In the spring of 2018, PCC will release version 8.4 of our electronic charting and practice management software to all PCC users.

The PCC 8.4 release includes powerful insurance policy tools in PCC EHR, improvements to working with documents, and a new way to save visit time in the Appointment Book.

Watch a Video: Want to watch a video summary of everything in this release? CLICK HERE

Implementation: The new features in PCC 8.4 require configuration and user-specific software training. Read about the features below and then review the PCC 8.4 Migration Considerations article.

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

Update and Work with Insurance Policies in PCC EHR

You can now add, update, and work with a patient’s insurance policies and medicaid plans in PCC EHR.

You can review a patient’s insurance policies in the new “Policies” component in PCC EHR. By default, it appears on the Demographics screen, and your practice can add it to chart notes, phone notes, or other PCC EHR ribbons.

The patient’s primary policy appears at the top, with a “1”, and any secondary or tertiary policies appear as well. By default, you’ll see active policies, but you can also review expired policies using the “Display” feature.

Click the disclosure triangle to see full policy information.

Add a Policy

When mom hands you a new insurance card, click the “Edit” button to enter Edit mode for the chart section, and then click “Add Policy”.

Next, enter policy information. PCC EHR will search for a matching insurance plan as you type.

Autofill Subscriber Information: PCC EHR will attempt to fill in the appropriate account information for the policy, based on the patient’s bill payer account. Or, for a Medicaid-type plan, PCC EHR will automatically fill in the patient’s information. You can review and change the policy information before you save. Also, if a sibling already has the policy you are entering, you can optionally autofill policy information from their plan.

Remember to enter a Start Date and add an End Date, when appropriate. PCC knows to bill insurance plans based on these dates and the patient’s dates of service.

Click “Save” to save the policy.

After you create a policy, you can click “Edit Policy” to make changes.

Insurance Policies Shared Among Siblings

When you add or edit a policy for a patient who has siblings, PCC EHR will prompt you to update their policies as well.

You can deselect any siblings that will not have the policy, optionally enter different Certificate numbers, and click “Save” to add the policy to the sibling(s). Or you can click “Cancel” to skip adding the policy to siblings.

New Insurance Plans: When you add a policy to a patient, you pull from your practice’s official list of insurance plans, kept on your PCC system. That official list of plans is maintained in the Insurance Plans table in the Table Editor in Practice Management. For help making changes to your insurance table, contact your Client Advocate or read The Insurance Plan Tables.

Primary, Secondary, Tertiary and Medicaid Plans

When you edit patient policies, you can click and drag to move them to primary, secondary, and so forth.

The numbers by each active policy (1, 2, 3, etc.) will adjust for the new position on the list of policies.

PCC EHR will not allow you to move an expired policy into a primary position. It will also automatically sort Medicaid-type policies to the bottom of active insurance policies. The helpful “M” indicator for Medicaid plans will also help your practice when they need to select VFC status or make other decisions affected by Medicaid coverage.

Edit, Expire or Delete a Policy

While in Edit mode, double-click or select any plan and click “Edit Policy” to make changes.

If you click “Expire”, PCC EHR will pop yesterday’s date into the End Date field.

You can also manually change that date to whenever the plan expired. PCC uses Start and End dates to determine the responsible parties for a date of service.

PCC recommends you keep all old policies on a patient’s record. However, you can click “Delete” to delete a policy that was added to a patient’s record by mistake.

What if the policy has outstanding charges pending? PCC EHR alerts you, and prevents you from deleting that policy.

Policies in pocketPCC

On your mobile device, you can review a patient’s policies in the Demographics section of the chart, or wherever the component appears.

Online Bill Pay is Now Available Through the Patient Portal

Today’s families don’t like to open paper bills and write checks. Parents have instant, 24-hour access to your patient portal, so your bill-paying service should be available to them there.

PCC EHR now includes mobile payments, right in the patient portal (My Kid’s Chart), so your families can pay their bill from their phones. You’ll collect money faster and have fewer bounced checks.

Limited Pilot Test: Portal payments are in a limited pilot testing period in just a few offices. If you are interested in participating in the pilot, or wish to be notified when this feature is ready for general deployment, please contact your Client Advocate.

Prerequisites to Online Payment: Before you can implement mobile payments, you will need to make sure your practice has enabled the Personal Balance feature in your portal. In addition, only portal users with a linked billing account will see the option to make a payment. If you have not linked billing accounts with portal users yet, and would like help doing so, contact your Client Advocate. For more detail on these prerequisites, see the 8.4 Migration Considerations article.

When families with linked billing accounts log into the patient portal, they will see a “Make a Payment” button beneath their personal balance information.

If the family has used the mobile payment option previously, they will also see a “Last Payment” listed above the button. Only the most recent portal payment will be shown.

When the user presses the “Make a Payment” button, one of two different Payment screens will open.

If the user has not previously saved credit card information, the portal will prompt them to enter their basic credit card information, billing address, and e-mail address.

Alternatively, if the portal user has previously made a mobile payment and opted to save their credit card, the credit card information will pre-populate. They can select a different payment method if they wish. Only the most recent credit card used can be stored.

Card Data is Secure: Credit card data is never stored on your PCC server, but is managed by our PCI-compliant partner, BluePay.

After the payment is made, the portal user will see the result of the transaction. The date and time of payment will appear, and whether the payment was successful or not.

The balance in the patient portal will not be adjusted until your practice posts the payment.

The BluePay service will send receipts to the email address that the portal user entered on the payment screen. Your practice can opt to receive copies of each receipt email.

Your practice also has the ability to log in to the BluePay Gateway and view and download an activity log, which shows all portal payment activity for a date range.

You can use this activity log to post payments into Partner.

Getting Started: Portal payments is an optional service, and Payment Pros charges a monthly third-party fee and standard credit card fees. Contact your Client Advocate to learn more.

Keep Documents Open As You Chart a Visit or Work On a Phone Note

When you are working with scanned documents in a patient’s chart, such as lab results or a patient form, it’s cumbersome to have to close the document window before you can enter results and notes into the patient’s chart.

In PCC 8.4, the Document Viewer opens in a separate window that you can keep open as you do your charting, write a portal message, or complete a phone note. You can move the window around, shrink or expand it, and flip through other sections of the chart.

