What’s New June 2007
	Please do an update, even if you have done one within the last day or two, to take advantage of changes made after feedback from our early testers. The program will ask for an "admin" login from the first user to run the updated program. If you have not done an update this year, it is essential to do one now but please request a new registration certificate before doing so.
	We are replacing the insurance company term "provider" with "clinician" for most users.
	If you are submitting print-image electronic claims, you should definitely make the change to EDI. if you are submitting paper claims, then you should consider changing to EDI electronic billing. It is very simple as described below.
	We enjoyed meeting so many (10) existing customers at the recent APA Meeting and hearing your enthusiastic comments about TheraManager.
	Please read this email and pass it on to your staff and associates. We find a significant number of offices where staff are ignorant of new features. The emails are also available on the website.
Appointments
	The zoom feature on the Appointments Calendar has been improved. A default zoom-start-hour and zoom-end-hour can now be entered by selecting Tools | User Settings.
	In the past users have inadvertently inhibited zooming by placing "reminders" at the top of the screen, which should have been placed in the notelets or Tasks Screen. However the Appointments Scheduler now only zooms on the items currently visible on the schedule and these historical items and vacations and holidays will be ignored.
	An issue with viewing appointments that wrap around from one hour to the next has been that start and end times can be misread on a quick glance. We have now added chevrons to the text to flag the wrap around
	Many users have not yet adjusted the font-size of the text on the appointments screen to match their screen resolution. This can be done at the Tools | User Settings on the system menu and which includes many other customization options.
	The styles for the appointment lists printed on the Appointments Screen have been rationalized. They are listed under Tools | User Settings along with options to print available openings with the same spacing as the grid lines, and to include the note included in the Booking information.
	A time-saving smart option Open EMR with a Double-Click was added a while ago and is under User Settings. This allows a clinician with a double click on the booked appointment, to open a new note containing the appointment information at the EMR Screen. The appointment is then cross-hatched but the next time it is double-clicked, the Posting Form will open.
	When selecting a patient or clinician, when the clinician is not the designated principal clinician, the program used to ask for confirmation. This has been removed and replaced instead with the confirmation dialog appearing on booking an appointment.
	We have received several requests from staff and their bosses for staff appointments. These can now be entered and viewed by clicking View | Appointments by Staff on the system menu. This feature is still at a trial stage but is definitely usable.
Notelets
	The popup notelets are immensely popular for office business reminders. A while ago, we added clinical reminder notelets that appear at the clinical screens. Now we have added another type of notelet that can be associated with any patient or clinician appointment. The empty notelet is created by clicking the Notelet Button on either the Patient's or the Clinicians Booking Form and the content can be entered. There is a menu item on the popup menu over the notelets, that allows the appointment note to show when mousing over any appointment that has an associated notelet.
	We have added fonts to the popup menu on the notelets. A bold red font in a note certainly grabs the attention.
	If you click the Notelet Button on the toolbar and nothing appears on the screen, let us know and we'll find this valuable feature for you.
Tasks
	On the Tasks Screen the task memo can be written and viewed in the box at the bottom of the screen. This has now been made sizable.
	Priority for specific tasks can be high-lighted in red using Set Priority on the popup menu.
Posting Appointments
	After posting the first appointment for a new patient the parameters are remembered in TheraManager and posting subsequent appointments is very automatic so it will pay dividends to get the first one correct. The remembered information is also used to make the automatic adjustments when insurance payments or non-payments are entered. Questions to review are: is the patient insured? Is the clinician in-network (see below)? Does the Plan have a deductible, copay, variable rate copay etc? At the Posting Screen be careful to select the correct type of billing, Direct, Estimated, Deferred, Accept Assignment etc. Check the Help under "Billing." for more information
Groups
	We have made changes to provide significant time-saving for those offices doing group treatment.. A group time-slot can be set up as an "Other Group appointment" with the group name and the cptcode entered with as many repeats as you like. With the clinician tab still selected, and after a left-right click on the group, click Group Members | Show All to bring up the group members for this group (initially none of course). Now drag-and-drop patients from the Patients Title -box into the Group Box. Again with the Clinicians Tab selected, select the group appointment, right click and select Group Members | Book All. They will all be booked automatically. Each booked member can be rebooked for multiple repeats if required.
	When a group appointment is over, mark all the no-shows as "Missed" and with a left-right click Group Members | Show Booked/Attended and the Group List Box will open with the attendees. Go to the the EMR Screen. Click on a member of the Group and write an EMR note for that member. Select the content of the note and copy it to the clipboard. Right click on the Group List and click Paste into a new Note for All. The contents of the clipboard will be added to a new note for each group member. If you don't believe us (!) click on each member in the Group List.
Accounting
	Posting appointments, billing and the display of records at the Accounting Screen has been significantly speeded up. There are also checkboxes No Balances on the Posting Form, and obvious checkboxes on the Patient Accounts Screen that can be left checked on small databases but will speed up opening of the screens for large databases.
	We have added colors to some columns on the CPT Records Screen that correspond to those on the Patients Billing Screen that really helps in reading the Grid.
	When entering posting appointments or entering insurance payments, TheraManager uses the fact that a clinician is either in-network or not, to automatically calculate estimated charges and balance billing adjustments after making insurance payments. Please make sure that the In-Network/use Allowed Checkbox on the Organization Screen is correctly checked for each organization and clinician in your office.
Reports
	There are now a Day Sheet report and a Day Sheet Summary Report at the Reports Screen to summarize posted charges and payments made during the day or any selected date period. (More reports are currently being programmed).
