Netsmart Announces 'My Avatar' at National Council for Community Behavioral Healthcare Annual Conference

GREAT RIVER, N.Y., March 15 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Netsmart Technologies, Inc., a leading provider of enterprise-wide software and services for health and human services organizations, today announced the planned release of My Avatar™, the next generation of the company's industry leading electronic health record (EHR) and practice management software suite. The My Avatar software is being demonstrated at the National Council for Community Behavioral Healthcare's 40th Annual National Mental Health and Addictions Conference and Expo held March 15-17 in Orlando, Fla.

Scheduled for availability in fall 2010, My Avatar will enable staff in provider organization to personalize screen views and functionality in Avatar software by individual work roles.

"For providers to realize the efficiency and productivity gains from software, it needs to work the way their staff works, provide a user-friendly experience and offer them functions in a readily-available format that does not complicate their current work flow," said James L. Conway, chief executive officer, Netsmart Technologies. "Over the years, we have added deep functionality to our Avatar suite based on customer requirements. Our goal is to provide an intuitive user experience that enables all different types of users to access and manage critical information. We're confident My Avatar will set a new standard for software usability in behavioral and public healthcare."

My Avatar includes predefined templates for what Netsmart has found to be widely used roles within its customer base, including clinicians, executives, front desk, billing and information technology (IT). Other functions can be added easily and modifications can be made by end users without custom programming or in-depth technical knowledge. Widgets can be created and added to a home view, which can then be further customized to suit the preferences of the end user. My Avatar also makes key clinical elements like client charts available from a single screen view.

"A lot of behavioral health software has just one interface geared to either a billing or clinical function. We think it's important for users working in a multitasking environment to use software that adapts to their individual roles in the organization," said Suzanne Windham, software support and database analyst at Life Management Center of Northwest Florida. "We participated in the focus group research during the development of My Avatar, and feel it will give all different types of users quick access to the functions they need to be productive."

By allowing different types of users to tailor their own view of the system for the way they work, My Avatar's role-based features and functionality will benefit staff throughout organizations:

• Clinicians: Provides a single-click view and ability to modify a client's Electronic Health Record. Clinicians can quickly open, view, and edit medications, treatment plans, progress notes and other key components of the health record.  Clinicians can customize their home view to quickly see the information they need to manage all of their clients, including upcoming appointments in an easy-to-read calendar and alerts and reminders in a To Do list.

• Executives: Decision-making is enhanced with dashboard display of key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure compliance and revenue, as well as other organizational goals. Each executive can customize the screen to the way he or she works.

• Front Desk staff: Facilitates faster check-in and easier scheduling by providing front desk staff access to all the information needed from a single screen with multiple views of staff schedules. Also shows client authorization and eligibility information.

• Billing staff: A convenient billing dashboard allows billing staff to easily track claims and payments received. The system provides snapshots and drill-downs of items like billing status, accounts receivables, and claim value by payer.

• Information Technology staff:  Monitors the status of systems to ensure they are optimized. IT staff can customize any screen using ScriptLink, which gives users the ability to use a scripting language such as Java, .NET, ColdFusion or uScript to add custom programming to Avatar. With the My Avatar modeling tools users can quickly adapt to changing organizational requirements.

My Avatar is currently planned for a fall 2010 release as an upgrade for existing Avatar customers to allow them to take advantage of the new user interface.

"Very simply, our goal in offering My Avatar is to make our customers' workdays more efficient and increase the time spent providing quality care to consumers," said Conway.

For more information about My Avatar or other Netsmart Technologies solutions, visit www.ntst.com/myavatar or call 1-800-421-7503, Option 6.

About Netsmart Technologies, Inc.

Netsmart Technologies is an established, leading supplier of enterprise software and software as a service (SaaS) solutions for health and human services providers. More than 18,000 customer organizations, including 350,000 care providers and nearly 40 state systems, use Netsmart products.

Netsmart's customers include mental health and substance abuse treatment agencies, psychiatric hospitals, private and group mental health practices, public health departments, vital records offices and managed care organizations. Netsmart's products are full-featured information systems that operate on a variety of operating systems, hardware platforms, and mobile devices, and offer unlimited scalability.

Netsmart's Avatar PM 2006 Release 02 is a CCHIT Certified® 2006 Ambulatory EHR.

Netsmart's Connected Care initiative allows behavioral and public healthcare providers to share clinical data electronically within their internal processes, externally with other providers, and with consumers via a Web-based portal, enabling high quality, consumer-directed care.

Netsmart provides solutions that help its customers meet the evolving definition of "meaningful use" under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) of 2009. These include a certified electronic health record, the InfoScriber e-prescribing service, the CareConnect™ service that enables the sharing of clinical information through health information exchanges, and a flexible platform to capture and share outcomes data.

"My Avatar" is a trademark of Netsmart Technologies, Inc.

SOURCE Netsmart Technologies, Inc.