Opening multiple documents will open them in multiple tabs within the Document Viewer. This can be useful if you need to compare documents or search for something.

You can even go into a sibling’s chart and have documents open for both children at one time.

Save and Edit: When you edit a document and click “Save”, the Document Viewer will no longer close. Instead, you will be returned to “view” mode for the document. If you save the chart, document edits are saved as well.

Color-Code Your Schedule by Visit Type in the Appointment Book

On a busy schedule, you need to save time slots for sick visits and other types of visits that are scheduled late. You may also want to let schedulers know that some visit types need to be scheduled with specific providers or only on certain days.

You can now use optional color blocks on the Appointment Book, by provider, to give guidance to schedulers about where to place certain types of visits.

As you schedule, the Visit Reason drop-down field in the Schedule Appointment panel includes color swatches next to each reason that is part of a designated visit type.

This will help schedulers to find a time slot on the appointment grid that matches the color of the visit type they are scheduling.

The time slot color will still show in the background, regardless of the visit type scheduled. Users will not be prevented from placing appointments of one visit type on a time slot reserved for a different visit type.

Configure Visit Types and Colors

Use the Visit Reason Editor to define visit types and colors for your practice. The tool now includes three tabs: Visit Reasons, Visit Types, and Visit Reason Default.

Visit reasons can be grouped by visit type. Visit types are used to color code your schedule so that anyone scheduling can see what type of appointment should be scheduled within each block of time. For example, you may have one visit type named “Well Visits” that includes the visit reasons “infant well visit”, “1 yr well visit”, “2 yr well visit”, etc.

Your practice can create visit types, and then associate visit reasons. You can decide what color to use for each visit type, and where the colored time slots will appear on the schedule, by provider.

Open the Visit Types tab, and click “Add” to create a new visit type.

Enter a name for your visit type, and click “Save” if you are satisfied with the default color assigned. If you want to change the color, click on the color swatch.

You can choose from the color-blind friendly options provided in the Basic Colors palette, or you can create your own color scheme instead.

When you have finished adding visit types, you will be ready assign visit reasons.

Assign Visit Reasons to Visit Types

The Visit Reasons tab has been restructured into a matrix showing Visit Types in the first column, with each associated Visit Reason in the second column. Each provider then has their own column which shows their default duration for the listed Visit Reason.

To assign a visit reason to a visit type, select the visit reason in the grid and click “Edit”.

Select the Visit Type and make any edits to provider default durations that you need.

When you are finished click “Save” or “Save + Next” to continue associating other visit reasons to visit types.

Assign Visit Types to Each Provider’s Available Hours

Use the Provider Hours tool to add your Visit Types to a provider’s schedule. You can configure each provider’s schedule to give guidance to schedulers about what types of appointments to schedule throughout the day.

You can select a color from the Visit Type drop-down and then “paint” that color onto the provider’s schedule.

If you need to make changes, click on the block of time to edit it. You will see grab handles that will allow you to move the color block, or an ‘x’ to delete it.

When you are finished configuring the schedule, you will see the colored visit type guidance on the Appointment Book tab.

Appointment Book Now Differentiates Between Past, Present and Future

To schedule quickly and efficiently, you need an appointment book that is easy to read.

When looking at the Appointment Book, there are now distinct visual differences between today, past days, and future days.

Days in the past are now shaded with a dotted pattern, which appears much like a curtain over the days. Today’s column will include a blue header, and a blue line will appear down the left side of the day, clearly dividing the past from the present.

Past appointments sit on top of the curtain, so that they are still easy to read. When the past is over-booked, you will see a heavier looking cross-hatch pattern.

When you schedule in the past, a new confirmation dialogue will appear, warning that the date is in the past. The Schedule Appointment panel will also include a warning message that the date has already passed.

Review Results from Immunization Registry Submissions

The Immunization Registry Response Viewer lets you see the acknowledgement responses from your immunization registry, highlighting warnings and errors that you may need to fix.

When you want to review registry responses, select the Immunization Registry Response Viewer from the Reports menu.

Here you see a list of all responses PCC has received that contain errors or warnings. You can adjust the filters at the bottom of this screen to show all responses, a specific date range, or a specific care center.

Open a message to get the error details.

PCC EHR shows you the segments of the message that contain the errors or warnings. Click the “Open Chart” button at the bottom of the viewer to open the associated chart and make the necessary corrections.

You can click “Reviewed: By”, which will mark the response as reviewed. You can click “Save” to return to the list of responses, or click “Save + Next” to move directly to the next unreviewed message with errors or warnings.

When you return to the tool, you can use the “Reviewed” filter to filter out messages that have already been reviewed, leaving only responses that need attention.

Permission to access this tool is role-based.

Configuration and Preparation Required: The Immunization Registry Response Viewer is available for all practices that participate with an immunization registry. It requires additional configuration and activation on your system. To get started, click here for more information, or contact your Client Advocate.

Powerful New Reports Mean Better Clinical and Practice Management Decisions

The Report Library in PCC 8.4 includes new, customizable reports and updates to existing report that will enable you to review patient portal use, justify visit coding levels, and review wasted or transferred vaccine inventory, and more.

• Patients Linked to Patient Portal Users: Use the Patients Linked to Patient Portal Users report to find patients who are linked to Portal users. This will enable you to report on and evaluate patient portal usage.

• Billed Diagnoses by Date: Use this report to find all billed diagnoses within a date range. You can use it to prove accurate diagnosing of complex encounters to payers.

• Vaccine Inventory Transaction Log: This report isn’t new, but we’ve added an “Adjustment Reason” filter, so you can run a report on wasted or transferred vaccines. You can use this information when you need to report on inventory.

• Patient Immunization Administration Summary: This report provides a quick and easy way to find patients who may be past due on an immunization. The PCC 8.4 update adds custodial information to the available columns for this report, making it possible to work down the list and contact the families.

Drag and Drop Columns in Your Reports

You can drag and drop columns in the report library, arranging them in whatever sequence you like.

This column order will also be reflected when you print or export the report.

When you create a custom report, your column order will be saved with the new report.

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 now 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. To learn more about importing Direct Secure Messages, read Direct Secure Messages.

