Mental & behavioral health · Penna's deepest care model
The EMR for psychiatry, therapy and counseling
Penna was designed with a working psychiatry practice, and behavioral health is still the deepest thing in it. Your note formats, visit types, measurement instruments and code set all arrive configured for how a behavioral health practice actually runs.
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The chart your clinicians would work in.
Real screens from the product: the chart with PHQ-9 trended beside the note, the schedule, and billing in the same system. Click any of them to see it full size.
Notes in the format you already write
Five structured formats ship with the mental health model, chosen per note rather than forced on the practice.
SOAP, DAP and BIRP
The three formats behavioral health actually uses, side by side. A prescriber and a therapist can share a chart without sharing a template.
Intake Assessment
A structured new-patient evaluation rather than a blank page, so the first appointment produces a usable record, not a wall of free text.
Discharge Summary
A dedicated close-out format for when an episode of care ends, instead of improvising one in a blank note.
AI note assistance
Drafts run in our own HIPAA-covered environment. Prompts and completions are never stored and never used to train models.
Dictation
Speak the note and edit the draft. Medical vocabulary, in the chart, with no third-party transcription service holding your audio.
Blank note
For everything that does not fit a template. Still signed, still audited, still part of the legal record.
PHQ-9 and GAD-7, scored where the clinician looks
Measurement-based care only works when the score is in the chart rather than in a filing cabinet. Both instruments are first-class objects in Penna.
Scored and banded on entry
PHQ-9 lands in one of minimal, mild, moderate, moderately severe or severe. GAD-7 bands across minimal, mild, moderate and severe. No one is adding up columns by hand.
Trended across the episode
Scores plot over time on the patient's chart, so “is this working?” is a glance rather than a chart review.
Item 9 tracked separately
PHQ-9's self-harm item is carried as its own signal rather than buried in the total, so it stays visible to your clinicians even when the total score is flat.
Visit types and codes that match the work
The mental health model ships its own appointment types and a preloaded psychiatric code set, so the schedule and the claim agree with each other.
Behavioral health visit types
Intake / new patient evaluation, medication management, 45- and 60-minute psychotherapy, and crisis / urgent visits, with matching patient-facing labels in the portal.
Time-based code suggestions
Session length maps to the right psychotherapy code: 53 minutes or more suggests 90837, 38 or more suggests 90834, 16 or more suggests 90832. The clinician still decides; the system stops the guessing.
Psychiatric code set preloaded
90791 and 90792, 90832 / 90834 / 90837, the 90833 and 90836 add-ons, 90846, 90847 and 90853, E/M codes and 96127, with your fee schedule on top.
Eligibility and claims in the chart
Real-time eligibility, electronic claims, claim status and payment posting, without a separate billing product or a percentage of collections.
Telehealth and portal
Video visits and a patient portal are part of the platform, not an upsell, which matters for a specialty that runs largely remote.
EPCS-certified e-prescribing
Add e-prescribing per prescriber when a prescriber joins, controlled substances included, and drop it when they leave. No contract renegotiation.
Frequently asked
Which note formats does Penna support for behavioral health?
SOAP, DAP and BIRP, plus a structured Intake Assessment and a Discharge Summary. You pick the format per note, so a prescriber writing SOAP and a therapist writing DAP work in the same chart without fighting each other's template.
Are PHQ-9 and GAD-7 built in?
Yes. Both are scored on entry and banded automatically: PHQ-9 across minimal, mild, moderate, moderately severe and severe; GAD-7 across minimal, mild, moderate and severe. Scores trend over time on the patient's chart rather than sitting in a PDF.
Does Penna flag suicidal ideation?
PHQ-9 item 9 is tracked as a distinct self-harm signal rather than folded into the total score, so a rising item 9 is visible even when the overall score looks stable. It is a clinical decision-support signal for your clinicians, not a monitoring service; Penna does not triage or respond to it on your behalf.
Is the psychiatric code set preloaded?
Yes. Diagnostic evaluations (90791, 90792), psychotherapy at 30, 45 and 60 minutes (90832, 90834, 90837), the psychotherapy add-ons billed with E/M (90833, 90836), family and group codes (90846, 90847, 90853), E/M codes and the brief-assessment code 96127 all ship with the mental health model.
Can psychiatrists prescribe controlled substances?
Yes. E-prescribing is an add-on at $79 per prescriber and is EPCS certified. Each prescriber completes identity proofing once and signs controlled-substance prescriptions with two-factor authentication from the chart. Therapists on the same practice never pay for it.
What does a behavioral health practice pay?
$149 a month for the platform plus $79 per provider ($74 from the sixth seat, $69 from the sixteenth), plus $79 for each prescriber who needs e-prescribing. Front-desk, billing and management users are unlimited. A solo therapist pays $228 a month.
One platform, shaped per specialty
The same system underneath. The specialty decides your note formats, visit types and code set.
Built for behavioral health first.
Prescribers, therapists or both: start the trial and see the chart your clinicians would work in.
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