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What’s New August 2006
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IMPORTANT
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| There are lots of changes and additions to all parts of the program so please be sure to do an update. There are some database additions this month so the program will check to ensure that nobody else is logged in when the update is run the first time.
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| You will see a new look in the logo, in the program and on our website.
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| We are now reselling an automated phone/email reminder system that is automatically interfaced to TheraManager. Appointments for the next business day can be collected from TheraManager and passed to this program. The program is called ReminderPro and comes with a hardware modem. It must be purchased from TheraManager Software or we cannot license you for the interface from TheraManager, although support will be provided by the ReminderPro folks.
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Batch Printing.
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| The program is now smart enough to determine if the items to be printed were sent to the printer or not. Therefore if they were sent to the printer, it will assume that they were printed. In the case of preview only, the program will leave the records as unprinted without a message to ask if they were printed as it has been doing. This also links automatically to the Last Batch Printed Dates.
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| The Organization column on the grid now lists the insurance organization instead of the plan name, consistent with the header in the Grid.
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Business Reports
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| Some significant new business reports have been added to the Business Reports Screen this month.
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| Selected Receivables by CPT Code shows the breakdown of your receivables by cpt code for self-pay patients, missed and cancelled appointments, and insurance organizations. These are totalled over any period selected on the date dialog.
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| Receivables and payments are also now available as reports for each month of the selected year by provider or corporate entity, by insurance organization, by place-of-service and by cpt code with monthly and annual totals.
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| Another report has been added that estimates the length that a patient is in treatment before being discharged. This can be used to evaluate treatment outcomes or to monitor early terminations because of clinician incompatibility. This report is based totally on the appointments of record, although a discharge date has been added to the Patients Screen.
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Binocular Button/Date Dialog.
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| The Date Dialog brought up with the Binocular Button has been redesigned. In addition the date-lock feature has been added to more screens to make it much easier to review history within a particular date window on different screens.
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EMR Notes
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| We have added another record under medical records called Treatment. Like the summary this is intended as a home for your treatment Plans that can be brought up reviewed and changed when writing the medical record. To view it just click on one of the panels and select it in the lefthand tree chart.
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| We have also added an additional panel to the Notes Screen on the right hand side. The patients diagnosis is automatically loaded on to this when the patient is selected.
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| The diagnosis panel complements the Medications panel that can be brought up from the lower part of the screen. The order of the prescriptions on this panel has been reversed so that the most recent appear at the top of the panel. These 3 panels provide a very helpful working environment when writing the medical record without having to change screens
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| The amount of these panels that show when opening the EMR Screen can be set at the Tools | User Settings.
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| We have had one case of a slightly corrupted table that led to some notes appearing corrupted on screen. If you see a case of this please let us know immediately.
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Payments Screen
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| If an insurance organization is late in paying you they will pay interest. This can be entered at the Insurance Screen in the Interest/Refund Box. This works whether it is included in an EOB or is a stand-alone payment.
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| A smart update to the allowed amount for general insurance organizations has always been available, but now an update to any one of the six Medicare Allowed amounts that is done automatically based on the amount on the EOB, has been added.
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| The program is designed to always round the remainder of a completed split patient payment to precisely zero so that the split can be posted, if this does not happen please let us know.
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| A feature at the Payments | Patients Screen is that if you know the visit and/or cpt code for which you are entering the payment, for example the patient has made a note of this on their check, you can click on the the visit record on the Grid and the DOS and the CPT code will be selected. This make reviewing of the patient billing account much easier, particularly after grouping by the DOS header. When the program is set up for vritual corporate entities (groups only), then the provider associated with that entity is now always selected to the corresponding provider and cannot be changed
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Posting Screen.
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| Automatic update of any one of the six Medicare Allowed amounts is now available.
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| You can uncheck the Allowed Checkbox and change the charge.
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| The program does the tax billing for states like Hawaii. If it is known to be payable by the patient rather than the insurance, then only the patient will be billed, ie there will be no S9999 cpt record made.
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| If a self-pay patient is billed for a missed appointment, the patients percentage is not changed by the charge for the missed or cancelled appointment. This has always been true for insured patients.
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insurance Organizations
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| One of our customers was having their "HCFAs" rejected by an insurance organization, who insisted on violating the rules related to the contents of boxes 32 and 33. The Swich names Boxes 32-33 Checkbox on the Orgns/Plans | Organization Screen is designed to fix this issue for them. For all others please ignore.
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| The Actions | Copy Plan Contact Info on the system menu has been reconnected.
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Booking Screen and Authorizations.
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| If a Managed Care patient has an authorization on the last booked appointment that has expired, or this is a new managed care patient with no prior appointments, and there is a new set of authorizations visible, then the program will automatically select this as long as the cpt code is consistent, whereas in the past it was up to the user to click on it.
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PDA and Authorizations
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| In the past there was no checking of appointments made on the PDA to see if Authorizations were necessary, when these appointments were imported back into TheraManager. This feature has been added. If an Authorization is available for the cptcode selected for a managed care patient, it will be added else a message dialog will appear.
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| We also take this opportunity to remind you of a useful feature for those providers with managed care patients. At the Authorization | Requests Screen, set the View Thresholds and then go to View | Patients with Expiring Authorizations and View | Patients with Low Authorizations.
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Credit cards.
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| A check has been added for offices taking only some credit cards to ensure that over enthusiasm doesn't lead to swiping a card that the office does not accept. This can be set at the Admin | Credit Card Screen and conforms to those cards that will be displayed on the bill.
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| As a reminder, if the program is registered for credit cards, then select "CARD" as the method of payment but do not enter anything in the Check/Authn # Box. The automated credit card feature will then handle the transaction. If you use another means of using credit cards then you must enter enter something Check/Authn # Box based on the other transaction. Remember that the TheraManager credit card system is completely integrated and does NOT require a separate phone line.
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Appointments
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| Cut or Copy and Paste of Appointments has been extended to cover pasting between different clinicians and/or different Rooms/Places of Service.
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| Cancelled or Missed Appointments that have been posted and are then voided at the Accounts Screen, are now removed from the Appointments Screen.
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ICD-9 Diagnosis Codes
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| This is only applicable to a small number of clinicians but the V61.1 and V61.21 codes for victims of abuse have been augmented with separate 995.81 and 995.5 respectively.
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| Addition of ICD-9 codes to 'My categories' has been fixed.
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| As a reminder, new codes can also be added to the list of ICD-9 codes using the New Button on the Toolbar. ICD-9 codes can always be selected and then used to flesh out the DSM-IV codes if necessary.
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6313 Errors on a TabletPC
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| This error only occurs when a particular tabletPC is networked and seems to occur on Refresh. We have made some changes that may eliminate the problem. Please let us know if not. Turning off Search | Auto Refresh may be a temporary fix.
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Thanks again for your continuing support, suggestions and patience as we try to make this program be all things to all people.
If you have suggestions, need training or support please contact support@theramanager.com or call 908-508-8900.
If you have never downloaded TheraManager, go to our website and download the Trial that will include all these new features, or call 800-913-4294 to request an on-line demo or ifan earlierl trial has expired.
Our customers continue to convert from many other programs and we can make the switch easy with an import of existing patient data so do please forward this email to your colleagues .
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