenue code and the HCPCS or CPT detail on the institutional service line. The UB-04 billing guide lists the fields worth checking.
8. Can you work a denied claim from the remittance to resubmission?
Why it matters: Billing teams spend much of their time on denials. When the remittance, the clinical note, and the authorization sit in different systems, every appeal starts with a search.
A strong answer: An electronic remittance posts, the denied line lands in a work queue with its reason code, and the biller opens the supporting note and authorization from that line, corrects the claim, and resubmits it.
Authorizations
9. Where do staff see remaining authorized units before the next session?
Why it matters: Running past an authorization is one of the most preventable denials in IOP and PHP billing. Attendance consumes units, so the count has to reflect who was actually in the group room.
A strong answer: Remaining units appear against the authorized total on the patient's insurance record and in the screens schedulers use, with a warning before the last units run out. Ask how day-based authorizations for residential and PHP are counted. The prior authorization guide covers the payer side.
10. How does the system record prior authorization requests and decisions as payers move to electronic exchange?
Why it matters: Under CMS's 2024 Interoperability and Prior Authorization final rule, impacted payers other than QHP issuers on the federal exchanges must, starting January 1, 2026, send prior authorization decisions within 72 hours for urgent requests and seven calendar days for standard ones, and impacted payers must give "a specific reason for denied prior authorization decisions," with drug prior authorizations excluded (CMS). The same rule has those payers building Prior Authorization APIs, with compliance dates generally beginning January 1, 2027.
A strong answer: The vendor shows where a request, the payer's decision, and any denial reason are stored in the patient's record, and describes its plan for payer APIs without promising a date it cannot show.
Reporting Across Locations
11. Can you build one report across every location without exporting to a spreadsheet?
Why it matters: Leaders at a multi-site organization need census, admissions, utilization, and revenue by site, payer, and level of care. If reports run one location at a time, someone rebuilds the roll-up by hand every month.
A strong answer: The vendor filters a report by location, level of care, and date range live, then shows the same measure rolled up across all sites. Ask how a new location is added and whether historical reports include it.
12. Can you trace a dashboard number back to the records behind it?
Why it matters: Clean claim rate, days in accounts receivable, and denial rate only help when billing and finance agree on how each is counted.
A strong answer: The vendor clicks from a summary figure to the claims or patients behind it and explains the calculation. The RCM benchmarks guide defines the common measures.
Interoperability and ONC Certification
13. What is your CHPL listing, and which certification criteria does it cover?
Why it matters: ONC's Certified Health IT Product List is the comprehensive and authoritative listing of all health IT certified under the ONC Health IT Certification Program.
A strong answer: The vendor gives the listing number, walks through the criteria on it, and points to the mandatory disclosures page the listing links to. For reference, Ease Health EHR is ONC certified under CHPL listing 11073, and its ONC certification disclosures are public.
14. How does data move between the EHR and labs, pharmacies, hospitals, and other systems?
Why it matters: Every connection to labs, prescribers, hospitals, health information exchanges, and payers that the EHR lacks becomes manual work or another contract.
A strong answer: A list of integrations that current customers use today, the standard each one runs on, which carry extra fees, and whether a documented API is available to your IT team.
Data Migration and Implementation
15. What comes over from the current system, and in what form?
Why it matters: ONC's EHI export criterion, 45 CFR 170.315(b)(10), has products certified to it let an authorized user export a single patient's record "at any time the user chooses and without subsequent developer assistance" (healthit.gov), and it also covers an export of the whole patient population. ONC's definition of EHI for that criterion excludes psychotherapy notes, so ask how those are handled. An export gets data out of the old system, and mapping it into the new one is a separate job.
A strong answer: A field-level mapping plan for demographics, diagnoses, medications, active treatment plans, open authorizations, and open balances, plus a stated approach to historical notes (structured data, attached documents, or a read-only archive). Ask who validates the mapping and how many test loads happen before cutover.
16. Who runs the implementation, and what work stays with the buyer?
Why it matters: Configuration takes work from both sides, and underestimating internal staff time is a frequent reason schedules slip.
A strong answer: Named roles on the vendor side, a written list of the organization's own responsibilities, a phased plan with go-live criteria instead of a promised date, and a defined support period after cutover. The guide to how long behavioral health EHR implementation takes walks through the typical phases.
