Securely Retrieve Clinical Documents from Hospitals and Other Providers

Watch a Video: Watch Clinical Document Exchange: The Initiator Role to learn how to configure your PCC system to submit requests and retrieve clinical documents.

Initiate a Query for Patient Records

If a new patient transfers to your practice, or if you know that an existing patient has received care at another healthcare facility, you can request and retrieve their records on demand within PCC EHR.

Open the patient’s chart and navigate to the History component. Click on “Find Clinical Documents”.

If the patient has default organizations configured, PCC EHR immediately begins querying them for records.

If the patient does not have default organizations configured, or you want to query organizations which are not part of the patient’s defaults, click the triangle beside the Healthcare Organizations to Query header.

The triangle reveals a list of healthcare organizations that your office has historically queried for the patient. Check marks appear beside the patient’s default organizations.

To query an organization that is on the patient’s list but is not a default, check the box beside it and click the “Find Patient” button.

If you want to query an organization that is not on the patient’s list, search for it by name or address and add it to the patient’s list.


Search Results Only Show Organizations You Can Query: Search results include healthcare organizations that both match your search terms and have adopted the Carequality interoperability framework.

After you add the new organization to the patient’s list, click the “Find Patient” button.

The “Find Patient” button initiates a query to all of the selected organizations for patients whose name, date of birth, and sex match yours. Each organization returns patient match results in its own table.

Patient Not Found: If an organization does not have any records that match your patient’s demographic criteria, the query will return a message that says “Patient Not Found”. If the request times out, you will receive a message that says “No response, please try again later.”

Select your patient from the query results, then click “Find Documents”.

Found documents display in a table beneath the organization and patient they are associated with.

You can filter the list of found documents by date. You can also expand the results to include previously retrieved documents, deprecated documents, and documents are of an unsupported file type.

Deprecated Documents and Unsupported File Types: Deprecated documents are flagged by the source organization for being out of date. Unsupported file types are documents that cannot be retrieved and imported into PCC EHR due to their file format.

If you want to run the query again, click the “Refresh” button in the top-right corner of the results table. The time stamp in the top-right corner of each table shows the last time a query was performed.

Query Results Remain Visible All Day: Clinical document queries persist on the Find Clinical Documents screen until 11:59 p.m. and can be seen and refreshed by all users who have query permissions. After midnight, the Find Clinical Documents screen clears its queries, leaving a blank slate for users who access it the next day.

View and Manage Retrieved Documents

Once you have determined that there is a document for your patient at a queried healthcare organization, you will need to import it in order to view its contents and save it to PCC EHR.

Click the “Retrieve” button beside the document you wish to import. If there are multiple documents and you want to import all of them, you can click the “Retrieve All” button beneath the table.

Wrong Patient? Try Again: If you realize at this point that you have requested documents for the wrong patient, you can cancel your search by clicking the “Back to Patient Match” button beneath the table.

Once you retrieve documents, the “Retrieve” button is replaced by “View” and “Reconcile” buttons. The “View” button appears for all document types. The “Reconcile” button only appears for CCDA documents.

You can open a retrieved document by clicking the “View” button.

Once open in a Document Viewer window, you can see the document’s contents and other information about it, such as its title and source, the date it was last modified, and the name of the document category under which it is saved in the patient’s chart in PCC EHR. Retrieved documents are always saved into the Retrieved Documents category when you first import them.

Click the “Edit” button to modify the document’s title, re-assign it to a different category, attach it to a visit, send it to a provider for signing, share it to the patient portal, attach it to a portal message, annotate it, or create messaging tasks from it.


You can remove the document from the patient’s chart by clicking the “Remove Document” button.

Removed Documents Get Deleted Altogether from PCC EHR: Unlike other kinds of documents in PCC EHR which return to the Import Documents screen when you remove them from the patient’s chart, clinical documents retrieved from other healthcare organizations are deleted from your PCC system altogether when you click the “Remove Document” button. Documents deleted in error can usually be retrieved anew from the source organization, as long as the source organization has not deleted them.

You can find and edit retrieved documents anytime in the Documents section of the patient’s chart.

Reconcile Retrieved Documents

You can import Problems, Medication Allergies, and Medications from retrieved documents into your patient’s chart in PCC EHR.

If you already have a retrieved document open in a Document Viewer window, click the “Reconcile” button to review and import its data.

You can also begin reconciling a document from the Find Clinical Documents screen within the History section of the patient’s chart, provided the document was retrieved the same day you are reconciling its contents.

The reconciliation window compares the Problems, Medication Allergies, and Medications in the retrieved document to those already in your patient’s chart. You can select which items, if any, you wish to import from the retrieved document.

Once you have selected all of the items you wish to import, click the “Next” button.

Review your changes. If you notice duplicate or outdated information in the preview, click “Edit” to make corrections.

The corrections you make in this window will be reflected in the patient’s chart once you complete the reconciliation.

When you have finished making corrections, click “Done” to exit the editor. Then, click “Save” to finish reconciling the retrieved document.

The patient’s Problem List, PCC eRx Allergies, and Medication History in PCC EHR will reflect the choices you made while reconciling the retrieved document.

Reconciled documents include a “Last Reconciled” date and user stamp.

You can reconcile documents as many times as you need. The “Last Reconciled” date and user stamp updates each time a document is reconciled.

Manage Default Healthcare Organizations

You can set up default healthcare organizations for just one patient and for all patients at your practice.

Set Up Default Organizations for One Patient

You can manage a patient’s default healthcare organizations within the Find Clinical Documents section of their chart in PCC EHR.

On the Find Clinical Documents screen, click the triangle beside the Healthcare Organizations to Query header.

The triangle reveals organizations which have historically been queried for this patient.

Place a check mark beside organizations that should be queried by default for the patient, and uncheck those that should not.

You can add more organizations to the list using the “add another healthcare organization” search field.

As soon as you place a check mark beside an organization, it is considered a default for this patient. Default organizations are automatically queried when users open the Find Clinical Documents section of the patient’s chart.

Set Up Default Organizations for All Patients

If your practice frequently request records from a local hospital or urgent care clinic, and that organization has adopted the Carequality interoperability framework, you can set it up as a default healthcare organization to query for all of your patients.

Click on the PCC EHR Configuration menu and select “Clinical Document Exchange”.

Use the search field to find a healthcare organization that you regularly request patient records from.


The search results include healthcare organizations that both match your search terms and have adopted the Carequality interoperability framework. Select an organization from the search results to add it to the list of healthcare organizations that should be queried by default for all patients.

Repeat this process for as many organizations as you want to query by default for all patients. Click “Save” to save the configuration and close the window.

If an organization is no longer active with the Carequality network, an Inactive icon (red triangle with exclamation point) appears beside it in the Clinical Document Exchange configuration window.

Inactive organizations are automatically hidden from patient charts, but they remain in the Clinical Document Exchange configuration list until you manually remove them by clicking the “x”.

Note: Sometimes organizations are marked inactive in the Carequality directory as the result of a name change or a change in ownership. Search for the new name of the organization to re-add it to your list of default organizations to query.

User Permissions

Allow Users to Retrieve Clinical Documents

Users require special permissions in order to query other healthcare organizations for patients’ clinical documents. Permissions are assigned on a per-user basis in PCC EHR.

Open User Administration from the Tools menu in PCC EHR.

Select a user from the list and click the “Edit” button.

Under the “Clinical Document Exchange” header, check the box labeled “This user is allowed to query for clinical documents.”

Select a role for the user. The list of roles is defined by the Carequality interoperability framework and cannot be modified. Each user at your practice may only be assigned one role. Role assignment is required.

Once you have assigned permissions and a role to the user, click the “Save” button.

Repeat this process for all users at your practice who need to be able to query other healthcare organizations for patients’ clinical documents.

Users with Clinical Document Exchange permissions are able to see the “Find Clinical Documents” button within the History section of patient charts. The “Find Clinical Documents” button is hidden from users who do not have Clinical Document Exchange permissions.

Allow Users to Manage Practice-Wide Clinical Document Exchange Settings

Some users at your practice will require special permissions in order to manage your practice’s default healthcare organizations to query. These permissions are assigned on a per-role basis in PCC EHR.

Open User Administration from the Tools menu in PCC EHR.

Click the “Roles” tab at the top of the window.

Select an existing role and click the “Edit Role” button.

Check the box for “Clinical Document Exchange Configuration”, then click “Save”.

If you would rather create a new role to manage Clinical Document Exchange Configuration permissions, click “Add Role” instead of editing an existing one.

Name the role, check “Clinical Document Exchange Configuration”, then click the “Save” button.

Assign the new role to relevant users in PCC EHR.

Users with Clinical Document Exchange Configuration permissions are able to manage your practice’s default healthcare organizations to query.

Close User Administration when you have finished assigning permissions. The new permissions will take effect the next time users log in to PCC EHR.

Best Practices for Pediatrics in the COVID-19 Era

Pediatric practices around the country can continue to see patients, provide great care, and thrive as businesses during and following the COVID-19 pandemic.

PCC worked with practice managers and managing providers to develop this library of recommendations.

Recall Patients

PCC recommends that all practices launch a patient recall initiative. During the initial months of the COVID-19 pandemic, many practices experienced lower visit volume. Children’s developmental needs and other health concerns (diabetes, asthma, depression, and more) did not slow down, and this created an unmet need.

Consider contacting all families who have visited your practice in the past three years and schedule them for telemedicine or in-person appointments. Get your patients caught up on well visits, screenings, shots, and chronic problem and care plan management. As you provide much needed care, you will also be maintaining your practice’s relationships and your ability to help your community.

Read Why and How Pediatric Practices Should Launch a Recall Initiative Today to learn more.

Adjust How You Schedule Patients

When PCC spoke with pediatric practices, they shared changes they’ve made to patient scheduling during the COVID-19 era.

Implement the PCC EHR Appointment Book

The Appointment Book has built in Telemedicine features and can be configured with visit templates to help your schedulers. The close integration between the Appointment Book and the patient’s chart record make everything easier, from connecting to patients, to charting, to billing.

If your practice is not using the PCC EHR Appointment Book, PCC Support can help you get started.

Maximize Portal Communication

Contact your families and make sure they all have patient portal access. This will allow their initial contact with your practice to be asynchronous, which means your staff and clinicians can followup on questions and concerns whenever they are available.

By improving this initial point of contact, you can more efficiently triage issues and schedule appointments as needed.

Implement Appointment Requests in the Patient Portal

Your practice can create a patient portal template for appointment requests. Then, when the family wants an appointment, they can pick “Appointment Request” when they create a portal message.

With an Appointment Request template, you can encourage families to provide the information you need to schedule them.

Read Configure Your Patient Portal Message Templates to learn more.

Update How You Handle Scheduling Phone Calls

When your practice schedules an appointment, what do you review and communicate to the family?

Develop a quick script that informs the family what to expect when they visit your practice, and confirm demographic, insurance, and other information when you schedule. For example, if your practice requires masks, no longer uses your waiting room, or performs a phone-based checkin prior to the appointment, set that expectation when you schedule.

If your practice is implementing practice-wide credit card on file for all families, you can collect that information when you schedule. See below for more tips on CCOF implementation.

Adjust When You Schedule, Your Scheduling Blocks, and More

Review when your practice schedules different visit types, and make adjustments that balance what your families need with your practice’s enhanced safety protocols and other changes.

  • Well Visits in the Morning: Some pediatric practices have implemented a “Well Visits in the Morning” schedule. That means all well visits are seen in exam rooms, normal cleaning takes place in between visits, sick visits happen in the afternoon, and the once-a-day more comprehensive cleaning happens after the office has closed.

  • Sick vs. Well Locations: Another pediatric practice has two locations, and they have changed one to a “sick only” location and one to a “well visit only” location.

  • Change Blocks, Stop Using Blocks: Some practices report that in 2020 they “threw out the visit template”, reworked their blocks based on daily trends, or no longer use visit blocks at all.

The above ideas may or may not suit your practice’s goals, but you might make other changes to how you schedule. In the COVID-19 era, pediatric practices need to stay agile as they tweak and adjust schedule blocks, hours, open time slots, and family expectations. As your community and culture rapidly changes in response to COVID-19, patient appointment needs will change too.

Proactively Schedule Followups and Recurring Appointments

When a followup appointment is appropriate, consider scheduling it at the same time as you schedule the initial visit, or during the initial visit. Rather than waiting the weeks or months before you contact a family to schedule, make the appointments when you have the family’s attention.

If your practice normally only schedules out six months, consider expanding that to 13 months so you can schedule annual well visits at the preceding visit.

Ask: “Could This Be a Telemedicine Encounter?”

Many practices schedule telemedicine encounters for sick visits and followup visits. Some are trying out partial well visits over telemedicine as well.

See the Telemedicine section below for ideas on expanding your practice’s telemedicine services.

Improve Your Practice’s Pre-Visit Steps

What does your practice do in advance of each appointment? During the COVID-19 era, you can examine your process and make changes that will make the visit itself easier and more efficient.

Your process might include:

  • Expand When and How You Check Eligibility: Especially if you are increasing telemedicine visits or offering new services, you should review eligibility for all encounters in advance. You can do that with PCC’s built in eligibility tools. Practices report that payers do not respond to eligibility requests until 5 days previous, and anecdotally some Medicaid payers only provide day-of or day-before eligibility information. Regardless, it’s important to check eligibility as employment status, insurance payer rules, and state rules about visit types are rapidly changing.

  • Implement Pre-Visit Questionnaires in the Patient Portal and/or With CHADIS: Since clinician in-person time now has additional constraints and challenges, you may want to implement or expand your pre-visit screenings or questionnaires. You can design your own questionnaires in the patient portal’s templates tool, or you could sign up for CHADIS or a similar service. PCC is working to enhance CHADIS functionality, and a partial CHADIS integration is in pilot test now. As you expand your pre-visit questionnaire use, keep in mind that you will need to adjust your workflow so the front desk or a nurse can send the families these materials or links.

  • Collect Copays in Advance: In order to make in-person and telemedicine encounters as smooth and “touchless” as possible, your practice can implement a policy of collecting copays in advance of an appointment. Since account balances and payments can be done through the patient portal, families will have transparency and can see their credit if the visit ends up not requiring a copay, for example.

