Earlier this month, Centerstone Research Institute CEO Tom Doub briefed members of Congress on the need for interoperability of electronic health records between primary and behavioral health care. Describing how behavioral health has traditionally lagged behind primary care in EHR adoption, Doub outlined the benefits of coordinating patient data between the two entities. The Nashville Post spoke with Doub to discuss his briefing and how Congress can help.Why is behavioral health not already interoperable with primary providers?For several years we've been working with Congressional officials to get a fix in the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act that passed as part of the recovery funding in 2009. The issue is that the funding was put into place very rapidly, because the economy was crashing, and behavioral health was somehow excluded. One of the pieces was promoting the adoption of electronic health records, and nursing homes, psychiatric hospitals and doctors got funding, but if you lived outside of that ecosystem, you weren't included in the funding.How can Congress help?We're working for an amendment to the HITECH Act that would include the behavioral health community. The important part of this is making sure that we find the appropriate cost offsets to make it palatable legislatively, making sure this isn't an unduly costly bill. I believe it will provide economic benefit, because if you want to improve health, you have to coordinate people who have significant medical problems as well as mental health and substance abuse issues.In your briefing, you described a pilot program using EHRs and mobile technology to target high-use patients. How does that work?The fastest growing location for providing health care is actually a cell phone. Having that kind of connectivity and communication is really key to improving health. Our pilot program with Verizon targets people who cost more than $30,000 a year on health care expenses. Using tools and apps, we can communicate, video chat and track how they're doing, avoiding high-cost care situations.What do you see as the future for communication companies in health care?All the communication companies have a significant investment in using mobile technology to support health care delivery. Verizon has been a great partner for us--they're really interested in seeing these tools used for health care. I don't believe they're trying to enter the health care industry, but partnering with those in health care helps us figure out how what works and how to use those tools best.