PCC has launched a series of rapid updates in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. We are beta testing and rolling out new functionality in direct response to the situation as it evolves. Read below to learn about new features and updates planned for our June 2020 release. Contact PCC Support for information about these new features or about any PCC product or service.

PCC COVID-19 Release Feature Videos: You can watch a video playlist which covers the major features PCC has developed during the COVID-19 pandemic and includes tutorials on related topics.

Migration Considerations for Your Practice: The PCC June COVID-19 update includes features that may require configuration and user-specific software training. Read about the features below and then review the PCC June COVID-19 Release Migration Considerations article.

Chat With Your Practice Inside PCC EHR

PCC EHR includes a chat/instant messaging tool that lets you chat and send messages to other PCC EHR users.

Chat allows you to communicate quickly with the rest of the staff and clinicians at your office without having to log in to another program.

Send a New Message

To send a message, click on the “Chat” icon at the bottom of the EHR window.

If you have any existing message threads you can find and open them here. Or, simply click on the “New” button to find any PCC EHR user at your practice.

Use the “To:” field to search for the user you want, or select a user using the drop-down menu.

Who is on Chat?: The user list in Chat includes all active PCC EHR users. The order in which they appear is controlled by the settings in the User Selection List in the User Administration tool. If your practice uses Care Center functionality, users from your Care Center will always appear at the top of the list.

Then simply begin typing. Other users will be notified that they have a new chat message, and can respond. If you have the chat window open, it will automatically refresh as the conversation continues.

When you get a reply, it will appear instantly in the chat window. All chat messages are time stamped, so you can see exactly when they arrived.

Close the chat using the “Close” button, or use the back arrow to return to the Chat inbox.

Receiving Messages and Message Notifications

When you have new messages, the Chat icon at the bottom of the PCC EHR window will indicate that you have messages waiting with a red circle.

When you open Chat, you will see unread messages at the top of the of your Chat inbox in bold. Click a message to open the conversation and reply.

Reply to the message, and then either return to the Chat inbox, or close Chat and continue with your work.

Chat History is saved in PCC EHR: All chat messages are saved in PCC EHR. Scrolling back through a conversation will reveal the entire chat history between two users.

Use Snap Text to Chart Faster and More Consistently

PCC EHR’s Snap Text automatically expands a short typed text into a full word or phrase, reducing your typing and saving you time.

Each user can customize their own personal Snap Text and your office can set practice-wide entries for all users.

Create Snap Text

To begin creating your own Snap Text, open My Account within PCC EHR’s File menu and select the Snap Text tab.

Each user is listed in the drop down menu on the upper right. Select yourself, or, if you have access, Practice Defaults.

Here, you’ll find two fields, one for your typed text, and one for the expanded text. Enter your short text in the first field, and the full, expanded, text in the second. The short text should be a few characters long, and the expanded text can be as long as you need.

Typed text can be any combination of characters. It is case sensitive, so the expanded text will only be triggered if the letter case matches, that also means that “ABC” and “abc” can both be used to trigger different expanded texts.

Click Save, and you’ll be returned to the Snap Text tab, where you can add another or Save and Exit.

Avoid Common Words, Use a Prefix Character: Whatever short codes you enter will be automatically replaced by the expanded text when you press space, or in the case of multi-line text fields, enter, or return. You should avoid real words that might be used in a different context. Consider using a special character prefix before your code. For example, “.adhd” to expand to “Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder” while still leaving “adhd” available to be used without being expanded.

Copy And Edit Snap Texts

Each user can view, but not edit, the snap texts of other users. When reviewing another user’s entries, any user can copy entries to their own list by using the copy button at the bottom of the tab.

Any of your snap texts can be edited by selecting it from your list, and clicking the edit button. Simply change the text, or if it’s no longer needed, click the delete button to delete it from your list.

Set User Permissions for Editing Practice Wide Snap Texts

Each user can manage their own Snap Text, but managing the practice-wide defaults is accessible via the User Administration tool. Give users access to manage your practice-wide defaults by adding permission to a user role, or creating a new role exclusively for Snap Text Configuration.