Change How You Checkin and See Patients

When it’s time for the encounter, what changes will your practice make to accommodate the additional challenges of COVID-19? This section includes recommendations we heard from pediatric practices across the country.

Eliminate or Reduce Use of Your Waiting Room

Some practices have closed their waiting rooms or greatly reduced any time spent in them. They tell families:

  1. Wait In Your Car: Your practice can instruct families to wait in their car until the time of their appointment.

  2. Call When You Arrive: When a family pulls in, they can call your front desk to checkin. You can verify insurance, demographics, and collect the copay over the phone.

  3. We Will Text You When Your Exam Room is Ready: PCC’s built-in text feature means your staff can quickly select an appointment and text the family when their room is ready.

As they make these transitions in their offices, some practices are changing their long term plans for their layout. For example, could you transition your waiting room into multiple exam rooms or office space?

Virtualize Your Checkin and Precheckin Processes

By using the patient portal, texting, and the phone, some practices have eliminated all parts of the in-person patient checkin.

To facilitate encounter management, some practices create a new Visit Status in PCC EHR, such as “Precheck”, so that everyone can understand when a family has completed their demographic updates, paid their copay, and are ready for the doctor.

At The Door: Take Temperature, Provide PPE

When a family enters the building, a practice can greet them at or near the entrance. They can use this opportunity to take temperatures and to review PPE guidelines for the practice.

If a patient or family member is not wearing a mask, a practice can optionally provide masks for them to wear.

Consider Car Visits and Shot Tents

PCC heard from practices that now see their patients right in their cars.

Instead of an exam room, the clinician visits the patient in the parking lot of the pediatric practice.

When an immunization or other medical procedure is needed, they can use a “shot tent” or station set up for that purpose.

Plan for Flu and Immunization Clinics

If your practice performs annual flu clinics, where you bring in patients en masse for their flu immunization, you can make adjustments to your usual procedures and do the same in 2020 and beyond.

Similarly, if you implement Telemedicine well visits (some practices are trying), you may have a backlog of kids who need to come in for immunizations. When COVID-19 vaccines are developed, pediatric practices may be an important part of distribution and administration.

Practices can work now to improve their “immunization-only” visit workflow and how they might run clinics while maintaining enhanced safety protocols.

Read More Here: Run a Pediatric Drive-Up Flu Shot Clinic

Implement and Expand Your Telemedicine Services

Telemedicine encounters can provide effective care without physical contact. During the COVID-19 era, practices across the country have expanded their use of phone, portal messages, and video telemedicine encounters. When a practice schedules a sick visit or a followup visit, they can stop to ask the both the family and themselves, “Could we do this as a telemedicine encounter?” The answer is often “Yes!”

You can learn how to use PCC EHR’s tools for these encounters here:

  • Schedule, Chart, and Bill for a Telemedicine Encounter (Video, Article)
  • Bill For Phone Calls and Portal Message Encounters (Video, Article)

Read below for an overview of tips and recommendations we heard from pediatric practices.

Schedule for Telemedicine Appointments

When you schedule a telemedicine encounter:

  • Actually Schedule Telemedicine Encounters: A telemedicine encounter is not just a phone call that you decide to bill for later. Schedule your Telemedicine encounters. Adjust your schedule’s visit reasons, blocks, and more to make telemedicine a real part of your practice’s offerings that you will bill insurance for.

  • Use the PCC EHR Appointment Book: When you schedule a telemedicine encounter in the Appointment Book, a telemedicine icon appears with the encounter for all users, additional fields are available for telemedicine connection information, and PCC EHR can optionally designate a telemedicine billing place of service based on your configuration.

  • Perform Precheckin When You Schedule: As with any encounter in the COVID-19 era, it is important to review and update information as soon as you can, to make the actual encounter run smoothly. Update patient information, verify insurance, and collect credit card information for the copay when you schedule.

  • Set Expectations: When you schedule a telemedicine encounter for a family, tell them exactly what to expect. For example, when will the practice call them for pre-visit questions? How will they receive telemedicine connection information? Let them know during scheduling.

Perform “Precheckin” Calls Before a Telemedicine Encounter

On the day of a telemedicine encounter, or the day before, your practice can call the family. At some practices, this call is made by the MA or nurse. During that call, they:

  • Update Patient and Family Information: Verify demographics, insurance, and other details.

  • Collect Money: Collect copays and payments for any outstanding balances. Since billing and collection for telemedicine visits are rapidly changing, some practices have made it their policy to always collect the copay ahead of time and issue a refund later once the EOB arrives.

  • Tell Them How to Connect: Provide technical instructions on how to connect to the encounter. The caller can provide the telemedicine link verbally, and also send a portal message or followup text message with the URL, using PCC’s direct text message feature.

  • Update Visit Status: When the precheck phone call is complete, the practice updates the Visit Status for the appointment so the practice can see it has been completed and the patient is ready for the telemedicine encounter.

Adjust Encounter Workflow, Charting, and Billing for Telemedicine

You can make changes to your workflow and PCC EHR configuration to help telemedicine encounters be successful.

For example, create additional Visit Reasons, Visit Statuses, and custom chart note protocols that include tools for recording information during a telemedicine encounter.

If some parts of a visit must be done separately, you must decide how you will chart and bill for the two different parts.

To help chart a telemedicine protocol, create one or more telemedicine protocols for your clinicians.

Get Paid and Maintain Practice Revenue

This section collects recommendations and tips for pediatric billing and collections during the COVID-19 era.

Here are some general recommendations:

Streamline Personal Payment Collection

Across the country, pediatric practices are finding ways to make personal payment of copays and outstanding balances as quick and “touchless” as possible.

  • Implement Portal Payments: Families can pay their copay and outstanding balances in the patient portal. Read Get Started with Portal Payments to learn more. Once you’re set up, work with your schedulers and staff so that they can prompt families to use this service.

  • Implement Credit Card on File (CCOF) for All Families: Your practice can use a third-party service to securely store credit card information, and incorporate CCOF into your practice’s billing policies. When you use portal payments, credit card information is similarly stored by a third party, but by expanding CCOF to all families for other billing needs, you can streamline payment and avoid problems at the time of service. Ask your bank and your merchant services for information about CCOF service. If you are doing portal payments with PCC, you have an existing contract with BluePay, a company which also offers CCOF for other billing needs. You can use a CCOF account flag and clinical alerts in PCC EHR to both drive adoption (by checking if a family has CCOF yet) and inform staff. You can then also create a custom report for the current week’s appointments showing who has CCOF and who still needs it set up.

  • Collect Copays In Advance: As mentioned above, many practices have begun collecting copays during a pre-visit checkin call. For some encounter types, it may not be clear if a copay is needed. A practice can collect the copay for every visit and issue a refund later when the EOB arrives.

  • Get Paid By Your Insurance and Medicaid Payers

    Are your insurance and medicaid payers paying you for Telemedicine visits in parity with your in-person sick visits? According to regulations in some areas, they should be. You can research this and other topics at the COVID-19 section of your Practice Vitals Dashboard.

    For common coding topics during the COVID-19 era, read Code and Bill for a COVID-19 Related Encounter, or take a look at PCC’s quick COVID-19 Coding Guide.

    As insurance companies learn to respond properly to changing circumstances, your practice may need to be extra vigilant as you review claim rejections and underpayments and resubmit.

    Is Billing Place of Service Still an Issue for Telemedicine?

    Early on in the COVID-19 era, some practices encountered challenges with the billing place of service used on claims.

    Insurance payers have mostly improved how they handle this. PCC has seen good response in many states to telemedicine billing and other encounter changes that practices have needed to make.

    However, just in case, your practice should know about the capabilities in PCC EHR:

    Apply for a CARES Grant and Other Available Support

    Pediatric practice across the country have participated in the federal government’s CARES program, which includes grants and money for small business loans. As the COVID-19 pandemic continues, every practice should stay abreast of these opportunities, and PCC will help keep you informed.

UC 2020 Chat

For UC 2020, PCC is running a chat feature to keep users connected as we attend remote sessions. Presenters and instructors will use the chat as a way to field questions and facilitate discussion, and it can also be used to talk and connect with other session attendees.

The chat will be live for the duration of our virtual UC, and you can access it outside of session hours. For more details about UC 2020, and a session schedule and links, visit the UC 2020 page on pcc.com.

Sign up for UC Chat

Use the link you received from PCC Marketing to reach the registration page.

Enter your email address, and select a username and password. The chat tool will then send you a verification email.


When you receive the verification email, simply click on the Verify Email button to complete the process.


Now you’re ready to log in!

Logging in to UC Chat

Follow the link from PCC’s UC2020 page, or manually enter the URL for chat in your browser: https://uc2020.pcc.com/uc2020


Enter your email and password to log in to UC Chat.

How to Use UC Chat

On the right is the main message window, and on the left you can select from different channels, or message threads.

Discussion Channels

There are two main channels:

  • UC Lobby: This is for general chat and conversation. Talk and connect with other Virtual UC attendees.
  • Live Session: This channel is for questions and discussion about UC sessions as they are happening. During sessions, this channel will be moderated and monitored by a PCC staff member, and is where you can ask presenters questions.
  • Other Channels

    There are other channels that provide opportunity to connect directly with other practices who are similar in size and scope. To add them to your ribbon, Click on “More…”


    There are channels specific to different sizes of practices, as well as a channel specifically for start up practices. Join one or more of these channels if you want.

    There are also channels here for virtual vendors. If you would like to connect directly with one of the vendors, you can do so here.

    Direct Messages

    If you want to chat with one or more people directly, you can do so by sending a direct message. First, click on the plus next to Direct Messages.


    Find and select the person or people you want to message, and then click the “Go” button.


    You can now begin messaging these people. Your recent direct messages will appear in the ribbon on the left for easy navigation.

    Preferences and Settings

    You can change your username, notification settings, avatar, and other details in the Account Settings menu.



    The first screen here, “General Settings” gives you options to change your user name and email. You can fill out the “Position” field to let people know more about who you are; it can be helpful to include your position and the name of your practice. You can also add a profile picture here.

    Notifications

    You can also change your Notification preferences in Account Settings, under the “Notifications” tab.


Expand Short Text into Common Phrases in PCC EHR

Expand Short Text into Full Phrases in PCC EHR

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

To watch a video about Snap Text in PCC EHR, click here.

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

User Permission

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.

Create Snap Text

To create 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. After text is expanded, you can select “Undo” from the Edit menu, or   ctrl+x to undo the expansion and return to the unexpanded text.

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.

Practice Defaults Matching a Single User's Snap Texts: When a user’s typed text matches a practice default typed text, the user’s snap text will take precedence over the practice default for that user.

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

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.

 

Create a COVID-19 Test Lab Order

You can use the Lab Configuration tool to create and track lab orders for COVID-19 tests. Your PCC EHR system includes codes and descriptions for SARS-CoV-2, including the newer 95209-3 SARS-CoV+SARS-CoV-2 Ag test.

Watch a Video: Watch a video walk-through of creating a COVID-19 lab order.

CMS Guide to Becoming Certified for Lab Testing: On 2020-09-25, CMS released new tools for laboratories seeking Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments (CLIA) certification to test for coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19).

Procedure Code Guidance: The procedure codes discussed in this article are intended only as examples. You should consult the AMA’s current CPT Coding Guide and work with your insurance payers to verify what codes you should report on claims. Your practice updates and maintains your billable procedure list, codes, and prices in the Procedures table in the Tables configuration tool on your PCC system.

Open Lab Configuration

Open the Lab Configuration window from PCC EHR’s Configuration menu.


Add a New Lab and Configure Details

Click into the Lab Orders tab, and click the “Add Lab Order” button to create a new lab.

Enter the lab’s name, default lab facility, and other details.

Set Default Lab Behaviors

Next, review and edit the settings and default behaviors for this lab order.

  • Specimen Collection: If you wish to record specimen collection information for this lab order, click “Enable recording of Specimen Collection user, date, and time”.

  • Appear on Patient Reports and My Kid's Chart: If you wish this lab to be visible by default on patient reports, including the Patient Visit Summary and My Kid’s Chart (the patient portal), select “‘Include on Patient Reports’ will be selected when this order is issued”. Clinicians can determine whether or not a lab order is visible at any time for any order by selecting the check box on the specific order for a patient.

  • Refusal and Contraindication: If a lab order can be refused or contraindicated, select the appropriate options to enable those checkboxes on the order.

Add COVID-19 Lab Tests for Third-Party Vendors

If your practice receives results for this lab order electronically from LabCorp or Quest you can add their specific lab test to this lab order. Both LabCorp and Quest have provided lab codes for COVID-19 tests. Enter those into the E-lab Vendor Order Mapping:

  • Labcorp COVID-19 Test: 139900
  • Quest SARS-CoV-2 RNA, Qual Real-Time Test: 39433

PCC EHR will be able to correctly associate and track the lab results with the order in the patient’s record. For more information about e-labs, read the Import E-lab Test Results article.

Optional: Add Specific LOINC Lab Tests for Manual Results

Type a LOINC code or test name in the “Tests to Include” section to add a LOINC test’s fields for manual entry to your lab order.

For example, you could add the 95209-3 SARS-CoV+SARS-CoV-2 Ag test.

Click “Save”

Click Save to save your lab order changes.

Configure Billing

Open Billing from the Configuration menu. Search for your new lab order, select it, and click “Edit”.

If you’re collecting and preparing the specimen for analysis by an outside laboratory, enter the specimen collection procedure, 99000 Handling and/or conveyance of specimen for transfer from the office to a laboratory, in the CPT Billing Procedure field. Additional procedures can be linked by clicking the plus button to add a new line. Click save and the selected procedures will be included in the visit’s bill.

Depending on whether or not your practice is actually performing a lab, you might add one or more of the following procedures to the lab order:

  • 87426 Infectious agent antigen detection by immunoassay technique
  • 87635 Infectious agent detection by nucleic acid (DNA or RNA); severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) (Coronavirus disease [COVID-19]), amplified probe technique
  • 86328 Immunoassay for infectious agent antibody(ies), qualitative or semiquantitative, single step method (eg, reagent strip); severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) (Coronavirus disease [COVID-19])
  • G2023 Specimen collection for severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (sars-cov-2) (coronavirus disease [covid-19]), any specimen source.

    Note: This code is for use by independent labs, not private offices.

