What challenges did Netsmart face before AI implementation?

Clinicians spent up to 40% of their time on documentation, contributing to burden and burnout. Behavioral health notes are narrative and goal-centric, while providers still need to meet billing and documentation requirements.

What was the impact of the AI solution?

Early adopters reported positive initial reactions. The solution is targeting a reduction in documentation time from two days to about two hours. It aims to improve clinician focus on patient care and support accurate, comprehensive documentation.

Source

Evidence: Low35/100

Netsmart – Bells Virtual Scribe for behavioral healthcare clinical documentation using AWS HealthScribe

Use case typeClinical documentationUpdated Jun 13, 2026

Netsmart, a behavioral healthcare software and platform company, built Bells Virtual Scribe for clinical documentation in behavioral health. The solution uses AWS HealthScribe with a behavioral health GIRPP template to transcribe and summarize therapy sessions into draft notes for provider review and approval.

Organization: Netsmart
Industry: Healthcare
Location: United States
Published: February 2025

Reported outcomes

2 days to 2 hours

documentation time reduction targetTime & speed

−40%documentation burden share of clinician time

Strategic outcomes

New product / capabilityLaunched virtual scribe documentation toolCustomer experience & trustImproved clinician focus on patient careBetter decisions & insightSupported accurate documentation review

Why do we believe this?Outcome claims, sources, and evidence checks

Normalized claim

Documentation time reduction target: 2 days to 2 hours decrease

AWS Healthcare BlogFeb 17, 2025Blog postExplicit claimLow evidence strength

If we can take that two days of documentation time down to two hours

Normalized claim

Documentation burden share of clinician time: 40% decrease

AWS Healthcare BlogFeb 17, 2025Blog postExplicit claimLow evidence strength

clinicians and staff can spend up to 40 percent of their time on documentation

Why do we believe this deployment?Customer identity, provider attribution, maturity, and source checks

Customer: Netsmart
Provider: AWS
Maturity: Unknown
Linked source: AWS Healthcare Blog

No explicit deployment-stage evidence found.

Customer identity supportedSource describes one deploymentMaturity evidence evaluated

Primary read

Use case focus

Showing 3 of 3

1Clinical Documentation Automation
2Ambient Scribe
3Generative AI

Clinicians spent up to 40% of their time on documentation, contributing to burden and burnout.
Behavioral health notes are narrative and goal-centric, while providers still need to meet billing and documentation requirements.

Netsmart developed Bells Virtual Scribe using AWS HealthScribe and a behavioral health GIRPP template.
The system uses ambient listening, transcription, NLP, and LLMs to draft GIRP notes during appointments.
Providers review and approve all records, preserving clinician control.

Technologies

AWS HealthScribe Amazon Web Services

Early adopters reported positive initial reactions.
The solution is targeting a reduction in documentation time from two days to about two hours.
It aims to improve clinician focus on patient care and support accurate, comprehensive documentation.

Architecture

Netsmart built Bells Virtual Scribe on AWS HealthScribe using a behavioral health GIRPP template. During appointments, the system uses ambient listening to transcribe and summarize the provider-patient conversation in near real time and generate draft GIRP notes. Clinicians then review and approve the documentation before it is finalized.

Sources & evidence1

Evidence: Low35/100Evidence strength