In the fourth quarter of 2021, PCC will release version 9.1 of our electronic charting and practice management software to all PCC users.

PCC 9.1 brings personal payment posting to PCC EHR, dramatically improving several tools for billers. PCC 9.1 also introduces a pilot test of a new forms configuration tool, allowing you to create new forms quickly and easily in PCC EHR.

Watch a Video Series: Want to see PCC 9.1’s highlights in action? Watch the PCC 9.1 Release Video Series.

Implementation: PCC 9.1 includes features that require configuration and user-specific software training. Read about the features below and then review the PCC 9.1 Migration Considerations article.

Read below to learn more, and contact PCC Support for information about these new features or about any PCC product or service.

Post Personal Payments in PCC EHR

When you want to post a payment from a family, or a stack of personal payments, use the Payments tool in PCC EHR.

Open Payments

Open the Payments tool from the Tools menu in PCC EHR.

Find an Account

Find the billing account for the payment.

You can search by account name or use other search parameters, like an account phone number. The list of matching search results includes a Dependents column, to help you confirm that you have the right account.

Optionally Review and Update Account Information

Before you enter payment information in the Payments component, you can optionally review and update account information.

The Payments tool includes Payments, Account Balances, Account Demographics, and the Account Notes component so you can review balance details, update account information, and add notes about any billing issue with the family.

Enter Payment Information

Next, review and adjust the transaction date, select a payment type, and enter a payment amount.

Enter a check number if applicable.

Save the Payment

Click “Save Payment” to save the payment and update the account’s balance.

Review Results and Optionally Add Another Payment

After you save a payment, you can see it in the ledger. Click the disclosure arrow to see how the payment was applied.

You can enter additional payments if (for example) the family used two different checks.

Print a Reciept

Click “Print Receipt” to print a receipt for the payment(s) you posted this session.

The receipt displays all payment information, along with helpful charge information for the family.

Save Changes and Continue to the Next Payment

Click “Save + Exit” to close the Payments window and save any additional changes you’ve made for the account. If you are posting a stack of personal payments, you can then immediately find the next account.

Review all Payments Posted

At the end of the day, run the Payment Reconciliation report in the PCC EHR Report Library to review all payments.

Optionally Indicate a Payment Should Not Be Linked

By default, a payment will link to the account’s oldest charges with a personal balance. You can optionally specify that only a portion (or none) of the payment amount should be applied.

If you change the amount of a payment to apply to charges (and therefore leave some or all of it unapplied), you can select a provider for reporting purposes.

Payments are normally linked to charges, which have an associated provider. If a payment is not linked to charges, you can indicate a provider manually.

Write Off a Charge in PCC EHR

When you want to write off a charge on an account in PCC EHR, use the Payments tool.

Open Payments

Open the Payments tool from the Tools menu in PCC EHR

Find an Account

Find the billing account for the charges you need to write off.

You can search by account name or use other search parameters, like an account phone number.

Optionally Review Account Information

In the Payments tool, you can review Account Balances, Account Demographics, and the Account Notes component so you can understand the charges and what you may need to write off.

For an explanation of all outstanding personal balances, click the disclosure arrow below Aged Balances.

Enter Adjustment Information and Click “Save Adjustment”

Select your practice’s preferred Adjustment type for a write off in the Payment Type drop-down menu. Then enter an amount and click “Save Adjustment”.

Optionally Review Results

PCC will automatically apply the adjustment to the oldest unpaid charge(s) on the account. Use the ledger to see the charges that the adjustment is applied towards.

In an upcoming PCC release, you will be able to select specific charges when (for example) an older charge should remain due and the adjustment should apply to more recent charges.

Enter an Account Note Explaining What You Did

It’s a good idea to add an account note explaining what balances were written off.

Enter and Review Account Notes in PCC EHR

When you wish to record details about an account or billing situation with a family, you can add an account note.

First, open the Payments tool and find the account.

Next, scroll down to the Account Notes component. It appears underneath Account Demographics.

Click “New Note” to create a new note.

Click the checkbox to save your note.

If you want to add something to your note later, click the pencil icon to edit a note.

Do you have follow-up information about an existing note? Click the plus symbol (+) to add a follow-up note to an existing note.

You can have multiple follow-up notes to track a billing issue as it continues.

Account Notes in PCC EHR vs. Partner: If your practice used the Account Notes features in the Partner Practice Management system, found in the Family Editor (fame), you may notice slight differences. For more details about transitioning between the two interfaces, read the PCC 9.1 Migration article.

Understand and Respond to Eligibility Errors

When automated insurance eligibility checking fails, PCC 9.1 explains precisely why, and gives you action steps to fix the problem.

If the underlying issue is missing patient or policy information, you can quickly correct the problem and try again. If eligibility isn’t working due to underlying configuration, PCC EHR will provide you with useful information so you can contact PCC Support.

PCC EHR’s Insurance Eligibility tool summarizes errors, but it also provides access to the full payer response, when available. You can review the payer response to learn more.

Experience Fewer Eligibility “False Positives”

PCC 9.1 improves the underlying intelligence of automated eligibility in PCC EHR. The Insurance Eligibility tool will more accurately indicate whether a patient’s policy status is Active, Inactive, or Unknown.

Prior to PCC 9.1, the default Insurance Eligibility result was Active. This worked well when a payer’s eligibility response followed a straightforward logic. However, eligibility responses can include both a status and a variety of additional codes. PCC’s automated eligibility now displays Unknown, or “Eligibility Undetermined” by default, which will increase eligibility accuracy, and provides details in the Full Report.

Do You Trust Eligibility in PCC EHR, or Do You Visit the Payer's Web Site?: PCC wants automated eligibility to be 100% reliable, the perfect tool to give your billers a heads up about upcoming encounters. If you encounter an eligibility status in PCC EHR that doesn’t match a patient’s status on a payer’s web site, please let us know so we can track down and correct the issue.

Configure Your Locations to Reduce Service Facility Claim Errors

If your practice bills for several facilities, such as when you have a multiple locations across town, you can now designate that a location is a subpart of your main billing location.

To make the change, edit the location in the Places of Service table in the Table Editor (ted) in your Practice Management window. Or, get PCC Support to make the change for you.

PCC will then automatically use the correct logic to include (or leave out) service facility location information based on electronic claim standards and your practice configuration.

See Both Codes When a Payer Downcodes

When an insurance payment can’t be posted automatically because of a rejection or other issue, your practice’s billers review the 835 ERA to find out what’s wrong and resolve the issue.

When PCC 9.1 displays an 835, you’ll now be able to see both the adjudicated code and the submitted code. That means that if a payer includes information about both the code you submitted and the code they paid on, you’ll see both. Payers sometimes reply to a charge by erroneously including the NDC code instead of the CPT code you used on the claim. When that occurs, the NDC code will appear in the Submitted column, as shown in the example above.

By reviewing both columns, billers can better understand what happened and take action to resolve the issue and post the payments and adjustments.

Notify Portal Users When a New Document is Available

Automatically notify your patients and families when you share a new document to the Patient Portal, to keep them informed and updated in real time.

When you add a new document to a patient’s chart, check the “Display in Portal Documents” box to automatically send a portal notification to the users associated with the patient you selected. If the patient has multiple portal users associated with their account, each portal user will receive the notification.

When the user signs into their patient portal, they’ll find the new document waiting.

One Notification Per Patient, Per Hour: To avoid inundating your users with emails, a notification will only be sent for the first document uploaded to a patient in a 60 minute period. So if you upload multiple documents for one patient, that patient’s portal users will only receive one notification for the batch.

Pilot Test: Create and Manage Patient Forms in PCC EHR

Starting in PCC 9.1, you can optionally participate in a pilot test to create your own patient form letters in PCC EHR.

In the new Forms Configuration tool, you can create patient form letters that include variable fields for auto-inserting patient, account, and practice information.

The form letters you create during the pilot test will not replace your existing patient forms in PCC EHR until a time of your choosing in a future PCC release.

You should consider participating in the pilot test if you want early access to the tools for making your own patient form letters in PCC EHR and to tell PCC what would make them even better.

Get Started with Forms in PCC EHR

Notify your Client Advocate if you want to participate in the pilot test to create your own patient form letters in PCC EHR. Your Client Advocate will enable the Forms Configuration tool and help you prepare to use it as a pilot tester.

You can read more about how to get started with Forms Configuration in PCC EHR in the Migration and Implementation Considerations.

Create a Basic Text Form

Once your Client Advocate enables the Forms Configuration tool, you can start creating your own patient form letters in PCC EHR.

Open Forms Configuration

Click on “Forms” in the Configuration menu in PCC EHR to open the Forms Configuration tool.

Access Forms Configuration by Permission Only: Users can only access the Forms Configuration tool if they have permission to do so. You can grant users forms configuration access in the User Administration tool in PCC EHR.

Add a New Form

In Forms Configuration, click the “Add” button to create a new form.

A blank form template opens in the window.

Give the Form a Name

Create a name for your form. In a future PCC release, this will be the name that users see in the Forms component in PCC EHR.

Pick a Unique Name: The form name must be unique. You cannot save a new form if it has the same name as another form in the Forms Configuration tool.

Compose Text

Compose the text of your form in the blank document template.

The document template represents a standard 8.5 x 11-inch page with 1-inch margins.

Automatic Page Breaks: When the content of your form exceeds the amount of space available on the page, the extra text automatically flows onto a new page.

Customize the Style of the Text

Use the style options in the toolbar at the top of the window to customize the font, size, weight, color, and alignment of your text, or to insert a bulleted or numbered list.

Save Your Work

Click the “Save” button to save your new form.

A “Last Saved” timestamp appears beneath your form in the editor window. The timestamp updates each time you save your form.

Close Your Form

When you have finished working, click “Save + Exit” to save and close the form.

You can also click the “Back” button if you wish to discard your changes instead of saving them.

When you close a form, you return to the main screen of the Forms Configuration tool.

Work with Variables

You can include fields on your forms for auto-inserting patient, account, and practice information. These fields are called variables.

You can use variables to create generic form templates that will auto-complete with relevant details when you generate them for patients. You will be able to generate your new form letters for patients in a future PCC release.

Get to Know the List of Variables

Edit a form in the Forms Configuration tool and locate the Variables pane to the right of the document canvas.

Review the list of variable names and descriptions to learn which kinds of information you can auto-insert onto forms.

In PCC 9.1, you can auto-insert:

• patients’ demographics, insurance policy details, last vaccination date, and allergies
• patients’ billing and home account addresses, demographics, and contact information
• patients’ next appointment details
• patients’ primary care provider details
• your practice’s physical and Web address, contact information, and tax ID
• today’s date

More variables will be added in future PCC releases.

Search the Variable List: You can search for specific terms within the Variables pane. As you type a search term, the list narrows to include just the variables with names or descriptions that match your search.

Variables Use Your Practice’s Naming Conventions: The variables available to you in the Forms Configuration tool reflect your practice’s unique names for phone numbers and custom demographics fields. For example, if your practice has a custom field for emergency contact information in patient demographics, you will see a corresponding variable for that custom field in the Forms Configuration tool.

Find a Variable to Insert

To insert a variable onto your form, first select it in the Variables pane.

Place Your Cursor Where You Want to Insert the Variable

Position your cursor in the body of the form where you want to insert the selected variable.

Insert the Variable

With your cursor in position, double-click the selected variable to insert it, or click the “Insert” button at the bottom of the Variables pane.

The variable appears on your form where the cursor was positioned.

Configure the Variable Options

Click on the variable in the body of your form to view and configure its options. Once selected, the variable’s options appear in the Variables pane.

Some variables have formatting options. For example, you can choose how to format dates.

Other variables require you to make a decision before they can work. These variables turn orange as soon as you insert them onto your form, letting you know there is an action for you to take.

Click on the variable in the body of your form, then select one of the options from the orange-highlighted drop down list within the Variables pane.

