Building Better Behavioral Health Systems with Data, Trust, and Human Judgment with Rebecca Ragland

Yeah, so I think it's really important to me with this transition to, I just feel very strongly about the human element of our work.

And I feel like every day in this space, I'm learning something new.

I mean, I would say even in the last six months, I don't know if you feel the same because you're in this, in these discussions, but technology and innovation, you know, everything's moving so quickly.

And There's so many incredible innovators out there that it just blows me away.

I feel like, though, at this point, we're not just digitizing things.

We're really thinking about, okay, how can technology support people accessing care, How do we support our clinicians to have better quality data and use their time in that human, that deeply human space? Because I really, I feel like all of my work, that drives it, right? And all of my conversations and the partners that I work with, that drives it.

And I do have a story that really resonated with me earlier this year, was visiting with one of our partners at a site visit.

And They've done all of this incredible work to integrate assessment technology, really standardize and work on those workflows for really long wait lists so that individuals can move through the wait list.

But they still recognize the need for the human component.

And they had a gentleman that was in his 70s.

You know, he had waited years.

to be able to access something that was going to help him understand something more about himself that he had long wondered about.

But technology moved so fast, he didn't know how to access it.

And really, how to have a human validate what he has been experiencing for who knows how long.

And in his 70s, having that support to just be able to log on and not that you can't do that, but how to go through that system, it's intimidating.

And this partner organization has done some incredible work to really release some of that admin burden and that clinical, you know, kind of the things that they don't need to be doing to really work with this gentleman.

So ultimately being able to redirect and use technology to free up that human time and help our clinicians with that judgment piece, that trust, And they can then make some really good care decisions.

That's just really stuck with me.

And we just can't lose that.

I feel really strongly about

that.

Totally.

I'm a huge proponent of finding the right balance between tech and human touch.

I mean, even since the very beginning days of BHT, we've talked a lot about that.

And it's more important than ever with AI.