The release notes below are dated. When you apply the update, you will receive all changes since your last update. To find the last date you updated, login to Accuro and click Help > About > Details.
Accuro Release Notes Index by Iteration
What’s new in Accuro EMR?
It’s time again for another update to Accuro EMR! Read on for a description of the latest features and functions. You can always access release notes from the Help menu of Accuro. If you are unsure of how to Update Accuro, please contact QHR Client Services.
Accuro has for a long time had a date that you could record as the onset date for a problem in the History of Problems. This is intended to be used as it sounds; the data (or approximate date) that the problem began. Note: To enter partial dates, just fill in the part of the date field you know, even if it is just the year. (eg: MM/DD/1992).
The new feature in this release is a second date field called “Date of Diagnosis”. This is meant to capture the date you are recording the problem in to the chart which ideally is synonymous with the date you learned of the problem.
For all existing problems this field is blank. The new diagnosis date has also been added to the diagnosis constraints in Alerts (Query Builder). To add a problem select the EMR icon > click the Encounter Notes tab > click the “+” button in the History of Problems section.
Users can already graph lab results over a period of time. A new update has been released that enables users to graph multiple results that have been taken over the course of a single day. When the lab result’s start and end date are the same, the x-axis is broken down to hours (starting with the earliest time and ending with the latest time). To graph lab results select the EMR icon > click the Encounter Notes tab > click the Lab Graphing button.
In the Document section of Accuro there is a drop down list where you select the Document Folder. There is also the ability to have a second drop list for “Sub-Type”. You enable this by logging on as an administrator, go to Manage Security (User Menu), then in the System Settings Tab, select the checkbox “Enable Sub-Types”.
What’s new here is the ability to link the Sub-Types to the Folder. This means that the Sub-Type menu contents will load once you choose a Type. The benefit here is the set up the sub type list can be much shorter as you are only seeing the items relevant to the Folder.
To set this up, use the Manage option in the drop down list for Sub-Type within the Document section.
Accuro billing is centered on the amount billed, and the amount paid. The difference between these two is the balance owing. To zero out a bill, it either must be paid, or the amount billed adjusted down so the balance is zero. If adjusted, Accuro changes the amount billed to match the amount paid. The original billed amount was previously not being tracked anywhere. This original billed amount is known as the Gross billed amount. The adjusted amount billed is called the Net Billed amount.
New to Accuro (for most provinces) is the tracking of the Gross Billed amount for reporting purposes. The logic explained above stays the same so your process does not change with billing and reconciliation. What Gross Billed Amount allows to you to see it the original billed amount before you adjusted it. Useful information we think when you want to determine how much you are adjusting in a given time period.
The places where you can see the Gross Billed Amount include the F4 Window by right-clicking on a bill and selecting Claim History and if you use billing periods, this is now displayed in some billing period reports.
A small but important change has been made to the Patient section. You can now enter longer email addresses. Up to 100 characters! Previously Accuro stopped you at 30.
We have had lots of comments of who should be able edit Appointment Reasons and Cancellation Reasons lists in the Scheduling section.
We have determined that the best approach is to lock this down a bit so only users with administrator permissions can edit appointment reasons and cancellation reasons. If you have no administrator in your clinic, contact QHR using Help > Send Feedback (in Accuro) so we can get you set up with one. Lots of the Tech Tuesday Tips require admin access as well.
Appointment reasons can now be managed in the dropdown in the Appointment Details window. To access the appointment reason description select the Scheduler icon > make the appointment > in the Appointment Details window click the Reason dropdown and select Manage.
This one is for large multi-site clinics that share a single Accuro EMR. Now, when you arrive a patient, if they are meant to arrive in a different office it will let you know. This will allow you to arrive the patient, but it will arrive it in the office they were booked in. This is designed for shared registration check in desks shared by multiple clinics.
Great news for those that do Private Payments. For those times when you have a number of procedures on a single visit and want to apply a partial payment to a specific procedure, Accuro now allows it.
Apply the payment as you normally would, except now a popup window is displayed allowing you to pick which procedure to apply the payment towards. The window displays the automatic assignment of the amount as it is being done to the bills on the claim. From this new window users can adjust the payment to apply it to a different bill on the claim, if required. To apply a partial payment select the Patients icon > click the Private Billing tab > select the bill and type in the payment amount > the Private Payment window is displayed.
For those administrators that use the version control (Help, About Accuro, Version), you will now have ability to select a more specific version to lock your clinic to. The button largely works the same, just now with more choices. This is useful for those that are a few releases behind and want to move to a newer release, just not the newest release. In addition, an “Inform Users when not up to Date” checkbox has been added. This checkbox is only available when a client is using a locked version of Accuro to inform them that they are not using the latest version of Accuro that you have locked the clinic to. The goal here is to give you more control over having all of your clinic on the desired version of Accuro. This is only going to work moving forward, so previous releases to 2014.01 are not choices.