Once you take the required action, the orange highlight goes away and the name of the variable on your form updates to reflect your choice.

The way you configure each variable determines what kind of information it auto-inserts onto your form upon generation and the manner in which the information is formatted.

Coming Soon: Edit the Font Style of Variables: In a future PCC Release, you will be able to edit the font style of variables to match the surrounding text.

Work with Saved Forms

You can edit, delete, and clone saved forms on the main screen of the Forms Configuration tool. To work with a saved form, select it, then click the button for the action you want to take.

Edit

The “Edit” button allows you to make changes to a saved form. You can also double-click a form to open it for editing.

Clone

The “Clone” button makes a copy of a saved form and allows you to make changes to the copy. When you save a cloned form, the original form remains intact and the cloned version gets added to the Forms Configuration tool with the changes you implemented.

Delete

The “Delete” button allows you to permanently remove a form from the Forms Configuration tool.

Delete by Permission Only: Users can delete forms by permission only. You can set up user permissions in the User Administration tool in PCC EHR.

Work with PDFs

With help from PCC Support, you can upload PDF forms into the Forms Configuration tool.

You might need to do this if your state or local school district requires that you complete a particular form for patients at the beginning of a new school year.

PDF forms appear in Forms Configuration with an icon.

You can rename them without intervention from PCC Support.

Users with the right permissions can also delete PDFs from the Forms Configuration tool.

In a future PCC release, you will be able to view the contents of PDFs in the Forms Configuration tool, control which PDFs are visible in the Forms component in PCC EHR, and decide where PDFs appear in the Forms component list order.

What to Look Forward To

PCC 9.1 is the first of many PCC releases that puts the power to create and manage patient forms into your hands. In upcoming PCC releases, you will be able to:

• Preview your form letters as you build them to see what they will look like when you generate them for patients
• Generate your form letters for patients in PCC EHR
• Include images on forms
• Auto-insert provider signatures
• Auto-insert details from patient encounters, such as vitals
• Auto-insert complete address blocks
• Auto-insert patients’ siblings
• Create questions for users to answer while generating a form, and auto-insert their answers
• Set custom margins and page sizes
• Check spelling
• Recreate your letterhead in Forms Configuration
• Control which forms appear in the Forms component and in what order

…and more! Pilot tester feedback will steer the future development of the Forms Configuration tool in PCC EHR.

Tell PCC What You Think

If you decide to become a pilot tester, tell your PCC Client Advocate what you like about the Forms Configuration tool and what would make it more useful for your practice.

Your feedback will guide the development of the Forms Configuration tool in PCC EHR.

Look Up and Import Immunization Records from Your State’s Registry

Practices in California, Wyoming, Indiana, and Florida are now eligible to sign up for bidirectional connections with their state immunization registries.

With a bidirectional connection, you can look up vaccine records from your local immunization registry and import them into patients’ charts without ever leaving PCC EHR.

To read about how it works, check out Look Up and Import Patient Immunization Records from Your Local Registry.

Contact PCC Support to get started, or to let us know that you’re interested in establishing a bidirectional connection with your registry once it’s available in your region.

Securely Retrieve Patient Information from Hospitals and Other Practices

When you enable Clinical Document Exchange, you can exchange patient records securely and on-demand with other healthcare organizations right within PCC EHR.

Learn how it works and how to sign up in Securely Retrieve Patient Information from Hospitals and Other Practices.

Use 2022 ICD-10 Diagnosis Billing Codes in PCC EHR

During the PCC 9.1 release cycle, PCC updated your practice’s system with 2022 ICD-10 diagnosis billing codes.

The 2022 ICD-10 update includes additions and expansions to sections for neonatal screening findings (P09*), cough (R05*), pediatric feeding disorder (R633*), cannabis/cannabinoid related codes (T407*), and Social Determinants of Health (Z5*). The update also includes a new “Post COVID-19 condition, unspecified” code (U099).

The new codes and guidelines take effect for dates of service starting on 10/1/2021.

Here are some resources to help you learn about 2022 ICD-10:

• CMS: You can review the complete, updated guidelines in the CDC’s 2022 ICD-10-CM Official Guidelines for Coding and Reporting.

• Attend a Billing Drop-In Event: You can learn about the updates that are of most interest to pediatric practices by attending Monthly Billing Drop-In events hosted by PCC’s billing specialists. September’s Drop-In included a Code Updates presentation.

• New and Updated ICD-10 Codes of Interest to Pediatricians: You can also review a list of new codes highlighted by PCC’s Jan Blanchard (CPC, CPEDC).

Chart Diagnoses Mapped to Deprecated ICD-10 Billing Codes: Were there any 2022 code changes for items that your practice frequently bills? After your update, you can review your system configuration using the snomedmap program in Partner. You can set what charted diagnoses (SNOMED-CT) map to your billing codes in the Billing Configuration tool in PCC EHR. While there were no major disruptions in the 2022 ICD-10 update, it’s always worth reviewing your code mapping to head off any billing challenges.

Use New Test Descriptions in the LOINC 2.70 Update

During the PCC 9.1 release cycle, PCC updated your practice’s system with LOINC 2.70, an update to the standard list of labs used to make tests interoperable between different systems.

PCC reviewed the updates to LOINC before the update: there will not be any disruption to labs your practice currently orders, and you shouldn’t need to take any action to see the effects of the patch.

The update includes over a thousand new terms and updates, including COVID-19 related issues and new lab tests such as LOINC Code 76098-2 (Respiratory Syncytial Virus RNA by isothermal nucleic acid amplification technology (NAAT)). You can read more details on the LOINC Release Notes web site.

Your practice can configure the tests for each of your lab orders in the Lab Configuration tool. For a quick guide on how to add a COVID-19 test or other lab order to your system, you can read Create a COVID-19 Test Lab Order.

New and Updated Reports in PCC 9.1

With each release, PCC improves upon the reports you can generate in PCC EHR. Here are the reporting updates for PCC 9.1:

Find Portal Users Who Have Unknown Relationships to Their Linked Patients

Use the new Portal Users by Relationship report in PCC 9.1 to generate a list of portal users who have undefined relationships to their linked patients. Then, fix the undefined relationships to ensure that your patients and their family members get the right portal communications at the right times. This is especially important for practices who send CHADIS questionnaires to portal users ahead of patient visits.

In the Report Library in PCC EHR, open the Portal Users by Relationship report from the Appointment or Patient Portal category.

The default settings for the report will help you find patients with upcoming appointments who have an unknown relationship to their linked portal users.

Once the report generates, you can use your findings to correct the undefined relationships in the Patient Portal Administration tool.

Open Patient Portal Administration from the Tools menu, then click on the Manage Portal User tab.

Search for the portal users on your list, then set up their relationships to their linked patients.

If the Portal User by Relationships report does not meet your needs by default, you can customize it to include different default filter settings (such as a date range that looks further into the future), more or fewer columns, or different criteria.

Filter by CHADIS Visit Type: Because the Portal Users by Relationship report is primarily intended for use in practices where CHADIS is enabled, it includes a filter for CHADIS Visit Type that allows you to limit the report results to patients who are scheduled for certain kinds of visits associated with CHADIS questionnaires. If you run the report to include “All CHADIS Visit Types”, the results will include all patients with unknown portal user relationships irrespective of CHADIS visit type.

Customize Lab Test Reports to Meet Third-Party Requirements

PCC 9.1 introduces the ability to generate, customize, and schedule test result reports from the PCC EHR Report Library.

The Test Result report in the Report Library improves upon the Lab Test Report, which is located in the Reports menu in PCC EHR. You can use the new Test Results report to share COVID test results and contact tracing information with your regional health agency.

Open the Test Results report from the Clinical category within the Report Library.

By default, the report includes lab test and facility information, patient and account contact information, and insurance policy details. Tests will display a CLIA number if performed at an in-house lab facility that is linked to an appointment location.

You can customize the report criteria, rearrange the columns, and schedule the report to run at regular intervals.

When you export the report results to CSV format, the elements of most names and addresses separate into discrete columns. This makes the export easier to work with in your favorite spreadsheet program.

Contact PCC Support if you need help customizing the Test Results report to meet specific reporting requirements for COVID or other test results.

Find Open Referrals (and Other Types of Orders) for Inactive, Transferred, and Dismissed Patients

In PCC 9.1, you can filter patient list and orders reports in the PCC EHR Report Library by patient flag and order status to find inactive, transferred, and dismissed patients who still have incomplete orders.

Edit the patient flag filter to include patients who are inactive, have transferred out, or were dismissed from your practice. Edit the orders filter to find orders with the status “Not Complete”. Generate the report.

You can use the resulting list to clear incomplete orders for inactive, transferred, and dismissed patients from your Visit Tasks queue.

Flexible Filters: There is more than one way to use the patient flag and order status filters on the patient list and order reports. Whenever you tackle a new reporting task, keep in mind that the patient flag and order status filters can be used in combination on a number reports.

See Patients’ Age at Last Visit on Reports

When you generate a Patient List in the Report Library in PCC EHR, you can optionally include a column that displays how old patients were at their last visit.

The Age at Last Visit column is also available on the Preventive Care Recall, Chronic Condition Recall, Patients Overdue for Weight Management, and Broadcast Messaging Patient List reports.

You can share this information with third party requesters or use it to perform practice-level analysis about how you deliver care to patients in different age groups.

Discrete Columns for Name and Address Elements When You Export Reports to CSV Format

Reports in the PCC EHR Report Library combine the elements of names and addresses into the same column.

In PCC 9.1, the elements of most names and addresses separate into discrete columns when you export report results to CSV format.

Discrete columns for name and address elements make it easier to work with report results in your favorite spreadsheet program.

Not All Names and Addresses Split Out: You might notice that the names and addresses in certain columns on certain Report Library reports do not split out when exported to CSV format. The splitting function will be extended to all name and address types in a future PCC release.

Sort Reports by Patient Age

In PCC 9.1, you can sort report results according to patient age in the PCC EHR Report Library.

The patient age column now sorts logically in ascending or descending age order, rather than sorting strictly numerically. For example, in ascending order, patients who are 11 months old will now come before patients who are 1 year old.

Find Emancipated Patients Whose Healthcare Information Remains Visible to Other Portal Users

You can use the Portal Users by Relationship report in PCC 9.1 to find patients who have reached the age of emancipation and who continue to share health information with portal user accounts other than their own.

Open the Portal Users by Relationship Report

In the Report Library in PCC EHR, open the Portal Users by Relationship report from the Appointment or Patient Portal category.

Edit the Patient Age Filter

In the report criteria, set the minimum age in the Patient Age filter to the age of emancipation in your locality.

The age of emancipation in your region should be the same age at which your practice enables age-based privacy for patients who choose to hide their healthcare information from portal user accounts other than their own.

Edit the Portal User Relationship Filter

In the report criteria, edit the Portal User Relationship to Patient filter and select all relationships except “Self”.

In order for this filter to work as intended, your practice must have relationships set up between portal users and the patients to whom they are connected.

Edit the Age-Based Privacy Filter

In the report criteria, change the Age-Based Privacy filter to “Disabled”.

This setting allows you to find patients whose healthcare information is visible to other portal users.

Generate the Report

Generate the report. The results contain the names of patients who have reached the age of emancipation and continue to share their health information with portal user accounts other than their own.

Verify Your Patients’ Privacy Preferences

Speak with the patients on your list and affirm that their intent is to continue sharing their healthcare information with other portal users.

Update Age-Based Privacy Settings Based on Patient Preferences

You can change the age-based privacy setting for patients who would like to hide their information from other portal users in Patient Portal Administration.

Patients who opt to continue sharing their information with portal accounts other than their own past the age of emancipation should sign a release form.

Easily Report on a 14-Day Date Range

All reports in PCC EHR now include a fourteen-day date range option.

