Release Notes

R4+ v8.7.0 Product Release Notes

The following is a list of enhancements included in R4+ Version 8.7.0.  All fixes are cumulative (each new release contains all new fixes as well as all fixes from the previous release).

New Features in R4+ v8.7

NHS England — April 2025 Fee Update

Below are the 2025 NHS Dental Fees which take effect on April 1, 2025.  This is a fee increase of 2.3% across all Treatment Bands.

NHS England, Wales  & Scotland — CCN 70 Expiry of Tax Credit Exemption

The Department of Health and Social Care has published that the current Tax Credit and Child Tax Credit benefits are ending as of April 5^th, 2025.

• Any Patients affected will be automatically switched to Not Exempt when their Record is accessed from April 6^th, 2025.
• Any prior FP17 Claims affected but have their Acceptance Dates altered beyond April 5^th will have it automatically cleared.

NHS England & Wales — CCN 70 PR Form (R10) and PRw Form (R12) Support

To coincide with the Expiration of the Tax Credit Exemption new PR Form revisions have been issued for use in England and Wales. The R4+ supported Full Print, Paper Overprint & eSignature Form variants have been updated and will automatically take effect from April 6, 2025.

NHS Wales — CCN 76 Dental Access Portal FP17 Claim Options

 Three new options are available on Dental FP17 Claims from April 1^st, 2025. These are found on the Dental Treatment Tab in the Dental Access Portal frame and must be manually set where needed before readying Claims for Submission.

• New Patient: This is available for use with Dental Claims in all normal circumstances.
• New Urgent Patient Referral: A Course of Treatment must be created with the Urgent Flag set for the Claim to make these options available, if the Urgent Flag was not set when creating the Course, it should be abandoned and recreated to ensure the produced FP17 Claim is aware of the Urgent Patient need.

            Additionally, about the use of the Patient DNA option…

• This option must be used in tandem with the “New Urgent Patient Referral” option to enable the health board to allocate funds under the corresponding Dental Contract, this will be automatically ticked if not already set.
• The “Patient Presented with”, “ACORN Assessment Carried Out” or “Examination Reason” requirements for Submission checks are overridden as the Patient did not attend so these are not expected to be included unlike a normal FP17 Claim.
• New Urgent Patient Referral - Patient DNA: This has the same Urgent requirements as “New Urgent Patient Referral” above, except the Course should be completed while empty as the Patient did not Attend so no Exam or Treatment is expected in the FP17 Claim.

Carestream Dental Payment Manager UK Integration

Carestream Dental and Clover Network LLC (Clover) have partnered to provide Payment Manager UK, a secure online resource for processing credit card payments directly with R4+.

• When Payment Manager is enabled for your practice, you can use it to accept and process Credit Card and Debit Card electronic payments directly from the R4+ Till window.

• Where enabled, Payment Manager Transaction Reporting is available within the R4+ Reports Manager, alongside real-time insights via your personal Clover web account.

• Clover POS Devices are chip-enabled, and work with Visa, MasterCard, Discover, American Express, and Diners Club International credit cards, as well as Google Pay, Apple Pay and Samsung Pay.

• Debit Card Transactions settle immediately with Credit Card Transactions settled automatically within 24 hours.

Note: Before you can use the Payment Manager UK service, you must also be enrolled. Contact a Carestream Dental representative for more information and your initial account setup.

After enrolment:

• The software can be downloaded via Main Settings > Add Ins 1 > Credit Card Processing > Vendor Payment Manager > Download button.

• After Installation return to Main Settings > Add Ins 1 > Credit Card Processing > Vendor Payment Manager > Activate button to undertake the Onboarding Process using your provided account credentials.

• When Onboarding is completed, install the Payment Manager software on all additional Workstations required to undertake Payments or to use the Transaction Report within your Practice or Clinic Locations.

Address Lookup Service Transition from GBG ePAF to GBG Loqate

The Address lookup facilities provided in R4+ for Patients & G.P. / Doctor addresses has now been updated to use GBG Loqate. This provides access to a larger Post Code Address dataset than that provided by the previous Service.

• When searching for Post Codes, some searches may also return Post Code Groups Alongside Single Addresses. These will be indicated by the addition of “Address - xxxx Postcodes” in the result list. Selecting these results and clicking OK will then expand this group allowing searches to repeat focusing the result each time until the required address for use is reached and selected.

• Due to the change in service, a different Service Endpoint is used. Ensure your Firewall allows HTTPS traffic to services.postcodeanywhere.co.uk.

Sensei Patient Bridge – Financial Writeback Other Payment Methods Support

We have made further changes in R4+ for the Sensei Patient Bridge platform.  Any Sites using Patient Bridge who want to use the Payment “Loan” type or have added additional “Other” Payment Methods in R4+ can now utilise them through Patient Bridge for online Payments. This may require further configuration in both R4+ and the Patient Bridge Platform so contact your R4+ and Patient Bridge Support representatives if you want to utilise this functionality.