  • U0002 2019-ncov coronavirus, sars-cov-2/2019-ncov (covid-19), any technique, multiple types or subtypes (includes all targets), non-cdc

For more information, read Code and Bill for a COVID-19 Related Encounter.

Optional: Add Labs to Protocols

You can order any lab from the Labs component, which is already available on most of your chart protocols. Specific labs can be added to each protocol- if you’re creating a visit type just for these tests, use the PCC EHR Configuration Tool to add the labto your chart note protocols. Contact PCC Support for assistance.

Test Your New Lab Order

Create a sample visit for a test patient and order your new COVID-19 lab. You should see appropriate tests inside the order, and if you added the Specimen Collection (or other CPT), it should appear on the Electronic Encounter Form.

For additional help setting up your labs or adding them to your protocols, please contact PCC Support.

Code and Bill for COVID-19 Related Encounters

How does a pediatric practice code and bill for COVID-19 related encounters? Read below to learn about the SNOMED-CT, ICD-10, and CPT codes available for tests, diagnoses, and more. PCC Support can help you customize your chart note protocols, diagnoses, orders, and billing tools.

New Codes On Your System: Throughout 2020 and into 2021, PCC regularly updated your system to add vendor lab identifiers, SNOMED-CT descriptions, ICD-10 codes, and LOINC codes to help with COVID-19-related orders, charting and billing. Contact PCC Support if you have any questions or can’t find the code you need.

Procedure Code Guidance: The procedure codes discussed in this article are intended only as examples. You should consult the AMA’s current CPT Coding Guide and work with your insurance payers to verify what codes you should report on claims. Your practice updates and maintains your billable procedure list, codes, and prices in the Procedures table in the Tables configuration tool on your PCC system.

Code for Exposure or Other COVID-19 Related Symptoms

How do you code for exposure to COVID-19? What other diagnoses are used for a COVID-19 encounter, and how might you map those to SNOMED descriptions for use on a chart note?

Exposure

When you diagnose exposure to COVID-19, you can use:

  • Z20.822 Contact with and (suspected) exposure to COVID-19
    • SNOMED-CT Mapping Option: Exposure to SARS-CoV-2 (alternate title: Exposure to 2019 novel coronavirus)

History, Associated Symptoms, and More

What other ICD-10 billing codes, and corresponding SNOMED descriptions, are available for COVID-19 related encounters?

  • B97.21 SARS-associated coronavirus as the cause of diseases classified elsewhere
    • SNOMED-CT Mapping Option(s): Suspected disease caused by severe acute respiratory coronavirus
  • Z86.16 Personal history of COVID-19
    • SNOMED-CT Mapping Option(s): H/O: viral illness, H/O: infectious disease
  • Z86.19 Personal history of other infectious and parasitic diseases
    • SNOMED-CT Mapping Option(s): History of disease caused by Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus
  • Z03.89 Encounter for observation for other suspected diseases and conditions ruled out
    • SNOMED-CT Mapping Option(s): Disease caused by Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 absent
  • M35.81 Multisystem inflammatory syndrome (MIS)
    • SNOMED-CT Mapping Option(s): Acute organ dysfunction due to systemic inflammatory response syndrome, Systemic inflammatory response syndrome, Systemic inflammatory response syndrome associated with organ dysfunction, Systemic inflammatory response syndrome without organ dysfunction
  • M35.89 Other specified systemic involvement of connective tissue
    • SNOMED-CT Mapping Option(s): Disorder of connective tissue co-occurrent and due to systemic disease
  • J12.82 Pneumonia due to coronavirus disease 2019
    • SNOMED-CT Mapping Option(s): (pneumonia diagnosis descriptions)

You might also use other diagnoses for common signs and symptoms:

  • R051-R059 Cough
  • R06.02 Shortness of breath
  • R50.9 Fever, unspecified

Code for a Screening Encounter?: In December of 2020, the WHO added another related ICD-10: Encounter for screening for COVID-19 (Z11.52). During the COVID-19 pandemic, a screening encounter code is generally not appropriate. For encounters for COVID-19 testing, including preoperative testing, code instead as exposure to COVID-19.

Adjust Your PCC EHR Chart Note Protocols to Display COVID-19 Related Diagnoses

To make them easier to select, you can use the Protocol Configuration tool to add diagnoses directly to your practice’s chart note protocols.

When clinicians select a SNOMED diagnosis description, the mapped ICD-10 billing code appears on the Bill screen.

Many codes include pre-defined mapping. Use the Billing Configuration tool to adjust the mapping of SNOMED-CT descriptions to ICD-10 codes. Possible SNOMED to ICD-10 mappings are listed in the section above with each billing code.

Order and Code for COVID-19 Lab Tests

During an encounter, you may decide to order a COVID-19 test. When you order a COVID-19 test, your practice might collect the specimen and relay the test to a lab vendor for processing. Increasingly, pediatric practices are also completing tests in-house.

In PCC EHR, when you click “Order” next to a lab order, the appropriate LOINC will be part of the order, appropriate diagnoses and procedures can be queued up for billing, and optionally the lab test information can automatically be added to the chart note for incoming electronic results.

Set Up Your COVID-19 Lab Test Orders: You can learn how to create a COVID-19 lab test order on your system, add it to chart note protocols, and configure billing behavior by reading: Create a COVID-19 Test Lab Order. For additional details about Lab Configuration in PCC EHR, you can read Lab Configuration.

Billing Codes for COVID-19 Tests and Orders

When you gather the specimen for a COVID-19 test, you can bill:

  • 99000: Handling and/or conveyance of specimen for transfer from the office to a laboratory

Depending on your lab configuration, and whether or not you perform the test in-house, you may use additional procedures for a COVID-19 test:

  • 87635: Infectious agent detection by nucleic acid (DNA or RNA); severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) (Coronavirus disease [COVID-19]), amplified probe technique
  • 87426: Infectious agent antigen detection by immunoassay technique
  • 86328: Immunoassay for infectious agent antibody(ies), qualitative or semiquantitative, single step method (eg, reagent strip); severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) (Coronavirus disease [COVID-19])
  • U0002: 2019-ncov coronavirus, sars-cov-2/2019-ncov (covid-19), any technique, multiple types or subtypes (includes all targets), non-cdc
  • G2023: Specimen collection for severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (sars-cov-2) (coronavirus disease [covid-19]), any specimen source. Note: This code is for use by independent labs, not private offices.

In PCC EHR, you can map your orders directly to the procedures you bill so they will automatically appear on your electronic encounter form automatically.

E-Lab Configuration Identifiers

You can configure lab orders so results will be sent back to your practice electronically, if your lab vendor supports e-lab integration.

Labcorp and Quest have provided the following vendor-specific identifiers, which PCC added to all practice systems:

  • Labcorp COVID-19 Test: 139900
  • Quest SARS-CoV-2 RNA, Qual Real-Time Test: 39433

Code and Bill a COVID-19 Diagnosis

During an in-person or telemedicine visit for a patient with a COVID-19 diagnosis, you would code both the COVID-19 diagnosis and related conditions.

When you indicate a COVID-19 diagnosis with a SNOMED description, use:

  • 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”.

In PCC EHR, you can select this diagnosis on a chart note and/or add it to a patient’s Problem List.

For all encounters that occured after April 1st, 2020, use this code when you bill for a visit with a patient with a positive COVID-19 diagnosis:

  • U07.1 COVID-19

This code was added to all PCC systems with a 2020-03-23 update. By default in PCC EHR, when you select the SNOMED COVID-19 description, the ICD-10 COVID-19 code will appear:

For services rendered prior to the April 1st effective date of U07.1 COVID-19, the CDC recommends you chart and code for the conditions of Pneumonia, Bronchitis, Lower Respiratory Infection, Respiratory Infection NOS, and ARDS, and then adding B97.29 Other coronavirus as the cause of diseases classified elsewhere. Before the specific COVID-19 ICD-10 diagnosis code is in effect, use the less specific B97.29 secondary to the manifestation code to indicate the patient has COVID-19.

Details May Change: The above scenarios and COVID-19 codes are new and 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 and this article as the situation changes and we learn more.

Use Other Procedure CPTs for COVID-19 Related Visits

In addition to the codes mentioned above, here are some other CPT codes you might use in relation to a COVID-19 related encounter.

Code for Telemedicine, Phone Calls, Portal, Email and Other Remote Services: What CPT visit code should your practice use for a video telemedicine encounter, a telephone call, a portal message consultation, or other remote service? PCC is maintaining a COVID-19 Coding Guide with descriptions of appropriate codes for different circumstances. You can also read PCC’s Schedule, Chart, Code, and Bill for Telemedicine Encounters.

Bill for COVID-19 Risk Counseling

Your practice may talk with a patient or parent at length about COVID-19 risk. You could use:

  • 99401: Preventive medicine counseling and/or risk factor reduction intervention(s) provided to an individual (separate procedure) approximately 15 minutes
  • 99402: …approximately 30 minutes
  • 99403: …approximately 45 minutes
  • 99404: …approximately 60 minutes

You may use these codes for COVID-19 risk reduction and prevention counseling. You can add these codes onto a claim with other office visit codes, or they can stand alone.

Are These Codes Okay for Telemedicine?: Although these codes do not appear in Appendix P of the CPT manual, which lists telehealth or telemedicine codes, many states are currently mandating that all services, including the 99401-99403 codes, be billable in a telemedicine encounter.

Add-On CPTs for Urgent and Unusual Circumstances

If an emergency appointment disrupts your office’s schedule, such as the sudden arrival of a patient with Acute Respiratory Distress, you can use this additional code on the claim:

  • 99058: Service(s) provided on an emergency basis in the office, which disrupts other scheduled office services, in addition to basic service

If you have to leave the office for an emergency visit that disrupts your schedule:

  • 99060: Service(s) provided on an emergency basis, out of the office, which disrupts other scheduled office services, in addition to basic service

If you leave the office for an encounter at the request of the patient or family, you might add:

  • 99056: Service(s) typically provided in the office, provided out of the office at request of patient, in addition to basic service

We're Seeing Kids in the Parking Lot. Is That a 99056?: If the patient or family makes a special request for you to come out to the parking lot to perform a visit, you may add this code. If your practice sees patients in your parking lot as your general office policy during the COVID-19 epidemic, this code may not apply.

Vaccine, Administration, and Counseling Codes

Payment for administration of COVID-19 vaccine varies among payers and states. You should consult your CPT resource for guidance, and speak with your payers.

Guide to COVID-19 Vaccines in PCC EHR: Read COVID-19 Vaccines: Plan, Configure, Order, Administer, and Track to learn about the MVX, CDX, NDC, and CPT codes needed for COVID-19 vaccine encounters.

How to code for COVID-19 vaccine-related encounters has continued to evolve and change during 2021. For example, in June of 2021, North Carolina Medicaid changed their payment policy for CPT 99401 (Preventative medicine counseling and/or risk factor reduction intervention) to allow for an additional 15 minutes to counsel about the benefits of receiving COVID-19 vaccine. They require a CR modifier on the code. When this change occurred, PCC reached out to North Carolina clients.

If you learn of similar updates to policy, please reach out to PCC and/or PCC Community to share!

Installing Your Firewall

PCC uses a Fortinet Fortigate 60F (or related model) as a firewall in our clients’ offices to protect their networks.

Follow the instructions on this page to install your Fortigate firewall.

Follow the instructions on this page to install your Fortigate firewall.

Connect Your Modem

With the ethernet cable that came with your Fortigate firewall, connect your ISP’s modem to the “WAN1” port on the Fortigate.

The ethernet ports on most modems are usually clearly labeled, but if you are unsure which port to use, contact your ISP.

Add Other Devices to Your Network

Now connect other networking equipment to the LAN ports on the back of the Fortigate. Use the ports labeled 1-5. All 5 of these ports are identical.

Ports A and B: Depending on your needs, PCC may have configured your router to also allow ports A and B to be used. Use these ports only if instructed to do so by PCC.

Connect Your Network Switch (optional)

Depending on the needs of your office, you may or may not use a network switch. If you use a switch, plug all devices, including the Fortigate, into the ports on the front of the switch. All ports work the same, and all ports communicate in both directions; you can plug any device into any port.

Connecting network devices via your network switch: If you are using a network switch, all the instructions below still apply. However, instead of plugging your other devices into your Fortigate firewall, plug them into your switch. The switch and your modem will be the only two devices connected to the Fortigate.

Connect Your Network Attached Storage

A Network attached storage (NAS) device is a RAID array of hard drives connected to your network that is used to store backups.

PCC is currently equipping our clients with the FreeNAS Mini E. To connect the Mini E to your firewall (or switch), use the lower-left ethernet port on the back of the Mini E.

Connect Your Server

Your Dell server will need to be connected to your firewall (or switch) using two ethernet cables. Connect one using the “GB1” port, and the other using the “iDRAC” port.

Connect Wireless Access Points

Your wireless access points should already have been installed around your office by your local IT support. Connect them to free ports in your firewall (or switch).

Connect Your Fortigate Firewall to Power

Turn on your modem first: Your modem should be powered on before you plug in your firewall.

Connect the power supply to the back of the device and plug it into a UPS battery device.

Your UPS looks like this:

The “PWR” and “STATUS” indicators on the front of your Fortigate firewall should light up green if the cable is pluged in correctly.

Power cable clicks into place: The power supply connector has a locking tab that will click into place. You must press the tab if you want to remove the cable from the firewall for any reason.

Wait for Your Devices to Connect

Depending on how quickly you plugged everything in, the Fortigate firewall may still need time to start up before you can connect to the network. If after 5 minutes you are unable to connect, please contact PCC for assistance.

Call PCC for assistance: If you need assistance at any point in this process, PCC is here to help! Call PCC Support at 800.722.7708. If possible, have a photo of the back of your Internet modem and the back of the Fortigate firewall available.

Send Broadcast Messages to Patients and Families

Use Broadcast Messaging in PCC EHR to send batches of messages to patients and families. You can use PCC’s Broadcast Messaging report, or customize any patient-based report, to create a patient list. PCC EHR will collect all contact information for the patient (emails and cellphones) and send the message to all of them.

Broadcast Messaging requires some initial setup before you can begin sending messages. Contact PCC Support to get started using Broadcast Messaging.

Watch a Video: You can learn how to use Broadcast Messaging in PCC EHR by watching the Send Broadcast Messages to Patients and Families video.