You can use this option to generate reports about patients who have visits in the next two weeks, or to identify encounter charges from the last two weeks that have yet to be posted.

The fourteen day date filter is available on default reports, custom reports, and scheduled reports.

Improved PCC EHR Release Deployment

During the release of a new PCC EHR update, the update cannot be completed if a user is logged in to PCC EHR, or if a user logs in during the deployment process. To ensure that you get the newest versions of PCC EHR without delay or interruption, users are now prevented from using PCC EHR while an update is in progress.

The login screen will include a message that maintenance is in progress.

If a user is already logged in when an update begins, they will be automatically logged out and will prevented from logging in again until the update is complete. After the update, the window will refresh and the username and password fields will reappear.

A Better Way to Set Patients’ Immunization Registry Status

Practices who are required by their immunization registries to include a patient status with vaccine record submissions can now set a patient immunization registry status under Communication Preferences.

The patient immunization registry status field is only visible to practices who have it enabled in the Communication Preferences component.

You should only enable the patient immunization registry status field if your registry requires you to send a patient status with vaccine record submissions. Contact PCC Support if you receive such a request. A PCC immunization registry support specialist will work with you to enable the field and make sure that your practice is using it the way your registry requires.

Immunization Registry Status is Not Connected to Patient Flags: Patient immunization registry status is used solely for the purpose of communicating patient status to a registry and is not tied in any way to patient flags in Practice Management and PCC EHR.

New and Updated Interfaces Available in PCC 9.1

With each release, PCC expands and updates direct connections, partnerships, and integrations with insurance payers, immunization registries, and more. Here are the clinical and financial interoperability updates for PCC 9.1:

• New and Updated Clinical Interfaces: During the PCC 9.1 release cycle, PCC updated our immunization registry interfaces with Oregon (ALERTIIS), Florida (Florida SHOTS), and Louisiana (LINKS) to support state-specific requirements around COVID vaccine and VFC status reporting.

• New Insurance Eligibility and Financial Interfaces: During the PCC 9.1 release cycle, PCC enabled real time insurance eligibility-checking for LA Medicaid, VA Medicaid, Optima Health Plan, Neighborhood Health Plan Rhode Island, Triple S, LA Healthy Blue, and NC Healthy Blue. PCC also updated eligibility configuration for Meridian Health, Harvard Pilgrim, and Cigna. PCC 9.1 also introduced claim interface improvements for Advocate Lutheran, Community Health Choice, PA Medicare, Cook Children’s Health, Parkland, AmeriHealth Caritas North Carolina, Healthy Blue North Carolina, IL Aetna Better Health, and Aetna Better Health PA..

If your practice would like to take advantage of these connections, or you have other interface needs, contact PCC Support.

Background Improvements to PCC eRx

Ahead of the PCC 9.1 release, your practice received an important, non-disruptive background update to PCC eRx which:

• Fixes common prescription errors related to frequency, dose form, quantity, and missing instructions that prevent you from e-prescribing
• Fixes the “Add New Medication” button so that you can prescribe new medications immediately after renewing existing medication entries
• Gives you the ability to view or adjust Dispense as Written (DAW) information for pending prescriptions on the Rx Queue, and fixes an issue where the DAW checkbox was sometimes being selected without user input
• Reduces possible confusion at the pharmacy by removing the generic epinephrine option mapped to brand-name only manual injector pens (Symjepi)
• Resolves issues surrounding saved prescriptions and stop dates, ensuring the calculated date is always present and, if selected, the “Use Stop Date” box is honored when editing a 3 month supply
• Gives you the ability to revert a pending 3 month supply prescription to a single month, and ensures that the set of 3 prescriptions remains linked by preventing individual processing
• Resolves unintended duplication in the PCC EHR Prescriptions component that resulted from editing three month supply prescriptions
• Picks up patients’ preferred pharmacy when you renew medications

Contact PCC Support if you have any questions about the improvements included in this update.

Other Feature Improvements and Bug Fixes in PCC 9.1

In addition to the features described above, PCC 9.1 includes these smaller improvements and squashed bugs.

• Updated VIS, MVX, and CVX for the new VAXELIS Vaccine and More: PCC 9.1 includes updates to the list of supported immunization Vaccine Information Sheets, manufacturers, and product codes. Among other updates, PCC EHR now supports VAXELIS (CVX 146), a new vaccine that immunizes against diptheria, tetanus, pertussis, polio Hib (Haemophilus influenzae type b), and hepatitis B, developed in a partnership with Merck and Sanofi Pasteur (requiring a new manufacturer code, MSP). For help adding new immunizations to your PCC system, read Add, Update, and Configure Immunizations in PCC EHR and contact PCC Support.

• New Vaccine Product Codes (CVX) Pending Approval of Pfizer SARS-COV-2 Vaccine for 5 through 11 Years of Age: You can begin to configure your PCC system for administrations of Pfizer’s tris-sucrose SARS-COV-2 vaccine formulations for ages 5 through 11 (CVX 218) and ages 12 and older (CVX 217) in anticipation of FDA approval for emergency use. Instead of vaccine information sheets (VIS), these vaccines will have emergency use authorization (EUA) sheets that you can share with patients and their families. PCC is preparing to assist practices with the configuration needed to carry out a mass SARS-COV-2 vaccination campaign. Until further communication is released, you can contact PCC Support to notify PCC of your intent to administer the vaccine and of your potential need for configuration assistance. For more information about these vaccines and the associated CVX, NDC, and CPT codes, please refer to the CDC’s web resources concerning COVID-19 vaccines.

• CVX Code 207 for Moderna SARS-COV-2 Booster Dose: Per the CDC, the description of CVX code 207 has been updated pending FDA emergency use authorization to allow its use for a booster dose of the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine drawn from existing product vials.

• Call PCC Before You Start Billing for COVID-19 Boosters (Third Shot): With a little custom configuration, PCC supports the procedure codes for billing third-dose boosters of COVID-19 vaccines. Call PCC Support to request the custom configuration before you begin billing for COVID-19 booster shots.

• Use Apostrophes in Names on Claims: PCC’s claim processing now supports apostrophes in patient and account names. Names like D’Angelo and O’Hara will no longer cause claim errors.

• More Information Sent to CHADIS: Gestational Age is now sent to CHADIS, so that CHADIS can calculate an adjusted age and better match questionnaires to patients up to three months old. Multiple birth information is also included with patient information, though CHADIS does not yet make use if it.

• Reduce Claim Errors Related to Subscriber Relationship: Claims will use the relationship to subscriber entered for the patient’s specific policy first, and then use the relationship entered in the patient’s record if needed.

• Improved Messages Queue Speed: The Messages queue in PCC EHR now caches information, speeding up how the queue refreshes. At large practices, this will lead to noticeable improvement on the Messages queue, and may result in improved performance elsewhere in PCC EHR.

• Unable to Save Documents from Patient Education to the Chart: Under certain circumstances, sending patient education would create a blank document. PCC patched this problem to all clients mid-release.

• Appointment Note Crash: While reviewing Appointment Notes on the Schedule screen, an automatic refresh of the screen could cause PCC EHR to crash. PCC 9.1 fixes this issue.

• New Patient Sync Problems: When adding a new patient or modifying their date of birth, sometimes the records would not be adjusted in the Partner PM system right away. This update now happens more quickly.

The PCC 9.1 release includes new features that may need configuration and for which you may want to do extra planning or training. Read below to learn more, and share relevant details with your physicians and staff.

Read the PCC 9.1 Release article for complete details on these features.

Contact PCC Support for help implementing features in PCC 9.1.

Update Your Workstations, Expect Some Slowness On Day 1

After a PCC update, your practice will need to update workstations around your office. Users will see an update reminder on their login screen.

Update Slowness: After you install a PCC EHR update on a workstation, the software needs to cache the code it uses to display information. You will experience slowness until this finishes.

Add User Permissions for Post Payments in PCC EHR

Your practice can now post personal payments (and write off charges) inside PCC EHR. Your PCC 9.1 update will grant this permission to all users who have administrative privileges. After your PCC 9.1 update, use the User Administration tool to update your Roles to include the new tool.

Link vs Unlinked: When you post a personal payment in PCC EHR, the payment is by default linked to unpaid personal charges, starting with the oldest charges first. In PCC’s previous payment tool, the pam program in Practice Management, the default was to leave payments unlinked (unless the user pressed a key to link them.)

Understand the Differences Between Account Notes in PCC EHR and Partner Practice Management Tools

Your practice can now edit Account Notes in both the Payments tool in PCC EHR and the previous, Practice Management system’s Family Editor tool (fame). If your billers use this feature to track issues with an account, you may notice some differences.

• In the Family Editor, deleted notes were turned into a message indicating that a note was deleted. Those messages will still appear on old deleted notes in PCC EHR and Practice Management. When you delete an Account Note in PCC EHR, however, the note disappears and a record is kept in PCC EHR’s Audit Log indicating the note was deleted.
• In the Family Editor, notes could have descending hierarchy, with children of children notes. This made threaded notes more difficult to read and led to confusion when tracking issues. In PCC EHR, all child notes of an initial note are displayed at the same hierarchy, and are sorted chronologically.

Pilot Test the Forms Configuration Tool

In PCC 9.1 you can volunteer to pilot test a new tool in PCC EHR that you can use to create and edit your own patient form letters. You should consider becoming a pilot tester if you want to gain early access to making your own patient form letters in PCC EHR and to provide feedback that will inform the future development of the Forms Configuration tool.

Pilot testers will also get a head start migrating their existing patient form letters in the new tool.

Get Started with Forms Configuration

There are a few steps that you and your Client Advocate need to take in order for you to get started with the Forms Configuration tool.

Tell Your Client Advocate That You Want to Be a Pilot Tester

Talk to your PCC Client Advocate if you are interested in pilot testing the new Forms Configuration tool. Your Client Advocate will take several steps to launch the pilot test at your practice.

Your Client Advocate Schedules a Call to Review Pilot Test Information

Your Client Advocate schedules a call with you to share information about how the pilot test works and what you can expect to be able to do in the Forms Configuration tool in PCC 9.1.

Your Client Advocate Enables Forms Configuration

After the information session, your Client Advocate enables the Forms Configuration tool in PCC EHR and notifies you that the pilot test is live. Once the pilot test is live, a “Forms” option appears in the Configuration menu in PCC EHR.

Your Practice Configures User Permissions

Decide who should be allowed to access the Forms Configuration tool. Then, assign the correct permissions to those users.

In the User Administration tool in PCC EHR, click on the Roles tab and add the Forms permission to relevant user roles, or create a new role just for Forms Configuration access.

Permission to delete forms is controlled separately.

If you decide to create a new role, assign it to the relevant users.

User Administrators Have Forms Access by Default: Users at your practice who have access to User Administration in PCC EHR will automatically be given access to Forms Configuration when the tool is enabled. You can revoke this access in the User Administration tool.

Optionally, Your Client Advocate Migrates Existing Forms into Forms Configuration (Highly Recommended)

Once Forms Configuration is live, you have the option to migrate some or all of your existing forms from the PCC EHR Forms component into the new tool. Your Client Advocate must complete this step on your behalf.

You are not required to migrate existing forms in order to use the Forms Configuration tool. However, if you decide that you would like to move some or all of your existing forms into the new tool, it is highly recommended that your Client Advocate do so as soon as Forms Configuration is enabled.

Migrated forms remain linked to the chart note protocols where they are currently configured for one-click generation.

After Migration, Configure Your Forms: After your Client Advocate migrates your existing forms into the Forms Configuration tool, you must configure them for use. The steps you need to take depend on whether the migrated forms started out as text forms or PDF documents. Learn how to configure your migrated forms in Configure Migrated Forms.

What If I Decide to Migrate Later?: If you decide to migrate your existing forms later, be aware that it could overwrite new forms that were created in the Forms Configuration tool in the interim. This would occur in cases where your new forms share a background ID with the forms that you are migrating.