Recent Updates to PCC eRx

PCC updates and improves PCC eRx, the suite of prescription tools in PCC EHR, throughout our product release cycle. Since the 8.3 release, we made improvements to specific drug listings and prescribing workflow issues reported by pediatric practices.

Want to learn more? You can see a log of all PCC eRx patches and updates in the PCC eRx Update Log.

For more information about PCC eRx, visit PCC’s library of PCC eRx training videos and documentation. We add new eRx videos and materials every month.

New and Updated Interfaces Available in PCC 8.4

With each release, PCC’s Interoperability team expands and updates PCC’s direct connections, partnerships, and integrations with insurance payers, immunization registries, and more. Here are the clinical and financial interoperability updates for PCC 8.4:

• New and Updated Immunization Interfaces: As part of the PCC 8.4 release, PCC updated our immunization registry interfaces for Tennessee and Florida.

• New Clinical Interfaces in PCC EHR: PCC developed new clinical data interfaces with Spectrum Labs, Glendale Adventist Memorial Hospital, Holland Hospital, and Mercy Diagnostics.

• New Insurance Eligibility and Financial Interfaces: PCC added or updated payer interfaces with Missouri Medicaid, Tricare East, Community First Health Plans, and Pacificsource Health Plans.

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

2018 SNOMED-CT Update

PCC 8.4 updates PCC’s products and services to include the latest SNOMED-CT descriptions and codes.

The SNOMED update includes over 6000 new descriptions for diagnoses, allergies, therapies, and procedures. It also updates thousands of text descriptions for diagnoses and their mapped ICD-10 billing codes.

New Favorites Available in Diagnosis Quick Search

The PCC 8.4 update adds 800 new Favorite diagnoses to the quick search feature of diagnosis fields in PCC EHR.

As you type or search in any diagnosis field, PCC EHR automatically searches a list of your practice’s Favorites. You can also right-click on any diagnosis field in PCC EHR to search your system’s full SNOMED-CT library.

In preparation for the PCC 8.4 update, PCC’s certified coder, Jan Blanchard, assembled a list of new SNOMED-CT descriptions of interest to pediatricians. The PCC EHR 8.4 update will add these diagnoses to your practice’s default Favorites list for quick searching, unless your practice has specifically requested otherwise.

You can review the list of 800 new Favorite descriptions and make adjustments in the Diagnosis Configuration tool. You can attend PCC’s monthly coding weblabs to learn more about the new descriptions and other coding topics.

Deprecated Codes on Your Chart Note Protocols

PCC software will intelligently implement the new code set changes. If a default diagnosis on a chart note protocol is deprecated, your PCC 8.4 update will replace it with the new SNOMED description.

Here’s the list of SNOMED-CT descriptions that the PCC 8.4 update will replace on chart note protocols:

Old Concept ID	Old Term	Replacement Concept ID	Replacement Term
12441001	Epistaxis	249366005	Bleeding from nose
234490009	Immune thrombocytopenic purpura	32273002	Idiopathic thrombocytopenic purpura
16944002	Mononucleosis syndrome	271558008	Infectious mononucleosis
30799000	Neonatal thrush	414821002	Neonatal candidiasis
308893005	Pyrexia postprocedure	130091000119103	Postprocedural fever
448801000124102	Underweight in childhood	762491008	Underweight in childhood
72269009	Unilateral modified radical mastectomy	726437009	Modified radical mastectomy of left breast
170536002	Vaccination required	723620004	Requires vaccination
68525005	Varicella vaccination	571611000119101	Administration of varicella live vaccine

Other Deprecated Diagnoses You May Want to Review

Here are the top 40 codes from PCC’s pediatric practices that have been removed from the SNOMED-CT library. Your providers may need to adjust coding habits for some of these diagnoses.

Deprecated Concept ID	Description
170536002	Vaccination required
12441001	Epistaxis
30799000	Neonatal thrush
16944002	Mononucleosis syndrome
162373007	Has nosebleeds – epistaxis
448801000124102	Underweight in childhood
68525005	Varicella vaccination
276617005	Growth delay
409596002	Non-productive cough
699205002	Involuntary weight loss
198212006	Vaginitis and vulvovaginitis
63039003	Influenza with respiratory manifestation other than pneumonia
12366661000119100	Recurrent croup
41931001	Abdominal distension
713708001	Idiopathic scoliosis of thoracolumbar region of spine
35402000	Eye AND/OR eyelid symptom
204962002	Multicystic kidney
57643001	Peptic reflux disease
55726006	Unilateral agenesis of kidney
52756005	Nasal polyp
234162000	Simple faint
422503008	Abnormal weight in relation to growth / age standard
201037000	Corns and callus
396284006	Lobular pneumonia
162371009	Nosebleed/epistaxis symptom
9446007	Coloboma of iris
111563005	Adrenal hypofunction
4852000	Metatarsus varus
202852009	Shoulder tendinitis
268620009	Single major depressive episode
253686000	Patent ductus arteriosus – persisting type
50642008	Complex regional pain syndrome, type I
4191007	Scaphycephaly
234163005	Neurally-mediated syncope
702777009	Liver transplant recipient
85791004	Ecthyma
403277007	Pigmented skin lesion of suspected benign nature
12242311000119108	Swelling of right lower limb
233686006	Aspirin-sensitive asthma with nasal polyps
702776000	Heart transplant recipient
248061004	Self-harm
62329009	Aspiration of foreign body

Map Codes to ICD-10 for Billing

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

After your practice’s PCC 8.4 update, you may wish to review billing configuration for your diagnoses. You can use the snomedmap report to review ICD-10 code changes on the codes you use, and you can open the Billing Configuration tool to configure which ICD-10 diagnoses are mapped to each SNOMED-CT description in PCC EHR.

In particular, PCC recommends you review the mapped ICD-10 billing codes for any nosebleed (epistaxis) related diagnoses, vaccination required (which is now “Requires Vaccination”), and other concepts in the list of common deprecated descriptions above.

Deprecated SNOMED-CT Descriptions that Affect CQM Reporting for Mandates

If your practice uses CQM reporting to apply for PCMH or other incentive or mandate programs, you should be aware that several diagnoses used for CQM reporting have been deprecated.

The following codes are no longer in the SNOMED-CT library, and therefore cannot be diagnosed in order to track Clinical Quality Measures.