Send a Broadcast Message

Open the Report Library

Open the PCC EHR Report Library from the Reports menu.

Select a Report

Select a report to begin building a patient list.

You can use the Broadcast Messaging Patient List or another report in the library.

Most EHR reports work with the broadcast messaging feature, including (but not limited to) those in the Appointment, Clinical, Immunization, and Patient Recall categories.

Select Report Criteria

Adjust the report criteria to create a list of patients and families you wish to contact.

The Broadcast Messaging Patient List includes a range of criteria for narrowing down the list of patients included in your report. For example, exclude by patient or account flag to ensure that inactive or deceased patients aren’t contacted, or select by care center flag to limit the results to patients of one care center.

By default, the Broadcast Messaging report includes all patients who have been seen in the past three years, are not marked as deceased, and who are under 21 years old.

Run the Report and Review the Patient List

Once you have adjusted the criteria to meet your needs, run the report, and check that the resulting list includes the patients or number of patients you expect.

Export Your Results

Click the “Export” button at the bottom right of the results window.


Select One or More Sending Methods

You’ll see three options, PDF, CSV, or “Send message to patients via” with the option to choose a sending method.

Select one or both of the sending methods, SMS or Email.

Compose a Message

Write your message.

Text (SMS) messages are limited to 160 characters per message. The character count in the bottom right of the window shows how many characters you’ve used out of the 160.

If you select the email option, you will see a subject line for the email. There’s no character limit to emails, so you can write as much as you need.

If you select both the Text (SMS) and Email options, you will see both the Subject field and and character count. When you send both message types, you’re limited to 160 characters. Anything in the Subject field will appear as the subject line of the email and the first line of the text message.

Include Your Practice Information: Broadcast Messages are plain text, and include nothing more than what you type. Be sure to include your practice name, and, if necessary, contact information, so the recipients will know who the message is from. 

Send Your Message

When your message is complete, be sure to double check it, since there’s no going back after sending. When you’re happy with it, click send.

If you’ve chosen to send a message via text and email, the message will go out by both methods to the phone numbers and email addresses you selected in Practice Preferences to all accounts in your report result. Accounts may receive both an email and a text message.

Duplicate Email Address or Phone Numbers: If siblings or patients with shared custodian accounts appear in your search results, duplicate messages will not be sent. Only one message will be sent to each email address and phone number.

You’ll see a confirmation message, and you’ll be returned to the report results.


How Do I Get Started With Broadcast Messaging?

Begin by assigning permissions for broadcast messaging. Who at your practice will compose and send these messages? Broadcast Messaging is extremely powerful, and can send thousands of messages with just a few clicks.

Use the User Administration tool to add a new Role for Broadcast Messaging, and then assign that role to particular users at your practice.

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.

 

Who Will a Broadcast Message Be “From”? What If The Family Replies to the Message?

Email

When a patient or family member receives an email from Broadcast Messaging, the message will be from your practice, with an email address noreply@CLIENT.pcc.com, where “CLIENT” will be replaced with your acronym.

If they reply to that email, it will go to a “noreply” email account on your PCC system, in order to filter bounced emails.

Your practice can configure who will receive a copy of these noreply emails. For example, families might reply to your message with a request to be seen, even though it says “noreply”.

PCC Support can configure what email address will receive copies of email replies from parents and families.

Text (SMS) Messages

When a patient or family receives a Text (SMS) message, it will appear to be from a phone number with your practice’s local area code. PCC provisions these lines, creating one number per-practice or multi-practice group.

You can ask PCC Support for details about this phone number, and optionally share it with your patients and families so they can know the number the messages will come from.

If a family responds to that text message, the Broadcast Messaging service will ignore that text.

Unsubscribing

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 texts in the future. 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

Unsubscribing Stops Patient Portal Messages and Direct Texts: Unsubscribing prevents the user’s phone number from being used for any reason by PCC. In addition to broadcast messages, unsubscribing will prevent a user from receiving Patient Portal notifications or direct messages via SMS.

If a patient or account has unsubscribed from Broadcast Messaging, and would like to receive your practice’s broadcast messages again, responding to a previous message with “unstop” will remove their number from the blacklist, and they’ll begin receiving your messages again.

To learn more about how you can help patients and families resubscribe to broadcast messages, read the article Help Families Resubscribe to Broadcast Emails and Text Messages From Your Practice.

Bounced Messages and Dead Phone Lines

PCC’s Broadcast Messaging service will automatically recognize when an email address fails, or a cell phone number fails. When that happens, PCC will automatically add that cell phone number or email address to a black out list so your practice does not send messages to disconnected numbers or emails.

Repeated messages to dead emails or cell phones can lead to your system being identified as a spam service. PCC has set up the blacklist feature to avoid this.

Spam and Invalid Email Address

If the email address is not unsubscribed but still not receiving emails, then either the email address itself is incorrect, or the recipient has marked messages from Patient Portal or Broadcast Messaging as spam or junk. Broadcast Messaging and Patient Portal messages will not be sent to any addresses that have marked a previous messages as spam. The recipient must resolve the invalid spam complaint then use the resubscribe link from a previous PCC email.



If the email address is not unsubscribed but still not receiving emails, you’ll find the option to correct any typo in the email address, or mark the email address as correct. Marking the address as correct does not guarantee the next message will send, but it clears the error and attempts to send future messages

Broadcast Messaging Log

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.

Broadcast Message Log is found in the Communication category and the Patient Recall category in the Report Library, and can be run for a range of dates and limited 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, both email and SMS, were attempted, how many were sent successfully, and how many failed.

Broadcast Messaging Details Report

The Broadcast Message Details report provides detailed results of a single broadcast message run. You’ll find it in the Patient Recall category.

The communication log criteria lists all previous Broadcast Message runs. Select one from the drop-down menu and click Generate to run the report and see the results of that run.

The results show the date and time of the run, each recipient, the patients associated with each email address or phone number, the status, and a blacklist column.

If an email or phone number is added to the blacklist, the Excluded from Future Broadcasts column indicates 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.

Review Replies with the Inbound Messages Report

When a recipient of a Broadcast Message replies via email or text, you can review those replies in the Inbound Message 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.

COVID-19 Links and Resources

This page was created in 2020 and updated throughout the first few years of the COVID-19 pandemic. Follow the links below to find content, services, and features collected by PCC to help pediatric practices during the COVID-19 Coronavirus crisis.

Rapid Development of COVID-19 Related Features: PCC launched a series of rapid updates in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2020, we beta tested and rolled out new functionality, and then released six major updates to all clients with new features for telemedicine, office communication, COVID-19 vaccine support, and more. To review these new features, visit the Updates page.

COVID-19 Vaccines

PCC EHR supports tracking the administration, charting, and billing of the new COVID-19 vaccines. Whether or not your practice administers a COVID-19 vaccine, you can configure PCC EHR to display the vaccination on chart immunization records when patients are vaccinated.

Get Started With COVID-19 Vaccines in PCC EHR: For a guide to available vaccines, how to set them up in your PCC system, and how to order, administer, bill, and track a COVID-19 vaccine, read COVID-19 Vaccines in PCC EHR: Configure, Order, Administer, and Track.

Connect With Patients and Families During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Code and Bill During the COVID-19 Pandemic

 

Other PCC COVID-19 Information Resources

 

Useful Information From Other Sources

American Academy of Pediatrics

Center for Disease Control

World Health Organization

Other

Add Additional Races, Ethnicities, and Languages in PCC EHR

When you update a patient’s demographics, you can select from your practice’s list of races and ethnicities and enter any language from the full CDC OMB lists. You can have up to three races, ethnicities, and languages listed on a patient’s chart.

PCC EHR includes a default list of races and ethnicities, but your practice can optionally add any race or ethnicity from the full CDC OMB lists.

For convenience, you can search the list below to see if what you need is available in the CDC standards used in PCC EHR. Contact PCC Support to have any of the races or ethnicities below added to your practice’s pull-down lists. All languages are always available in PCC EHR.

Races

Default List

  • American Indian or Alaska Native
  • Asian
  • Black or African American
  • Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander
  • White
  • Other Race
  • Prefers not to answer