Your Practice Starts Making Patient Form Letters!

With the Forms Configuration tool enabled, your migration plan in place, and user permissions squared away, you can start making patient form letters!

First, try creating a test form from scratch. You can delete this form later if needed.

Once you get a feel for the tool, you can start creating realistic patient form letters.

Configure Migrated Forms Before Creating New Letters From Scratch: If your Client Advocate migrated your existing forms, you should configure those for use before making new letters from scratch. See Configure Migrated Forms to learn how.

Your Practice Provides Feedback About the Forms Configuration Tool

As you gain experience within Forms Configuration, let your Client Advocate know what you like, what seems confusing or broken, and what could make the tool more useful for your practice. Your feedback during the pilot test will steer the future development of the Forms Configuration tool.

You can see what features PCC already plans to add to the Forms Configuration tool in the PCC 9.1 Release article.

Configure Migrated Forms

If your Client Advocate migrated some or all of your existing forms into the Forms Configuration tool, you need to take some steps to configure them for use. The configuration steps depend on whether the migrated forms started out as text forms or PDF documents. In a future PCC release, you will be able to generate your migrated forms for patients.

If you have questions about the Forms Configuration tool, the forms migration process, or the pilot test, contact your PCC Client Advocate.

Use the Test Results Report Instead of the Lab Test Report

The new Test Results report in the PCC EHR Report Library replaces the Lab Test report that lives under the Reports menu in PCC EHR.

Unlike the Lab Test report, you can customize the Test Results report to meet the specific reporting requirements of third party requesters. You can also schedule different versions of the Test Results report to run regularly.

Try using the Test Results report to report COVID test results to your local health department.

Adjust Staff Workflow for Indicating Patient Immunization Registry Status

Prior to PCC 9.1, practices whose immunization registries required them to report a patient immunization registry status set that status in the Patient Status field, which was positioned at the top of the Patient Demographics chart section.

This field was often misused because of its name and placement in the chart, so it was moved and renamed in PCC 9.1. In the new version, staff members can set patients’ immunization registry status under Communication Preferences.

The Patient Immunization Registry Status field is only visible at practices where it is enabled within the Communication Preferences component.

You should only enable this field if your immunization registry requests that you send a patient status with vaccine record submissions. Contact PCC Support if your registry makes such a request of your practice. An immunization registry support specialist will work with you to enable the field and make sure your practice is using it the way your registry requires.

Add VAXELIS Vaccine to Your System

If your practice plans to administer and bill for the new VAXELIS combination vaccine, contact PCC Support.

Prevent Claim Rejections for Third Dose of Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine

If your practice administers the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine, and you administer (or plan to administer) booster shots (a third dose), contact PCC Support for help adjusting your configuration. PCC has seen claim delays and rejections without proper configuration. (In an upcoming update, PCC may implement these configuration changes for all practices.)

Update Your MacOS 10.12 or 10.13 Workstations and Your Windows 7 PCs

When a manufacturer stops providing security updates for an operating system, PCC ends support as well. If your practice is still using workstations that run Windows 7 or MacOS 10.12, that support has already ended and you should upgrade those machines.

Apple is expected to end support for 10.13 in 2021. PCC EHR includes a reminder to users when they log in on workstations running older operating systems. The reminder encourages them to review and update their operating system. Contact PCC Support for recommendations.

PCC EHR requires a workstation running on Windows 8 (or higher) or MacOS 10.14 (or higher). For more information, read Hardware Guide: Your Personal Computer and Equipment.

In August of 2021, PCC will release version 9.0 of our electronic charting and practice management software to all PCC users.

PCC 9.0 is a release focused on eRx functionality.

Watch a Video: If you would like to watch a brief overview of the features in PCC 9.0, watch the 9.0 Release Video.

Implementation: PCC 9.0 includes features that require configuration and user-specific software training. Read about the features below and then review the 9.0 Migration Considerations article.

Read below to learn more, and contact PCC Support for information about these new features or about any PCC product or service.

Access Prescription Favorites from a Drop-Down Menu

You can now access your favorites in a drop-down menu at the top of the Prescribe component. You can search directly in this drop-down for the favorite you want.

If you want to hide or show this drop-down, or the favorite tiles, you can independently activate or deactivate either feature in the My Settings section of PCC eRx.

Number of Favorites to Display: The “Number of Favorites to display in Prescribe section” setting in your PCC eRx settings only affects the number of favorite tiles. The drop-down will always contain all favorites.

Create Favorites While Prescribing

You can now create favorites on the fly, while you are prescribing. Click the “Add to Favorites” button at the bottom of the Add New Med section, or click the gray heart icon next to the drug name.

If you are prescribing something that is already a favorite, the heart will be colored blue. If you make changes to that favorite, the heart will turn gray, indicating that it is no longer a favorite. You can then save this new prescription as a new favorite.

What Fields are Saved as Part of a Favorite?: The following information is saved as part of a favorite: drug name, route, frequency, dosage form, dose, dose max, dose unit of measure, strength, strength max, strength unit of measure, dispense quantity, dispense unit of measure, and refills.

Can I Delete a Favorite?: You cannot remove a favorite while prescribing. To remove something from your favorites list or otherwise manage favorites, go to the My Settings tab in PCC eRx.

Create Three Month Supply of Schedule II Substances More Easily

In PCC 9.0, instead of having to create three separate prescriptions to create a three month supply of a Schedule II drug, you can now do so with one click.

Whenever you create a prescription for a Schedule II drug, PCC eRx will display a “Create 3 month supply” checkbox. When you check the box, dates will auto-populate the Date to Fill fields for 30 and 60 days out from today’s date.

In the Prescription History and Medication History components, this will appear as only one entry, simplifying and clarifying those items in the history.

Pre-date Prescriptions

If you want to allow patients to pick up prescriptions early, you can change the Date to Fill dates to allow for that.

You can set a default pre-date duration under My Settings, so that all prescriptions created using the “Create 3 month supply” checkbox will automatically set dates to fill 2 and 3 with a pre-dated value.

What does the Pharmacy Receive?: Even though PCC eRx displays the three month supply as one prescription, the pharmacy will receive three separate prescriptions, all identical except for the start date. You can see the serial numbers of these prescriptions in the Prescription History component.

Stop Dates: Stop dates are added automatically to the first two prescriptions in this series; they will drop off the “active” list in the Medication History component after 30 days. The final prescription, however, will have no stop date; it will persist in the Medication History component until you manually discontinue it.

No More Waiting for Prescriptions to Send

With PCC 9.0, you do not have to wait for prescriptions to send from the Review and Sign component before moving on to your next task. After you have finalized your prescriptions and clicked “Send Prescriptions”, the Prescription Review window will close immediately, and you can continue on with the visit.

What If There Are Errors?: If the prescription cannot make it to the pharmacy for any reason, an error will appear on the Rx Task Queue.

Renew Prescriptions More Easily From the Prescription and Medication Histories

You can now renew prescriptions with fewer clicks. Prior to PCC 9.0, clicking the Renew Prescription icon queued the prescription in the Review & Sign component. Now that icon opens the Renew Prescription window directly, where you can click the “Process Now” button to send the prescription immediately.

RapidRx Permissions: This feature is enabled by default for all users who have the eRx role of Provider or Mid-Level Provider. You can enable or disable this feature in the My Settings section of eRx.

Reassign Renewal Requests on the Queue to Another Prescriber

In PCC 9.0 you can assign renewal requests to other providers at your practice. Perhaps you were covering for a colleague when you made the initial prescription, but want the patient’s PCP to field the incoming request. Or, you’re managing the queue and the prescribing physician is on vacation so you need to redirect the request to a different physician. To reassign a renewal request, select the “Reassign” option and select the appropriate prescriber.

The queue will update within a minute, and the assigned prescriber will see the request on their queue.

Repeat Requests for Renewals from Pharmacies Only Appear Once on the Queue

When pharmacies send multiple renewal requests for the same prescription, these requests are now represented as one item in the queue, so you only have to reply once.

The queue will display the number of times the request has been submitted.

Make Adjustments to Renewal Requests from the Pharmacy

When you get a renewal request from the pharmacy, you can now make adjustments to the requested renewal, such as changing the dispense amount, and send that updated prescription to the pharmacy right from the Rx Task Queue.

Assign a Follow Up Provider When Creating a Prescription

If you are covering for another provider who is out of the office, or otherwise want to pass off any follow-up for a prescription (including phone calls and renewal requests) to another provider, simply select the provider from the Follow Up Provider drop-down.

The pharmacy will be notified that you want all follow-up communication for this prescription to go to that provider.

Disable Renewal Requests for Specific Prescriptions

If you want to indicate to a pharmacy that they should not send a renewal request for a particular prescription, click the Prevent Renewal Request checkbox when creating a prescription.

Updates to the Rx Task Queue

Edit and Delete Pending Prescriptions from the Rx Task Queue

PCC 9.0 adds a red edit pencil and a trash can icon to pending prescriptions in the Rx Task Queue. Use these to edit or delete prescriptions.

Note: As before, you can click on a patient’s name in the Rx Task Queue brings you directly to the eRx section of the chart for the encounter of the prescription.

Send Pending Prescriptions for All Patients with Fewer Clicks

You can now batch send all pending prescriptions from the Rx Task Queue. Click “Select All” and/or manually select the prescriptions you want to send, and then click “Process Unsigned Prescriptions”.

Prior to PCC 9.0, processing unsigned prescriptions opened a verification window. This extra step has been removed, so prescriptions will be sent when you click “Process Unsigned Prescriptions”.

New Error Section on the Rx Task Queue

Prescription transmission errors can occur when the pharmacy’s system is down, or when Surescripts, the entity that manages the communication between pharmacies and PCC EHR, is unable to process your prescriptions. These transmission issues can prevent prescriptions from reaching the pharmacy. When that happens, PCC eRx will display errors at the top of the Rx Task Queue.

After encountering an error, PCC will make multiple attempts to send a prescription. If you’d like PCC to stop trying to send the prescription so you can take action yourself, click “Stop Retrying” to end the process.

When a prescription fails to send (or when you tell PCC eRx to stop retrying), you can take one of three actions:

• Select “Keep” to indicate that you’ve called the pharmacy and resolved the issue.
• Select “Delete” to delete the prescription.
• Select “Print” to print the prescription to give to the patient or fax to the pharmacy.

Once you make a selection, click “Resolve” to remove the prescription from the queue.

Transmission errors will also appear in the Prescription History section of PCC eRx.

Receive Electronic Prescription Change Requests from the Pharmacy

You can now receive questions and communications from the pharmacy electronically. Maybe the pharmacy would like to substitute a generic for a name brand, or they want to dispense a therapeutically equivalent substitution due to insurance coverage. You can see and respond to these requests in the Rx Queue.

These requests from the pharmacy appear in the Rx Task Queue. You can approve, deny, or reassign a request to another provider.

Updates to the Medication History Component

Easily Discontinue Medications in the Medication History

You can now discontinue medications in the Medication History component by clicking on the new trash can icon.

Discontinue Date: When you click the trash can icon in the Medication History, the medication is discontinued as of today’s date. If you want to record something as being discontinued in the past, you must edit the medication and enter the stop date manually and then click “Save”. If you click “Discontinue” before clicking “Save”, the date you entered will be ignored.

Delete More Than One Entry From the Medication History at the Same Time

You can now discontinue multiple medications at once in the Medication History component. Click “Clean Up Med Hx”, select the medications you want to discontinue, and then click “Discontinue Medications”.

Communicate Canceled Prescriptions Electronically to the Pharmacy

When you delete a prescription from the Review and Sign component (or an active prescription from the Medication History), PCC eRx will automatically send an electronic cancelation to pharmacies that accept that type of electronic communication. A pop-up will indicate whether an electronic cancelation was sent, or if you need to call the pharmacy.