Defects Fixed in R4+ v8.7.0

NHS England, Wales & IoM – Permanent Fillings not allowed on Permanent Tooth Occlusal Surfaces

An issue was identified stemming back to the introduction of the NHS Treatment Codes in 2006 where Permanent Fillings under the NHS and NHS Occasional Schemes could not be charted on Occlusal Tooth Surfaces even through this is stated in the NHS Regulations as allowed. This has now been fixed in R4+ v8.7.0. 
NOTE: A System Administrator must log into R4+ on your App Server after completing the update. You will then be prompted to import a further Code Update. This must be completed to apply these Filling Treatment Code changes to your system.

NHS England, Wales & IoM – Improvements to FP17 Claim Contract Selection when Changing Performer & Contracts for Submission

Due to how some Sites operate with Foundation Dentists ownership of a Course of Treatment may differ to the produced FP17 Claim being submitted for Payment, in these situations the Performer and Contract are adjusted on the FP17 Claim before submission. In some cases, this would be blocked if the assigned Contracts between providers do not align stopping the FP17 Claim from Transmitting. This has now been fixed in R4+ v8.7.0.

NHS Scotland – eOrtho Interim Payment Claims Rejecting due to containing Treatment Proposal Comments

An issue was identified where if an approved Prior Approval contained any Treatment Proposal Comments these comments would be included in any generated Interim Payment Claim that maybe submitted while the Course of Treatment was ongoing. This would result in the Interim Payment Claim being rejected as Treatment Proposal Comments are not allowed in these Claims however any specified Treatment Proposal from a Prior Approval still hold sway in the subsequent Final Payment Claim after completing Treatment.

To avoid losing the recorded information we will now omit this information from the Interim Payment Submission to ensure the recorded comment is maintained between a Patients Prior Approval and the Final Payment Claim. This has now been fixed in R4+ v8.5.2.

NHS Scotland – eOrtho Prior Approval & Final Payment Claims with Filling and Restoration Fees on the same Tooth resulting in Claim Rejection

A small issue was identified when generating the FP17 Claim for submission where the separate Treatment Codes were not being processed correctly, this resulted in a malformed Claim which would be rejected by MIDAS with an 8410 Error, this has now been addressed so further Submissions of affected Claims should be generated correctly and be accepted for processing in R4+ v8.7.0.

NHS Scotland – Clinical Administration updated to Support Alphanumeric Code use in Private Schemes

Due to how some Health Boards Student Training Systems use Patient Schemes and Treatment Codes this was impacted when the SDR Treatment Reform came into effect in 2023 which switched from Numeric to Alphanumeric Treatment Codes as Self-Managed Codes were still limited to being only Numeric.

This has now been corrected so any Created or edited Private Treatment Code will now allow an Alphanumeric Code Number to be used in R4+ v8.7.0.

Windows 11 – NHS England, Wales, IoM & Scotland NHS Form Full Print not Printing Backgrounds

A Microsoft Windows 11 Security Update affected how files containing embedded images are displayed and printed, this resulted in the NHS PR & NHS GP(O) Printed Forms no longer displaying the form instead printing a Blank Page with fields like Form Overprint mode. This now been fixed in R4+ v8.7.0.

Clinical Charting – Baseline Charting Carious Where a Filling exists without Material Displays an Error

Historically, some Tooth based Treatment Codes could be configured without any Material set, while this did not cause a problem with Charting Treatment it causes an error if a Condition is Baselined in the same position later. This has now been fixed in R4+ v8.7.0.

Planner – Monthly Overview can display a Shorter Slot Pattern than Configured Resulting in some Appointments appearing Out of Hours

An issue was identified where in some situations a Provider's Slot Pattern would appear shorter than what is configured, causing some appointments that are booked within Hours to appear to display Out of Hours. This has now been fixed in R4+ v8.7.0.

Waiting List, Closures & Holidays, Non-Allocated Mode Financial Report – Date, Duration & Financial Value Columns Showing Incorrectly

Due to changes made in v8.1.17 some columns would now show unexpected values versus previous versions of R4+.

• Waiting List [Appt At] column showing Dates rather than the Appointment Time.

• Waiting List [Duration] column showing the Date and Length rather than just the Length.

• Closures & Holidays – Cancel Appointments [Date] column showing Date and Time rather than just the Date.

• Closures & Holidays – Cancel Appointments [Time] column showing Date rather than the Appointment Time.

• Closures & Holidays – Cancel Appointments [Duration] column showing HH:MM:SS rather than just HH:MM.

• Non-Allocated Mode – Financials [Payments] column losing its Decimal placement so not showing pennies.

These forms have been corrected so the Columns will display as they did before. This has now been fixed in R4+ v8.7.0.