Netsmart acquires Behavioral Pathway Systems

Netsmart, which develops clinical technology for health and human services organizations, has acquired Indianapolis-based Behavioral Pathway Systems (BPS), a provider of benchmarking services for behavioral health.

Netsmart acquired BPS from the not-for-profit Centerstone Research Institute for an undisclosed sum.

BPS serves more than 500 client organizations nationwide, including community behavioral health providers, addiction treatment facilities, and human services agencies. The company provides comprehensive clinical, operational, financial, and organizational benchmarking services.

Enabling care organizations to gauge their performance against others and develop best practices, benchmarking can help improve outcomes, enhance clinical research, improve risk management. Netsmart officials say the acquisition is important as the U.S. moves toward a reformed healthcare system aiming for lower costs, improved outcomes, better coordination and more accountable care.

[See also: Banner Health to control labor costs with benchmarking.]

Netsmart CEO Michael Valentine said the deal is the next step in his firm's efforts to build "a national clinical and operational benchmarking and analytics service that leverages aggregate clinical and management data and best practices from across the Netsmart client base and beyond."

He added that, "by linking our network of clients, who today provide care to more than 20 million people, to this powerful set of solutions, we now have the potential to dramatically accelerate the evolution of the use of evidence in this side of healthcare – something that other parts of healthcare have done for some time now. We are thrilled about the possibilities created by tightly integrating our mutual strategies."

[See also: Obama plan for health reform includes evidence-based care.]

BPS's offerings will also be integrated into Netsmart's myAvatar, TIER, Insight and CMHC/MIS enterprise electronic health record technologies, and Netsmart officials say further integration with more of its IT platforms is planned.

All BPS staff will join Netsmart, including President Paul Lefkovitz, who will serve as general manager, benchmarking services.

“Healthcare is in the midst of unprecedented complexity and change, and I believe benchmarking will be a key framework that helps providers manage for the future,” said Lefkovitz.