EMR Datacenter Product Release Notes

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EMR Datacenter Product Release Notes – October 2004 4Q2004

For the benefit of all products, a searchable online Frequently Asked Question (FAQ) for non-technical has been added.  Users are invited to participate, particularly in the FAQ forum for training level questions.

A fax number field is now available for a patient.  The users should inquire as to the privacy of the fax number and should require a signature release on file to fax protected healthcare information.

A new form type of "EClaims EDI Image" has been added to provide a disk image file preferred by EClaims.com's clearinghouse services.

The Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) path has been added to the MyEMR® Suite Attendant, so that the CLAIM.EFT and ECLAIMS.TXT files can be easily identified over the network from any workstation without browsing the network.

The database has been modified in anticipation of supporting Visitometers triggered by Primary Care Physician referrals.  The user interface for this feature will be available in an interim release or future general release of EMR Datacenter.

The Insurance Manager is now modified, by default, to create insurance for transactions through the DOS of the previous date up thru 11:59:59PM.  This allows an office manager to balance the previous days' books and make insurance policy corrections or completions prior to creating insurance (typically for electronic EDI billing), while the other office staff can continue to add current services for the current day, which by default will not be billed until the following day.  The user can override this behavior by selecting the "batch thru" date as the current date, which will batch through the current date for DOS's up until 11:59:59 PM.

The front desk window has been modified to show the provider assigned to a particular appointment, in support of multi-provider offices.

The database is now modified to support merge variable queries of the first active insurance policy.  The merge variable content will be supported in supplemental releases to the October 15, 2004 release.

A new merge variable for the Insurance Payer catalog, Box 19 has been added named [PIN]. If the insurance payer has a PIN # override, this PIN # is used; otherwise the PIN number in the Provider Catalog is used.

For Canadian postal codes, the postal code field now supports 10 digit alpha-numeric characters.

In support of the new [Global] Intelli$ense fee schedules, the renaming feature is now working as intended.

Box 7 in the Internet Disk Image and EClaims EDI Image now has identical behavior as Box 7 of the CMS-1500 form.

The insurance payer catalog now correctly refreshes the default form type (which is inherited when an insurance policy is added).

Default provider slots can now be added for provider ID's that have a maximum allowed number of characters.

"Date of Last Service":  You now have a merge variable for Box 19 called DLS for printing in the various form types, including the Internet Disk Image. You need to choose your Medicare payer(s) and go to the CMS-1500 tab and set the Box 19 merge format as:

DLS=[DLS]

This will merge YYYYMMDD of the most recent service on the claim in the [DLS] brackets.

Example:  DLS=20040815
 

For an individual patient, a Quick Claim can now be created as "strict" (which enforce the pre-billing report's flag if the patient's account is complete enough to bill) or "loose" (which creates a claim irrespective of the claim information being complete enough to bill.  This is primarily intended for cash-only practices who wish to provide their patients a partially completed CMS-1500 as a "value added" service from the chiropractic office so a cash patient can more easily file his or her insurance.  Note that the "walkaway receipt" also has the information that is complete enough for a patient to file his or her own insurance.  Administrative warning:  If your office is a corporation, limited liability company, professional association or similar, you should delete your Social Security Number from your receipt to avoid identity theft!

The attorney clean bill totals, for the new attorney clean bill released in 3Q2004 have been corrected.  Totals were incorrect if the report was repeatedly displayed.  This is now corrected.

Globally shared Intelli$ense fee schedule system is added to allow an Intelli$ense fee schedule to be shared among an unlimited number of payers.

Transaction recap dialog window colorization corrected for Windows XP operating systems.

Payer ID is added in parenthesis in the Internet Disk Image on the row of the payer company name.

EMR Datacenter Product Release Notes – July 2004 3Q2004

For backdating purposes, the procedure display and print order on claims is now enforced by date of service, irrespective of the date of entry. This keeps claim display entries sequential even if sporadic backdating has been done by users.

Added State License # to CMS-1500 Box 31.

Remove soft carriage returns for address on Box 33, in the event a user added carriage returns for spacing for other purposes; the address is now strictly packed without carriage returns.

Box 32 soft carriage returns are stripped to ensure a strictly packed address.

Alignment for bottom justification of state license #, PIN, GRP, and tighter vertical address placement in Box 32 && 33. BMP signature force justified above Dr.'s name in Box 31 of CMS-1500.

E-mail address is now a filter criteria for SmartSelect.

Rendering provider number is now an available override in Box 24K of the CMS-1500.  This feature is used when "Print Provider Catalog PIN in Box 24K is not checked.
 

References to HCFA in the Insurance Policies window is now changed to CMS.  All references throughout the software that previously referred to HCFA-1500 are now renamed to CMS-1500.

Edit field background coloring is changed to ensure a grayscale match with the main window color. This is noticeable when "Classic Mode" is selected instead of "POS" mode, in Start->All Programs->Software Motif->User Preferences on the 1st tab.

The main menu of EMR Datacenter refers to "Insurance Payers" instead of "Insurance Carriers" in the Tools->Catalogs section.

Expanded middle initial field to 15 characters for a full middle name, in support of patients who prefer their first initial and middle name.

Date of Onset will now print "N/A" if the date of 11-11-1111 is entered for insurance policy detail.

Itemized Report – Font size is reduced and trimmed to provide margins for lengthy transaction remarks or check numbers.

User definable field names:  There are now menu options to customize 3 memo fields, 8 date fields, 8 edit fields and 8 yes/no fields.

The Statistics Wizard now includes a quantity count for each statistical category.