Other Available Races in PCC EHR

Abenaki Absentee Shawnee Acoma Afghanistani African
African American Agdaagux Agua Caliente Agua Caliente Cahuilla Ahtna
Ak-Chin Akhiok Akiachak Akiak Akutan
Alabama Coushatta Alabama Creek Alabama Quassarte Alakanuk Alamo Navajo
Alanvik Alaska Indian Alaska Native Alaskan Athabascan Alatna
Aleknagik Aleut Aleut Corporation Aleutian Aleutian Islander
Alexander Algonquian Allakaket Allen Canyon Alpine
Alsea Alutiiq Aleut Ambler American Indian Anaktuvuk
Anaktuvuk Pass Andreafsky Angoon Aniak Anvik
Apache Arab Arapaho Arctic Arctic Slope Corporation
Arctic Slope Inupiat Arikara Arizona Tewa Armenian Aroostook
Asian Indian Assiniboine Assiniboine Sioux Assyrian Atka
Atmautluak Atqasuk Atsina Attacapa Augustine
Bad River Bahamian Bangladeshi Bannock Barbadian
Barrio Libre Barrow Battle Mountain Bay Mills Chippewa Beaver
Belkofski Bering Straits Inupiat Bethel Bhutanese Big Cypress
Bill Moore’s Slough Biloxi Birch Creek Bishop Black
Blackfeet Blackfoot Sioux Bois Forte Botswanan Brevig Mission
Bridgeport Brighton Bristol Bay Aleut Bristol Bay Yupik Brotherton
Brule Sioux Buckland Burmese Burns Paiute Burt Lake Band
Burt Lake Chippewa Burt Lake Ottawa Cabazon Caddo Cahto
Cahuilla California Tribes Calista Yupik Cambodian Campo
Canadian and Latin American Indian Canadian Indian Canoncito Navajo Cantwell Capitan Grande
Carolinian Carson Catawba Cayuga Cayuse
Cedarville Celilo Central American Indian Central Council of Tlingit and Haida Tribes Central Pomo
Chalkyitsik Chamorro Chefornak Chehalis Chemakuan
Chemehuevi Chenega Cherokee Cherokee Alabama Cherokee Shawnee
Cherokees of Northeast Alabama Cherokees of Southeast Alabama Chevak Cheyenne Cheyenne River Sioux
Cheyenne-Arapaho Chickahominy Chickaloon Chickasaw Chignik
Chignik Lagoon Chignik Lake Chilkat Chilkoot Chimariko
Chinese Chinik Chinook Chippewa Chippewa Cree
Chiricahua Chistochina Chitimacha Chitina Choctaw
Chuathbaluk Chugach Aleut Chugach Corporation Chukchansi Chumash
Chuukese Circle Citizen Band Potawatomi Clark’s Point Clatsop
Clear Lake Clifton Choctaw Coast Miwok Coast Yurok Cochiti
Cocopah Coeur D’Alene Coharie Colorado River Columbia
Columbia River Chinook Colville Comanche Cook Inlet Coos
Coos, Lower Umpqua, Siuslaw Copper Center Copper River Coquilles Costanoan
Council Coushatta Cow Creek Umpqua Cowlitz Craig
Cree Creek Croatan Crooked Creek Crow
Crow Creek Sioux Cupeno Cuyapaipe Dakota Sioux Deering
Delaware Diegueno Digger Dillingham Dominica Islander
Dominican Dot Lake Douglas Doyon Dresslerville
Dry Creek Duck Valley Duckwater Duwamish Eagle
Eastern Cherokee Eastern Chickahominy Eastern Creek Eastern Delaware Eastern Muscogee
Eastern Pomo Eastern Shawnee Eastern Tribes Echota Cherokee Eek
Egegik Egyptian Eklutna Ekuk Ekwok
Elim Elko Ely Emmonak English
English Bay Eskimo Esselen Ethiopian Etowah Cherokee
European Evansville Eyak Fallon False Pass
Fijian Filipino Flandreau Santee Florida Seminole Fond du Lac
Forest County Fort Belknap Fort Berthold Fort Bidwell Fort Hall
Fort Independence Fort McDermitt Fort Mcdowell Fort Peck Fort Peck Assiniboine Sioux
Fort Sill Apache Fort Yukon French French American Indian Gabrieleno
Gakona Galena Gambell Gay Head Wampanoag Georgetown (Eastern Tribes)
Georgetown (Yupik-Eskimo) German Gila Bend Gila River Pima-Maricopa Golovin
Goodnews Bay Goshute Grand Portage Grand Ronde Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa/Chippewa
Grayling Greenland Eskimo Gros Ventres Guamanian Guamanian or Chamorro
Gulkana Haida Haitian Haliwa Hannahville
Havasupai Healy Lake Hidatsa Hmong Ho-chunk
Hoh Hollywood Seminole Holy Cross Hoonah Hoopa
Hoopa Extension Hooper Bay Hopi Houma Hualapai
Hughes Huron Potawatomi Huslia Hydaburg Igiugig
Iliamna Illinois Miami Inaja-Cosmit Inalik Diomede Indian Township
Indiana Miami Indonesian Inupiaq Inupiat Eskimo Iowa
Iowa of Kansas-Nebraska Iowa of Oklahoma Iowa Sac and Fox Iqurmuit (Russian Mission) Iranian
Iraqi Irish Iroquois Isleta Israeli
Italian Ivanof Bay Iwo Jiman Jamaican Jamestown
Japanese Jemez Jena Choctaw Jicarilla Apache Juaneno
Kaibab Kake Kaktovik Kalapuya Kalispel
Kalskag Kaltag Karluk Karuk Kasaan
Kashia Kasigluk Kathlamet Kaw Kawaiisu
Kawerak Kenaitze Keres Kern River Ketchikan
Keweenaw Kialegee Kiana Kickapoo Kikiallus
King Cove King Salmon Kiowa Kipnuk Kiribati
Kivalina Klallam Klamath Klawock Kluti Kaah
Knik Kobuk Kodiak Kokhanok Koliganek
Kongiganak Koniag Aleut Konkow Kootenai Korean
Kosraean Kotlik Kotzebue Koyuk Koyukuk
Kwethluk Kwigillingok Kwiguk La Jolla La Posta
Lac Courte Oreilles Lac du Flambeau Lac Vieux Desert Chippewa Laguna Lake Minchumina
Lake Superior Lake Traverse Sioux Laotian Larsen Bay Las Vegas
Lassik Lebanese Leech Lake Lenni-Lenape Levelock
Liberian Lime Lipan Apache Little Shell Chippewa Lone Pine
Long Island Los Coyotes Lovelock Lower Brule Sioux Lower Elwha
Lower Kalskag Lower Muscogee Lower Sioux Lower Skagit Luiseno
Lumbee Lummi Machis Lower Creek Indian Madagascar Maidu
Makah Malaysian Maldivian Malheur Paiute Maliseet
Mandan Manley Hot Springs Manokotak Manzanita Mariana Islander
Maricopa Marshall Marshallese Marshantucket Pequot Mary’s Igloo
Mashpee Wampanoag Matinecock Mattaponi Mattole Mauneluk Inupiat
Mcgrath Mdewakanton Sioux Mekoryuk Melanesian Menominee
Mentasta Lake Mesa Grande Mescalero Apache Metlakatla Mexican American Indian
Miami Miccosukee Michigan Ottawa Micmac Micronesian
Middle Eastern or North African Mille Lacs Miniconjou Minnesota Chippewa Minto
Mission Indians Mississippi Choctaw Missouri Sac and Fox Miwok Moapa
Modoc Mohave Mohawk Mohegan Molala
Mono Montauk Moor Morongo Mountain Maidu
Mountain Village Mowa Band of Choctaw Muckleshoot Munsee Naknek
Nambe Namibian Nana Inupiat Nansemond Nanticoke
Napakiak Napaskiak Napaumute Narragansett Natchez
Native Hawaiian Nausu Waiwash Navajo Nebraska Ponca Nebraska Winnebago
Nelson Lagoon Nenana Nepalese New Hebrides New Stuyahok
Newhalen Newtok Nez Perce Nigerian Nightmute
Nikolai Nikolski Ninilchik Nipmuc Nishinam
Nisqually Noatak Nomalaki Nome Nondalton
Nooksack Noorvik Northern Arapaho Northern Cherokee Northern Cheyenne
Northern Paiute Northern Pomo Northway Northwest Tribes Nuiqsut
Nulato Nunapitchukv Oglala Sioux Okinawan Oklahoma Apache
Oklahoma Cado Oklahoma Choctaw Oklahoma Comanche Oklahoma Delaware Oklahoma Kickapoo
Oklahoma Kiowa Oklahoma Miami Oklahoma Ottawa Oklahoma Pawnee Oklahoma Peoria
Oklahoma Ponca Oklahoma Sac and Fox Oklahoma Seminole Old Harbor Omaha
Oneida Onondaga Ontonagon Oregon Athabaskan Osage
Oscarville Other Pacific Islander Otoe-Missouria Ottawa Ouzinkie
Owens Valley Paiute Pakistani Pala Palauan
Palestinian Pamunkey Panamint Papua New Guinean Pascua Yaqui
Passamaquoddy Paugussett Pauloff Harbor Pauma Pawnee
Payson Apache Pechanga Pedro Bay Pelican Penobscot
Peoria Pequot Perryville Petersburg Picuris
Pilot Point Pilot Station Pima Pine Ridge Sioux Pipestone Sioux
Piro Piscataway Pit River Pitkas Point Platinum
Pleasant Point Passamaquoddy Poarch Band Pocomoke Acohonock Pohnpeian Point Hope
Point Lay Pojoaque Pokagon Potawatomi Polish Polynesian
Pomo Ponca Poospatuck Port Gamble Klallam Port Graham
Port Heiden Port Lions Port Madison Portage Creek Potawatomi
Powhatan Prairie Band Prairie Island Sioux Principal Creek Indian Nation Prior Lake Sioux
Pueblo Puget Sound Salish Puyallup Pyramid Lake Qagan Toyagungin
Qawalangin Quapaw Quechan Quileute Quinault
Quinhagak Ramah Navajo Rampart Rampough Mountain Rappahannock
Red Cliff Chippewa Red Devil Red Lake Chippewa Red Wood Reno-Sparks
Rocky Boy’s Chippewa Cree Rosebud Sioux Round Valley Ruby Ruby Valley
Sac and Fox Saginaw Chippewa Saipanese Salamatof Salinan
Salish Salish and Kootenai Salt River Pima-Maricopa Samish Samoan
San Carlos Apache San Felipe San Ildefonso San Juan San Juan De
San Juan Pueblo San Juan Southern Paiute San Manual San Pasqual San Xavier
Sand Hill Sand Point Sandia Sans Arc Sioux Santa Ana
Santa Clara Santa Rosa Santa Rosa Cahuilla Santa Ynez Santa Ysabel
Santee Sioux Santo Domingo Sauk-Suiattle Sault Ste. Marie Chippewa Savoonga
Saxman Scammon Bay Schaghticoke Scott Valley Scottish
Scotts Valley Selawik Seldovia Sells Seminole
Seneca Seneca Nation Seneca-Cayuga Serrano Setauket
Shageluk Shaktoolik Shasta Shawnee Sheldon’s Point
Shinnecock Shishmaref Shoalwater Bay Shoshone Shoshone Paiute
Shungnak Siberian Eskimo Siberian Yupik Siletz Singaporean
Sioux Sisseton Sioux Sisseton-Wahpeton Sitka Siuslaw
Skokomish Skull Valley Skykomish Slana Sleetmute
Snohomish Snoqualmie Soboba Sokoagon Chippewa Solomon
Solomon Islander South American Indian South Fork Shoshone South Naknek Southeast Alaska
Southeastern Indians Southern Arapaho Southern Cheyenne Southern Paiute Spanish American Indian
Spirit Lake Sioux Spokane Squaxin Island Sri Lankan St. Croix Chippewa
St. George St. Mary’s St. Michael St. Paul Standing Rock Sioux
Star Clan of Muscogee Creeks Stebbins Steilacoom Stevens Stewart
Stillaguamish Stockbridge Stony River Stonyford Sugpiaq
Sulphur Bank Summit Lake Suqpigaq Suquamish Susanville
Susquehanock Swinomish Sycuan Syrian Table Bluff
Tachi Tahitian Taiwanese Takelma Takotna
Talakamish Tanacross Tanaina Tanana Tanana Chiefs
Taos Tatitlek Tazlina Te-Moak Western Shoshone Telida
Teller Temecula Tenakee Springs Tenino Tesuque
Tetlin Teton Sioux Tewa Texas Kickapoo Thai
Thlopthlocco Tigua Tillamook Timbi-Sha Shoshone Tlingit
Tlingit-Haida Tobagoan Togiak Tohono O’Odham Tok
Tokelauan Toksook Tolowa Tonawanda Seneca Tongan
Tonkawa Torres-Martinez Trinidadian Trinity Tsimshian
Tuckabachee Tulalip Tule River Tulukskak Tunica Biloxi
Tuntutuliak Tununak Turtle Mountain Tuscarora Tuscola
Twenty-Nine Palms Twin Hills Two Kettle Sioux Tygh Tyonek
Ugashik Uintah Ute Umatilla Umkumiate Umpqua
Unalakleet Unalaska Unangan Aleut Unga United Keetowah Band of Cherokee
Upper Chinook Upper Sioux Upper Skagit Ute Ute Mountain Ute
Utu Utu Gwaitu Paiute Venetie Vietnamese Waccamaw-Siousan Wahpekute Sioux
Wahpeton Sioux Wailaki Wainwright Wakiakum Chinook Wales
Walker River Walla-Walla Wampanoag Wappo Warm Springs
Wascopum Washakie Washoe Wazhaza Sioux Wenatchee
West Indian Western Cherokee Western Chickahominy Whilkut White Earth
White Mountain White Mountain Apache White Mountain Inupiat Wichita Wicomico
Willapa Chinook Wind River Wind River Arapaho Wind River Shoshone Winnebago
Winnemucca Wintun Wisconsin Potawatomi Wiseman Wishram
Wiyot Wrangell Wyandotte Yahooskin Yakama
Yakama Cowlitz Yakutat Yana Yankton Sioux Yanktonai Sioux
Yapese Yaqui Yavapai Yavapai Apache Yerington Paiute
Yokuts Yomba Yuchi Yuki Yuman
Yupik Eskimo Yurok Zairean Zia Zuni

Ethnicities

Default List

  • Hispanic or Latino
  • Not Hispanic or Latino
  • Prefers not to answer

Other Available Ethnicities in PCC EHR

Andalusian Argentinean Asturian Belearic Islander Bolivian
Canal Zone Canarian Castillian Catalonian Central American
Central American Indian Chicano Chilean Colombian Costa Rican
Criollo Cuban Dominican Ecuadorian Gallego
Guatemalan Honduran La Raza Latin American Mexican
Mexican American Mexican American Indian Mexicano Nicaraguan Panamanian
Paraguayan Peruvian Puerto Rican SalvadoranL South American
South American Indian Spaniard Spanish Basque Uruguayan Valencian
Venezuelan

Languages

Default List

All languages defined in the CDC OMB list are always available in PCC EHR.

Languages in PCC EHR

Abkhazian Achinese Acoli Adangme Adyghe; Adygei
Afar Afrihili Afrikaans Afro-Asiatic (Other) Ainu
Akan Akkadian Albanian Aleut Algonquian languages
Altaic (Other) American Sign Language Amharic Angika Apache languages
Arabic Aragonese Arapaho Arawak Armenian
Aromanian; Arumanian; Macedo-Romanian Artificial (Other) Assamese Asturian; Bable; Leonese; Asturleonese Athapascan languages
Australian languages Austronesian (Other) Avaric Avestan Awadhi
Aymara Azerbaijani Balinese Baltic (Other) Baluchi
Bambara Bamileke languages Banda languages Bantu (Other) Basa
Bashkir Basque Batak languages Beja; Bedawiyet Belarusian
Bemba Bengali Berber (Other) Bhojpuri Bihari
Bikol Bini; Edo Bislama Blin; Bilin Blissymbols; Blissymbolics; Bliss
Bokmål, Norwegian; Norwegian Bokmål Bosnian Braj Breton Buginese
Bulgarian Buriat Burmese Caddo Catalan; Valencian
Caucasian (Other) Cebuano Celtic (Other) Central American Indian (Other) Central Khmer
Chagatai Chamic languages Chamorro Chechen Cherokee
Cheyenne Chibcha Chichewa; Chewa; Nyanja Chinese Chinook jargon
Chipewyan; Dene Suline Choctaw Church Slavic; Old Slavonic; Church Slavonic; Old Bulgarian; Old Church Slavonic Chuukese Chuvash
Classical Newari; Old Newari; Classical Nepal Bhasa Classical Syriac Coptic Cornish Corsican
Cree Creek Creoles and pidgins (Other) Creoles and pidgins, English based (Other) Creoles and pidgins, French-based (Other)
Creoles and pidgins, Portuguese-based (Other) Crimean Tatar; Crimean Turkish Croatian Cushitic (Other) Czech
Dakota Danish Dargwa Delaware Dinka
Divehi; Dhivehi; Maldivian Dogri Dogrib Dravidian (Other) Duala
Dutch, Middle (ca.1050-1350) Dutch; Flemish Dyula Dzongkha Eastern Frisian
Efik Egyptian (Ancient) Ekajuk Elamite English
English, Middle (1100-1500) English, Old (ca.450-1100) Erzya Esperanto Estonian
Ewe Ewondo Fang Fanti Faroese
Fijian Filipino; Pilipino Finnish Finno-Ugrian (Other) Fon
French French, Middle (ca.1400-1600) French, Old (842-ca.1400) Friulian Fulah
Ga Gaelic; Scottish Gaelic Galibi Carib Galician Ganda
Gayo Gbaya Geez Georgian German
German, Middle High (ca.1050-1500) German, Old High (ca.750-1050) Germanic (Other) Gilbertese Gondi
Gorontalo Gothic Grebo Greek, Ancient (to 1453) Greek, Modern (1453-)
Guarani Gujarati Gwich’in Haida Haitian; Haitian Creole
Hausa Hawaiian Hebrew Herero Hiligaynon
Himachali Hindi Hiri Motu Hittite Hmong
Hungarian Hupa Iban Icelandic Ido
Igbo Ijo languages Iloko Inari Sami Indic (Other)
Indo-European (Other) Indonesian Ingush Interlingua (International Auxiliary Language Association) Interlingue; Occidental
Inuktitut Inupiaq Iranian (Other) Irish Irish, Middle (900-1200)
Irish, Old (to 900) Iroquoian languages Italian Japanese Javanese
Judeo-Arabic Judeo-Persian Kabardian Kabyle Kachin; Jingpho
Kalaallisut; Greenlandic Kalmyk; Oirat Kamba Kannada Kanuri
Kara-Kalpak Karachay-Balkar Karelian Karen languages Kashmiri
Kashubian Kawi Kazakh Khasi Khoisan (Other)
Khotanese Kikuyu; Gikuyu Kimbundu Kinyarwanda Kirghiz; Kyrgyz
Klingon; tlhIngan-Hol Komi Kongo Konkani Korean
Kosraean Kpelle Kru languages Kuanyama; Kwanyama Kumyk
Kurdish Kurukh Kutenai Ladino Lahnda
Lamba Land Dayak languages Lao Latin Latvian
Lezghian Limburgan; Limburger; Limburgish Lingala Lithuanian Lojban
Low German; Low Saxon; German, Low; Saxon, Low Lower Sorbian Lozi Luba-Katanga Luba-Lulua
Luiseno Lule Sami Lunda Luo (Kenya and Tanzania) Lushai
Luxembourgish; Letzeburgesch Macedonian Madurese Magahi Maithili
Makasar Malagasy Malay Malayalam Maltese
Manchu Mandar Mandarin Mandingo Manipuri
Manobo languages Manx Maori Mapudungun; Mapuche Marathi
Mari Marshallese Marwari Masai Mayan languages
Mende Mi’kmaq; Micmac Minangkabau Mirandese Mohawk
Moksha Moldavian; Moldovan Mon-Khmer (Other) Mongo Mongolian
Mossi Multiple languages Munda languages N’Ko Nahuatl languages
Nauru Navajo; Navaho Ndebele, North; North Ndebele Ndebele, South; South Ndebele Ndonga
Neapolitan Nepal Bhasa; Newari Nepali Nias Niger-Kordofanian (Other)
Nilo-Saharan (Other) Niuean No linguistic content; Not applicable Nogai Norse, Old
North American Indian Northern Frisian Northern Sami Norwegian Norwegian Nynorsk; Nynorsk, Norwegian
Nubian languages Nyamwezi Nyankole Nyoro Nzima
Occitan (post 1500); Provençal Official Aramaic (700-300 BCE); Imperial Aramaic (700-300 BCE) Ojibwa Oriya Oromo
Osage Ossetian; Ossetic Otomian languages Pahlavi Palauan
Pali Pampanga; Kapampangan Pangasinan Panjabi; Punjabi Papiamento
Papuan (Other) Pedi; Sepedi; Northern Sotho Persian Persian, Old (ca.600-400 B.C.) Philippine (Other)
Phoenician Pohnpeian Polish Portuguese Prakrit languages
Prefers not to answer Provençal, Old (to 1500) Pushto; Pashto Quechua Rajasthani
Rapanui Rarotongan; Cook Islands Maori Romance (Other) Romanian Romansh
Romany Rundi Russian Salishan languages Samaritan Aramaic
Sami languages (Other) Samoan Sandawe Sango Sanskrit
Santali Sardinian Sasak Scots Selkup
Semitic (Other) Serbian Serbo-Croatian Serer Shan
Shona Sichuan Yi; Nuosu Sicilian Sidamo Sign Languages
Siksika Sindhi Sinhala; Sinhalese Sino-Tibetan (Other) Siouan languages
Skolt Sami Slave (Athapascan) Slavic (Other) Slovak Slovenian
Sogdian Somali Songhai languages Soninke Sorbian languages
Sotho, Southern South American Indian (Other) Southern Altai Southern Sami Spanish Creole
Spanish; Castilian Sranan Tongo Sukuma Sumerian Sundanese
Susu Swahili Swati Swedish Swiss German; Alemannic; Alsatian
Syriac Tagalog Tahitian Tai (Other) Tajik
Tamashek Tamil Tatar Telugu Tereno
Tetum Thai Tibetan Tigre Tigrinya
Timne Tiv Tlingit Tok Pisin Tokelau
Tonga (Nyasa) Tonga (Tonga Islands) Tsimshian Tsonga Tswana
Tumbuka Tupi languages Turkish Turkish, Ottoman (1500-1928) Turkmen
Tuvalu Tuvinian Twi Udmurt Ugaritic
Uighur; Uyghur Ukrainian Umbundu Uncoded languages Undetermined
Upper Sorbian Urdu Uzbek Vai Venda
Vietnamese Volapük Votic Wakashan languages Walamo
Walloon Waray Washo Welsh Western Frisian
Wolof Xhosa Yakut Yao Yapese
Yiddish Yoruba Yue Yupik languages Zande languages
Zapotec Zaza; Dimili; Dimli; Kirdki; Kirmanjki; Zazaki Zenaga Zhuang; Chuang Zulu
Zuni