You can confirm the pharmacy received the cancellation by checking the Rx Queue History.

Changes to eRx Reporting

PCC 9.0 groups eRx reports together in one place, under the Rx Logs section of PCC eRx.

PCC 9.0 streamlines eRx reports, removing some fields and adding others to make the reports more focused and useful, and adds a Security Log.

Rx Audits

The following changes have been made to the Rx Audits log:

• Added: Search by Prescriber
• Added: Search by Patient
• Removed: Free text search field
• Removed: Event search field

Rx Queue History Updates

The following things have been changed in the Rx Queue History:

• Added: Drug schedule
• Removed: Search Type radio button
• Removed: Pharmacy search
• Removed: Location search

Security Logs

The new Security Logs section lets you monitor and audit suspicious activity regarding eRx and EPCS usage, such as multiple incorrect password attempts.

One feature of the Security Log is the ability to track prescribing activity based on a prescriber’s vacation hours and your practice’s office hours. A user with an administrator role can set your office’s hours in the Administration section of eRx.

All prescribers can set their vacation hours in My Settings in eRx.

If you want full data on all prescribing activity, use the Rx Audits log.

PCC eRx Logs Are Not Backwards-Compatible with Earlier Versions of PCC EHR: The Rx Queue History, Rx Audit, and Audit Log reports, along with many of the new features in PCC 9.0, use a more current standard for prescription information exchange. These reports cannot display information in the older format, and so will only give access to data as far back as the date you went live with PCC 9.0. If you need access to older data, contact PCC.

See If a Prescription Has Been Filled

Some pharmacies have the capability to send back information indicating that a prescription has been filled. When they do, the Prescription History component will display a pill bottle icon. You can click the icon for more history.

In the first quarter of 2021, PCC will release version 8.15 of our electronic charting and practice management software to all PCC users.

PCC 8.15 includes group chat, improved user management, COVID-19 vaccine support, improvements to preparing an encounter for billing, and much more!

Watch a Video Series: Want to see videos about the updates in this release? Watch the PCC 8.15 Release Video Series.

Implementation: PCC 8.15 includes features that require configuration and user-specific software training. Read about the features below and then review the PCC 8.15 Migration Considerations article.

Read below to learn more, and contact PCC Support for information about these new features or about any PCC product or service.

Chat With Groups in Your Office

When you want to chat with a group of PCC EHR users at your practice, select a chat group and enter your message.

The message appears to the whole group, and any replies will be marked with the replying user’s name.

Set Up Your Practice's Chat Groups: You can create and edit chat groups through the User Administration tool. See PCC 8.15 Migration Considerations to learn how.

Configure Which PCC EHR Queues Appear for Each User

Your practice can define which PCC EHR queues will appear when a user logs in. For example, a staff member at the front desk may not need to see prescription renewals or signing. Their PCC EHR screen could look like this:

And a biller may only need to review today’s schedule and messages in order to post charges:

Use the User Administration tool to define which roles will see each PCC EHR queue.

Read the PCC 8.15 Migration and Implementation guide to learn more.

By fine-tuning which queues appear for each user role in your practice, you can make PCC EHR easier to use and you can control who has access to different functions in PCC EHR.

All Users Will Still Have Access After the PCC 8.15 Update: Configurable queues are brand new! The PCC 8.15 update won’t hide any queues. When users log in after the update, they will see the same queues they have always seen. After the update, your practice’s office manager or system administrator can configure roles for your users, and also set expectations about the change. If you need help, contact PCC Support.

Manage All Usernames and Passwords in PCC EHR

PCC 8.15 automatically syncs authentication between PCC EHR and the Practice Management window. Your practice can use PCC EHR’s User Administration tool to manage user accounts for all PCC products.

When you enable or disable an account, adjust a Full Name, or change a password, the changes will affect all of PCC’s products for the user, including both Secure Connect access, PCC email accounts, and the Practice Management window.

When you create a new user account, PCC EHR will automatically create accounts and sync the authentications that each user needs.

If a user updates their own password in PCC EHR, that will automatically update their password for all PCC products.

The new “one stop shopping” for user account administration in PCC 8.15 will save time and reduce username and password problems, especially for your staff who access both PCC EHR and the advanced billing tools found in the Practice Management window.

Prepare for Password and Username Updates: While the password and username transition will be seamless for most users at your practice, there are special circumstances which may lead to confusion after the PCC 8.15 update. Please have your practice’s system administrator take a look at the Prepare for Username and Password Updates Across PCC Products and Services section of the PCC 8.15 migration article.

Configure, Order, Administer, and Track COVID-19 Vaccines in PCC EHR

In December and January, PCC applied several updates to your system to support COVID-19 vaccines. The PCC 8.15 software update includes further adjustments to improve COVID-19 vaccine support. Your practice can configure, order, administer, and track all available COVID-19 vaccines in PCC EHR.

For a complete guide, read COVID-19 Vaccines in PCC EHR: Configure, Order, Administer, and Track.

Here’s a list of the related updates that arrived during the PCC 8.15 release cycle:

• CVX and MVX for Pfizer, Moderna, Janssen and AstraZeneca Vaccines: Mid-release updates to your system added CVX codes 208 and 207 for Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines. PCC 8.15 adds CVX 212 and 210, for Janssen (J&J) and AstraZeneca. The MVX table is also updated to support new codes for Pfizer-BioNTech, Janssen, and AstraZeneca (PFR, JSN, and ASZ).

• VIS Entries for Pfizer, Moderna, Janssen and AstraZeneca: There are no VIS forms for the COVID-19 vaccines. In their place, the CDC has worked with manufacturers to provide EUA Fact Sheets. PCC added VIS table entries for the EUA Fact Sheets for both the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines to all practice systems in a mid-release patch. PCC 8.15 adds entries for Janssen (J&J) and AstraZeneca EUA Fact Sheets for their COVID-19 vaccines.

• 0.3mL Dosage Support for Pfizer COVID-19 Vaccine: PCC 8.15 adds support for a 0.3mL dose in vaccine record keeping, which is the dosage used for the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine. Prior to this update, the vaccine could be recorded with an “unspecified” dose. After the update, your practice may want to adjust your configuration and update those records if you administered any Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccines.

• Immunization Forecasting for Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 Vaccines: PCC’s Immunization Forecasting partner, STC, updated the underlying schedule logic to support both the new Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna mRNA vaccines, when identified by the 208 and 207 CVX codes.

• Immunization Forecasting with an Unspecified COVID-19 Vaccine: Your practice can optionally add a “COVID-19 (Unspecified)” vaccine to your system, using CVX 213, in order to record a shot on a patient’s record when you do not know the specific vaccine. A recent STC update to Immunization Forecasting logic allows for that vaccine to be valid. For example, an unspecified COVID-19 vaccine can report as valid for Dose 2 of a vaccine schedule that began with a Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna vaccine. (Note that an unspecified vaccine entry should not used to record immunization administration.)

• Vaccine Family 33 for Immunization Forecasting: PCC 8.15 adds the vaccine code family of 33, for COVID-19, to the underlying data structure for immunization forecasting. This allows Immunization Forecasting to display a line and label for COVID-19 forecasting.

Details on Forecasting for COVID-19: PCC 8.15 will not forecast an expected or missing immunization for COVID-19 until a patient has received a first dose in a two-dose series. Additionally, we expect Immunization Forecasting for COVID-19 vaccination to change in the coming year. Recent updates to your system lay the groundwork for forecasting, but COVID-19 forecasting results at this time may not produce the expected result.

Prepare an Encounter for Billing More Easily

PCC 8.15 includes two improvements to how your clinicians prepare encounters for billing in PCC EHR. Linked codes from orders and the consolidation of duplicate diagnoses will save time and reduce errors.

Automatically Link Diagnoses and Procedures From Orders

When you create an order for a patient, the correct diagnoses and procedures can now appear linked when you prepare the encounter for billing.

When a user creates an order in PCC EHR, it can automatically add diagnoses and procedures to the Bill window (also called the electronic encounter form). For example, you might configure a Wart Removal order to add both a plantar wart diagnosis and a cryosurgery procedure code for billing. In PCC 8.15, these codes will automatically be linked and ready for charge posting.

Billing codes for diagnoses and procedures are based on your practice configuration. Once you’ve set up your orders, both your clinician and biller will save time, as they will not need to manually indicate which diagnoses correspond to the billing procedures for the order.

Configure Your Orders: Your practice can configure exactly which diagnoses and procedures are triggered for each order. Use the Billing Configuration tool to add diagnoses and procedures to orders. Use the Protocol Configuration tool to specify which orders appear on each chart note.

No More Duplicate Diagnoses on the Bill Screen

When you prepare an encounter for billing, you will no longer see duplicate diagnoses from orders. For example, when your practice orders multiple immunizations, PCC EHR will consolidate the Z23 diagnosis into a single entry.

In the Bill window, all orders that have the same configured diagnosis will appear on a single line. Based on your practice’s configuration, the diagnosis will also be automatically linked to the procedure codes you use to bill each order.

If the clinician needs to link an additional procedure or make other changes, they can spot the diagnosis more quickly and link it without the confusion of seeing duplicate entries.

After the clinician clicks “Make Ready for Billing”, Post Charges in PCC EHR will also deduplicate and only display the diagnosis once, making it easier for the biller to review details and post charges.

Deduplication is Only in PCC EHR: If your practice still uses the post charges tool in the Partner Practice Management system, sometimes called chuck or checkout, billers may still see a diagnosis multiple times. The older charge posting program does not deduplicate diagnoses.

Update an Encounter’s Billing Provider Separately from the Scheduled Appointment Provider

In PCC 8.15, you can schedule an appointment for one provider and then easily select a different provider for billing. Your practice could potentially use different clinicians when you schedule, see the patient, and bill for an encounter.

When you need to change the scheduled appointment provider for an encounter, you can adjust it in the Appointment Book, or right at the top of the chart note:

When you need to select a different billing provider, you can make that change at the top of the Bill window (the electronic encounter form) when you prepare the encounter for billing.

Alternatively, the biller can make that adjustment later, when they post charges.

You can change the billing provider without changing the scheduled appointment provider. PCC EHR’s records will display both the Appointment Provider and the Provider of Service in the patient’s Billing History.

When Would I Need to Change the Provider for an Encounter?: Your practice might schedule a stand-in “Flu” provider in the Appointment Book. Then on the day of the encounter, you might change the scheduled clinician for the appointment to Nurse John, who gives the patient the flu shot. Afterwards, when you prepare the encounter for billing, you might define the supervising Provider of Service as the credentialed M.D., Dr. Williams. PCC supports these and other workflows, and in PCC 8.15 you can more easily adjust the provider of service while not altering the appointment provider.

Apply Past Credits When You Post Charges in PCC EHR

When you post charges, PCC EHR will display any credits on the patient’s Billing Account in the Payments component.

By default, the full credit will be applied towards any personal (non-insurance) charges for today. Optionally, you can adjust the amount you wish to link to today’s charges.

You might do this in order to apply only the amount of a copay, for example, or if only part of the credit should be applied.

When you are finished reviewing charges and payments, click Save and Post. PCC EHR will link the payment from the past directly to the charges that have a personal amount due.

Review and Fix Invalid ICD-10 Codes When You Post Charges

When you post charges, and an ICD-10 code is expired (or not yet in effect), PCC EHR will warn you and prevent posting. The diagnosis will appear in red text and include an explanation in parentheses. For example, this screenshot was taken in December of 2020:

PCC EHR will not allow you to post charges with diagnoses that are invalid for the date of service. You can immediately add the correct code into the Diagnoses component, link and post the charges, and queue up a claim.