Deprecated Concept ID	Description
267538002	Agranulocytopenic disorder
72050006	Agranulocytic angina
188526000	Hodgkin’s paragranuloma of intra-abdominal lymph nodes
68525005	Varicella vaccination (procedure)
21072009	Gas bubble disease
79578000	Alcohol paranoia
77383003	Marfanoid mental retardation syndrome
191540006	Hebephrenic schizophrenia in remission
191537006	Chronic hebephrenic schizophrenia
191536002	Subchronic hebephrenic schizophrenia
200117009	Post-delivery acute renal failure – delivered with postnatal problem
312990005	Maternal care for fetal acidosis during pregnancy
312989001	Maternal care for fetal tachycardia during pregnancy
312988009	Maternal care for fetal decelerations during pregnancy
312977003	Maternal care for fetal bradycardia during pregnancy
1938002	Emotional AND/OR mental disease in mother complicating pregnancy, childbirth AND/OR puerperium
13010001	Acute renal failure following labor AND/OR delivery
198220008	Subacute and chronic vulvitis
198212006	Vaginitis and vulvovaginitis
85791004	Ecthyma
66898004	Mucosal cyst of postmastoidectomy cavity
6136003	Epizootic lymphadenitis
63530007	Granulations of postmastoidectomy cavity
429553003	Abscess of medulla spinalis
47698002	Diverticular prostatitis
399095008	Fusospirochetal pharyngitis
396284006	Lobular pneumonia
187042003	Histoplasma capsulatum with pneumonia
198220008	Subacute and chronic vulvitis
200705000	Impetigo circinata
14255005	Hemorrhagic dysentery
129458007	Bronchiolitis obliterans organizing pneumonia
198212006	Vaginitis and vulvovaginitis
123592004	Acute mucous pneumonia
197325003	Liver abscess – excluding amebic liver abscess
1156003	Cavitary prostatitis

For more information about how to configure PCC EHR and chart a visit in order to meet Clinical Quality Measures for PCMH recognition, read How to Chart for Each Clinical Quality Measure.

LOINC 2018 Update

PCC EHR 8.4 updates your practice to the latest version of the standardized lab test list, LOINC (Logical Observation Identifiers Names and Codes). As part of this update, over 11,000 new codes were added, and many descriptions and test result standards were updated.

The update changes many common tests that pediatric practices use. Your practice may notice the new test names in your orders.

Historical Data is Not Affected: The LOINC update will not affect historical descriptions or charted data. Flowsheets, which track lab results over time, will display the most recent description of a completed order.

Deprecated and Replaced Lab Tests

The LOINC update deprecates hundreds of tests and replaces with them with new tests. PCC examined the list of changed tests, and wherever possible the PCC 8.4 update adjusts your configuration to match the new standard tests. For example, if your practice had a now-deprecated test on a chart note, or configured for a Clinical Alert, the PCC 8.4 update replaces it with the appropriate new test instead.

Here are some examples that your office should be aware of:

• Streptococcus: A series of common Streptococcus tests were deprecated and replaced with slightly different Streptococcus tests. For example, the extremely common LOINC 6556-5 “Streptococcus pyogenes Ag Presence in Throat by Immunoassay” was replaced with LOINC 78012-2 “Streptococcus pyogenes Ag [Presence] in Throat by Rapid immunoassay”. Other more noticeable shifts include the deprecation of the “Pneumococcal Serotype” and “Streptococcus pneumoniae” series of tests, which are replaced by a “Streptococcus pneumoniae Danish serotype” series of tests. Fortunately, these were easy 1-for-1 replacements. If a deprecated test is attached to any order or other configuration on your PCC system, the PCC 8.4 update will update the order’s configuration.

• Lead, Whole Blood: A very common lead test, “Lead, Whole Blood”, LOINC 5671-3, has been deprecated and replaced with two different tests: 77307-7 “Lead Mass/volume in Venous blood” and 10368-9 “Lead Mass/volume in Capillary blood”. PCC consulted with several pediatricians and learned that the capillary version is most commonly performed in pediatric practices. Therefore, if you had “Lead, Whole Blood” configured on an order at your practice, the PCC 8.4 update will automatically replace that configuration with the new lead capillary test. You can easily adjust this in the Lab Configuration tool in the Tools menu, and optionally create a new order to track both.

• PHQ-9: The 44257-4 “Patient Health Questionnaire 9 item (PHQ-9)” test has been replaced with the 44249-1 “PHQ-9 quick depression assessment panel” test. The PCC 8.4 update will adjust your configuration if you have this test on a screening or other order.

• Other, Less Common Changes: In addition to those mentioned above, there were hundreds of other deprecated LOINC codes that the PCC 8.4 update will fix. However, there were only a handful that were in common use by pediatric practices: 44616-1 “Pulse oximetry panel”, 71850-2 “Oxygen saturation in Capillary blood by Oximetry”, 49543-2 25-OH “Vitamin D2”, 5092-2 “Clostridium tetani Ab in Serum”, 3281-3 “Lupus anticoagulant in Platelet poor plasma”, and 6367-7 “Tetanus Antibody, IgG”. You may want to review your PCC EHR configuration for these orders. For each of these tests, PCC made an appropriate replacement or else contacted affected practices directly so they could review their configuration.

Review Your Configuration

You may want to pick a different test than PCC’s replacement. And if your practice has not configured discrete, official tests for a lab order or other order, now would be a great time to review and update your configuration.

Use the Lab Configuration tool under the Tools menu, or the Component Builder section of the Protocol Configuration tool in the Tools menu, to review which tests are assigned to each of your practice’s orders.

Lab Test Report Preferences: As part of the update to the new LOINC list, user default preferences for the Lab Test Report will be reset. That means if your practice periodically uses that report to create a lead test report, for example, you may need to reselect appropriate labs after your PCC 8.4 update.

Test Description Updates

Your PCC EHR Lab Order names will not change, but some of the LOINC tests inside those orders will. For example, “Bilirubin, Total”, also known as 1975-2, will now be known as “Total Bilirubin serum/plasma”.