Open the User Administration tool and visit the Roles tab, select a role, and check the Snap Text Configuration box.

For a more detailed guide to setting up roles and configuring user permissions, read Set User Roles for Permissions and Security.

Send a Text Message Directly to the Patient or Family in PCC EHR

Is a family waiting in the car before their appointment? Do you need to send a family a link for telemedicine? You can now send a text message directly to a patient.

When you need to send a quick text message, select an appointment on the Schedule screen and then click “Send Text”.

Select a phone number from the patient’s records or enter a new phone number. Then type your message and optionally turn on/off your practice’s default message footer. Messages are limited to a total of 160 characters and should not contain PHI.

Click “Send” to send the message. The family will receive the message in a few seconds.

In addition to sending a text from the Schedule screen, you can also open any patient’s chart and choose “Send Text” from the Edit menu.

Did They Get My Text? Did We Text That Family Already?: After you click send, PCC EHR will display a brief status window, which will usually tell you that the text was successfully delivered. If the text is stalled for some reason, PCC EHR will close the window to allow you to return to work. Use the Single Text Log report in the PCC EHR Report Library to review what text messages went out (and if any bounced or couldn’t be sent). PCC EHR does not log text messages in patient charts.

What Phone Numbers Appear in the Drop-Down When I Send a Text?: When you create a text message, you can pick from phone numbers that PCC has linked to the patient, including home account phone numbers, the patient’s confidential communication preference, and patient portal numbers. If instead you enter a number manually, PCC EHR will remember that number for later use. The most recent number used by your practice will appear at the top. Any numbers previously identified as invalid will not appear.

Review Your Practice’s Outbound Single Text Messages to Patients and Families

Your practice can use PCC EHR to send a text message to any patient or family member. How can you review what texts were sent and find out if a text was delivered successfully?

Run the Single Text Log report in the PCC EHR Report Library to see your outbound text records.

You can optionally filter the report based on date, user, or patient–or see all messages.

On the report, you can see the date and time, the user at your practice who sent the text, and the patient who the message was sent in regards to. Next, the report displays the phone number that was used. When known, the report will display where the number comes from (i.e., from a parent account). If your practice typed in a number when they sent the text, the number’s origin may not be known.

Finally, the report will display the Message and the Message Status. You can use the Message Status to understand whether a message was successfully delivered, bounced by the cell phone carrier, or if something else happened.

Families Can Use a Phone Number or Email Address to Sign In to the Patient Portal

Families can now sign in to the patient portal using either an email address or phone number as a username.

When you sign families up for the portal, their sign in will be the default choice for portal notifications.

Families Can Choose to Receive Portal Notifications via Email or Text Message

When a portal user is being registered for the portal, they can choose whether or not to use their sign in as a communication method. By default, they will receive portal notifications at the number or email they are using as a sign in.

If the portal user wants to use a different method to receive portal notifications, select the “Use a different method” option.

Portal users can choose a phone number, an email, or both as a portal notification preference. They will receive portal notifications by either email or text messages, depending on the method(s) they choose.

Check the Box: In order to choose a method for portal notifications, you must enter the information, and click the check box to activate it.

Changing Portal Notification Preferences

You can change a portal user’s notification preferences on the Manage Portal User screen by clicking “Edit Portal User”.

Portal Users can Change Their Own Preferences

Portal Users can change their notification preferences on the “Edit Account” screen of the patient portal.

They can change their notification email or phone number, as well as choose to activate or deactivate portal notifications on either method.

Patient Portal Users Component: The Patient Portal Users component, which appears both in pocketPCC and in PCC EHR, has been updated to display users’ portal user name, sign in, and portal notification methods.