EPCS Migration: Connect Your Authy App to the new PCC eRx Account

PCC has just transferred Exostar EPCS credentials from FDB to PCC eRx. With this migration, providers can no longer process prescriptions using the FDB-owned account inside the Authy app.

In order to associate the new PCC account in your Authy app, you will need to go into your settings within PCC eRx and reactivate your mobile credential.

You Can Still Use Your Hard Token to Prescribe: Providers can continue to use their hard token throughout this entire process.

Use a Token to Authenticate Your Account

You need to authenticate your account using either your hard token or your back-up authentication method (back-up texting option) to unlock your account and add the new PCC eRx account as a mobile credential.

Open the Token Management Tool

From the PCC eRx My Settings tab, click on the “Exostar Token Management” button to access your EPCS tokens.


The Manage Mobile Credential box, which displays your Authy info, will be disabled, as the FDB-owned account has been deactivated.

If you registered your cell phone as a back-up authentication method, the Manage Phones box shows that cell phone number.

Authenticate Either Your Hard Token or Your Back-up Texting Option

Click the “Authenticate” button in either the Manage Token box or the Manage Phones box.

Acknowledge the Exostar Validation

You will receive a 6-digit one-time code on either the hard token or your phone.

Enter the validation code as directed on screen.

Add a New Mobile Credential

Once you authenticate your account, the “Add Credential” button in the Manage Mobile Credential box will be enabled, and you will be able to add PCC eRx to your Authy account.

Click “Add Credential”

Click the “Add Credential” button within the Manage Mobile Credential box.

Register Your Phone

Enter the phone number and email address that you use with your Authy app, and click “Register Phone”.

Verify the New Account

You should receive either a text or a notification from the Authy app on your phone to approve.

Verification Not Working?: If you don’t receive the notification within a few seconds, open the Authy app on your phone and click on “Settings” (gear icon in the top right), and then “Accounts” (people icon in the bottom middle) and you will see a new pending Authy account titled something like PCC eRx. Click on that to approve the new account.

Your Authy App Has Been Switched!

Back on the Exostar Token Management tool, you will see your phone number within the Manage Mobile Credential box. The Mobile Credential Status will be “Active”.

You can click “Cancel” to return to the My Settings window.

Remove the Old FDB Icon from Authy App

Finally, you’ll want to “hide” the FDB icon from Authy.

Open Your Authy Accounts

Open the Authy app on your phone and click on “Settings” (gear icon in the top right), and then “Accounts” (people icon in the bottom middle).

Hide the FDB Account

Press on the FDB account and slide to the left. You should then get a Hide option, which will take that tile off the “main” screen.

Clinical Document Exchange

The promise of interoperability between EHRs — that patients’ data will be accessible to any clinician whom they see for treatment — is one step closer to realization.

PCC has implemented an interoperability framework that allows practices to automatically make clinical information available to other providers and organizations who participate in the Carequality Interoperability Framework. This includes many hospitals, specialists, and other networks who may serve your patients.

Participation is Optional: Participation in clinical document exchange with other organizations who are also implementing the Carequality framework is optional, and is included in PCC’s comprehensive service plan. In order to participate, contact PCC Support. If you choose to proceed, which include signing an addendum to your PCC EHR agreement acknowledging and agreeing to the Carequality Connection Terms.

Watch an Introductory Video: Watch Clinical Document Exchange: The Responder Role to learn the basics of CDE along with details about the Responder role, wherein your practice receives requests and shares information.

What is Clinical Document Exchange?

Clinical Document Exchange (also referred to as Query Based Clinical Document Exchange, or QBCDE) allows different healthcare organizations to exchange patient records. Your participation would allow other providers who see your patients to obtain your patients’ records for treatment purposes, as defined in the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA).

The Carequality Framework

Carequality is an organization that maintains a framework of technical, data, and privacy standards that allows organizations who implement that framework to directly exchange data.

All implementers of the Carequality Framework sign an agreement with Carequality, outlining rights, obligations, and “rules of the road” for trusted exchange of data. All implementers of the framework are able to exchange patient records with all other implementers of the framework. Carequality maintains a list of software vendors, Health Information Exchanges (HIEs) and others who have adopted the Carequality Interoperability Framework, as well as a tool to search for hospitals clinics, and other entities who are participating. Use this tool to see if you can exchange data with your local hospital or specialists.

The Responder Role

There are two sides to clinical document exchange; an organization in the Initiator Role makes record requests, and an organization in the Responder Role responds to record requests.

What Data will be Shared?

If your practice participates in clinical document exchange, the patient’s most up-to-date Summary of Care Record is made available and contains information including:

  • Demographic data (Name, D.O.B., Address)
  • Clinical data
  • Diagnoses
  • Allergies
  • Medications
  • History of Procedures
  • Diagnostic and Laboratory Test Results
  • History of Immunizations
  • Insurance Policies

Customize the Summary of Care Record: Your practice can configure which information is included in patients’ Summary of Care Records. Click here to learn how.

Who has Access to Patient Data?

Other healthcare organizations that participate in clinical document exchange through the Carequality interoperability framework are able to retrieve your records. They may retrieve your records for treatment purposes only.

Is Clinical Document Exchange Safe and Secure?

Yes. Many layers of security protect patient data both in storage and when it is transmitted to a different healthcare organization.

Do patients or their families need to consent to Clinical Document Exchange?

Your practice needs to make an informed decision about whether you will have an opt-out or opt-in policy for clinical document exchange. Some practices choose an opt-out policy, meaning that all patients are considered to have consented to clinical document exchange unless otherwise indicated. Practices that choose an opt-in policy will require patients to give explicit consent to participate in exchange activities.

You will need to consider your state’s patient privacy and consent laws, your existing office policies, and provider preferences. Laws and policies vary between states. Some state policy is more stringent than federal HIPAA policy and if that is the case, the state policy should be followed, not the federal. PCC recommends that you consult with your practice’s legal counsel and/or malpractice carrier to determine what laws apply in your specific circumstances.

What Does it Cost?

Nothing. Clinical Document Exchange is offered to all PCC clients as part of our comprehensive service plan. There are no hidden fees or additional charges for PCC clients to participate in the Carequality Interoperability Framework.

How do I Participate?

If you are interested in participating in clinical document exchange, contact PCC Support.

Getting Started with Clinical Document Exchange

Follow these steps to get started with clinical document exchange.

Find Out Who You can Connect With

Follow this link to search for Carequality enabled organizations near you.

Determine Your Practice’s Consent Policy

Before contacting PCC Support, please decide whether your practice will have an opt-in or opt-out policy. PCC recommends consulting your practice’s legal counsel as you determine which policy will work for you.

Contact PCC Support

Contact PCC Support to let them know you are interested in clinical document exchange. Your CA can answer general questions about Carequality and and the document exchange process. When you are ready to move forward, they will put you in touch with the PCC teams that will manage your onboarding and go-live.

Review and Sign Carequality Connection Terms

When you are ready, PCC Sales will send you the Carequality Connection Terms for your review and signature. This is an agreement to follow Carequality guidelines – there is no charge to you to participate in the Carequality Interoperability Framework.

Train with PCC

You will have a one-hour training with PCC’s Interoperability Implementation team, in which you will:

  • Learn about document exchange functionality
  • Review patient consent configuration options in PCC EHR
  • Discuss your practice’s consent policy and workflow considerations
  • Find out how to talk to your patients about clinical document exchange

Schedule a Go-Live Date

Schedule a go-live date with PCC to enable clinical document exchange functionality! Once you are live, Carequality enabled organizations will be able to retrieve Summary of Care documents for patients who have consented. No more faxing!

Notify Carequality Enabled Organizations

Notify Carequality enabled organizations who work with your practice that your patients’ documents will soon be available for retrieval. You can explain the new capability in the following way: “Our practice will be making our patients’ documents available to you through Carequality.”

Configure PCC EHR for Clinical Document Exchange

Once you have worked with PCC Support to get started with clinical document exchange, there are a few things you will need to configure in the EHR.

Set Default Consent Status for New Patients

You need to decide whether you will have an opt-out or opt-in policy for clinical document exchange. Once you have done so, set this status in the Practice Preferences tool.


You can choose whether new patients’ consent status will default to “Undetermined”, “Yes”, or “No”. Note that a status of undetermined is functionally the same as a status of no. The data of patients with the status of either undetermined or no will not be shared, while those with a status of yes will.

Add Clinical Document Exchange Consent to Communication Preferences

Once clinical document exchange has been activated for your practice, a section for patients’ consent status will appear in the Communication Preferences component in your chart notes. To make this status appear prior to activating clinical document exchange (perhaps you are acquiring patient consent in advance of implementing this feature), edit the Communication Preferences component with the Protocols configuration tool.




After choosing to include clinical document exchange consent in this component, it will appear in all patients’ charts.

Change a Patient’s Consent Status

To change a patient’s consent status, edit their chart and select a new status.


Retrieve Clinical Documents from Other Healthcare Providers

Once you become a Clinical Document Exchange Responder, the groundwork is laid for your practice to enable the “Initiator” role, which allows you to securely retrieve patients’ clinical documents from other healthcare providers.

Read about how to Securely Retrieve Clinical Documents from Hospitals and Other Providers Through PCC EHR.

Send and Receive Direct Secure Messages

When you need to send a secure message to another provider, or a hospital needs to send you patient records, you can use Direct Secure Messaging–a communication technology used to exchange private medical information. You can send your message, along with a Summary of Care Record, directly to a specialist, another pediatrician, or other healthcare provider.

Read the procedures below to learn how to exchange Direct Secure Messages with other healthcare providers.

Setup and Configuration Needed First: Before you can send and receive Direct Secure messages, your practice must activate the feature and you must register an account. Read Get Started with Direct Secure Messaging to learn how.

Watch the Video: Watch Send, Receive, and Reconcile Direct Secure Messages to learn how to send, receive, and reconcile direct secure messages on your PCC system.

Send a Direct Secure Message to Another Healthcare Provider

Read the steps below to learn how to send a message, along with a Summary of Care Record (C-CDA), using Direct Secure Messaging.

Open a Chart and Select the Summary of Care Record Report

When you wish to send a Direct Secure Message, first open a patient’s chart.

Then select the “Summary of Care Record” from the Reports menu.


Optional: Indicate Whether the Message is For a Referral or Transition of Care

On the report’s criteria screen, you can indicate whether or not you are creating the record for a referral or transition of care.

Transition of Care For Meaningful Use: If you have indicated that the record is being created for a referral or transition of care, PCC EHR will track that you have generated the C-CDA document and it will update your Meaningful Use reporting totals.

Optional: Limit Record to a Specific Encounter

When you are sending a Direct Secure Message for a referral, you can select a specific referral and optionally limit the record you send to information from that referral encounter. Choose the specific referral order from the selection pull-down menu.


The Summary of Care Record transmitted with the Direct Secure Message will be limited to procedures, orders, and vitals noted for that given encounter date. (Along with the patient’s Problem List, insurance policies, and some other chart information not specific to a particular encounter.) Optionally, you can deselect the “Limited to the referral encounter” check box, and the Summary of Care report will generate the patient’s complete C-CDA with all available patient information.

Select ‘Send via Direct Secure Messaging’

Click “Send via Direct Secure Messaging” and then click “Send to…” to indicate you wish to send a Direct Secure Message.

Enter a Direct Address, or Search for One

Enter the care provider’s Direct Address (not their e-mail address) into the “To” field. Optionally, you can search by provider or practice name.


You will see more results if a user at your practice is registered with the DirectTrust network (learn how). PCC EHR also displays search results from contacts your practice has entered into the Professional Contact Manager–those results will appear at the top of your search.