Fix Your Diagnosis Configuration: If an invalid ICD-10 appears on the Post Charges screen, you can fix the problem so it doesn’t appear again. For example, you might have an order that is configured to trigger the old diagnosis, or an expired ICD-10 might be manually mapped to a SNOMED description. You can fix these issues in the Billing Configuration tool. In Billing Configuration, you can only map ICD-10 diagnoses that are valid or will be valid in the future; expired ICD-10s are not available for mapping.

Help Families Resubscribe to Broadcast Emails and Opt In to Your Practice’s Text Messages

When a patient or their caregiver indicates that they did not receive your latest text (SMS) message or broadcast email, you can easily determine if it is because they have opted out of communication from your practice.

Look up the person’s phone number or email address in PCC EHR and see if an icon appears beside it.

If you see an icon, it indicates that the contact method has been opted out of communication from your practice.

Unsubscribed Email Addresses Still Receive Portal Notifications: Patients and families who unsubscribe from your practice’s broadcast emails are still able to receive email portal notifications.

Opted-Out Phone Numbers Cannot Receive Any Text Messages from Your PCC System: Patients and families who opt their phone numbers out of text messages from your practice cannot receive any kind of text message sent from your PCC system, including broadcast messages, single text messages, and patient portal notifications.

Click the icon to learn how you can help the person opt back in to communication from your practice.

If the contact method is an email address, you can send a resubscribe email.

The recipient must open the email and click the “Opt-In” button in order to complete the process.

If the contact method is a mobile phone number, the person whose number it is must text “UNSTOP” to your practice’s texting number. You can find your practice’s texting number in the instructions that pop up when you click the icon beside the opted-out number.

As soon as the person texts the word “UNSTOP” to your practice’s texting number, they receive confirmation that they have opted back in.

The icon in PCC EHR disappears once a contact method can receive messages again.

Where Does My Practice’s Texting Number Come From?: A text messaging number is automatically assigned to your practice by the telecommunications vendor PCC works with to provide broadcast messaging services. It is not possible to alter or customize this number.

Portal Users Can Opt In Mobile Phone Numbers from the Patient Portal

Portal users see a message in the patient portal if their phone number cannot receive portal notifications. They can click “Edit Notification Settings” to correct the issue.

The button brings the user to the Edit Account page.

A message at the top of the page explains why the opted-out phone number cannot receive notifications and how to fix it. The opted-out phone number is highlighted in red at the bottom of the page.

If the user is signed into the portal on their phone, an “Opt in” button appears beside the opted-out number. When tapped, the “Opt in” button automatically composes a text message to your practice with the word “UNSTOP” in the body.

Once the person opts the phone number in, they can once again receive text messages from your practice, including portal notifications.

Portal users can find opt-in instructions in the My Kid’s Chart User’s Guide.

Opt In the Right Device: Users should only resubscribe via the “Opt in” button if they are signed in to the portal on the mobile device associated with the unsubscribed phone number.

Some Contacts Intentionally Opt Out of Text Messages: Contacts who intentionally opt out of text message communication from your practice should remove opted-out numbers from their portal notification settings.

See if a Patient or Family Member Read Your Patient Portal Message

Learn exactly when your patients and families read your portal messages, so you can be sure you’re reaching them.

When you review a patient’s Portal Messages in PCC EHR, check the “status” line for each portal message. When the recipient opens a Patient Portal message, the status updates from “Unread” to “Read” with a timestamp of exactly when the message was opened, and which user opened it.

Make sure your message is received by assigning a follow-up task. Unread messages include the option to create a new “Follow Up On Unread Message” task. This new task type can be assigned to a user, but will also automatically be marked as completed if the message recipient reads the message before the assigned user marks it as completed.

More Easily View Portal Message Attachments in pocketPCC

Use pocketPCC to review attachments sent to your office via the Patient Portal to stay in complete contact with your patients from anywhere.

When you view a portal message in pocketPCC, any attachments appear below the message text. Click the arrow to the right of the file name to hide or show the attachment.

Click the arrow again to hide the image.

Click “Add Task” to create a new task associated with this document.

Quickly Find Recently Added Documents in pocketPCC

PCC 8.15 changes how documents are sorted and managed within pocketPCC, bringing it in line with PCC EHR, so you can quickly find a patient’s most recent documents.

The Recent Documents category appears at the top of each patient’s Documents and includes the five documents most recently added for the selected patient. Each document can also be found under its own category.

Likewise, within each document category, documents are sorted by date, with the most recent documents at the top of the list, so you can find the documents you’re looking for quickly.

Pick From Your Last 10 Patients When You Import Documents

When you need to import documents to a recent patient’s chart, you can now select from the last 10 patients in the Import Documents window.

In addition to the quick “Last Patient” button, you can now easily pick from any patient you worked with recently.

The last 10 patients menu now appears wherever you search for patients—in Import Documents, but also in the PCC EHR Audit Log, the Delete Charted Visit window, the Immunization Registry Message Viewer, and more.

See Clinical Measures for Each of Your Office Locations in the Dashboard

The Practice Vitals Dashboard helps you monitor the health of your entire pediatric practice at a glance.

In PCC 8.15, multi-location practices can drill down even further to measure how well each specific location delivers patient care.

Launch the Practice Vitals Dashboard from the Reports menu in PCC EHR.

A new label in the top-right corner of each page tells you which location the data on the page is for.

On pages that have location-specific data, the location label turns into a drop-down list and you can select the location you want to view.

When you change the location filter, the page automatically refreshes and updates the measures and benchmark calculations with data specific to your selection.

Location-specific calculations are based on the patients who are assigned to the location that is selected. At most, each patient at your practice is represented only once in location-specific data sets for each measure.

How Are Patients Assigned to Office Locations for Dashboard Measure Calculations?: Patients who have had a well visit are assigned to the location of their last well visit. Patients who have never had a well visit are assigned to the location of their most recent office visit. Patients who have had neither a well visit nor an office visit are excluded from location-specific data sets.

You can filter all Clinical Pulse and PCMH measures by location, except for weight assessment and counseling measures and the measures for influenza immunization rates.

When navigating between pages that have location-specific datasets, the Dashboard remembers the last location you selected.

Location-specific Dashboard measures can help you understand if a location needs extra help in the clinic or is providing particularly good care to patients.

Practices working toward Patient-Centered Medical Home (PCMH) recognition can also use location-specific datasets in the Dashboard to attest to the fact that they are meeting program benchmarks.

Contact your PCC Client Advocate for help interpreting information in the Practice Vitals Dashboard, including data about specific practice locations.

Delete Scheduled Reports

Clean up your list of scheduled reports in PCC EHR by deleting those you no longer need.

Open the Report Library from the Reports menu, then click the Scheduled Reports tab.

Select a schedule you never plan to use again, then click the Delete button.

Deleted scheduled reports are permanently removed from the Report Library and cannot be re-enabled. If you want to temporarily disable a scheduled report, try stopping it instead.

You can continue to view past saved results of deleted scheduled reports in the Report Library in the Saved Results tab.

Only Users With Permission Can Delete: The ability to delete scheduled reports is restricted to users who have permission to do so. You can set this permission in User Administration.

Report More Easily on Hospital and Billing-Only Encounters

Improvements in the PCC EHR Report Library make it easier to report on hospital and billing encounters.

Find Hospital Visits and Billing-Only Encounters by Billing Status

The Encounters by Billing Status report can now include hospital and billing encounters.

When building your report, you can use the Encounter Type filter to include or exclude hospital and billing encounters from the results.

You can also use the Location filter to include or exclude encounters that occurred at hospital locations.

Report on Diagnoses Billed for Hospital Visits

The Billed Diagnoses by Date report can now include hospital encounters.

You can include or exclude hospital encounters from the report using the Location filter on the report criteria screen.

When you run the report for all locations, the results include hospital encounters.

Other Report Library Improvements

PCC 8.15 tweaks and tunes the Report Library to make it an even more powerful tool for your practice.

• See When You Last Reviewed Care Plans: The date of last review for care plans has been added to the Care Plans by Date report. This change helps all practices track the progress of care plans more closely, and especially helps offices working toward PCMH recognition.

• Filter and Sort Care Plan Reports by Patient Flag: You can now filter and sort by patient flag in the Care Plans by Date report. This change is most useful if you want to exclude inactive patients from the report so that you can focus on active patients with care plans.

• When You Delete a Custom Report, See If It Is Scheduled: When you delete a custom report that was used as the basis for scheduled reports, the Report Library notifies you of the schedules before deleting the report. You can use this information to decide if you want to keep the report in place or delete it anyway. If you choose to delete it, the associated schedules will also be deleted.

• No More Canceled and Missed Appointments When Reporting by Billing Status: The Encounters by Billing Status report now excludes canceled and missed appointments, allowing you to focus on the visits which did occur and might need some biller or clinician follow-up.

• More Locations When Reporting By Billing Status: As of PCC 8.15, the Location filter for the Encounters by Billing Status Report allows you to select both scheduling and non-scheduling locations.

• Navigate the Report Library More Quickly: Performance improvements introduced in this release result in a Report Library that loads screens faster and smoother than before.

Coming Soon: Look Up and Import Immunization Records from Your State’s Registry

When a new patient joins your practice or an established patient comes in after a hiatus, you want to be sure you have the most complete and up-to-date version of their immunization history.

PCC 8.15 gives pilot practices the ability to look up and import vaccine records from their local immunization registry without ever leaving PCC EHR.

If you are interested in using this feature once a connection has been established with your registry, speak with PCC Support.

Open the Patient’s Immunization History in PCC EHR

Open a patient’s chart in PCC EHR and navigate to the Immunization History.

You can get to the Immunization History from the History section of the chart or within the Immunizations component if you’re in a visit protocol.

Click the “Retrieve Imms” Button

Click the “Retrieve Imms” button to request the patient’s immunization history from your state registry.

Confirm the Patient Match

The registry searches its records for your patient and PCC EHR asks you to confirm that it found the right person.

Once you confirm that the registry found the right patient, click “Next” to view the patient’s vaccine history.

You Can Only Proceed with a Unique Patient Match: If the registry finds several possible matches for your patient or finds no exact matches you will not be able to retrieve the patient’s vaccine history from the registry within PCC EHR. Close the Retrieve Immunizations window and try looking up the patient’s vaccine history directly on the registry website.

Review the Information Sent by the Registry

Review the vaccine history from the registry. Information that is already in the patient’s chart appears in a black font, while new information from the registry appears in an orange font. You can decide what to do with the new information on the next screen.

Click “Next” to begin importing new information from the registry into PCC EHR.

Immunization Registry Forecasting and Disease Data: Some registries send vaccine forecasting and/or vaccine-preventable disease data in addition to the patient’s vaccine history. You can view this information if the registry sends it, but you cannot import it into PCC EHR.

How Does PCC EHR Determine if a Vaccine is Already in the Patient's History?: For each immunization reported by the registry, PCC EHR checks to see if the associated CVX code and date already exist in the patient’s chart.

Import New Vaccine History Information from the Registry into PCC EHR

Select the immunizations and dates you wish to import from the registry into the patient’s PCC EHR record. You can only import new entries from the registry; entries that already exist in the EHR are excluded from the import window.

Once selected, immunizations from the registry are automatically mapped by CVX code to their equivalents in the EHR.

If a registry immunization has several equivalents in the EHR, all of the options are presented in a drop-down field in the import window. Review the options and manually select one to use for the import.

Sometimes new entries from the registry use CVX codes that are not configured in your PCC system. You must add the missing CVX codes to your immunization configuration in order to import these entries. Contact PCC Support if you need help adding CVX codes to your immunization configuration.

Once you have selected and mapped the immunizations you plan to import from the registry, click the “Import” button.

The information imports into PCC EHR and the Retrieve Immunization window closes on its own.

View and Edit Imported Entries in the Patient’s Immunization History

Information imported from the registry appears immediately in the patient’s Immunization History in PCC EHR.

You can view details about the immunizations imported from the registry by editing the patient’s Immunization History.