Families Can Opt-In or Out for Broadcast Messaging

If a patient or family does not wish to receive text (SMS) messages from your practice, responding “stop” or “unsubscribe” will prevent that number from receiving future texts sent through Broadcast Messaging. Likewise, each email sent via Broadcast Messaging includes an unsubscribe link, that will remove the recipient’s email address from future mailings. These addresses and numbers will be moved to your blacklist, and appear there in the Broadcast Messaging Log Report

If a patient or account has unsubscribed from Broadcast Messaging texts, and would like to begin receiving your practice’s text messages again, they can respond to a previous message with “unstop”. Their number will be removed from the blacklist and they’ll begin receiving your text messages again.

Select Which Phone Numbers To Use For Broadcast Messaging

By default, Broadcast Messaging sends text (SMS) messages to all available phone numbers and email addresses in the patient’s home account, confidential communication preference, and patient portal information. If you prefer to limit which contact methods Broadcast Messaging  uses, you can now select which fields should be included in the Practice Preferences menu.

See All Broadcast Messaging Replies on Inbound Messages Report

When a recipient of a Broadcast Message replies via email or text, you can review those replies in a new Inbound Messages report in the Report Library’s Communication category.

Here you’ll see all replies, including automatic responses from emails, and direct replies from users. You can use these results to keep your user’s contact information updated, or follow-up with users who need additional help or answers.

Replies to Broadcast Messages will no longer appear in the Broadcast Message Details Report.

See More Information on the “Blacklist” Column in Broadcast Message Details Report

When a broadcast message can’t be delivered via text to a phone number or via email to an email address, the Broadcast Message Details report will now give you a reason why that contact method was blacklisted and more detail of the message’s status.

The Message Status column now lists if a phone number is not able to receive text messages, or if the message has been accepted by the carrier for delivery, in addition to the statuses or Sent and Not Sent.

If an email or phone number is added to the blacklist, the Excluded from Future Broadcasts column now includes a reason why a contact method has been added. If a text message is sent to a landline, that number is added to the blacklist with the reason “Not Text Enabled”. “Validation Failed” indicates an email address that is invalid or no longer exists.

Check Eligibility for Phone Note and Portal Message Encounters

When you bill for services rendered over the phone or in a portal message, it’s important to verify that the patient’s insurance policy was active during the date of the encounter.

Now you can check insurance eligibility for billed phone notes and portal messages when you post charges in PCC EHR.

As long as the patient’s policy is configured for eligibility, the most recent eligibility information for the date of the encounter appears in the Insurance Eligibility component in the Patient Details section of the Post Charges workflow.

You cannot record notes or statuses in the Insurance Eligibility component when verifying eligibility for phone or portal encounters.

Not all insurance plans offer eligibility, and those that do must be configured on your PCC system. To configure insurance plans for eligibility, contact PCC Support.

Live Eligibility, Not the Batch Eligibility Tool: Phone note and portal message encounters do not appear in the batch Insurance Eligibility viewer under the Tools menu in PCC EHR, nor do they appear in the insurance eligibility (elig) tool in Practice Management. You may only check eligibility for phone and portal encounters in the Post Charges workflow in PCC EHR.

Analyze and Respond to COVID-19’s Financial Impact on Your Practice

Use the new COVID-19 section in your Practice Vitals Dashboard to see how the crisis is impacting your practice and what you can do to respond.

To log into your Practice Vitals Dashboard, select “Practice Vitals Dashboard” from the Reports menu.

Click on the new COVID-19 tab to review trends and metrics specific to your practice.

Graphs are based on weeks, going back to 2/17 as a pre-coronavirus baseline. Data points are updated live from your practice every morning.

COVID-19 has an effect on your practice’s charges and payments (cashflow), your visit volume, and how you see patients. The new dashboard section visualizes those impacts based on data from your PCC system, and it also provides explanations and ways to take action.

To see graphs and analysis based on data from pediatric practices around the country, visit The Business Impact of COVID-19 on Pediatric Practices.

Visit Categorization Update

As part of this update, PCC adjusted the default categorization of visits for many reports. Just as you can now see data on your Telemedicine and Phone visit rates in your Practice Vitals Dashboard, you may also see those categories in financial and charge-based reports in the Smart Report Suite in the Practice Management window.