Type a Subject and a Message, and Click “Send”

Finally, enter an explanatory subject and message text for your Direct Secure Message. Optionally, you can attach files or documents from your workstation or from the patient’s chart. When you are finished, click “Send” to send the message along with the patient’s care record.

Attach a Patient Document to a Direct Secure Message

You can use the “Attach Document” button to attach any documents associated with the patient to a Direct Secure Message.



Attach a File to a Direct Secure Message

Use the “Attach File” button to attach any file from your workstation to the message.



Size Limit and Removing Attachments: Before you send the document you have the option to remove any attachments you may have selected. Direct Secure Messages have a 50MB size limit; if you try to send a message that is too big, you will be prompted to remove attachments.

Receive a Direct Secure Message and Add It to a Patient’s Chart

Once your practice has activated Direct Secure Messaging (learn how), other medical practices can send Direct Secure Messages to users at your practice. Those messages can include transition of care C-CDA attachments and other documents.

When a Direct Secure Message arrives, it will appear on the Messaging queue. Double-click on a message to review it and associate it with a patient chart.


Similar to the process for importing an electronic lab result, you can review message information, including patient name, birthdate, and sex, and message details, if available. You can view PDF, Continuity of Care documents, and the contents of zipped attachments, and optionally save any attachments to your workstation. Use the panel on the right to associate the message with a patient’s chart. In most cases, PCC EHR does the work for you and suggests a matching patient. Otherwise, you can search for any patient.

Click “Select” to place the Direct Secure Message into the patient’s chart.


After you click “Select”, PCC EHR will open the Direct Secure Message as it appears in the patient chart. You can see the full message details and any attachments.

Add a Custom Summary to a Direct Secure Message

After a Direct Secure Message is placed in a patient’s chart, you can optionally write your own summary of its contents. Custom summaries appear in place of the message subject in the patient’s Visit History.


You can edit the summary of a Direct Secure Message at any time.

Review and Work With a Direct Secure Message

After a Direct Secure Message is placed in a patient’s chart, it appears in the Visit History. You can review it as you would a chart note or phone note.

As you review a message, you can click to open message attachments and create and complete tasks. For example, you can click “View” to view a C-CDA document or other attachment.


You can also create a task for any user so they can follow up on the message.

Reconcile a C-CDA Document

If a Direct Secure Message includes a transition of care document in C-CDA format, you can import any Problems, Medication Allergies, and Medications from the C-CDA document into the patient’s chart record.

When you see an incoming C-CDA in a Direct Secure Message, you can click “Reconcile” to review and import patient data.


On the “Reconciliation – Import” screen, you will see three sections: Problems, Medication Allergies, and Medications. In each section, you will see both the information in the C-CDA and the information that is already in the patient’s chart. When you want to import information, select it in the “Add to EHR” column.

After you have reviewed each section (Problems, Medication Allergies, and Medications) and selected any items you wish to add to the patient’s chart in PCC EHR, click Next.


On the “Reconciliation – Review and Save” screen, you can review what the final result of the patient’s record will be. You will see what the patient’s new Problem List, PCC eRx Allergies, and Medication History will display after the import is complete.

Optionally, Click Edit: You can click “Edit” and modify the items on these lists before saving. If you have a duplicate entry, for example, you may want to edit and combine notes or delete an item.

Click “Save” to save your changes and import the data. You can also click “Cancel” to close the C-CDA without making any changes to the patient’s chart.

Last Reconciled: PCC EHR tracks when a user clicked the “Reconcile” button, whether or not they decided to import data to the chart. You will see a “Last Reconciled” attribution on the Direct Secure Message as well as in the patient’s Visit History. You can revisit the message and choose to reconcile the C-CDA data with the patient chart again at any time.

Check Imported Medications and Medication Allergies in PCC eRx

When you reconcile and import medications and medication allergies from a C-CDA, PCC eRx attempts to match each drug description with a known item in its database. Where a match is found, drugs are added to the Allergies and Medication History components in PCC eRx in such a manner that they participate in drug safety checking. Where no match is found, drugs are added as free text. Free text entries are denoted by a pill bottle icon with a question mark and do not participate in drug safety checking.

In order to facilitate the safest possible e-prescribing, PCC recommends that you check for free text entries after reconciling a C-CDA and recreate them as items that can participate in drug safety checking. Use the “Add New Allergy” button in the Allergies component to recreate medication allergies imported as free text. Use the “Add Hx Med” button in the Medication History component to recreate medications imported as free text.

Once you have recreated imported free text entries as items that are able to participate in drug safety checking, you can delete the original free text versions from the patient’s record.

Remove a Direct Secure Message from the Incorrect Patient’s Chart

If you accidentally attach a Direct Secure Message to the wrong chart, you can un-attach it and send it back to the queue.

From the Visit History, double-click to open a Direct Secure Message.


While viewing the Direct Secure Message protocol, select “Remove Direct Secure Message” from the Edit menu and then click “Remove”.


Reconciled Items: If your practice reviewed the Direct Secure Message and reconciled Problems, Medication Allergies, or Medications, they will not be removed by the above process.

The Direct Secure Message will now appear back in the messaging queue, where you can import it to the correct patient’s chart.

Patients and Families Can Send Direct Secure Messages in the Patient Portal

Once your practice has activated Direct Secure Messaging, your patients and families can use the patient portal to send their own visit summary directly to other physicians and medical practices. They can use your practice’s Direct Secure Messaging connection to send the visit summary directly to another Direct Secure Messaging user.

When users want to save or send a visit summary in C-CDA format, they first select the patient and visit from their history.


At the bottom of the visit, they can choose to download or send the visit summary.


On the Direct Secure Email screen, the user can enter the Direct Secure Messaging address provided by the recipient. For example, a specialist might provide a parent with an address for the purpose of sending a visit summary directly to them.

After they enter an address, the user can optionally edit the default subject and message. Next, the user can choose whether to attach a C-CDA or PDF, and click “Send” to send the message and visit summary.

Direct Secure Messaging Required: Portal users can only send Direct Secure Messages if your practice has activated Direct Secure Messaging. Additionally, until a user at your practice registers with the DirectTrust Network, parents and families can only send messages to physicians and other practices within the Updox network. For more information, read the Get Started with Direct Secure Messaging article.

Recall Overdue Patients for Well or Chronic Condition Visits

The best and easiest way to recall patients who are overdue for their well or chronic condition visit in PCC EHR is to run the Preventive Care Recall report or the Chronic Condition Recall report.

Open The Report Library

Open the Patient Recall Section

Open the Preventive Care Recall or Chronic Condition Recall Report


Select Criteria and Run The Report

The Preventive Care Recall report gives you many options for tailoring your recall list. Some criteria you will likely want to set include:

  • Use the Exclude Patient Flag criteria to exclude patients who are deceased, have transferred, have been dismissed, or are otherwise no longer at your practice.
  • Use the Exclude by Account Flag criteria to exclude patients whose accounts are inactive.

Set the Physical Due criteria to match the time frame you expect to be scheduling for. If you’re already scheduled for 3 months out, setting this to “All Past Dates Through Next 90 Days” will give you a list of patients that includes patients who will be due for their physicals at the time your schedule is open.

You’ll want to exclude patients who already have a physical scheduled, so use the Exclude by Scheduled Appointment criteria to remove those patients from this list.

It’s likely that running the report with just these criteria set will still leave you with an unmanageable recall list. You might further refine this list in various ways:

  • Focus on a specific age range. Maybe you want to focus on kids who will need vaccines before they start kindergarten, so you run this for patients who are 4-5 years old. Or you could run a list of 10 year olds so you can get them in for their HPV vaccination.
  • If your list is still too long, you might choose to recall patients with a specific insurance carrier.

Print or Export the Report

Once you’ve got a list of a manageable size, you use this report to recall patients.

For example, you could adjust report output to include columns for patient contact (phone, address, etc). You could also use Broadcast Messaging to send text and email messages to all patients on the list.

Contact PCC Support: Would you like help setting up the perfect criteria for your recall… and saving those criteria as a custom report? Do you want to explore options for exporting and sending messages? Call PCC Support for help!

Connect Remotely with PCC SecureConnect

Working from your home office? Follow the instructions below to connect to your practice’s PCC server from home.

Authorized Users Only: PCC keeps your system locked down so that only approved users can use this method to connect to PCC software. Your office can decide which users should be allowed to connect from home (or from a remote office) and call PCC Support to change that authorization list at any time.

Use pocketPCC Instead: You can review your schedule, see many sections of a patient’s chart, and create phone notes on any internet-connected device using pocketPCC. You only need to use SecureConnect when you wish to run the full PCC EHR or Partner software remotely.

Set Up and Configure Your Remote Connection

Download and Run the Authy App On Your Mobile Device

PCC SecureConnect uses two-factor authentication via the Authy app to ensure a secure connection to your server. Use your mobile phone’s app store to download and install the Authy app. Images below show the Apple iOS app store.


Register the Authy App With Your Identification

The Authy application will walk you through entering identification information to use it as a software token.



Verify your account with either a SMS message or phone call. When you are finished, proceed to the next step.

Log in to PCC SecureConnect

Set aside the phone and use a web browser on your laptop or workstation to navigate to your practice’s SecureConnect login page and enter your PCC username and password. The url is your practice’s acronym, followed by “.pcc.com/secureconnect” (such as: https://bedrockpeds.pcc.com/secureconnect).


Pair the Authy App with your PCC Server

Pair the Authy app with your PCC server by scanning the QR code.






Enter Your Token on the SecureConnect Login Page

Enter the six-digit token you see on your phone in the appropriate field on the SecureConnect login page on your computer’s web browser.

Tokens regenerate every 30 seconds: Authy tokens are only valid for 30 seconds, after which Authy generates a new token automatically. If you don’t enter the token within the 30 seconds, don’t worry, just enter the new token as it appears on your cell phone.

Open and Log In to PCC EHR

You are now logged in to your PCC server. Click the “Start” button and open PCC EHR.



Connect to Your PCC Server

Once you have installed and paired the Authy app with PCC SecureConnect, follow these instructions to log in to PCC SecureConnect.

Log in to PCC SecureConnect

Use a web browser on your laptop or workstation to navigate to your practice’s SecureConnect login page and enter your PCC username and password. The url is your practice’s acronym, followed by “.pcc.com/secureconnect” (such as: https://bedrockpeds.pcc.com/secureconnect).


Enter your Token from the Authy App

Open the Authy app on your mobile device and enter the token that is presented into SecureConnect in your web browser.


Tokens regenerate every 30 seconds: Authy tokens are only valid for 30 seconds, after which Authy generates a new token automatically. If you don’t enter the token within the 30 seconds, don’t worry, just enter the new token as it appears on your cell phone.

Open and Log In to PCC EHR

You are now logged in to your PCC server. Click the “Start” button and open PCC EHR.



Moving Your Practice to a New Location

So your practice is moving. Maybe you have outgrown your current space, or want to move to a more affordable location, or your lease is up, or you want to buy a building as an investment? Moving can be complicated. There are many moving pieces, and PCC is eager to make your move successful, with as little interruption to routine and as few surprises as possible.

Contact PCC

When you make the decision to move please contact PCC Support. Your Client Advocate and/or a PCC project coordinator will arrange a “kick-off” meeting with you and a team at PCC. Ideally you’ll let PCC know about your move at least three months before your projected move date, but the more lead time we have the easier and less stressful the process will be. PCC will work with you to ensure all the i’s are dotted and t’s crossed for your move.

Moving Checklist

Many small things have to happen for your transition to go smoothly. PCC has developed a checklist you can use to track your outstanding tasks while you get ready to move. Download it here.

Guide for Start-up Practices

Opening a new practice is a complex process. One important element is selecting the EHR and Practice Management System you want to use, but, before your practice can open its doors, certain things must be in place.

Physical Space

Location

Your practice location is of critical importance. Selecting a location, signing a lease or purchasing a property, and interior fit-up take time.

Certificate of Occupancy:

Before you can begin seeing patients, you must receive a Certificate of Occupancy from your state or local government to certify that your physical space meets building code requirements.

Internet Access

Having a connection with enough bandwidth to support your patient volume and practice operations is critical. Before you can start using your EHR, the right internet connection needs to be up and running, provided by the local internet service provider (ISP) of your choice. PCC strongly recommends fiber or business-class cable for internet. Your PCC representative will provide specific requirements and review your current or planned internet connection.

Equipment Room

Will your practice host your data locally, in a physical server on the premises, or in the cloud? PCC provides both solutions, and can work with your practice to decide on the best choice. We also provide network equipment to practices that need them, such as a firewall, UPS battery, and network switch.

If you will have a server running locally on the premises, or if you use PCC to supply and manage your network equipment, PCC requires that this equipment have adequate space, power, and ventilation. Many pediatric practices use a ventilated closet or storage room, one that is not used for other storage needs. To ensure that proper security is maintained, this equipment should be locked when not attended.

Network Cabling

Your office must have network cables to connect hardware throughout your practice. Speak to your PCC representative for help determining what kind of cabling will work for your practice. Please note that PCC does not do premise cabling and cannot cut holes in your walls, ceilings, or furniture for cabling. You are responsible for arranging such work to be completed before the PCC Server is installed.

Floor Plan

A floor plan of your physical space allows you to determine how many exam rooms you will have, where your front desk will be, where to house your PCC equipment, and where to place wireless network access points.

Recommended Hardware

Before you can go live with PCC, you’ll need to set up the printers, scanners, and workstations to support your practice. Clinical, front desk and billing staff will need workstations that meet PCC’s hardware requirements.

Set Up Billing Workflow

One of the biggest challenges for new practices is ensuring that their billing and collections are up and running from day one. Your billing is your revenue stream, and without proper coding, claims processing, and followup, your practice will have a difficult time getting paid fairly and on time. We recommend the following as a minimum to help you build a healthy billing workflow.

Get Your Providers Credentialed Properly

Without the right credentials, your providers can’t see patients, or bill for services. Identify who is responsible for getting the right paperwork completed to ensure that your providers can see patients and submit claims before you open your doors.

Hire an Experienced Biller or Billing Service

Billing is an incredibly detailed and complex process. It may sound straightforward, but insurance companies, coding practices and changing regulations require a great deal of attention. Hiring the right person will help you build strong billing practices from the start, saving you from potential trouble down the line. If you’d prefer to use a billing service, PCC has experience working with billing services.