Historic immunizations imported from the registry are recorded in the patient’s chart with the source “Historical Record from Other Registry”. The imported entries can also include information about the vaccine dose, lot number, site, route, and funding source.

You can edit or delete an imported immunization just like any other item in the patient’s Immunization History.

Continued Pilot Test: Send CHADIS Questionnaires to Families in the Patient Portal

PCC continues piloting the integration of CHADIS questionnaires into PCC EHR and PCC’s Patient Portal. If your practice is part of our pilot testing, your Patient Portal now links directly to CHADIS, so your portal users can get started on their patient’s CHADIS questionnaires as soon as their appointment is booked.

Coming Soon: CHADIS integration into PCC is currently in pilot testing and not yet available to all PCC clients. Stay tuned for additional functionality and the wide release. CHADIS integration into PCC EHR requires that your practice has a CHADIS subscription.

Continued Pilot Test: Securely Retrieve Patient Information from Hospitals and Other Practices

Do your patients see other doctors? Do you wish you could retrieve records from those providers on demand?

Pilot testers can request and securely retrieve their patients’ records from other healthcare organizations right within PCC EHR. This is the latest addition to PCC’s Clinical Document Exchange functionality.

To retrieve a document, click “Find Clinical Documents” within the History section of the patient’s chart.

Select one or several healthcare organizations to query, then search for your patient within their records. If you find matches for your patient, you can then see if the organizations have clinical documents to share, and retrieve any you wish to view and save to PCC EHR.

You can set up default healthcare organizations to query for each of your patients, and also decide if certain organizations (such as local hospitals or urgent care clinics) should be queried for all patients.

Users need special permissions in PCC EHR in order to request patient records from other organizations. All PCC EHR users can view retrieved documents after they have been saved in patients’ charts.

How do I Participate?

Although it is not yet possible to sign up to securely retrieve your patients’ records from other healthcare providers, you can prepare for the feature by becoming a Clinical Document Exchange Responder.

Clinical Document Exchange Responders allow other healthcare organizations who participate in the Carequality interoperability framework to retrieve their patients’ records for treatment purposes. In order to eventually be able to initiate records requests, you must first enroll to respond to requests from others.

To become a Clinical Document Exchange Responder, contact PCC Support.

Learn About Clinical Document Exchange

Is Clinical Document Exchange secure? How does it work? Which organizations can I query for my patients’ records? Find answers to all of these questions and more in the PCC Learn article about Clinical Document Exchange.

Other Feature Improvements and Bug Fixes in PCC 8.15

In addition to the features described above, PCC 8.15 includes these smaller improvements and squashed bugs.

• Delete Hospital and Administrative Fee Billing Encounters: When you use Correct Mistakes (oops) to delete all diagnoses, procedures, payments and adjustments for a hospital encounter or other charge that does not have an appointment, PCC EHR will automatically remove that encounter from the Billing History and the Visit History sections of the patient’s chart.

• Diagnoses and Procedures Remain Available in Post Charges: When you need to delete and repost charges, or return and finish posting additional items for an encounter, the Post Charges workflow will continue to display all of the diagnoses and procedures originally added to the encounter.

• 2021 RVU Values for Reporting: During the PCC 8.15 release cycle, PCC updated all practices with RVU values for 2021. This updates many reports, such as the RVU-Per-Visit measure in the Practice Vitals Dashboard.

• 0.3ml Dose Amounts: PCC EHR now supports the recording and tracking of immunizations that require a 0.3ml dose.

• Additional COVID-19 Terms Available as Diagnoses: Among other updates in support of charting COVID-19 related encounters, the PCC 8.15 update adds three SNOMED situations to the standard Diagnosis favorites list so they can be used as diagnoses: Suspected disease caused by severe acute respiratory coronavirus (mapped to B97.21), History of disease caused by Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (mapped to Z86.19), and Disease caused by Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 absent (mapped to Z03.89).

• See If PocketPCC or the Patient Portal is Being Updated When You Sign In:

  Users who try to sign in to PocketPCC or the patient portal while PCC is updating your software to a new release will be notified that an update is in progress and that they should try again later.
  
  Users who are signed in to PocketPCC or the patient portal when an update begins will be logged out the next time they take an action. They will be redirected to a page explaining that an update is underway. Any unsaved work will be lost.

In the fourth quarter of 2020, PCC will release version 8.14 of our electronic charting and practice management software to all PCC users.

PCC 8.14 focuses on quickly delivering improvements clients asked for and may need immediately. PCC updated SNOMED-CT, ICD-10, and LOINC code sets to the most recently published standard, which includes COVID-19 terms and codes for billing. PCC 8.14 also introduces new chart features for sexual orientation and gender identity and the next phase of our CHADIS integration, allowing families to open questionnaires from inside the patient portal.

Watch a Video Series: Want to see videos about the updates in this release? Watch the PCC 8.14 Release Video Series.

Read below to learn more, and contact PCC Support for information about these new features or about any PCC product or service.

Send Broadcast Messages for Overdue Immunizations and Much, Much More

You can now send broadcast messages from the PCC EHR Report Library to recall patients who are behind on their vaccines.

Open the Report Library and generate the Overdue Vaccine Recall report.

Once the report has generated, click “Export”.

Select the “Send Message to Patients” option to start a broadcast message.

Decide whether to contact patients by text, email, or both. Then, compose your message and hit “Send”.

You can also use Broadcast Messaging with most other reports in the PCC EHR Report Library, including Appointment reports, Prescription reports, and Visit reports.

Now you can leverage reports to get in touch with patients in powerful and creative ways:

• Remind families without portal accounts to sign up at their next visit
• Send a message to all patients affected by a medication recall
• Offer tailored guidance to at-risk patients during a public health emergency

Contact PCC Support to explore how Broadcast Messaging can help you stay connected to your patients.

To learn more about how to create, send, and track broadcast messages, read Send Batch Messages to Patients and Families.

Record Sexual Orientation in a Patient’s Chart

When your practice charts a patient’s sexual orientation, you can record the patient’s information in the Sexual Orientation component.

Your practice can add this chart-wide component to chart note protocols or anywhere you need it for your workflow.

Sexual Orientation is a Confidential Component: When you open a chart, the contents of this component are hidden. A clinician or other PCC EHR user must click the disclosure arrow to display the contents of the Sexual Orientation component. PCC EHR records that this information was accessed, and your practice can review who accessed the information in the PCC EHR Audit Log.

Record Gender Identity, Preferred Name, and Pronoun in the Patient’s Chart

Use the Gender Identity component to record a patient’s gender identity, preferred name, pronoun, and notes.

The component appears on the Medical Summary by default. Your practice can move it, remove it, and add this chart-wide component to chart note protocols or anywhere you need it for your workflow.

Patient information in this component is marked private by default. When private, the fields in the component are not visible anywhere in PCC EHR except in the Gender Identity component.

When the information is no longer private, select Public in the “Privacy Status” drop-down menu.

When Public is selected, PCC EHR and pocketPCC can display the patient’s preferred name and pronoun in the Patient Banner as well as in other places in PCC EHR.

On the Appointment Book, for example, your staff will be able to see the patient’s preferred name and pronoun as they make an appointment. The preferred name can also appear on the Schedule screen and PCC EHR queues, except for the Rx Queue (which uses the patient’s legal name) and the E-lab Results queue (where a patient’s name is provided by a lab vendor). Your practice can find the patient by searching for either the preferred or legal name.

The patient’s preferred name can also appear at the top of forms and patient and family-facing reports that include the green name header. This includes the Patient Visit Summary:

Note that the patient’s legal name and sex appear elsewhere on the form. Documents that can include the preferred name in the green header include: Care Plans, PDF versions of Continuity of Care Documents, Growth Charts, the Health Information Summary, Lab Order Details, the Patient Visit Summary, Summary of Care Record, and Visit and Billing History printouts.

Configure How Your Practice Displays Preferred Name and Pronoun: A patient’s preferred name and pronoun do not appear at all if their Gender Identity component is set to Private. Your practice can configure whether PCC EHR displays only a patient’s legal name, only the preferred name, or both the legal and preferred names when they are set to Public in a patient’s chart. You can also optionally turn off the preferred pronoun display. Open Practice Preferences to review your options.

In addition to adjusting your practice’s display preferences, after your PCC 8.14 update your practice may wish to change the location of the component. You can also adjust your practice’s existing workflows for patients. For example, if you formerly used the Nickname field, a patient flag, or a Reminders note to indicate a preferred name or gender identity, you can decide how that usage will change.

Gender Identity is a Confidential Component: When you open a chart, the contents of this component are hidden. A clinician or other PCC EHR user must click the disclosure arrow to display the contents of the Gender Identity component. PCC EHR records whenever this information was accessed, and your practice can review who accessed the information in the PCC EHR Audit Log.

Track Relationship to Patient in Patient Portal

Track the relationship between your Patient Portal users and their patients, and avoid errors by knowing exactly who you’re communicating with.

PCC 8.14 adds a new column to the Patient Portal Administration’s Manage Portal User called “Portal User’s Relationship to Patient”. Each patient has a drop-down menu listing all relationship types – the same list that appears under Personal Contacts in PCC EHR. If the Patient Portal user also appears under the patient’s Personal Contacts in PCC EHR, setting the relationship in Patient Portal Administration will also update the relationship in Personal Contacts. 

The top of the list shows the ten most frequently used relationships, so that you can quickly select common relationships.

Selecting the “Self” relationship automatically changes the Hide at age of emancipation setting to “no” to avoid locking a user out of their own data.

Once you’ve selected your relationship, it will appear in PCC EHR and pocketPCC under the Patient Portal Users component.

Track Vaccine NDC Codes Alongside Other Vaccine Lot Details

PCC EHR’s Vaccine Lot Manager now tracks NDC codes, alongside manufacturer, expiration date, lot number and other details.

Lot Manager Only: NDC codes in the Vaccine Lot Manager are not used for billing. NDC codes needed for billing should still be managed through the Procedures Table.

When scanning a new vaccine into the Vaccine Lot Manager, the NDC code will be added with the rest of the vaccine’s information.

When entering vaccines manually through the Add Lot window, NDC codes can be entered several ways. When adding a new lot, click the NDC drop-down menu to review a list of all active NDC codes. You can skim through the numerical list until you find the code you’re looking for, or begin typing the code to narrow the list to matching results. Selecting an NDC code will automatically enter the immunization name and the manufacturer.

Alternately, by entering an immunization name first, the NDC menu will automatically filter to NDC codes that match your selected immunization. Entering a manufacturer will filter further, to NDC codes that match your immunization and manufacturer.

Access CHADIS Questionnaires Directly through the Patient Portal

PCC continues piloting the integration of CHADIS questionnaires into PCC EHR and PCC’s Patient Portal. If your practice is part of our pilot testing, your Patient Portal now links directly to CHADIS, so your portal users can get started on their patient’s CHADIS questionnaires when their appointment is booked.

Coming Soon: CHADIS integration into PCC is currently in pilot testing and not yet available to all PCC Clients. Stay tuned for additional functionality and the wide release.

CHADIS Required: CHADIS integration into PCC EHR requires that your practice has a CHADIS subscription.

Configure CHADIS in PCC EHR

You first need to connect your practice’s visit reasons to CHADIS visit types, so that your patients will receive the appropriate CHADIS questionnaires for their visit. Open the Visit Reason Editor and click on the CHADIS tab.

The CHADIS Visit Type Mapping includes a list of each CHADIS visit type and lists the PCC EHR visit reasons associated with each. Click the Edit button.

In the Edit Mapping window select which of your Visit Reasons should be assigned to the selected CHADIS Visit Type. Each visit reason can be assigned to multiple CHADIS types, and each CHADIS type can be assigned to any number of visit reasons.