If your practice previously used a custom visit category configuration (in order to break out mental health visits, for example), we did not adjust your configuration for reports in your Practice Management window. Contact PCC Support to make changes to report configuration for visit categories or any other configuration needs.

Change an Encounter’s Billing Place of Service After Posting Charges

Adjust the billing place of service of phone note, portal message, and visit encounters after the charges have already been posted in the Correct Mistakes (oops) program in the Practice Management window in PCC EHR.

In Correct Mistakes (oops), press F5-Visit Status, select an encounter, adjust the billing place of service on the last page of settings, and save. Then, from the same window, resubmit the charges to insurance.

Read step-by-step instructions in Change an Encounter’s Billing Place of Service After Posting Charges.

Attach Documents to Future Appointments

Future appointments now appear in the Attach Document drop-down in Import Documents and wherever else you can edit documents in PCC EHR, allowing you to link forms, questionnaires, and images to patients’ upcoming visits.

Once you attach documents to a future appointment, that appointment will appear in the patient’s Visit History.

You can view document attachments in the patient’s Visit History by selecting the encounter and clicking “View Documents”. Attachments open in a Document Viewer window, where you can edit their titles, create tasks, move them to different visits, or remove them from the patient’s chart.

You can also view document attachments within the visit ribbon. Select the encounter in the patient’s Visit History Index, click “Edit”, and navigate to the Documents component. There you can see the document’s settings and manage its related tasks.

For more information about how to import and manage documents in PCC EHR, read Import Documents to a Patient Chart.

Identify Missed and Canceled Visits in a Patient’s Visit History

Sometimes a visit that contains notes or documents ends up being missed or canceled by the patient or your practice. Now, visit ribbons and the patient Visit History display a missed or canceled appointment status when an encounter containing notes or documents has been missed or canceled.

Cancelation information in the Visit History or visit ribbon can help you determine if documents were attached to a visit that never occurred, or if a visit that did occur was charted under the wrong encounter.

When you cancel a visit or mark it missed, related notes, orders, tasks, and document attachments remain intact until someone at your practice manually chooses to edit or delete them.

Pilot Test: Send CHADIS Screenings Automatically by Visit Reason

PCC is developing a stronger integration with CHADIS, making it easier to get the proper screenings to the patients you want. As part of this release, we will be pilot testing the first phase of that integration; PCC EHR can automatically register patients with CHADIS and have CHADIS assign those patients screenings based on the scheduled visit reason in PCC EHR.

Coming Soon: Print from PCC SecureConnect to Your Home Printer

Users who connect remotely to their PCC systems using SecureConnect now have the option to print out of PCC EHR and the Practice Management window wherever they are working.

To print a file while working in SecureConnect, choose the printer named “SecureConnect” as your destination.

When you print, the file will download to your local workstation, where you can open it from your downloads folder and send it to your local printer.

For step-by-step instructions about how to print out of SecureConnect, read Print from PCC SecureConnect to Your Home Printer.

Improved Portal Payment Processing

Under certain circumstances, such as when a family closed their patient portal window before the payment transaction completed, portal payments occasionally did not appear in your PCC database. Additionally, in April and May of 2020, the BluePay payment network experienced processing delays which exacerbated the problem.

In April, PCC distributed patches to all practice systems to address this problem. Now the patient portal can validate a payment even if the user has prematurely closed their window. Your PCC system also looks for any stuck payments and makes sure they arrive.

As payments may occasionally take several minutes to arrive on your PCC system, a family might submit a duplicate payment by mistake. Your practice can identify and resolve duplicate payments and other payment issues by reviewing the Portal Payments report in the PCC EHR Report Library.

Other Updates and Bug Fixes

• Review Communication Reports in New Report Library Category: When your office needs to review your sent Broadcast Messages, texts, and related details, you can now find those reports in a new Communications section in the PCC EHR Report Library.