Identify Claim Posting and Followup Responsibilities

Determining who posts charges, who follows up on personal balances, and who follows up with insurance companies is vital. Make sure each person understands and can handle their responsibilities.

Plan Out Your Front Desk and Encounter Workflow

Your patients and families need to quickly check in at your front desk, register for their visit, and pay their copays. When you start a new practice, you’ll be collecting a lot of information – names, addresses, insurance cards – and your front desk will be set up for success if they have clear responsibilities and proper workflow in place. How will your practice manage the flow of patients from check in, to the waiting room, to the exam room?

The best way to prepare for your go-live is to visit a pediatric practice in your area already using PCC. We’re happy to provide you a list of PCC clients near you. Visiting another office allows you to see how they have chosen to set up their system, observing their workflow and asking questions about what works best for them. This hands-on experience will give you an idea of how you’d like your practice to work and can help you make informed decisions as you go through the PCC online process.

Set Your Prices

Your practice needs to determine how much to charge for its services. This includes all of the different procedures and office visits you do, as well as lab tests, school forms, and other ancillary services. PCC has reporting tools you can use as a guide when making pricing decisions, but, your practice must decide how much to charge for each service you provide.

Determine Your Coding Practices

Pediatric billing is complicated, and your practice needs to become familiar with Current Procedural Terminology (CPT) and International Classification of Diseases (ICD) coding. Use resources about pediatric coding to decide which CPT and ICD codes you will use and how your visits should be coded. Make sure this information is communicated clearly with staff members who are responsible for charting.

Top Ten Data Security Best Practices for a Small Pediatric Practice

As a pediatric practice you deal constantly with Personal Health Information (PHI). This data includes:

  • Name, Address, Phone Number
  • Social Security Number
  • Date of Birth
  • Insurance Information
  • Medical Records, including test results

This information can be extremely valuable, and therefore a target for hackers. Here are some basic best practices you can implement in order to ensure your PHI remains safe.

  1. Keep Your HIPAA Policy Documents Up-to-Date: HIPAA, or the Health Information Portability and Accountability Act, is a set of policies, procedures and guidelines that include rules around health insurance, medical savings accounts, and other aspects of healthcare. When most people talk about HIPAA, they are talking about the HIPAA Title II sections on privacy, rules around information transactions, and security. HIPAA rules around privacy are not just arbitrary requirements, they are also practical measures you can take to secure the PHI and other data at your practice. Read more about HIPAA and security here.

  2. Perform a Periodic Security Risk Assessment: Your practice is obligated to perform and record an annual Security Risk Assessment. You can use your Security Risk Assessment to inform and update your practice’s HIPAA Security Policy.

  3. Get Social Security Numbers Out Of Your System: One of the best ways to increase data security at your practice is to not store any unnecessary sensitive data. It can be tempting to use Social Security numbers as unique identifiers for patients, but those numbers are a target for identity theft. CMS has already removed SSNs from Medicare cards and replaced them with a Medicare Beneficiary Identifiers (MBI). Maybe you have an old custom field in PCC EHR that you used to store SSNs? Contact PCC for help with removing/re-purposing that field.

  4. Maintain Proper Wireless Network Configuration and Passwords: Your practice uses a wireless network that was set up by PCC or by a third party IT consultant. Networks in your office configured by PCC include both an internal network that can access your PCC server but does not have access to the internet, as well as a staff/guest network that has access to the internet but does not have access to PCC. This “network segmentation” isolates your system from outside attacks. The weakest link in network security is generally the human user. With that in mind:

    • Never share your clinical network password with anyone.
    • Do not share your staff/guest password with patients. If you want to provide network access to your patients and families, contact PCC.
    • If you keep your passwords written down, treat them as sensitive information. Secure them, and do not leave them exposed on paper, post-it notes, etc.
    • PCC does not know your password and will never ask you for your password.
  5. Perform Staff Training on Practice-Wide Procedures for Data Protection: Your staff should be trained on HIPAA privacy guidelines and your practice’s HIPAA policies. The Department of Health & Human Services has a summary of the HIPAA guidelines, and healthIT.gov’s Privacy, Security, and HIPAA page has a number of resources including a Security Risk Assessment tool and various training modules.

  6. Make Sure Your Credit Card Processors Are PCI DSS Compliant: The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) is a standard established by the major credit card brands to protect cardholder data. Any business that processes, stores, or transmits credit card information must comply with the standard. You can find more information about PCI DSS compliance, as well as self-assessment tools here.

  7. Encrypt Your Data: Any computer that holds PHI should always have encrypted drives. Your practice’s server already has an encrypted drive, and all data backups, both locally and in the cloud, are also encrypted. Your workstations and laptops may contain PHI (maybe a saved e-mail attachment, or an exported report), and so should be encrypted as well. If one of your practices laptops is lost or stolen, it does not need to be treated as a HIPAA breach if its hard drives are encrypted.

  8. Periodically Review Your User Lists in PCC EHR and Other Logins Around Your Practice: Employee turnover is a natural part of running a business. When an employee leaves, you should remove (or change the password for) their login to PCC EHR or any other hardware or software you use in your office. Only people who have a reason to log in to your system should be able to do so.

  9. Review Your Audit Logs in PCC: PCC’s Audit Log gives you granular details about which users are accessing or changing information in PCC EHR. More information is here.

  10. Don't Share User Logins For PCC or Any Other Services: It can be tempting to use the same login or password for multiple services. Never use your PCC login or password for other services or websites.

More detailed information about HIPAA, Security Risk Assessments, and your practice can be found here.

PCC eRx Drop-In Sessions

PCC’s Morgan Ellixson-Boyea, CPhT, Dewey Howell, MD, PhD, and the rest of the PCC eRx team host conversations about all things eRx, from solutions to common prescribing dilemmas to new functionality. If you are a PCC client, you can sign up to attend one. At PCC’s eRx drop-in sessions, we discuss your questions and often preview upcoming prescribing functionality in PCC EHR.

Register for the Next PCC eRx Drop-In Session

You can sign up for the next PCC eRx drop-in session by clicking here:

http://www.pcc.com/events/

Watch a Previous Web Lab

Click in the table below below to review archived presentation files, video, or accompanying materials for PCC’s eRx drop-in sessions.

Date Presentation Additional Links and Handouts
2025 June 2025-06 PCC eRx Drop-In
slides, video
2025 May 2025-05 PCC eRx Drop-In
slides, video
2025 April 2025-04 PCC eRx Drop-In
slides, video
chat transcript
2025 March 2025-03 PCC eRx Drop-In
slides, video
2025 February 2025-02 PCC eRx Drop-In
slides, video
2025 January 2025-01 PCC eRx Drop-In
slides, video
chat transcript, hard token reference image
2024 December 2024-12 PCC eRx Drop-In
slides, video
chat transcript
2024 October 2024-10 PCC eRx Drop-In
slides, video
2024 September 2024-09 PCC eRx Drop-In
slides, video
2024 August 2024-08 PCC eRx Drop-In
slides, video
chat transcript, ePA workflow diagram
2024 June 2024-06 PCC eRx Drop-In
slides, video
chat transcript, ePA workflow diagram
2024 May 2024-05 PCC eRx Drop-In
slides, video
chat transcript, ePA workflow diagram
2024 April 2024-04 PCC eRx Drop-In
slides, video
chat transcript, ePA workflow diagram
2024 March 2024-03 PCC eRx Drop-In
slides, video
chat transcript
2024 February 2024-02 PCC eRx Drop-In
slides, video
chat transcript
2024 January 2024-01 PCC eRx Drop-In
slides, video
2023 December 2023-12 PCC eRx Drop-In
slides, video n/a
2023 November 2023-11 PCC eRx Drop-In
slides, video
chat transcript
2023 October 2023-10 PCC eRx Drop-In
slides, video
2023 September 2023-09 PCC eRx Drop-In
slides, video
chat transcript
2023 August 2023-08 PCC eRx Drop-In
slides, video

Pair a Bluetooth Immunization Barcode Scanner with your Computer

Read below to learn how to pair a bluetooth 2D barcode scanner to your Windows or Macintosh computer. You can use a barcode scanner to manage your vaccine inventory in PCC EHR.

Pair With A Single Workstation: Because of the way bluetooth works, a scanner can only pair with one computer at a time. Swapping bluetooth scanners from one laptop to another is a complicated and time-consuming process. If you use bluetooth scanners, you will need one scanner per computer.

Instructions for Windows

Learn how to pair a bluetooth 2D barcode scanner with your Windows workstation.

Click the Windows Icon in the Task Bar

Open “Bluetooth and other device settings”

Put the Scanner in Discovery or Pairing Mode

Follow your new scanner’s instructions on enabling discovery or pairing mode to link your scanner to your computer.

Search for Bluetooth Devices with your Computer


Select Your Scanner Model

You will see any number of Bluetooth-enabled devices in this list. Some you may recognize, some you may not. Any device within range will appear, which can include Fitbits, wireless mice and keyboards, phones, and other electronics. Select your scanner. Your computer may recognize it by name, or it may simply recognize it as a “Keyboard”.

Scan or Enter the PIN

Your computer will ask you for a PIN number. Again, check the instructions included with your scanner for a PIN to enter or a barcode to scan. Remember to scan the “Enter” barcode at the end.




Your scanner is now paired with your PC, and will work with PCC EHR.

Instructions for Mac

Learn how to pair a bluetooth 2D barcode scanner with your Macintosh workstation.

Open Bluetooth Settings

Use the Apple menu to open System Preferences, and then click on the Bluetooth icon.


Turn Bluetooth On

Put the Scanner in Discovery or Pairing Mode

Follow your new scanner’s instructions on enabling discovery or pairing mode to link your scanner to your computer.

Pair the Scanner

You will see any number of Bluetooth-enabled devices to pair. Some you may recognize, some you may not. Any device within range will appear, which can include Fitbits, wireless mice and keyboards, phones, and other electronics. Select the barcode scanner. Your computer may recognize it by name, or it may simply recognize it as a “Keyboard”.


Your scanner is now paired with your workstation, and will work with PCC EHR.

Unpairing a Scanner

Bluetooth devices can only be paired with one computer at a time. If you need to pair a scanner with a new computer, you will need to unpair it from the original workstation. Simply go to your list of Bluetooth devices, right click on the barcode scanner, and click “uninstall”.

Meet Ohio Prescription Verification and Indication Requirements in PCC eRx

Ohio requires two-factor identification or signature verification of all prescriptions. As of 2018, Ohio also requires that indications appear on prescriptions for opiates. Later this year, the requirement for indications will extend to all controlled substances.

Read below to learn more about how to meet Ohio’s unique prescription requirements in PCC eRx in PCC EHR.

Two-Factor Authentication and Daily Verification

The State of Ohio Board of Pharmacy requires two-factor or a secondary authorization on all prescriptions. You can meet this requirement in one of two ways in PCC eRx: Use a physical token or mobile-device application token to approve all medications, or use a Daily Prescription Report to review and approve all prescriptions.

Select Your Verification Preference

Every prescriber who prescribes in Ohio must designate whether they will use 2-factor authentication for every prescription or use the Daily Prescription Report method.

Each prescriber should visit the “My Settings” section of PCC eRx and make a selection.

You can return to this screen and change your preferences at any time.

Two-Factor Authentication For All Prescriptions

Two-factor authentication means that each time you prescribe, you will use either a physical token device or a verification app on your mobile device to approve the prescription you are creating.

This process is required for the electronic prescribing of controlled substances, and you can learn more about it on the Prescribe Controlled Substances article.

Once you are set up to prescribe EPCS, you can simply begin using your tokens for all prescriptions.

Daily Prescription Reports

You can avoid using your token for every prescription by relying instead on Daily Prescription Reports, which you can access right from the eRx Tasks Queue.



Each day, PCC eRx will create a new report, and you can review all of your prescriptions and verify them by signing that day’s report electronically or physically. If you miss a day, the reports will appear in a list on your Rx Tasks queue so you can do them later.

Your prescription reports will remain on this screen, in your queue, until you print and sign them or sign them electronically.

Choose a report and click on the lighting bolt or printer option. Next, click “Review & Sign” or “Print & Sign”.

For electronic verification, use your EPCS token or application to generate an “OTP”.


Or, to review a paper copy, click to print the report, sign it, and retain your copy for three years onsite at your practice.


Review Past Daily Prescription Reports

Use the Rx Queue History to review past Daily Prescription Report activity.

Click the “Daily Reports” button to see all past Daily Prescription Reports that have been electronically signed or printed.


You can open any report and see the details. If a report was signed electronically, you can see that indication at the bottom of the report. If it was printed and signed manually with a pen, you can see a copy of the report and will need to refer to your physical copy for verification.

Indications and “Days Supply” Are Required for Opiate and Other Controlled Substances

As of 2018, Ohio requires that a “Days Supply” as well as a medication indication appear on prescriptions for opiate medications. In June of 2018, indications will be required for all controlled substances.

When you create a new prescription, you can enter one or more indications in the Indications field.

You can select from diagnoses that appear in the patient’s chart, on their Problem List, or in a chart note. Alternatively, you can pick from common indications for the selected medication or enter your own. (Be aware that adding an indication to a prescription does not add the diagnosis to the patient’s chart. If appropriate, you should add diagnoses to the patient’s Problem List and/or record them on a chart note.)

The “Days Supply” field must also be filled for any controlled substance prescription, regardless of the drug class, as well as any gabapentin prescriptions.

If you do not enter indications or a days supply on a prescription that requires them, PCC eRx will remind you.


When entered, both Indications and the Days Supply will appear on the final prescription, whether it is printed or sent electronically.

Diagnoses as SNOMED-CT or ICD-10

Ohio prescription rules specify that Indications appear as ICD-10 descriptions. If an ICD-10 code is unavailable, a SNOMED-CT is allowed.

PCC eRx will automatically translate a patient’s SNOMED-CT diagnosis into an ICD-10 code if available, otherwise it will send the SNOMED-CT description.

Renewal Requests

It is possible that a pharmacy may send your practice a renewal request that does not include the required Days Supply or Indications.

In that case, PCC recommends that you speak with the pharmacy, and if appropriate cancel or deny the renewal request and create a new prescription with the required information.