The mobile Electronic Coaching Record (mECR)

The recent CMS decision to cover billing codes for health and wellness coaching will bring operational challenges to medical practices that bring on health coaches. Such coaches will be pressured to quit using their existing documentation tools, often spreadsheets, word processing apps and even paper notebooks. While simple tools have been cost-effective for many coaches in the past, meeting medical practice, legal and administrative standards will push coaches toward using the practice’s electronic medical record (EMR). 

Unfortunately, the patient-focused needs of health coaching center around helping patients stay on top of forming new habits, following progress towards goals, monitoring data from wearables, as well as connecting with community resources to increase the patient’s social support - functions that EMRs just don’t do. 

Enter the mobile Electronic Coaching Record, or mECR. As health coaches become part of the health care team, the mECR will become a crucial tool for patients to interact with their coaches and community-based support team. 

In 4 brief vlogs, I illustrate the advantages of an mECR over an EMR for health and wellness coaching. The first vlog starts here:

Bibliography for this Series

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David J. Meyers, PhD, MPH; Andrew M. Ryan, PhD; Amal N. Trivedi, MD, MPH. How Much of an “Advantage” Is Medicare Advantage? JAMA 2022;328(21):2112-2113. 

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