Pracsoft 4.4 Release Notes

Assignment of Benefits

Pracsoft now supports participation in the MBS Non-Referred Attendance (NRA) Incentive Program. This support includes site and practitioner configuration options, NRA item identification within fee setup, and updated bulk billing workflows aligned with Assignment of Benefit requirements. Practices can enable the functionality as required.

Enhancements

Appointments:

• In the Find Appointment window, it is now possible to search for appointments:
  • Of a specific appointment type, for example, Vaccination.
  • In a specified range of dates.
  • Across all Appointment Books.
• It is now possible to edit existing special sessions in the appointment setup.
• When recording a visit for a practitioner whose settings default to Vet Affairs for Veterans Affairs patients, this now applies to Veteran - Specified patients (in addition to Veteran - All patients).

Appointment Book:

• Activate the revised Appointment Book in Global Settings > Patient tab by setting Use New Appointment Book. The revised Appointment Book is activated by default.
• The Appointment List report now displays the appointment type in addition to the appointment time and patient name.
• Display a summary of information about an appointment by hovering your mouse over it.
• Reschedule an appointment by dragging-and-dropping it to a different time slot.
• Select a colour for the background and text of appointments.

Waiting Room:

• The new appointment type option Auto Add Waiting Room automatically adds appointments to the Waiting Room 15 minutes before the scheduled start time. The appointment is marked as Waiting. This is useful for Telehealth appointments to ensure they are not overlooked.
• When using a Medicare Card swipe to search for a patient in the Waiting Room, the scanned card number is now in the format 1234567890.
• The new Patient Waiting field displays the total number of patients currently in the Waiting Room.

Claiming:

• When preparing to transmit unsent claims to Medicare, patients who have no Medicare number are not listed in the Unsent Patient Claim window.
• When resolving exceptions to a claim, in the Resolving Claim Exceptions window, you can now select all of the claim’s exceptions by clicking the new Select All button.
• In the Global Settings > Payment Types, you can now enter the merchant IDs for Medicare Easyclaim with Tyro devices. (Formerly the merchant IDs were entered in the Bank Account Setup window. This window has been removed.)
• If Easyclaim is activated and you enter a visit for a patient with no recorded Medicare number, Pracsoft formerly displayed multiple messages. This workflow has been simplified to reduce the number of messages. Now, Pracsoft displays a message asking if you want to add the Medicare number. If you click:
  • Add Medicare and add the Medicare number, Pracsoft saves the Medicare number, transmits the claim, and prints the receipt or invoice as appropriate.
  • Continue, Pracsoft records the visit and does not transmit a claim.
• The Send Patient Claims practitioner selection is now a sticky setting that saves the last used setting.

Finance:

• Receipt site numbers can now range from 0 to 99, which makes it possible to differentiate the bank account information for up to 100 Pracsoft sites. Enter the receipt site number in Setup > Workstation Settings > Billing tab > Receipt site number.
• Multiple items in an account can now be reversed simultaneously.
• In the Unbanked Receipt Summary for (Site Name) window, receipts are now sorted by payment type, then by receipt number.
• In the Pracsoft - Statement window, text describing advanced searches by surname has been revised for clarity. It now says: Produce statements for where Payer Name falls within the letter range selected.
• In the Receipt window, the new Jump to Inv field quickly locates the specified invoice number in the Payment Allocation list.
• Receipt layout had been updated to ensure that Surcharge is only displayed when applicable.

Bugs

Appointments:

• The Telehealth appointment icon is now removed from the patient when their Telehealth appointment is deleted.
• When a user clicks a visit, an Unexpected Situation message is not displayed. At least one payment type must be selected in the Global Settings window’s Payment Types tab.
• In the Appointment Book, if:
  • A user manually types a new patient’s details into an available appointment slot and presses Enter, and
  • The details have more than 18 characters then the patient’s surname and first name are automatically added to the Surname and Name fields.

On hold accounts:

• If an account was placed on hold and then finalised, it can now be transmitted via Online Patient Claiming.
• If a patient is in the Waiting Room and their account is on hold, and you print an invoice for the account, the patient’s visit status is updated correctly in the Waiting Room.

Reports:

• The Receipt by Item Report can now be filtered by custom item numbers.
• Minor changes were made to multiple reports to fix cosmetic problems such as missing characters or overlapping labels.
• For consistency with Clinical, in the Enter Logon Details window:
  • The label of the OK button has been changed to Login.
  • The label of the Cancel button has been changed to Exit.
• When editing the patient’s Next of Kin details, if you select Other Relative in the Relationship list, you can save the patient’s record without typing anything in the Other field.
• When the Fee Listing window is not maximised, the Fees Last Updated date and Find button are not obscured by other details.
• If a patient has a Commonwealth Seniors Concession Card, in the Record Visit window, the Invoice To field defaults to Bulk Billing.
• In the Global Settings window, if you click Save and then click the X button in the upper right corner of the displayed message, the message closes.
• Pracsoft now applies the correct incentive item (75862) to pathology tests:
  • That are unreferred.
  • In Modified Monash Model (MMM) category 7 areas.
  • If the MyMedicare option is not set in the patient record.

Technical Updates

All entries in log files now include a date-timestamp. Formerly, only error messages included date-timestamps.