  

• Patient Portal Administration is Easier to Read: When you manage a patient portal account, the interface that displays user details is easier to read, mirroring what your front desk sees during Patient Checkin or in the patient chart.

  

• Telemedicine Component Will Display Portal Username: The Telemedicine component, which appears at the top of telemedicine chart notes, will now display the portal user name(s) for the patient, and not the user’s email address. Prior to the PCC June COVID-19 release, the portal’s username was also their email address for portal notifications.

  

• One Less Click for Selection and Drop-Down: When you select a bullet item, and then choose from a drop-down, PCC EHR is now smart enough to not require the extra click to select the drop-down. You’ll notice this improvement in various places in PCC EHR, including the Export menu of the PCC EHR Report Library.

• See Failed Messages Per Broadcast Run in Broadcast Messaging Log: Use the new “Failed Messages” column in the Broadcast Messaging Log to see if your broadcast messages are getting through.

  

• Improve Patient Recall Reporting By Excluding Cancelled Appointments: If a practice used a patient-based report to perform a patient recall, under certain circumstances the output could include cancelled appointments and orders. The PCC June COVID-19 update tweaks the criteria behavior for patient list reports so that when you wish to include patients by appointment and orders, they will not include cancelled appointments or orders.

• Send Fewer Rejected/Bounced Broadcast Messages With Improved Email Validation: In April, PCC updated all practices to improve email validation. If your practice records an invalid email address in an email field, Broadcast Messaging excludes it when it sends messages. We’ve improved this validation with new standards to reduce email errors.

• Post Charges While Editing the Chart: Under certain circumstances, when a user edited a chart while another user simultaneously saved new posted charges, the charges would not enter the system. This has been resolved.

• Continue Transmitting Broadcast Messages After Internet Connection Failure: Under certain circumstances, such as when an internet connection failed while transmitting Broadcast Messages, some messages would go out to families and others would not. PCC has added error capturing to the process so that messages will recommence once the connection is restored.

PCC has launched a series of rapid updates in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. We are beta testing and rolling out new functionality in direct response to the situation as it evolves.

Read below to learn about new features and updates collected in our April 2020 release, which PCC installed for all practices on Saturday, April 11th.

Contact PCC Support for information about these new features or about any PCC product or service.

PCC COVID-19 Release Feature Videos: You can watch a video playlist which covers the major features PCC has developed during the COVID-19 pandemic and includes tutorials on related topics.

Migration Considerations for Your Practice: PCC has wrapped many of the items below into PCC 8.12.12, recently deployed to all practices. We’ve collected a list of items your practice should review when you prepare for these features. Read PCC COVID-19 Release Migration Considerations.

8.12.x Releases?: PCC typically announces major releases with an update number, such as the 8.12 release. The updates and new functionality described in this article are designated as the 8.12.10 through 8.12.12 releases.

Send Broadcast Messages to Patients and Families

Your practice can use the new Broadcast Messaging report and service to send out messages to patients and families.

You’ll be able to build a list of patients based on a wide range of criteria and then send out a large batch of emails or SMS text messages. Recipients of broadcast text messages can reply “stop” or “unsubscribe” to stop receiving your messages. Likewise, each email sent via Broadcast Messaging includes an unsubscribe link, which will remove the recipient’s email address from future mailings.

To learn more, read or watch Broadcast Messages to Patients and Families (Article, Video).

Review Broadcast Messaging History

How many broadcast messages did your practice send? Can you track message counts to understand future costs?

PCC EHR’s Report Library includes a Broadcast Messaging Log, which tracks all Broadcast Messages sent. You can review historical messages and see results of each batch of messages.

The Broadcast Message Log is found in the Patient Recall Category in the Report Library. You can run it for a range of dates and optionally limit it by user.

Results include the date and time of each message run, the user who sent the message, the message content, type and count of messages sent.