Here are some of the other test names that will change:

LOINC Code	Old Description	New Description
11034-6	Acetylcholine Binding Antibody	Acetylcholine receptor binding Ab
11125-2	Platelet Morphology	Platelet morphology
14957-5	Microalbumin, Urine	Microalbumin urine
1742-6	ALT (SGPT)	Alanine aminotransferase serum/plasma
1751-7	Albumin, Serum (Neph)	Albumin serum/plasma
17713-9	Topiramate by GC	Topiramate serum/plasma
17861-6	Calcium	Calcium serum/plasma serum/plasma
1920-8	AST	Aspartate aminotransferase serum/plasma
1968-7	Bilirubin, Direct	Direct bilirubin serum/plasma
1971-1	Bilirubin, Indirect	Indirect bilirubin serum/plasma
1975-2	Bilirubin, Total	Total Bilirubin serum/plasma
2028-9	CO2	Carbon dioxide serum/plasma
2075-0	Chloride	Chloride serum/plasma
2160-0	Creatinine	Creatinine serum/plasma
2345-7	Glucose, Random	Glucose lab
26450-7	Eosinophils	Eosinophils %
26478-8	Lymphocytes	Lymphocytes %
26485-3	Monocytes	Monocytes %
26511-6	Neutrophils	Neutrophils %
27353-2	Estimated Average Glucose	Estimated average glucose
2777-1	Phosphorus	Phosphate
2823-3	Potassium	Potassium serum/plasma
2885-2	Total Protein	Protein serum/plasma
2951-2	Sodium	Sodium serum/plasma
30180-4	Basophils	Basophils %
30471-7	Keppra	Levetiracetam serum/plasma
3094-0	BUN	Urea nitrogen serum/plasma
3097-3	BUN/Creatinine Ratio	Urea nitrogen/Creatinine serum/plasma
3432-2	Carbamazepine, Total	Carbamazepine serum/plasma
3948-7	Phenobarbital	Phenobarbital serum/plasma
3968-5	Phenytoin	Phenytoin serum/plasma
4086-5	Valproic Acid	Valproate serum/plasma
4548-4	HgbA1c %	Hemoglobin A1c (Glycated)
48065-7	D-Dimer, Quantitative	Fibrin D-dimer FEU
5792-7	Glucose	Glucose urine dipstick
5902-2	PT, Patient	Prothrombin time – patient
6742-1	RBC Morphology	RBC morphology
6768-6	Alkaline Phosphatase	Alkaline phosphatase serum/plasma
6948-4	Lamotrigine	Lamotrigine serum/plasma
8014-3	Rubella Antibody, IgG	Rubella virus IgG
8015-0	Rubella Antibody, IgM	Rubella virus IgM
9738-6	Gabapentin	Gabapentin serum/plasma

Immunization Forecasting is Up to Date

The automated immunization schedules in PCC EHR are up to date with the latest tweaks and adjustments to the CDC’s ACIP schedule.

PCC EHR automatically reviews patient immunization records and provides a table showing any immunizations that may have been missed, are recommended soon, or that occurred outside of the ACIP schedule.

PCC uses immunization logic and calculation services provided by Immucast by STC. During the PCC 8.4 release cycle, STC updated your practice’s immunization calculation engine to meet all the latest recommendations.

While there are no major changes to the immunization schedule, minor adjustments were made for Meningococcal, OPV, Tetanus Immune Globulin, Anthrax Immune Globulin, Yellow Fever Vaccine, HIB, DTAP-IPV, Pneumococcal, Hepatitis B, Influenza, and DTap/Tdap.

For example, a recent patch updates guidelines for a 4-dose Hepatitis B schedule when there was no birth dose. Another update adds a warning for conflicts in dosing schedules when administering DTaP-IPV in place of DTaP or IPV. Your system was also brought up to date with the latest CVX codes for Flublok, Flucelvax, and other new vaccines.

PCC tests and evaluates these adjustments to immunization schedules. Please get in touch if you’d like to learn more about the updates, or if you observe a forecasting result or warning that doesn’t match your expectation.

You can learn more by reading the Immunization Forecasting article.

Other Feature Improvements and Bug Fixes in PCC 8.4

In addition to the features described above, PCC 8.4 includes these smaller improvements and squashed bugs.

• Deceased Patients Will Not Appear When Updating Sibling Policy Changes: When you create or modify an insurance policy for a patient, and PCC offers to update/add policy changes for siblings as well, deceased siblings will not appear on the list of siblings.

• Improved Location-Specific Form Letters: PCC EHR now uses your logged-in location when you generate form letters in the Forms component. If your practice has more than one location, it is now easier to create form letters that will automatically fill in the desired address and phone number, for example, of your working location.

• New Name Requirements: PCC uses provider names and usernames in PCC EHR when it sends and verifies your prescriptions. In order to support current data standards, the PCC 8.4 update includes a migration of account usernames. The username field will now only support alphanumeric characters (A through Z and 0 through 9), along with underscores (_), hyphens (-) and apostrophes (‘). If you use any other characters in your usernames, including a space, slash, or other symbol, the update will migrate the character(s) to an underscore (_) character.

• VIS Version Updates: When you record that a vaccine information statement (VIS) was provided, you can select the latest version dates for the new MMR, MMRV, Varicella, Zoster, and Rotavirus VIS forms. This update was patched directly to your system during the release cycle.

• Control Characters Causing Visit History Display Issues: In rare circumstances, the Visit History would display as blank. This happened when the patient’s chart record had a nonstandard character somewhere in the notes. PCC EHR will now ignore those characters and display the chart note.

• Margins and Spacing Around Form Letters: The space around form letters created by PCC EHR was different from the space in Partner. We have adjusted how these form letters are generated so that the two outputs more closely match each other.

• Growth Chart Printing Lines Darker: The lines on growth charts now print slightly darker.

• Immunization School Forms From the Patient Portal: If your practice had a custom school form that was particular to the patient portal, the PCC 8.3 update reverted it to your default form. PCC fixed this error with a patch to all systems, restoring the correct version of the immunization record form.

The PCC 8.3 release includes new features that may need extra planning, training, or configuration. Read below to learn more, and share relevant details with your physicians and staff.

Read the PCC 8.3 Release article for complete details on these features.

Contact PCC Support at 1-800-722-1082 for information about these or any features in PCC 8.3.

