Purpose-Built for Behavioral Health: How OIC Streamlined Care with GEHRIMED®
Community
- Geriatric Behavioral Health
- OIC Behavioral Health, a subsidiary of TeamHealth®
- June Johnston, Director of Provider Success
- North Carolina
- Misaligned EHR system: The previous EHR was built for office-based primary care, lacking the flexibility and behavioral health focus needed.
- Inefficient documentation workflows: Providers relied on paper documentation and portable printers, adding complexity and slowing down clinical workflows.
- Limited customization: The system offered little ability to tailor workflows or templates to the needs of behavioral health providers.
- Cluttered clinical notes: Documentation was bogged down with irrelevant fields, making it harder for providers to focus on what mattered most.
- Time Savings: Providers save an estimated 15 minutes per note, allowing more time for patient care.
- Ease of Use: The customizable templates and straightforward interface have made documentation more efficient and less burdensome.
- Provider Satisfaction: The team values the system so much that a potential switch to another platform once sparked concerns of a “mass exit.”
- Training Efficiency: New providers can learn the basics of GEHRIMED in just a few hours.
- Improved Documentation: Behavioral health surveys like the PHQ-9 are now embedded directly into note templates, eliminating the need for manual data entry or paper-based processes.
OIC Behavioral Health Enhances Provider Efficiency and Documentation with GEHRIMED®
About OIC Behavioral Health
OIC Behavioral Health, a subsidiary of TeamHealth®, provides behavioral health services in skilled nursing and assisted living facilities across North Carolina. With a team of certified nurse practitioners, physician associates, and therapists, OIC supports some of the most vulnerable populations in long-term care settings. On a mission to support providers in delivering high-quality patient care, OIC turned to GEHRIMED to streamline documentation and improve operational efficiency.
GEHRIMED®, Netsmarts purpose-built EHR for geriatric behavioral health, has been instrumental in helping OIC Behavioral Health streamline workflows, simplify documentation, and support long-term clinical excellence.
One Size Didn’t Fit All: Why OIC Needed a Purpose-Built EHR
Before adopting GEHRIMED, OIC Behavioral Health used an EHR system that was ill-suited for their unique care environment. The previous system was designed for office-based primary care, lacking the flexibility and behavioral health focus required for OIC’s patient population.
Providers were burdened with inefficient workflows, paper documentation, and even portable printers to meet documentation requirements. There was little customization available, and clinical notes were often cluttered with irrelevant fields.
“It was very geared towards people in an office environment… not to skilled nursing, and not to behavioral health. It just didn’t fit our needs,” Johnston explained.
June Johnston, Director of Provider Success for OIC Behavioral Health, shared learnings from OIC’s experience with GEHRIMED. Johnston plays a pivotal role in ensuring that clinical providers—such as psychiatrists, therapists, psychologists, and other licensed professionals—are supported, satisfied, and positioned to deliver high-quality care.
Custom, Not Complex: Simplifying Onboarding with Purpose-Built Workflows
OIC Behavioral Health adopted GEHRIMED over 12 years ago, becoming one of the platform’s first behavioral health customers. They worked closely with Netsmart to co-develop behavioral health-specific templates and workflows that fit their unique care model.
“It’s a very easy system to train people on,” said Johnston. “We can design our notes the way we want and need them to be.” “The basics can be trained in like two to three hours... They don’t have to worry about a lot of extra fields that don’t apply to them,” Johnston explained.
The ability to customize templates, create flexible workflows, and request changes through support tickets has empowered their operations team and simplified onboarding for new clinicians. With just 2–3 hours of training, providers are equipped to use the system effectively.
Easy to Learn, Built to Last: Why OIC Relies on GEHRIMED
GEHRIMED has become integral to OIC Behavioral Health’s daily operations. The platform’s ease of use, flexibility, and continuous evolution have made it a trusted tool for both clinical and operational users.
GEHRIMED offered a customizable, user-friendly platform tailored to the needs of behavioral health providers in long-term care settings. The intuitive templates and ease of use allowed OIC to train new hires quickly and reduce documentation time significantly.
“If we were forced to move to a different system, I think we’d have a riot on our hands,” Johnston emphasized. “It’s customizable, easy to learn, and easy to document. What more could we ask for?”
The implementation of features like the PHQ-9 simple survey directly into templates eliminated the need for paper documentation, further streamlining workflows.
About Netsmart
Netsmart designs, builds and delivers electronic health records (EHRs), solutions and services that are powerful, intuitive and easy-to-use.
Our platform provides accurate, up-to-date information that is easily accessible to care team members in behavioral health, home care, senior living and social services. We make the complex simple and personalized so our clients can concentrate on what they do best: provide services and treatment that support whole-person care.
By leveraging the powerful Netsmart network, care providers can seamlessly and securely integrate information across communities, collaborate on the most effective treatments and improve outcomes for those in their care. Our streamlined systems and personalized workflows put relevant information at the fingertips of users when and where they need it.
For more than 50 years, Netsmart has been committed to providing a common platform to integrate care.