Improve How You Schedule, Chart, and Bill Telemedicine Visits

When you schedule a telemedicine visit in PCC EHR, you can indicate it is a telemedicine visit and optionally add website URL links for your third-party video connection. It will be easier for patients, families, and everyone at your practice to handle telemedicine visits.

Your staff can easily identify the telemedicine visits on the Schedule queue, your clinicians will have instant access to the links they need to connect, and your billers will be able to see that the visit is Telemedicine and make changes as needed.

To learn more, read or watch Schedule, Chart, and Bill for a Telemedicine Encounter (Video, Article).

View When a Visit is Telemedicine in Practice Management

If your practice uses the new Telemedicine features in PCC EHR, and still prefers to post charges in Practice Management, you can also see if an encounter is marked as Telemedicine in Post Charges (checkout).

Any visit marked as Telemedicine in PCC EHR will be indicated with a “(T)” next to the Place of Service field in checkout.

You can also configure a default telemedicine place of service for each scheduling location.

Adjust Billing Place of Service for Telemedicine Encounters

When you schedule and perform a telemedicine visit, it makes sense to use your office location—the doctors can see their whole schedule, and your practice can see what’s happening at a glance. When it’s time to bill, however, some carriers require a special telemedicine place of service.

When posting charges from PCC EHR’s Schedule queue, the Billing POS is now a drop-down menu. It includes the appointment location and any locations set as a telemedicine location. You can select your new billing location, and complete posting your charges as usual.

To learn more, read or watch Schedule, Chart, and Bill for a Telemedicine Encounter (Video, Article).

Set a Default Billing Place-of-Service for Telemedicine Encounters

It can be cumbersome to manually switch the billing place of service each time you post telemedicine visit charges. To make posting easier, set a default billing place of service for telemedicine visits in PCC EHR Practice Preferences.

To learn more, read Set a Default Billing Place of Service for Telemedicine Visits.

Bill for a Phone Note or Portal Message

After a clinician completes notes for a phone note or portal message, they can click “Bill” to select charges and make the encounter ready for billing. Billers can post charges directly from the Messaging queue in PCC EHR.

To learn more, read or watch Bill for a Phone Note or Portal Message (Video, Article).

Find Encounters Waiting to be Billed with the Encounters by Billing Status Report

Run the Encounters by Billing Status report to find all encounters that are ready to be billed, including appointments, phone notes, and portal messages.

Visits by Billing Status vs. Encounters by Billing Status: This new report mirrors the Visits by Billing Status report, except that it includes phone notes and portal messages in the results. In the future, we will likely combine these reports. For now, if you want to exclude phone notes and portal messages, use the Visits by Billing Status report. To include them, use the Encounters by Billing Status report.

Track and Analyze COVID-19’s Impact on Independent Pediatricians

PCC is tracking and aggregating data from our clients in order to better understand how the COVID-19 pandemic is affecting independent pediatric practices across the country. That data and analysis are available at www.pcc.com/business-impact-of-covid-19/.

This page will be ever-changing as trends develop over time, bringing you useful insights and guidance based on what is happening in pediatric practices across the country.

Changes in daily visit and charge volume across PCC practices is just one trend we are following.

Code Updates for COVID-19

During March 2020, PCC rapidly deployed patches to PCC systems to add codes for COVID-19 related issues.

Configure Quest and LabCorp for COVID-19 Tests and Electronic Results

You can configure your lab orders in PCC EHR for the latest COVID-19 tests, including options for receiving results electronically from Quest and LabCorp. On March 17th, PCC updated all pediatric practice systems with new COVID-19 test identifiers for Quest and LabCorp.

Use the New COVID-19 SNOMED Diagnosis Description

On March 19th, PCC delivered a SNOMED-CT update to your practice’s system, adding the new COVID-19 diagnosis.

To learn more about the March 2020 SNOMED-CT update, read March 2020 SNOMED-CT Update Adds COVID-19 Diagnosis and More.

For more details on coding and billing for COVID-19 related visits, read Code and Bill for a COVID-19 Related Encounter.

