These release notes describe the most important changes/fixes in version 6.6.0 of the CS R4+ software.
For customers using the eSignature feature we have added the ability for users to now create their own custom consent forms with mail merge & eSignature capabilities, this is achieved via the Document Manager window after which they can be accessed from each patient’s communication tab, custom eSignature documents are recorded and stored in each patient record the same as any other letter or communication.
For further details on how to use this new feature of eSignatures please see Introduction to customisable eSignature templates.
New functionality has been added to expand the available methods to provide appointments cards to patients. As well as the existing ability to print a copy, users can now send an email copy or a text message copy of the appointment card dependent on the methods of communications that are configured and setup for each patient.
These templates are also individually editable from within the appointment book under ‘options – appointment book templates’.
We have made further changes to how SMS Messaging works within CS R4+ so instead of producing an email to Healthcare Communications with the required appointment notifications attached for transmission we directly post each appointment via a HTTPS connection via an API to our SMS vendor.
The benefits of this is the appointment information is now far less visible outside of the practice and the notification(s) are sent immediately, be aware If using scheduled Jobs to transmit appointment reminders then this takes place when scheduled rather than immediately, lastly any CS R4+ setups not using a UK based locale will continue to use the old email mechanism.
Effective immediately eSignatures will now produce electronic versions of the FP17PR (R7) form for sites situated in Wales using the eSignature feature, this form originally came into effect from 1st April 2018.
We have increased password security, so it no longer allows users with blank passwords, any existing users with a blank password will be prompted to change their password at next logon, if the system default password is also left as blank then any new users or any users who account is reset will also be automatically prompted to change it upon login.
Also, any changes any user makes to any patient addresses (contact, billing or shared), name, contact details (home, work, mobile, email) or date of birth fields in the system are now audit tracked recording the changes and the user responsible.
We have improved the Medical History eSignature form so when a user clicks the ‘Sign’ button under the Patient’s Medical tab it now prompts if you are signing as the patient or their representative which is recorded on the signed form.
Within the patient’s financial tab, we have added a new projected outstanding balance figure to more easily track the total remaining debit on a patient record at a glance. This is calculated from incomplete accepted treatment minus the account balance across all ongoing courses of treatment on each patient.
This was caused as a side effect of a previous issue that affected claims where claims were incorrectly seen as duplicate transmission attempts of previously sent claims which we corrected by renumbering the affected claims, so they would be seen as new claims and not duplicates by the board.
When this was completed we had not removed the previous Patient Search ID (if one was present) which resulted in the claims now being seen correctly by the board, but were now rejecting the claims due to the old Search ID which can only be used once in every claim. We are now clearing these ID’s from the affected claims, this will mean some rejected claims may prompt to undertake a new Patient Search when attempting to retransmit.
After discussion it was found there was an undocumented rule that meant apostrophes should be handled in specific ways between Patient Searches and payment claims, we now will programmatically remove any apostrophes for an initial patient search and any payment claims being transmitted, where a secondary patient search is used that goes to the CHI database for lookup then the apostrophe is retained.
To help simplify situations where a patient is seen by a clinician who is not their registered dentist we have added a new option to the Patients Scheme tab and the Payment Claim window under NHS Patient Type called ‘Registered with another Dentist at this practice’, if selected will behave as follows:
Patient Scheme Tab: if set here then the overprint version and eSignature signing versions of the GP17PR form will also set ‘Registered with another Dentist at this practice’ under Part 1a, additionally any claim produced for the patient will automatically persist the patient type unless changed as normal.
Payment Claim: if the same option is persisted from the patients record or changed to by the user we will transmit the claim as an NHS Type 2 claim, the board will then check the supplied clinician details (the owning dentist) against their records for registered dentist for the patient based on the acceptance date of the claim.
Important Note: If the dentist does not match the boards records then it will be processed correctly as not the registered dentist however if it does match then the board will reject as expecting an NHS Type 1 claim which requires the type to be set to ‘Registered with this dentist’ if this happens a user can simply adjust the patient type on the claim in either direction and resubmit as required.
A prior approval alert was being incorrectly displayed due to the system applying the PA limit of the logged-in user instead of the limit assigned to the user owning the Course of Treatment.
This would likewise mean in some circumstances where a PA alert should display it wouldn’t due to the logged-in user’s limit being the lower of the two, this has now been addressed to always be the clinicians limit and not the logged-in user’s.
Claims were being renumbered to allow retransmission to the board the DSR running count was not being corrected to the next available number, this meant that new claims created in v6.5.2 were then again treated as duplicates of the recently corrected claims by the board.
We have immediately corrected this to renumber the small number of claims affected and correct the DSR running count so further new claims do not repeat this issue.
When producing an Invoice for a Patient group the invoice was missing all financial information for the dependant patients, this has now been addressed.
We have corrected this issue so any site a user has access permissions for either through being a system administrator or granted via additional clinic access they will now be able to see the Springboard window correctly.
An administrative level user may still have to login into each clinic and enable the widgets for those users affected so they then see more than either an empty white screen or just the base widgets. (Springboard user permissions are maintained on a per user and per clinic basis)
Due to how the time is shown in a SMS message as “hh:mm” this meant certain times would be misconstrued by a phones messaging app as certain emoji’s, to correct this at affected times we instead send the time as “hh.mm” replacing the separating colon with a full stop so it remains visually readable as a time, but stops a phones messaging app converting it.
One of the three new standard report queries added in v6.2.0 “Have had an appointment…” would always throw an error when used regardless which criteria was assigned to it, this has been corrected.
A specific workflow was reported which would result in the appointment book incorrectly resizing beyond the visible resolution where the desktop resolution was set to 1920x1080, this issue has been addressed.
Carestream Imaging Software version 8 has now been integrated with CS R4+ and is fully supported from this release forwards.
The Carestream R4 imaging launcher has been also updated to fully support CSI v8 for sites that use this method of image capture with CS R4+, this update is supplied on the CS R4+ upgrade DVD from this release forwards if needed.
Microsoft SQL 2016 & 2017 Enterprise / Standard and Express have been validated and are now supported for use with CS R4+ form this release forwards.