For BC customers receiving PITO funding, there is a new rule. PITO and the Ministry of Health have mandated us to ensure we can set your Accuro to automatically timeout after 15 min of inactivity. Clinic users or administrators cannot modify this timeout setting. After 15 minutes of inactivity Accuro logs out automatically and requires username and password to login again. There is a “Do Not Timeout if Locked” checkbox in manage security and if this is selected then a user is not logged out if they have locked their Accuro. The Do Not Timeout if Locked checkbox can be found by clicking Users > select Manage Security > click System Settings > click Security. Note: This module is available to all BC clinics and disabled by default. Clinics will need to contact QHR to schedule the module to be enabled.
There are many reasons why bills need to be added to or removed from the main claims tables. Sometimes Accuro was not checking for bills that needed to be added or removed. An update has been made to ensure that the tables are refreshed when items need to be displayed or no longer need to be displayed. To access claims select the Claims icon.
Whilst investigating another issue a developer found scenarios where batch billing and billing rules were not functioning as expected: An error was generated if a billing rule for “After Date” existed but the claim’s current date was not set. An update has been made to ensure that not setting the date does not break the billed after billing rule.
Setting a date in a claim to no date in the claim window was not actually clearing the date in the database, but it looked like it was in the claim window. A change has been made so the date is now also hidden in the database.
A user who did not have billing permissions to a provider was still able to see the provider in the Batch Billing Settings window. An update has been made to check billing permissions in the batch billing area of Accuro and if a user does not have the correct billing permissions they are now unable to see providers in this area of Accuro. To access the Batch Billing Settings window >press Ctrl+B (New Bill) > click Batch Billing > select Batch Billing Settings.
An update has been made to the Calendar to add the 2014 cut-off dates. To access the calendar select the Scheduler icon > click the Calendar button.
When users update the bill amount on a claim that was adjusted to paid or written off they were given the option of whether the flag was removed or not. This led to some confusion with users as to whether to select yes or no. An update has been made so that the flag is now removed and if the claim needs to have the flag set, they will need to reapply it. A message is displayed informing users of the removed flag.
When saving the claim details window the history table was being updated excessively. An update has been made to ensure the history table is only updated when necessary and if the events that need updating are in the displayable area. If the main claim details window is being closed (i.e. the user pressed Save and Close) then the history table is not updated. To access claim details select the Claim icon > select the appropriate tab > right-click on a claim and select Claim Details.
The explanatory code DF has been updated to the latest physician’s payment schedule (dated October 1, 2013). This payment schedule can be found at: http://www.health.gov.sk.ca/Default.aspx?DN=d4c55f93-eb68-4530-acb7-118d079ddec0&l=English
If a user entered a macro into the claim table (in the Claim Details window) and the macro wasn’t a Procedure Code an error message was displayed, but the macro still worked. To avoid the confusion that this was causing, if a valid macro is entered, the message is no longer displayed. To create a claim press Ctrl+B (New Bill).
The manage diagnostic codes feature access permission prevents users from being able to access the screen from the billing menu and it also disables the edit button on the search screen. An update has been made to also disable the add and delete diagnostic code buttons in all diagnosis code search screens. To access the diagnostic code feature access permission click Users > select Manage Security > click Feature Access > Manage Diagnostic Codes (located in the Claims section).
The text fields in Manage Procedures have been updated to ensure the layout is much tidier.
An update has been made to the way payment period information is looked up in the database. The database now stores which payment periods have messages rather than having to look up each time which payment periods have messages.
With an unusual workflow it was possible for a user to have one instance of Accuro open and be looking at a PP bill. They could then open a second instance of Accuro, open the same PP bill and change the insurer to be a government insurer. In this scenario it was then possible for the user to make a PP against a bill that was changed to be a government insurer. An update has been made to prevent this from happening. User now cannot make any changes to a bill on the Private Billing tab if the bill has been modified since it was last loaded.
Users were unable to create an invoice for private pay bills if the claim also contained bills for other insurers. An update has been made so that users can now invoice for the private portion of a claim.
When a user tried to tab through fields in Claim Details, Accuro was not tabbing in a logical order. An update has been made so that when the user tabs, the cursor tabs through the fields in the order they are displayed. To access claim details select the Claims icon > select the appropriate tab > right-click on a claim and select Claim Details.
The totals were not refreshing properly on the bottom of the Not Reconciled tab when the user selected a filter. An update has been made to ensure the totals displayed are refreshed when a new filter is applied. To access Not Reconciled select the Claims icon > click the Not Reconciled tab.
When a user undid a submission, bills that had been resubmitted were not returned fully to their state prior to the submission. An update has been made to ensure that when a user undoes a submission all bills are now fully returned to their state prior to submission.