Bill With The New COVID-19 ICD-10 Billing Code

On March 23rd, PCC added the newly announced U07.1 COVID-19 ICD-10 code to your practice’s PCC system. By default, PCC maps that billing code to the corresponding SNOMED-CT term. You can use it to bill for visits with a confirmed case of COVID-19.

For more details on coding and billing for COVID-19 related visits, read Code and Bill for a COVID-19 Related Encounter.

Diagnose Exposure to COVID-19 with New SNOMED-CT Event

On March 31st, PCC added a new SNOMED-CT event, Exposure to 2019 novel coronavirus to your practice’s PCC system.

You can use this new SNOMED event as a diagnosis, which you can track on a patient’s Problem List or on a chart note.

By default, this diagnosis will map to the ICD-10 billing code Z20.828 Contact with and (suspected) exposure to other viral communicable diseases.

What’s Coming Next?

PCC updated all client systems with the April COVID-19 release, 8.12.12, on Saturday, April 11th. What are we working on next?

Track and Analyze COVID-19’s Financial Impact on Your Practice

You can soon use your Practice Vitals Dashboard to understand what is happening at your practice as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. What are the daily trends at your practice? What is the productivity impact? You can track some of these details in your Practice Vitals Dashboard now, and an upcoming update will add new benchmarks and ways to get the data you need to make decisions for your practice.

Guides to Self-Install and Other Supporting Materials

If your practice needs new hardware installed during the COVID-19 pandemic, can you install it yourself? Are there ways to improve remote training and help your practice implement PCC without having someone visit your office?

PCC is working on remote training materials, along with guides for hardware installation, so your practice can get up and running with PCC’s products and services without hosting a PCC employee at your office.

Exploring What You Need Most

PCC is going to explore further enhancements to meet the challenges of working remotely, ramping up telemedicine, and reaching patients during the pandemic.

For example, we are currently exploring creating an in-office chat tool for your staff, adding functionality to the patient portal, macro tools to help you chart consistently and rapidly, under-the-hood tools for making sure you get paid, and more.

Most importantly, we want to hear from you. What obstacles are you facing, and how can PCC help?

Get in touch!

On March 19, 2020, PCC updated the SNOMED-CT diagnostic terms on your practice’s PCC system to add the COVID-19 diagnosis.

PCC regularly updates your system’s ICD-10, LOINC, SNOMED-CT, NDC, RVU, VIS, and other standardized lists so you won’t encounter challenges when you chart, order a lab, interface with a care provider, or bill for a visit. (Your practice’s local system automatically updates your practice’s procedure codes.)

We decided to push the most recent SNOMED-CT codes and descriptions out as an immediate patch in order to provide practices with the new COVID-19 diagnosis.

Read the sections below to learn more.

COVID-19 Diagnosis

This update includes language and coding for a COVID-19 diagnosis.

• 840539006 Disease caused by 2019-nCoV: This diagnosis has alternate, searchable names of “Disease caused by 2019 novel coronavirus” and “Disease caused by Wuhan coronavirus”.

If your practice needs to diagnose COVID-19, you can select this diagnosis on a chart note and/or add it to a patient’s Problem List.

What ICD-10 Code Do I Use for COVID-19?

On Thursday, March 19th, the CDC announced an unusual addition of a new ICD-10 code mid-cycle, making a new COVID-19 code effective as of April 1st, 2020:

• U07.1 COVID-19

This code’s title has also appeared as “2019-nCoV acute respiratory disease”.

Prior to U07.1 COVID-19, the CDC recommends using specific codes for Pneumonia, Bronchitis, Lower Respiratory Infection, Respiratory Infection NOS, and ARDS, which you would add to a claim along with B97.29 Other coronavirus as the cause of diseases classified elsewhere. As always, payer response may vary.

PCC keeps an up-to-date handout with COVID-19 coding and billing recommendations here: 2020 COVID-19 Coding Guide. We will update that PDF link as the situation changes and we learn more.