Schedule Visits to Send CHADIS Questionnaires

Once your visit reasons are linked to Visit Types, simply begin scheduling visits. PCC automatically registers your patients with CHADIS and the matching CHADIS questionnaires for the scheduled visit type will be generated by CHADIS 7 days prior to the visit. If the visit is scheduled for less than 7 days in the future, the questinnaires will be made available the day of scheduling.

When a new questionnaire is ready, the patient’s portal user will receive a Patient Portal notification that a questionnaire is waiting for them. When they log into the Patient Portal, they’ll find an orange button inviting them to start their questionnaires. Clicking the orange button opens the questionnaire on CHADIS’s website in a new browser window. If no visit is scheduled or no CHADIS questionnaires are pending, users can access CHADIS from the Patient Portal by clicking the CHADIS Home button.

Upcoming PCC updates include importing CHADIS results directly into PCC EHR, where they can be linked directly to a patient and visit.

Improvements to the Practice Vitals Dashboard

PCC 8.14 improves your Practice Vitals Dashboard, making it a more valuable tool for insight to your practice’s clinical and financial trends.

• The COVID-19 Dashboard Page Now Loads Faster: Under-the-hood improvements to your COVID-19 Dashboard page now allow you to load the same great data in less time. The COVID-19 Dashboard page is designed to help you measure and respond to the impact of COVID-19 on your business. To learn more about this tool, read Analyze and Respond to COVID-19’s Impact in Your Dashboard.

• Corrections to Adolescent Immunization Rate Benchmarks: More accurate PCC Average and Top 10% benchmark calculations reveal how your adolescent immunization rates for HPV, Meningococcal, and TdaP compare to other PCC clients and top performers.

• Corrections to Reporting of Sick Visit Modality: The COVID-19 Dashboard page allows you to view trends in how you deliver sick care to patients. Sick visits conducted over the phone or through the patient portal were being reported incorrectly prior to 8.14, and have now been corrected to give you a more accurate view of how patients are receiving sick care at your practice.

Use 2021 ICD-10 Diagnosis Billing Codes, Including New COVID-Related Codes

On September 20th of 2020, PCC updated your practice with 2021 ICD-10 diagnosis billing codes.

The 2021 ICD-10 update includes new sections for COVID-19-related infections and vaping-related disorders. You can review the complete, updated guidelines in the CDC’s ICD-10-CM Official Guidelines for Coding and Reporting.

The new codes and guidelines take effect for dates of service starting on 10/1/2020. You can learn about the updates that are of most interest to pediatric practices by attending PCC Web labs held by Jan Blanchard (CPC, CPEDC). Missed a web lab? You can watch a recorded session as well.

In addition to COVID-19 and vaping-related guidelines and codes, Jan notes that the 2021 ICD-10 update includes more specificity for substance abuse codes, several adjustments to influenza coding, and new codes for reflux, headaches/face pain, and more. In the “curiosities” bucket, the update includes “Pedestrian on electric scooter and standing micro-mobility pedestrian conveyance (hoverboard, segway)” added to V00-V06.

Chart Diagnoses Mapped to Deprecated ICD-10 Billing Codes: Were there any 2021 code changes for items that your practice frequently bills? You can review your system configuration using the snomedmap report tool in Partner. While there were no major disruptions in the 2021 ICD-10 update, it’s always worth taking a look at your code mapping reports to head off any billing challenges.

For more details, read Fall 2020 SNOMED-CT and ICD-10 Updates Add COVID-19-Related Issues and Other Diagnoses.

Use the Latest SNOMED Diagnoses, Including New COVID-Related Descriptions

On September 20th of 2020, PCC updated the SNOMED-CT diagnostic terms on your practice’s system.

The SNOMED-CT update includes thousands of new descriptions for diagnoses, allergies, therapies, and procedures. It also updates thousands of text descriptions for diagnoses and their mapped ICD-10 billing codes. You can review information about the update on the National Library of Medicine web site.

Review Your COVID-19 SNOMED to ICD-10 Mapping: As codesets continue to change in response to COVID-19, PCC recommends you review the diagnoses you use to chart and bill for COVID-19 issues. For example, this update includes a new recommended mapping of the Exposure to SARS-CoV-2 SNOMED description to the Z20.828 ICD-10 code. This mapping was not included by default in the previous SNOMED standard. You can double-check your practice’s diagnosis billing configuration in the Billing Configuration tool.

For more details, read Fall 2020 SNOMED-CT and ICD-10 Updates Add COVID-19-Related Issues and Other Diagnoses.

Use New COVID-19 Test Descriptions With the LOINC 2.68 Update

On August 31st of 2020, PCC patched all practice systems with LOINC 2.68, an update to the standard list of labs used to make tests interoperable between different systems.

PCC reviewed the updates to LOINC before the update: there will not be any disruption to labs your practice currently orders, and you shouldn’t need to take any action to see the effects of the patch.

The update includes over a thousand new terms and updates, including specific LOINC descriptions for SARS-CoV-2 laboratory tests. The update also adds terms for COVID-19 case reporting and related issues.

If your pediatric practice is performing COVID-19 tests, you’ll be able to configure your labs for appropriate tests in the Lab Configuration tool. This includes the new 95209-3 SARS-CoV+SARS-CoV-2 Ag code, among others.

For details on how to add a COVID-19 test or other lab order to your system, you can read Create a COVID-19 Test Lab Order and Lab Configuration.

Continued Pilot Test: Securely Retrieve Patient Information from Hospitals and Other Practices

Do your patients see other doctors? Do you wish you could retrieve records from those providers on demand?

Pilot testers can request and securely retrieve their patients’ records from other healthcare organizations right within PCC EHR. This is the latest addition to PCC’s Clinical Document Exchange functionality.

To retrieve a document, click “Find Clinical Documents” within the History section of the patient’s chart.

Select one or several healthcare organizations to query, then search for your patient within their records. If you find matches for your patient, you can then see if the organizations have clinical documents to share, and retrieve any you wish to view and save to PCC EHR.

You can set up default healthcare organizations to query for each of your patients, and also decide if certain organizations (such as local hospitals or urgent care clinics) should be queried for all patients.

Users need special permissions in PCC EHR in order to request patient records from other organizations. All PCC EHR users can view retrieved documents after they have been saved in patients’ charts.

How do I Participate?

Although it is not yet possible to sign up to securely retrieve your patients’ records from other healthcare providers, you can prepare for the feature by becoming a Clinical Document Exchange Responder.

Clinical Document Exchange Responders allow other healthcare organizations who participate in the Carequality interoperability framework to retrieve their patients’ records for treatment purposes. In order to eventually be able to initiate records requests, you must first enroll to respond to requests from others.

To become a Clinical Document Exchange Responder, contact PCC Support.

Learn About Clinical Document Exchange

Is Clinical Document Exchange secure? How does it work? Which organizations can I query for my patients’ records? Find answers to all of these questions and more in the PCC Learn article about Clinical Document Exchange.

New and Updated Interfaces Available in PCC 8.14

With each release, PCC’s Interoperability team expands and updates PCC’s direct connections, partnerships, and integrations with insurance payers, immunization registries, and more. Here are the clinical and financial interoperability updates for PCC 8.14:

• New and Updated Immunization Interfaces: During the PCC 8.14 release cycle, PCC updated our immunization registry interfaces with SCIR (South Carolina), TennIIS (Tennessee), and ORALERT (Oregon).

• Updated Clinical Interfaces in PCC EHR: PCC added or updated clinical interfaces with Huntsville Hospital, WellCentive, Epic, Wyoming Department of Health, and Affinia.

• New Insurance Eligibility and Financial Interfaces: PCC also added or improved interfaces with Wyoming BCBS and Boston Medical Center Healthnet.

If your practice would like to take advantage of these connections, or you have another interface need, contact PCC Support.

Immunization Forecasting is Up to Date

During the PCC 8.14 release cycle, PCC updated your immunization forecasting schedules to meet the latest CDC ACIP schedules and to correct unusual schedule scenarios or errors in forecasting.

PCC EHR automatically reviews each patient’s immunization record and provides a table showing any immunizations that were missed, are recommended soon, or that occurred outside of the CDC’s ACIP schedule.

PCC uses immunization logic and calculation services provided by Immucast by STC. During the PCC 8.14 release cycle, STC applied their latest patch (5.24.0), updating and correcting immunization schedules and bringing your system’s Immunization Forecasting in line with the latest ACIP recommendations.

Here’s a summary of the most notable improvements:

• Influenza: This update adds new influenza CVX codes to the forecaster. Also, under certain circumstances, when a child turned 9 during a flu season, the second dose of an influenza vaccine was marked invalid. This no longer occurs. Finally, when a patient received one dose, and then received a two dose series the following season, the second dose can now be marked as valid.

• Meningococcal: This update adds new meningococcal CVX codes to the forecaster.

PCC tests all adjustments to the immunization schedules. Please get in touch if you’d like to learn more about the updates, or if you observe a forecasting result or warning that doesn’t match your expectation. You can review the full list of updates by reading the STC ImmuCast 5.24.0 release notes.

To learn more, read the guide to PCC’s Immunization Forecasting features.

Other Feature Improvements and Bug Fixes in PCC 8.14

In addition to the features described above, PCC 8.14 includes these smaller improvements and squashed bugs.

• Scheduled Reports Update in September: Due to last minute challenges found in beta, PCC delayed the release of the new Schedule Reports feature in PCC 8.13. We updated all systems with this new functionality on 9/2/2020. You can learn more about it by reading the documentation or watching a quick tutorial video.

• Find Next Available Appointments More Quickly: During the PCC 8.14 release cycle, PCC corrected a problem that caused the Availability Finder in the Appointment Book to take twice as long as it should. This fix was distributed on 9/2/2020.

• Better Reporting of Immunizations Not Administered on Summary of Care Documents (C-CDAs): In Release 8.14, PCC EHR more accurately reports immunizations which were ordered but not administered on Summary of Care documents (C-CDAs). Practices in Washington State will notice immediate improvement in the way these immunizations are reported to Wellcentive. To learn more about how Summary of Care records can help you exchange patient information with other healthcare providers, read about how to Send and Receive Direct Secure Messages.

• See Account Number in Open Payments Report: When you track down unlinked payments on accounts with Practice Management’s openpmts report, you can now see the billing family’s PCC#, which makes it easier to identify the account.

• Retire Old Immunizations On Your PCC System: When you need to remove an immunization from available options in PCC, you can now adjust an “Orderable in PCC EHR?” option in the Practice Management’s immunization and disease configuration table. PCC Support makes this adjustment for most clients. This option will not disrupt charted orders or patient records, and it will prevent your practice from selecting the retired immunization in the future. Your practice should no longer use the tilda (~) to retire immunizations.

• Re-Enable Locked Out Practice Management Users: When your practice re-hires an employee or for some other reason restores access to the Practice Management system, they can now unlock a formerly locked account. For more information, read Partner User Administration.

• Editing Notes on an Appointment Reset Form Printing: Under certain circumstances, editing the note on an appointment could cause the encounter to switch back to “not printed”, which could result in needless reprinting of visit forms. This no longer occurs.

• New Flu Shot CVX Code: PCC updated the CVX codes on your system, including the new code 205: Influenza vaccine, quadrivalent, adjuvanted.

• Improved Patient Search in pocketPCC: PCC 8.14 updates patient searching in pocketPCC. You can now look up patients using the PCC account number. Also, the search algorithm now matches the results in PCC EHR, which includes better guessing on search text that doesn’t quite match the patient’s name.

• See Who Scheduled an Appointment in Reports: Appointment reports in the Report Library now correctly display the user who created the appointment.

• Add Complete Lists of Allergies or Problems to a Form: PCC 8.14 includes three new form letter variables (probs, allers, and erxallers) which you can use to display all of a patient’s Problem List items, PCC EHR allergies, or eRx allergies on a form letter. PCC Support can help you customize your forms to take advantage of these new variables.