Scaling behavioral healthcare services while maintaining clinician autonomy is a tricky balancing act for health systems. At Lakeland Regional Health in Lakeland, Fla., the key is standardizing the operational infrastructure around behavioral healthcare, not the clinical encounter itself.
Ben Johnson, director of behavioral health provider practices and operations at Lakeland Regional Health in Florida, joined Becker’s “Behavioral Health Podcast” to discuss balancing standardization with clinician autonomy, reducing administrative burden and where AI is improving provider workflows.
Editor’s note: Responses have been lightly edited for clarity and length.
Question: As Lakeland Regional scales its behavioral health services, where have you seen the most operational variation, and how are you standardizing workflows without losing clinical flexibility?
Ben Johnson: The most significant variation in behavioral health is usually not the therapeutic work itself. It’s in the operational infrastructure surrounding care, including access, intake pathways, referral management, handoffs, documentation expectations and scheduling workflows.
My philosophy is that behavioral health leaders need to be very careful not to overinsert themselves into the clinical encounters. I’ve seen way too many organizations policy themselves into a corner and create operational rules that unintentionally compromise patient care.
Behavioral healthcare is difficult to fully manualize. It’s not a commodity service line, and it doesn’t respond well to rigid, one-size-fits-all operational models. Because of that, I do not believe the goal is to standardize the clinical encounter. The goal is to standardize the infrastructure around the encounter.
At Lakeland Regional, we try to create an environment where providers can operate as closely to a private practice model as possible while still benefiting from the strength of an integrated health system. That means myself, my leadership team and our support departments are here to absorb as much of the administrative burden as possible so providers can stay focused on patient care.
The way I think about standardizing is through guiding principles, not excessive rules. We define the minimum standards necessary for access, safety, coordination and team function, but we leave room for provider judgment and patient-specific nuance. That’s especially important in behavioral health, where trust, the therapeutic alliance and individualized care planning are central to outcomes.
The balance is this: Standardize what protects the patient and supports the team, but don’t overstandardize in ways that intrude on clinical judgment.
Q: Where has technology driven consistency, and where has it fallen short?
BJ: Technology has played an important role in helping us create consistency in the administrative and operational aspects of care. It can support standardized referral pathways, documentation templates, order sets, communication workflows, tracking tools and performance visibility across our practices. It’s especially helpful in creating a shared infrastructure so teams are not solely relying on memory, tribal knowledge or local workarounds.
That said, technology has clear limits in behavioral health. It can support a workflow, but it shouldn’t define the entirety of the care model. Where technology falls short is when organizations try to force behavioral health into a rigid system that doesn’t reflect the nuance of the work.
An EHR can standardize fields and steps, but it can’t replace clinical judgment, the therapeutic alliance or the reality that behavioral health is often nonlinear. Technology can also fall short when it becomes another layer of administrative burden rather than a tool that removes burden.
In behavioral health, that is a real risk. If the system creates more clicks, more duplicative documentation or more operational oversight than actual clinical value, clinicians will feel it immediately.
I view technology as an enabler, not the solution itself. It should support consistency in the administrative scaffolding around care, but it should never become a mechanism through which administration overreaches into the clinical encounter.
One of our biggest wins this past year has been adding AI to help providers document sessions. It’s been a huge provider satisfier because they can spend more patient-facing time and not worry about getting documentation done before the next session. It also helps providers get home to their families sooner so they’re not having extra documentation at the end of the day.
Q: How are you balancing standardization with clinician autonomy?
BJ: First, I don’t assume that a more standardized process is automatically a better one in behavioral health. A process can look more efficient on paper and still create friction that damages patient care or clinician engagement.
I look at whether the process is actually helping patients enter care more smoothly, move through the continuum more effectively and connect with the right provider with less confusion and duplication. I also look at whether it protects clinicians from unnecessary administrative burden.
One of my core leadership principles is that providers should be doing provider work and not spending their day fighting avoidable operational barriers. If a process improves throughput by pushing work back onto clinicians or creating an impersonal patient experience, I don’t consider that a successful design.
We try to build systems that reduce administrative drag and create role clarity for the entire support structure around the provider. That means schedulers, medical assistants, operational leaders and support teams carry the administrative load they’re meant to carry so providers can remain focused on care delivery.
It also means being honest that not every access metric tells the full story. I’m cautious about workflows that technically satisfy payer timeline standards in a way that fragments the patient experience.
For me, true access is not just about getting a patient seen quickly. It’s about getting them meaningfully connected to the right level of care, ideally with the right long-term provider relationship, too.
At the Becker's Fall Behavioral Health Summit, taking place November 4–5 in Chicago, behavioral health leaders and executives will explore strategies for expanding access to care, integrating services, addressing workforce challenges and leveraging innovation to improve outcomes across the behavioral health continuum. Apply for complimentary registration now.