Get Ready for Forms in PCC EHR

Now that you can generate any form letter from PCC EHR, your practice may want to make adjustments to your normal workflows and office communication around forms. For example, you may need to evaluate:

• Who will generate forms that are needed before the patient is seen, during a visit, or after a visit?
• What new form letters should be set up in chart notes for each visit reason?
• Should all form letters be logged in the patient chart, as well as in the patient portal (MyKidsChart)?

Once you answer these questions, you can train the right people on the new tools, set up the forms you want to appear on each chart note protocol, and work with your PCC Client Advocate to tweak your form list and create new forms.

Where Should You See the Forms Component, and Which Forms Should Be Single-Click?

You can place the new Forms component on any chart note protocol, decide where it should live on your Medical Summary, Demographics, and other chart note sections, and adjust which forms appear by default.



To place (or move) the Forms component, open the Protocol Configuration tool and pick either a chart section or a chart note protocol in the Protocol Builder.





Click “Add” to add the Forms component. Use the tab on the side to slide it to a new location on the protocol.



Double-click on the component to set up default forms for that chart note or chart section.



For example, you may want to add the School/PE Excuse form letter to sick visits. If you are adding the Forms component to the Demographics chart section, or configuring it for the Medical Summary, you might want to add form letters that would help your practice with their workflow when using that section of a patient’s chart.

Watermarks, Questions, and Custom Forms: Test Printing on Workstations

If your practice generates form letters that have watermarks, ask form letter questions, or use other special features, you should test those forms from PCC EHR to see if they work as expected.

For example, if you generate a watermark, you may need to adjust the printing settings in your workstation’s operating system to make the watermark print at the right darkness level. And if your PCC Client Advocate helped you set up a custom form with unusual script or information requirements, they may need to make adjustments after your update.

Adjust Default Forms Category

When you generate a form letter, you will have the option to print, as well as save the form letter to both the patient’s chart and the patient portal.

By default, PCC EHR will save a form letter into a Forms category, which you can later review in the Documents section of the patient’s chart.

Optionally, you can use the Document Administration tool to change the default save location for forms.




Review and Update User Accounts

As part of the PCC 8.3 release, any PCC EHR user who does not already have an associated Practice Management (Partner) account will be asked for it at login.



Users can click “Skip”. If they click “Skip” five times, PCC EHR will stop asking. However, associating a Partner account will lead to improved features (both Clinical and Practice Management), and will also mean your system does a better job of tracking who did what for your patients.

You can prepare your practice’s user accounts (and help them avoid the login prompt) by associating an account with each user in the User Administration tool.



Use the PM Column: You can scroll down the “PM” column in your user list to see which users do not yet have an associated Practice Management account.



If a user does not have an account on the Partner system, you can create one for them in Partner’s User Administration tool.





Review and Update Practice Locations and Care Centers

If your practice has more than one location, and/or uses PCC’s Care Center features, you may want to review location configuration as part of your PCC 8.3 update.

After your update, all users will be prompted to select a location, and optionally to set it as their default.



PCC will use this information for scheduling, form letters, and other features. But what locations will appear on that drop-down menu and elsewhere in PCC EHR and Partner?

Your practice’s locations are specified in the “Places of Service” table in the Partner Table Editor (ted).





When you edit a location, you should review the location names, location abbreviation, address, and phone numbers to be sure they are what you would want on a form letter. You should also review whether or not you schedule for the location, and whether or not it is a login location.

If your practice uses Care Centers, you will also see a field to set the flag used for that Care Center. Additionally, for each user, you can assign a Care Center in the User Administration tool in PCC EHR.

When you assign a user to a Care Center, that affects PCC EHR location-based functionality. For example, in the Appointment Book, a user who is assigned to a Care Center will only be able to see that Care Center’s location(s) when scheduling. A schedulable provider who is assigned to a Care Center can only have working hours in that Care Center’s location(s), which makes configuration and setup easier for your different practice locations.

Are You Ready for PCC’s Appointment Book?

The PCC EHR Appointment Book is a powerful, user-friendly scheduler that now supports practices with multiple locations, multiple scheduling providers and schedulers, custom visit time lengths, and provides users with an amazing visual scheduling tool. You can save time and see your whole schedule in a clear, graphical layout right in PCC EHR.

Is your practice ready to leave behind the SAM scheduler in Partner and explore the Appointment Book? You can get started by watching the Schedule with the Appointment Book video, and then contact your PCC Client Advocate to learn more.

Implement Barcode Scanning for Immunization Inventory

Beep! How do you get started implementing barcode scanning for immunization inventory at your practice?

Where Are Your Imms? When Do You Enter Your Lots Into Inventory?

First, evaluate how you currently store and load in immunization inventory. Are you using PCC EHR’s Lot Manager to track your lots? Do you have a workstation or laptop that can be easily accessed near your immunization refrigerator?

You can learn more about the Lot Manager in PCC EHR here: Immunization Lots and Vaccine Inventory Management

Recommended Barcode Scanners

Next, you’ll need a barcode scanner. PCC currently recommends two models from Zebra: A handheld, portable model, the CS4070, and a corded model with a lower price, the DS-4308. Both operate well under our testing.




• PCC’s Guide to Pairing a Bluetooth Scanner: Learn how to pair a CS4070 or other Bluetooth scanner with your computer workstation.
• CS4070 Specification Sheet from Zebra: Check out the details on the portable CS4070.
• DS4308 Specification Sheet from Zebra: Check out the details on the corded model, the DS4308.

A portable, bluetooth scanner may be easier to use, especially later in 2018 when PCC adds the ability to scan vaccines as you administer them. A corded or “tethered” barcode scanner doesn’t need to be charged, can easily be swapped between devices, and is less expensive. However, for vaccine administration, it might be tricky to carry a laptop and tethered scanner in and out of exam rooms.

Buy a Scanner Directly Through PCC: Based on customer feedback, PCC has decided to do a limited bulk order of the above scanners. That means you can order your scanner(s) directly from us. Place your order here: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/OrderBarcodeScanner.

Other Barcode Scanners?: We are also testing additional models. If you have experience with other barcode scanners, please get in touch, we’d love to learn about them. Some scanners work poorly with immunization boxes and vials that have a dark background behind the barcode. If you buy a low-quality scanner, you may be dissatisfied with performance.

Figure Out Your Workflow

Finally, get your staff together and play with the scanner in the Lot Manager in PCC EHR.