	While on the question of the days activities, many users seem to be unaware that payments of checks and cash can be printed on deposit slips or just a list all added up and ready to go to the bank. The deposit will be recorded on the Checking |Accounts Screen.
Grids
	We repeat this item from the last newsletter since we do not see our new very powerful feature being used much yet. Each grid cannot only be customized but that customization can now be remembered. There are several ways of using this capability. If the Open Screens with Customized Grid Checkbox at User Settings is checked then any customization is remembered and applied to the grid when it is reopened. There are also popup menu items that allow a custom view and in some cases a second custom view for printing to be saved and reloaded. If the Customization Checkbox is not checked then the as-designed view can be saved. It is then available to be reloaded to temporarily override any customization. Customization includes arrangement, width, sorting, grouping and visibility of the columns.
	Each grid now also has popup menu items that allows exporting the contents of the grid either to a spreadsheet (Excel in .xls format) or to an HTML file.This makes it easy to manipulate and to do customized prints of the data.
Earnings
	The rights setup has been modified to allow employed clinicians to see their earnings (without the ability of writing themselves checks!) or seeing the business accounts. To enable this, set their user rights at the admin User Screen to allow Clinician Customization for themselves and deny access to Checking.
Printing 1500 Forms
	The old HCFA 1500 forms are no longer available in the program as reflected on the new layout of the Batch Screen.
	If you are printing paper claims, you should note the 2 changes, that require your attention, that we have been forced to make to meet the demands of different insurance orgns (eg HMSA). The NPI number for boxes 32a and 32b are taken either from the Customization | Places of Service Screen and from the admin | Electronic Screen respectively, or from the Customization | Clinician Information Screen. We are told that an NPI number for the place of service and billing NPI for groups can be obtained from the same website as the provider NPI's.Putting individual provider NPI's in these boxes is fine for solo clinicians, but some insurance companies are insisting that the individual provider NPI's be used in these boxes for groups.
	The second issue requiring your attention is related to Box24j. Being simple folks, we assumed that any clinician that performs a treatment is a rendering provider, but some insurance orgns are saying that only the NPI of a locum tenens goes in Box 24j and are rejecting claims otherwise. You can decide what goes in the box at the Customization Screen | Clinician Information Screen.
	Selecting the way in which claims are "printed" for each insurance organization is now mutually exclusive and is set at the Orgns & Plans Screen. Check the Print Image Checkbox to select print image type of electronic billing, or select an EDI Target in the corresponding Box to create an electronic EDI claim. Selecting neither will force a paper claim to be printed.
Printing Bills
	The format of the Bills has changed but there are more options for customizing them at the admin | Corporate Screen.
EDI
	The type of printing claims for each insurance organization is now mutually exclusive and is set at the Orgns & Plans Screen. Check the Print Image Checkbox to select print image type of electronic billing, or select an EDI Target in the corresponding Box to create an electronic EDI claim. Selecting neither will force a paper claim to be printed. EDI files will be created in the "c:\Program Files\TheraManager\Electronic Claims" folder.
	We continue to add EDI targets to our list. A target may be a clearing house or an insurance organization that will accept EDI claims directly such as BCBS and Medicare. There are slight variations in the acceptable header formats of some claims that we have accomodated in the program. Generating EDI claims is much faster than paper claims, it is very easy to pass them to the clearing house and the process is secure. We encourage you to use EDI in preference to print image. The EDI is a standard format and the insurance organizations such as Medicare cannot impose their own requirements to frustrate us all.
	We have not yet activated this new feature for automatically entering the payments from an electronic remittance advice (ERA or 835 transaction) that can be returned by the payer or clearing house. This will, we hope, eliminate the tedious job of entering the insurance payments at the Payments Screen. We want to test this before releasing it so If anybody using EDI has signed up to receive the ERAs, please let us work with you.
Documents
	We have modified the Documents Screen to make it more user friendly and expanded the capability. At this screen you can store paths to files for any given patient so that the file can be immediately reviewed eg office staff can scan a lab test as a pdf, and associate it with the patient for review by the clinician. Any file for which there is a Windows association can be viewed. This includes documents, scanned hand-written notes, pictures, and even sound and video recordings.
	In a networked, office these files should be kept on the server in designated folders eg "LabTests" with a share applied to each. After associating the first file from one of these folders the folder name will be listed at the Documents Screen and the browser will open at that folder.
Backup
	The backup procedure has been generalized so that you can do remote backups over your local network or over the internet.
	For your own protection do frequent backups and definitely do one immediately before an update. Large groups should arrange for professional daily backup. Smaller users can back up on FLASH memory or a formatted R-W CD. You must have at least 2 of either and always have one offsite in case the building burns down, which did happen to one of our customers. Several of our customers have also had disc crashes and just today, we are trying to salvage 2 weeks of accounts data for a large office where the server crashed, and backups had not been made for 2 weeks.
Vista
	TherManager does install and run under Vista unlike some programs. However there are issues related to R/W permissions, backing up, copying files etc that are related to Vista and not TheraManager and make life difficult. We are not the only confused people, we have also talked to IT support people who actually are refusing to install Vista for their customers because of the difficulties. We are trying to document some minimal help for Vista, but for the moment, if you are buying a new computer you may just want to stick with XP.
	If you have suggestions or need support please contact support@theramanager.com or call 908-508-8900.
	If you have never downloaded TheraManager, go to our website, download the FREE Trial, and call 800-913-4294 to request an on-line demo. If an earlier trial has expired, or you had problems running it, please call and we can get you going again. Our customers have converted from many other programs.