Your practice can use the Billing Configuration tool to directly map one or more ICD-10 codes to a SNOMED diagnosis description.

For example, you could set up the Disease caused by 2019-nCoV code to automatically provide a selection of ICD-10 specific codes. In the configuration tool, you’d add codes to the ICD-10 mapping field:

When the clinician selects the diagnosis, they can choose the additional, specific codes to accompany B97.29:

New Favorites Available in Diagnosis Quick Search

The SNOMED-CT update adds 2600 diagnosis descriptions to your system. PCC added 78 of them to the “Favorites” quick search feature of all diagnosis fields in PCC EHR.

In preparation for the update, PCC’s certified coder, Jan Blanchard, assembled a list of 78 new SNOMED-CT descriptions of interest to pediatricians. The update added these diagnoses, which include the COVID-19 diagnosis, to your practice’s default Favorites list for quick searching, unless your practice has specifically requested otherwise.

What is a diagnosis 'Favorites' list?: As you type or search in any diagnosis field, PCC EHR automatically searches a customizable list of Favorites. Use the Diagnosis Configuration tool to adjust your practice’s list of Favorites. You can also right-click on any diagnosis field in PCC EHR to search your system’s full SNOMED-CT diagnosis library.

Deprecated SNOMED Diagnosis Descriptions

The March 2020 SNOMED-CT update removes or replaces many codes common to pediatric practices. Your practice may want to take special note of them.

• Acute upper respiratory infection of multiple sites: This common URI diagnosis was removed from the international SNOMED-CT library as being ambiguous. Your practice may want to review alternative diagnoses and adjust chart note protocols, especially as it was often used for CQM reporting. PCC will automatically replace the term on chart note protocols for new visits with “Acute upper respiratory infection”, and there are several related URI descriptions available.

• Lactose intolerance: PCC’s pediatric practices frequently used this SNOMED-CT diagnosis. It was removed from the SNOMED-CT library in favor of the more specific “Malabsorption syndrome due to intolerance to lactose”. PCC will automatically update your chart note protocols for new visits if this item appears as a default.

• Infantile seborrheic dermatitis: This SNOMED-CT diagnosis, one of many formal names for “cradle cap”, was removed from the SNOMED-CT library. If your practice used it on a chart note protocol, the update will automatically replace it with “Generalized seborrheic dermatitis of infants”.

Here are the top 25 codes from PCC’s pediatric practices that have been removed from the SNOMED-CT diagnosis library in 2020. When these codes appeared for selection on a chart note protocol, PCC added a replacement. For other diagnoses, your providers may easily find related descriptions with a search, but you may want to plan ahead.

Acute upper respiratory infection of multiple sites	78337007
Lactose intolerance	267425008
Infantile seborrheic dermatitis	200776003
Chesty cough	161929000
Acute wheezy bronchitis	275499005
Dysfunctional uterine bleeding	19155002
Fatigue – symptom	272060000
Pink eye disease	241759005
Pulled elbow	95854004
Oral contraceptive prescribed	169472004
Vesicular eczema of hands and/or feet	402567004
Periorbital and/or eye pain	43751000119109
Maternal drug abuse	169941005
Superficial bruising	270911002
Wry neck/torticollis	270476009
Newborn	46068001
Facial eczema	43523005
Hyperkeratosis	396228006
Genetic syndrome	290028006
Fall down stairs	414188008
Eczema of leg	309258000
Uncomplicated umbilical hernia	196867008
Tiredness symptom	267031002
Feeling tired	314109004
Sprain, ankle joint, medial	209531007

SNOMED Codes Mapped to ICD-10 for Billing

The SNOMED-CT update includes new mappings to ICD-10 billing codes. Many previous mappings have been updated.

You may wish to review billing configuration for your diagnoses. You can open the Billing Configuration tool to configure which ICD-10 diagnoses are mapped to each SNOMED-CT description in PCC EHR. You can also use the snomedmap report to examine your practice’s diagnoses that may need updating.