Avatar Practice Management facilitates high volumes of transactions over the enterprise

Netsmart Avatar Practice Management (PM) is the result of over 30 years of experience in the human services industry combined with today’s software development technology. Avatar is a comprehensive software solution that provides a common gateway to a suite of robust software modules equipped to handle everything from the newest developments in SQL reporting, automated Methadone dispensing, and outcome analysis to the traditional workhorses of billing, tracking, scheduling, and treatment planning in all types of behavioral care modalities.

Client Management
Client admission, account management, leave, discharge, treatment and census data are recorded on various screens within this module. This module includes a key collection of reports integral to internal business procedures: Current Unit Census, Bed Availability Report, tables of active and discharged patients. A historic record is created for each episode of care, containing all service, diagnosis, treatment and billing information. Bed management, discharge planning, and a number of administrative functions are supported within this module.

Practitioner
Staff records are maintained in this module. This is also used as a key cross reference for ensuring that only eligible providers can render particular services.

Billing/Billing Reports
This module manages both the billing and accounts receivable functions of the system. It records all subscriber and plan coverage information, including charge input, bill preparation, payment posting, client ledger and electronic claims submission and remittance. Major billing formats (including HIPAA transaction sets) are supported “off the shelf,” eliminating the need for third party billing services. This module provides management and accounting reports to control the patient revenue/managed care contracts. The reports available include Aged Accounts Report, Report of Charges, Payment/Adjustment Report, Daily Transaction Report, Active Receivables, and Detail Trial Balance.

Simplified Billing steps
Additional enhancements to the billing module are designed to save time and simplify tedious processes. Avatar PM enables organizations to compile inpatient charges and post the inpatient work list within a specified date range. Users can also upload changes to charges and remittance in mass, enabling completion of cash posting in a single grid environment.

Scheduling/Scheduling Reports
The Avatar PM scheduling module is tightly integrated with the systems billing components. Patients are scheduled and as the appointments are kept and services are rendered, all relevant billing information is sent to the patient’s ledger. Service recording can easily be distributed to the provider level. Over 11 pre-defined client, staff, and facility reports derived from scheduling data are available in this module.

RADPlus Management Tool
RADPlus provides a single, intuitive user interface for all Avatar products. RADPlus powerful configuration and modeling tools enable Avatar software modules to be tailored to the needs of any organization.

RADPlus system management tools enable system administrators to proactively manage system usage and monitor all system activity.

RADPlus offers several robust features:

• Client Maintenance provides the tools to delete erroneous clients, program movements, and service entries. User definitions and profiles can by managed to allow certain users read only access through a menu option. Tools are also provided to change a client’s medical records number and purge the call intake file.
• System Definition provides the tool to build the default system tables for Guarantors, Benefit Plans, Service Codes, Hospital Bed Files, Referral Sources, Payment and Adjustment Codes, CPT Codes, and Revenue Codes. These tables are used to determine billing rates, guarantor coverage, and maintain accurate client treatment histories.
• RADPlus utilities provide Netsmart clients with control of the system security and configuration (i.e., menus), as well as full control of content management.

New Features (April 2008)

Improved Appointment History Tracking
Appointment Scheduling has been enhanced to retain the appointment history when the appointment is posted. Previously, when the appointment was posted the data was pushed to the treatment history as a service and the appointment data deleted. Also new are audit tables to keep track of changes that are made to the appointment and to keep a list of deleted appointments.

New Appointment Management Option for Scheduling
This feature enables agency staff to select a practitioner, enter start and end dates, and view all the appointments for that practitioner. Staff can also change certain data for that appointment, such as service code, program and staff, or create a new appointment for the selected practitioner or any other practitioner from the same screen. Staff can also select each individual appointment and check it to post the appointment. When that screen is filed, appointments with “Post” checked are posted and those that did not have “Post” checked remain un-posted

New Appointment Scheduling Module
The previous Appointment Scheduling options have been replaced with a new Appointment Scheduling Module. This change does NOT affect the look of Appointment Scheduling in Avatar PM, but enables easier synchronization of updates to Appointment Scheduling across all Avatar products that contain Scheduling. Once Avatar PM 2008 is loaded, all Appointment Scheduling patches are loaded from the “Appointment Scheduling” option rather than Avatar PM option.

New Bed Management Option
This new option enables users to view the status of all beds and perform bed change functions from a single screen. This includes viewing which beds are occupied and which are available; move a client to a different bed; switch two client’s beds; delete a bed assignment; edit a previous bed assignment; and print a bed assignment report. This option is also available in the admission form so that when admitting a client, staff can point and click in order to assign a bed instead of selecting the unit, then the room, then the bed.

New Form Designer in Modeling (RADPlus)
This new features allows users to move fields, change names/labels, hide fields, change font of names/labels in a Product Form.

New Access Method to Netsmart University
Education and training is a critical component to the adoption and ongoing use of any software solution. Netsmart University is now an integrated component of Avatar PM and does not require the user to log in to a second system. Clicking the “My Courses” button within Avatar PM launches Netsmart University where users will find valuable Avatar training courses. And, if their organization has Netsmart University, users will also be able to choose from all other available Netsmart University courses.

The Avatar product set is CCHIT Certified^SM. Learn more.

CCHIT^SM is a service mark of the Certification Commission for Healthcare Information Technology.

Contact us today for additional product information.