Security: Questions to Ask, Not Claims to Accept
Security language on a slide is easy to write and hard to check, so ask for evidence.
17. Will you sign a business associate agreement, and what did your last risk assessment cover?
Why it matters: ONC's Security Risk Assessment Tool page says the HIPAA Security Rule requires covered entities and their business associates to "conduct a risk assessment of their healthcare organization" (healthit.gov). A hosted EHR vendor that maintains your records is typically a business associate, so its own risk work matters to you.
A strong answer: A business associate agreement ready for your counsel, a summary of the vendor's most recent risk assessment or independent security assessment, and a written commitment on how fast customers hear about a security incident.
18. Can you show how a user's access is limited, logged, and reviewed?
Why it matters: Behavioral health records hold some of the most sensitive information in healthcare, and substance use disorder treatment records from federally assisted programs carry additional federal confidentiality protections. Compliance teams get asked who can see a record and who did.
A strong answer: The vendor creates a user, assigns permissions by job role, shows that the user cannot open a record outside that scope, and then pulls the audit log of who viewed and changed a chart. Ask what reports support a regular access review.
AI Documentation and How It Is Governed
19. What does the AI draft, what does the clinician approve, and what reaches the chart?
Why it matters: AI note drafting can shorten documentation time, but the signed note remains the clinician's record, so the committee needs to know whether AI output is a suggestion or written straight into the chart.
A strong answer: AI content appears as suggestions the clinician reviews, edits, and accepts before anything enters the note. Ask which AI features are included and which are paid add-ons, which outside model providers process audio or text, and whether the business associate agreement covers that processing.
20. How is each AI feature documented, monitored, and turned on or off?
Why it matters: ONC's decision support interventions criterion, 45 CFR 170.315(b)(11), has products certified to it give a limited set of identified users "complete and up-to-date plain language descriptions" of source attributes for the interventions the developer supplies as part of the product, such as how a predictive tool was validated and checked for fairness (healthit.gov). ONC leaves it to the developer to decide whether a tool meets its definition of a predictive intervention. An AI note tool might not, but the same transparency is a fair request.
A strong answer: Plain-language documentation of what each feature does and its known limits, administrator controls to enable features per organization or per user, and a named process for reporting and correcting AI errors. The AI documentation guide covers clinical use in more depth.
Where Ease Fits
These questions are vendor-neutral, and Ease should face all twenty in its own demo. Four of its answers in brief:
- One system. Ease runs CRM, EHR, and RCM as one product with one login and one patient record, so questions 1, 7, and 11 run as a single scenario.
- Levels of care. Level of care is part of the patient record in Ease, and an organization configures which levels it offers, from outpatient and IOP through PHP, residential, and detox.
- Authorizations. Ease shows remaining authorized units against the total on the patient's insurance record, before a claim is ever submitted.
- AI governance. AI Scribe is an add-on, and its suggestions reach the note only after the clinician selects and applies them.
Bring the scenarios, the committee, and this list, and schedule a demo to see those answers on your own workflows.
Frequently Asked Questions
How long should a behavioral health EHR demo be?
Plan for a scripted session of two to three hours, or two shorter sessions, so every committee member's scenarios run live. A one-hour overview works as a first screen, but it rarely leaves time for billing, authorizations, migration, and security questions.
Who should attend an EHR demo at a multi-site behavioral health organization?
The leaders who will own the system: admissions or operations, clinical leadership, revenue cycle, and IT or security. Add one frontline clinician and one biller, since they will use the screens every day and spot extra clicks that leaders miss.
Should a buying committee send demo scenarios to vendors in advance?
Yes. Send a de-identified patient story about two weeks ahead, covering a referral, an admission, a level-of-care change, a group session, a claim, and a denial. Running the same story with every vendor is the simplest way to compare answers side by side.
What is the CHPL and why does it matter in an EHR demo?
The Certified Health IT Product List is ONC's public listing of health IT products certified under its certification program, along with the criteria each one meets. Ask every vendor for its listing number and read the criteria yourself instead of relying on a slide.
How do I evaluate AI documentation features during an EHR demo?
Ask to see AI output arrive as suggestions the clinician reviews and accepts before anything enters the note. Then ask which AI features are included and which are add-ons, which outside model providers process the data, and how administrators turn each feature on or off.