An update has been made to trim any spaces off the ACE Unite username before saving. The spaces were being counted as characters and this was causing problems when logging in.
An update has been made to fix two issues that would previously cause issues with INR lab tracking: Altering lab result IDs and deleting tracked lab results. The INR lab tracking has now been separated into its own software module; this module defaults to on for any clinics that already have labs being tracked by the existing INR tracking software.
Now if a user changes a lab result value that is being tracked (e.g. a provider realizes they have typed in an incorrect value). The new result is displayed in the INR tracking with a yellow background and an exclamation mark. If a user moves the cursor over the value a tooltip is displayed giving details of the change including what the previous value was.
If a user deletes a lab result that is being tracked, the result is deleted from the EMR but in INR tracking the last recorded result is displayed with a red background and an exclamation mark. If the user moves the cursor over the value a tooltip is displayed saying this result has been deleted and what is being displayed is the last known value.
To access INR Tracking select the EMR icon > click the Encounter Notes tab > click the INR Tracking button.
The order the Welch Allyn results are displayed in the interface with encounter notes was different from the order set by the user in lab results. An update has been made to the display order in encounter notes to ensure the results are displayed in the same order set by the user. To access encounter notes select the EMR icon > click the Encounter Notes tab.
The Details tab in About Accuro now displays whether the Accuro install is a 32 or 64 bit install of Accuro. To access the details tab click Help > select About Accuro > click the Details tab.
In 2013.07 Accuro switched to Java 7. All existing installs of Accuro with Java 6 custom versions have had this updated to ensure Java 7 is used across the board.
When investigating another issue a developer found two instances of memory leaks where memory was not being released after an action had been performed. An update was released to fix this issue.
In an unusual workflow, if a user tried to merge two patients who shared a group appointment the merge was failing. An update has been made to ensure that two patients can be merged when they share a group appointment. To merge two patients select the first patient and click the Patients icon > click the Merge button.
It was identified that as well as loading the user in some instances Accuro was also loading everything associated with the user. This is not necessary and can affect the performance of Accuro. An update has been made to ensure that only the user information required at the time is loaded.
A Location Details field has been added to the Offices Setup tab in Manage Security. A tag has been created for this field so that it can be selected in forms and letter templates (OFFPHYSLOCATIONDETAILS). To access the office setup tab click Users > select Manage Security > click Offices > click the Setup tab.
Where different clinics share a front reception desk, arriving patients for multiple clinics works when the patient has an appointment with that clinic. But when adding patients directly to the traffic manager (without a booked appointment) Accuro was adding them to the traffic manager of the loaded office. An update has been made so that when the user arrives a patient (without an appointment booked) they are now prompted to select a clinic from a list of ones they have permissions for. When the user selects a different clinic (to the one currently loaded) the patient is added to that traffic manager and a confirmation message displaying the patient and the waiting room (for which office) they have been added to.
A user reported that when another user deleted a template suggestion in the scheduler, they were unable to place another suggestion over the place that used to contain the suggestion. An investigation found this was caused by users deleting suggestions that are in use causing them to disappear from the scheduler. An update has been made to warn users when they attempt to delete a suggestion that has been used to recommend marking it as inactive instead. If the suggestion belongs to a template(s) a list of templates containing the suggestion is displayed. To access template suggestion select the Scheduler icon > right-click in the appropriate time slot > click Template Suggestions.
The HST/PST amounts were not being saved when the user created a billing period snapshot. An update has been made to ensure that when a user creates a snapshot of a billing period the correct HST/PST amounts are saved with the snapshot. To create a billing period snapshot report > press Ctrl+R select Period Accounts Receivable > specify the snapshot date range.
Note: This is only applicable to sites that have Billing Periods enabled.
If users generated the Remittance Summary report and used the default selections in the steps a Java error was generated (no report was created and no error message was displayed). An update has been made to fix this bug and ensure that reports are generated correctly. To access reports from anywhere in Accuro press Ctrl+R.
On the Waitlist Report, the Phone Number and Hour text was displayed too close together making the information difficult to read. An update has been made to adjust the spacing between these two columns and also fix some alignment issues with the procedure information. To access reports from anywhere in Accuro press Ctrl +R.
When a user opens a document in the virtual chart there is a show thumbnails checkbox. An update has been made so that if a user selects show thumbnails their selection is remembered for the next time they open a document. To access the virtual chart select the EMR icon > click the Virtual Chart tab.
The waitlist used to default to an Accuro provider who was not linked to the waitlist. An update has been made so that the default Accuro provider is now the globally selected provider (provided they have been linked to the waitlist). To add a provider to the waitlist provider list select the Waitlist icon > click Tools at the top of the Waitlist window > select Provider Management.