You’ll notice that if you scan a lot number that is already active, it will open up that lot for you so you can make changes. You may need to adjust your usual workflow for adding lots and how you move/mark boxes to indicate that they’ve been added to your PCC EHR inventory.

Give Us a Call!

Throughout the process, feel free to give us a call. Barcode scanning is new to PCC too, and we want to hear what works for you. We can also help you figure out how to use the new features in the Lot Manager and we can give you the latest news on scanners we are testing.

ThinLinc, Virtual PCC EHR Access: Barcode scanners work great on PC and Apple workstations, whether connecting to your server with the PCC EHR client application or via an RDP connection. They do not work as well with some browser-based ThinLinc connections. Contact your Client Advocate if you wish to perform barcode scanning from a remote location and you use a ThinLinc connection.

Review and Update Immunization Configuration, Procedure Codes, CVX and MVX Codes

PCC 8.3’s tools and reports support the latest flu vaccines, and barcode scanning is based on CVX codes on the immunizations that you administer. That makes the PCC 8.3 update a great time to review your immunization configuration and add, remove, or update details for the immunizations at your practice.

Contact your PCC Client Advocate to help with this process.

If you use a barcode scanner on an immunization that is not recognized by your system, it may mean your system’s CVX codes are not up-to-date. You can learn how to review and fix that by reading the CVX and MVX Codes in PCC article.

You can learn more about adding and updating your system’s immunization procedures by reading the Add and Configure Immunization and Medication Procedures in Partner article.

Create a New “Account Balance” Clinical Alert, or Other Account-Based Alerts

You can now create Clinical Alerts based on any account status. That means PCC EHR can warn your staff if a family has a billing problem, or other issue you track with account status flags.

You can edit and update alerts in PCC EHR in the “Clinical Alerts Editor” under the Tools menu.



Set Up Addresses in the New Direct Secure Messaging Addressbook

Does your practice use Direct Secure Messaging to communicate with other health care providers? If you do, you can now use PCC EHR’s Professional Contact Manager to create a practice-wide list of your common contacts and their Direct Secure Messaging addresses. After your PCC 8.3 update, you may want to spend some time in the Professional Contact Manager adding your frequent contacts.




For more information about starting up with DSM at your practice, read the Direct Secure Messaging article.

Update Practice Vitals Dashboard Bookmarks

The underlying web tools used to host your Practice Vitals Dashboard have been updated.

If someone at your practice accesses the Dashboard from an external Web browser and uses bookmarks, they may need to visit dashboard.pcc.com, log in, and create a new bookmark.

In January of 2018, PCC will release a special “Appointment Book” version of our electronic charting and practice management software.

The PCC 8.2 release includes major updates to the Appointment Book in PCC EHR, improving scheduling workflow for your practice. PCC’s SAM scheduler has powerful scheduling features, and in this special release we take some of these important functions and innovate and improve upon them in the fast, visual, and easy-to-use interface of PCC’s Appointment Book.

Watch a Video: Want to watch a video summary of everything in this release? CLICK HERE

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

Multiple Schedulers Can Book Appointments Without Fear of Double-Booking

As you schedule in PCC EHR’s Appointment Book, you will see if any other users are setting up appointments simultaneously.

If another scheduler has selected a time slot, it will appear on your screen with an ellipsis and the name of the scheduler. If you click on a held time slot, the Appointment Details panel in the lower-right corner will also show that there is scheduling in progress.

If you hold a time slot, the Appointment Book will continue to hold it if you open the patient’s chart, visit another tab, or perform another action. As long as the time slot remains selected, the Appointment Book will hold the time for you.

If you want to free up the cell you are holding, or if you are in the Appointment Book but do not wish to hold a specific cell, you can click the “Clear” button.

If you have permission to force in appointments, you can override your co-worker’s hold on a time slot.

Find Available Time Slots Across Multiple Providers

When a patient needs an appointment right away, it’s helpful to see availability for all of your providers at one time.

If you are trying to schedule an appointment and the provider is not available, select “All” from the Provider drop-down menu.

You can also click on the new “Day” button to display all providers’ schedules for the selected day. If you don’t already have a day selected, the current day will be displayed.

The new “Day” view displays the day’s schedule for all of your providers simultaneously in a clear, easy-to-read grid. You can flip through the Appointment Book and quickly find the right day, time, and provider to meet the patient and family’s needs.

If you click on the “Sun-Sat” or “Mon-Fri” buttons to go back to a week view, the Appointment Book will remember the provider whose schedule you were viewing.

Custom Visit Durations in 5-Minute Increments

In a busy practice, you may need to schedule sick visits for 5 minutes, rechecks for 10, and well visits for 15, 20, 25 or 30 minutes, depending on doctor preference. PCC’s Appointment Book now supports visit lengths of any 5-minute increment.

Use the Visit Reason Editor tool to set visit durations for each visit reason, for each provider, in 5-minute increments.

Short Appointment Lengths

As you design your schedule, remember that short appointments will all begin at the same start time in a single time slot. For example, if you use the default 15-minute Appointment Book time grid, you could schedule up to three separate 5-minute appointments, all set to begin at the same time.

Appointments appear on the grid in the order that they were scheduled. When there is more than one appointment in a time slot, the Appointment Details panel includes a tab for each visit.

Click on any appointment within a cell to display the details for that appointment, or use the tabs to review details for each appointment scheduled at that time.

Dynamic Use of Available Time Prevents Over-Booking

The Appointment Book will automatically accomodate longer appointments and, if necessary, fill time into the next cell.

Appointments will only borrow from the next time slot if there is sufficient time available. It will never change the start time of other appointments.

See Overbooked Time Slots At-A-Glance

If there is no room to push longer appointments into the next cell, you will need to have “force” permission to overbook a cell.

Overbooked appointments will stack side-by-side or one on top of the other. When a timeslot is overbooked or double-booked, you’ll see a patterned background indicating that the time is overstuffed.

You can use this visual indicator to quickly understand all the places where the day will be extra busy.

See Patient and Account Alerts Before You Schedule

PCC’s Appointment Book can now alert you to any important patient or account statuses, right after you select the patient to schedule. Your front desk staff will know immediately whether to schedule the patient, or if something else needs to happen first.