A running patient process count is displayed at the front desk.  This is a real-time query on the patients processed with the 24 hour day period.  The patient processed count is dependent, and can be immediately switched, upon the provider combobox above the Checked-In list, or ***ALL*** providers.  Walk-in patients are considered separately because a walk-in patient may not see their "default" provider in a multi-provider office.  All queries supporting this behavior are real-time appointment data for accuracy.

CMS-1500 Box 11a:  This will print as a blank field, and ignores the sex, if the date of "11-11-1111" is used with "Other" relationship to insured, and when the insurance payer type is not Medicare or Medicaid.  This is desirable for Worker's Comp cases.

CMS-1500 Box 15:  Similar symptoms prints as "N/A" when the date of "11-11-1111" is used.

Attorney Clean Bill:  A single column itemized report is designed for submitting to attorneys in a simpler format.

The Visitometer now traverses all active insurance policies for a patient for patients with secondary and tertiary, etc., coverage, for the most recent Visitometer for each insurance policy.

The diagnosis relation field on the transaction window is added as a text field to override the default diagnosis relation (1,2,3,4 etc.) for the insurance payer.  This field overrides the insurance payer field on a transaction-by-transaction basis.

The SALT (same as last time) button now references the same quantity and diagnosis relation as last time for service procedures.

Appointment time slots remain when moving an appointment, and an appointment can be moved to another provider (for multi-provider offices) when displaying in the appointment book in composite view.  Moving an appointment now also retains the slot count of the original appointment.

A patient's cell phone number is added to the patient general information.

Acute exacerbation is added as an option for the nature of illness field of the Insurance Policy window.

A problem introduced with the custom patient fields has been corrected to allow for sustained used of "continue adding patients."

The patient's visit frequency (from MyEMR's Plan window) is displayed on the appointment window in the upper right hand corner under the active patient's name, and the window is redesigned for an 800x600 display with the Windows taskbar always visible.

We have loosened the requirement to have a remark for the appointment field.  This is intended to assist MyEMR users.  We recommend that EMR Datacenter users continue to add a treatment plan or remark, although no longer required, it is a helpful reminder when viewing the appointment window and appointment report.

Internet Disk Image:  The Payer ID is added to the Internet Disk Image, as well as the diagnosis relation override as discussed for the CMS-1500 form.

Customized patient statements:  In Start->All Programs->Software Motif->User Preferences, on the Statement tab, a user can indicate if they are using "Custom Patient Statements".  This will turn off printing of the return address, and assumes that the clinic name and return address are part of the customized patient statement artwork.

Customized patient statements:  The artwork for customized patient statements is installed at:  C:\Program Files\Chirosoft\Artwork\PatientStatements.pdf.  If your printing company needs an Adobe Illustrator file, please contact support@softwaremotif.com.

The potential patient appointment window was a few pixels too short, but now displays as intended.

A total number of patients scheduled now prints on the appointment report.

All future appointments can now be erased for a patient who withdraws from care prematurely from their schedule treatment/outcome/appointment schedule.

A printed future appointment report is now available for a patient on the appointment window.

Quick Claim (strict) or Quick Claim (bypass):  The "strict" option is implemented as previous, but the "bypass" option is dependent upon the October 2004 database when distributed as a future web download or October 2004 CD-ROM release.  This allows an insurance claim to be generated even if it is deemed incomplete by the pre-billing report of the Insurance Manager.  This is useful for "cash only" practices who elect to provide their patients with "walk-away" receipts and/or CMS-1500 forms as a value-added convenience for the patient filing their own insurance claim.

Post Insurance: Right-click to "force" a CMS-1500.  This is useful for patients whose insurance is billed electronically however, a staff member may want a hardcopy of the insurance claim without changing the form type of the insurance policy.

Default form claim type in insurance payer catalog, which is inherited when an insurance policy is added for a patient.

EMR Datacenter Product Release Notes – April 2004 2Q2004

Four database queries related to insurance pre-billing and insurance processing have been changed to greatly reduce the superfluous data returned.  In some circumstances, the excess, superfluous data caused an explicit error, and in other cases, did not return an error but did not complete processing.  These changes are coupled with the new database SQL design 9.0.286, as indicated on your CD-ROM.

Post Insurance:  Reprinting an insurance claim was corrected as the result of these query changes.

Claim Registry:  After printing queued claims from the Claim Registry, the statuses of the claims is expected to be changed to a non-queued status.  This would not remove the queued status if only one claim was displayed in the Claim Registry.  This has been corrected.

Patient statements:  This field order was switching the statement type to past due entries due to field order grouping, which was giving an unpredictable behavior.  The field order is now set so that the controls for patient statements and the controls for past due statements are contained with their own groupboxes.

CMS-1500 form:  This is more precisely aligned to the pixel above the typed name line.  Requires signature in exactly a .5" x 2" with 600dpi resolution Windows BMP.

The default error message print box is now resized to display more cosmetically appealing.

Appointment report:  The add'l chart field has been added to the appointment report.

Appointment report:  The appointment report would lock up in the unique circumstance where the report sensed a page break at the end of the report but did not have an appointment to print on the page.  This is now corrected.

Pre-billing report:  The social security number is now a navy blue color to indicate it is required by the pre-billing status display.

CMS 1500 form:  The option to suppress the printing the insurance company address at the top of the insurance form is now functional with the letter-sized insurance form.

Medicare/Medicaid insurance printing:  Box 11A is now blank when the Medicare policy number is blank.

Database maintenance tools and blank database templates are distributed for any needed database maintenance at the user location without the necessity to send or upload data for normal maintenance procedures.

EMR Datacenter Product Release Notes – January 2004 1Q2004

No release notes are available for the 1st Quarter 2004 release of the EMR Datacenter, however all locking and licensing restrictions have been removed to effectuate unlimited multi-user and Remote Desktop operation of this 2004 release.