For LA County DMH residential programs — CRTP, ART, and PHF — concurrent review runs through ProviderConnect NX. Here is how the authorization flow works, what has to be true in Avatar NX first, and the documentation habits that hold up at audit.
Concurrent review is where residential authorizations are won or lost. For LA County DMH programs — the Crisis Residential Treatment Program, Adult Residential Treatment, and Psychiatric Health Facilities — that review runs through ProviderConnect NX, and the documentation you build during a stay is exactly what an auditor looks at later. This post covers the flow and the habits that keep it clean. For the market context, see the LA County DMH guide.
The concurrent review process in PCNX covers residential services: the Crisis Residential Treatment Program (CRTP), Adult Residential Treatment (ART), and the Psychiatric Health Facility (PHF) program. Before any of it can happen, a prerequisite has to be true: the client must have an open admission and financial eligibility in Avatar NX, submitted through the provider EHR via Web Services, before an authorization can be created in ProviderConnect NX. If the admission or the eligibility is missing, wrong, or misdated, the authorization simply cannot proceed — and the bed-day clock keeps running.
Residential authorization is a sequence, not a single event: admission and eligibility first, then the initial authorization, then concurrent review to justify continued stay. Each step depends on the one before it being correct in the county record. This is why residential programs feel the county's real-time write-through most acutely — an error early in the sequence blocks everything after it, and unwinding it means a HEAT help-desk ticket rather than a quick fix.
The through-line of a defensible concurrent-review record is consistency. The clinical justification has to match the level of care being authorized; the continued-stay criteria have to be documented on the same record that drives the authorization; and the admission, eligibility, and diagnosis in the county system have to agree with the clinical chart. Auditors are looking for daylight between what you documented clinically and what you submitted to the county — close that gap and the record holds.
Navix is the operating record where residential teams document the stay, and it is designed to fit the Avatar NX Web Services and 837 5010 workflow so admissions, eligibility, and claims come from that same record. ProviderConnect NX remains the county's system for authorizations and concurrent review; Navix keeps the clinical justification, the level of care, and the continued-stay documentation on one record so the county submission and the chart do not drift apart. CollaborateMD, our RCM partner, processes the claims. Confirm current LACDMH requirements against the county's own materials.
See it on a real residential chart — schedule a demo — or start with ProviderConnect NX for contracted providers.