When you find a patient in the Appointment Book who meets the criteria for a scheduling alert, the alert will appear over the scheduling screen as soon as you select that patient.

You can click “Continue” to ignore the alert and schedule the appointment.

Appointment Book Only: Scheduling alerts don’t appear when you click “Create Visit” in the patient chart. If you want to make sure you cover that option as well, you can configure the alert to also appear whenever a patient’s chart is opened.

Configure Scheduling Alerts in the Clinical Alerts Tool

PCC EHR can alert you to important issues, based on a wide range of demographic and clinical criteria, including your practice’s customizable status flags.

Use the Clinical Alerts tool to configure your practice’s alerts. You can now set alerts to appear during scheduling.

When you configure your practice’s Clinical Alerts, you can now use the “Account Flag” Demographic criteria option.

Billing issues are the most commonly used account statuses that may need a scheduling alert, but your practice could create alerts for any account status.

Scale the Appointment Book to See More of Your Day

Adjust the scale slider in the lower-right corner of the Appointment Book to adjust how much of the day appears on your screen.

You can “zoom out” to see more of the day and find open time slots. PCC EHR will remember your preferred scale, even if you log out.

Choose the Appointment Book Display Unit for Your Practice

Your practice can now configure your Appointment Book display grid in time units that work best for your office.

You can choose from time slots of 10, 15, 20 or 30 minutes.

The Appointment Book’s time unit determines the start times of your appointments. For example, if you use a 20 minute unit, all of your appointments in the 9:00 hour would begin at 9:00, 9:20, or 9:40.

Contact PCC Support to configure your Appointment Book scheduling grid.

Select Your Login Location in PCC EHR

If your practice has more than one location, you can now select that location when you log in.

You can select whether or not you want PCC EHR to remember your selection for all future logins, or you can have it prompt you each time you log in. You can also adjust your location later in the My Account tool, located in the File menu.

In upcoming releases, you’ll see enhanced features that use your location and provide location-based form letters, reports, and other settings.

In PCC 8.2, if two practice locations have different immunization school forms, PCC EHR will make sure you get the right form based on your location.

Set Locations For Your Staff: As needed, your practice’s system administrator can change default login locations for any user in the User Administration tool.

Get in Touch: Your PCC system keeps track of scheduling locations, billing locations, and places of service. Your Client Advocate can work with you to sort out exactly which locations should be configured for various features.

Print School Forms from PCC EHR

Click “Print” at the top of a patient’s Immunization record to generate your practice’s customizable school form.

If your office has multiple school form formats, you can select the one you want before printing.

If you don’t see the school form you expect, get in touch with your PCC Client Advocate. They can help you customize and configure your school form(s) so they are available and print correctly from PCC EHR.

VFC Updates and Improvements

PCC EHR now supports IIS-specific VFC eligibility statuses and will display the code next to each status.

You’ll have access to exactly the codes you need for your state registry. You can quickly and easily make sure the right one is recorded for your state’s registry needs.

If you don’t see a code you need, or see codes that your practice will never need, your PCC Client Advocate can help you customize the list.

Other Feature Improvements and Bug Fixes in PCC 8.2

In addition to the features described above, PCC 8.2 includes these smaller improvements and squashed bugs.

• Lab Configuration is Easier with Lab Name Search: When you configure labs in the Lab Configuration tool, you can now search for labs by name.

• Clearer Labelling for Weight-Based Dosing: As part of a mid-release patch, PCC improved the wording in the Prescriptions section of the chart when a prescriber selects a weight-based dosing statement. For more information on the ongoing improvements to PCC eRx, read Mid-Release Updates to PCC eRx.

• 'My Account' User Settings Moved to the File Menu: When individual users need to change their password or other personal account settings, they can now click on the File menu and select “My Account”.

• New and Updated Immunization Interfaces: PCC 8.2 updates and improves our HL7 immunization registries with Vermont (VITL), New Jersey (NJIIS), Texas (ImmTrac) and Michigan.

• Inactive Patients in Dashboard Screening Measures: Your Practice Vitals Dashboard measures on adolescent and developmental screening will now exclude patients who have been marked “Inactive”. Previously, these measures worked based on visit date only, and might have erroneously included patients who recently left the practice.

In October of 2017, PCC will release version 8.1 of our electronic charting and practice management software to all PCC users.

The PCC 8.1 release includes an update to the look and feel of PCC EHR, along with a massive under-the-hood maintenance update. While much of this release’s work-hours were spent updating our programming infrastructure, PCC 8.1 also includes a new option for personal balances in the patient portal and customizable reports in PCC EHR.

Watch a Video: Want to watch a video summary of everything in this release? CLICK HERE

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

PCC EHR’s New Look and Feel

PCC EHR has been updated to appear the same on your screen, whether you access it from work or home, from a Mac or a PC.

With new graphic elements and a brighter, clearer presentation, PCC EHR screens are easier to read and review.

New PCC EHR Icon

The first thing you will notice when you use PCC EHR is that the “blue man” is gone. The new desktop icon is consistent with PCC’s logo colors and design.

The new icon will also appear on the login screen and the PCC Home button.

Where Did EHR Client Go?: On Apple computers, if you formerly clicked on “ehrclient” to launch PCC EHR, you will notice the new icon with a new name of “PCC EHR”.

New Fonts and Color Scheme Easier to Read and Use

PCC EHR now uses standard, embedded fonts across all operating systems, for a consistent experience on any platform.

The font size has been increased and the background color has been lightened to give PCC EHR a brighter, sharper overall appearance.

Find Components More Easily

PCC 8.1 makes PCC EHR’s component blue title-highlighting feature clearer and more visible than before. When you click on an anchor navigation button for a chart note or other “ribbon” in PCC EHR, it is now easier to quickly identify where the component appears on the screen.

Families Can Review Balances in the Patient Portal

Personal balance information can now be displayed in the patient portal, reminding your patients to pay you.

When enabled by your practice, the portal will display the personal balance for the selected billing account.

What charges will show up?: The information shown in the portal is not necessarily reflective of all charges for the billing account. Charges will only be included if there is an unpaid balance on the visit. Pending insurance will be displayed if there is also a personal amount due. Credit balances will not be displayed. Portal users will not see any data for patients who are not connected to their portal account, or who have privacy enabled.

Turn on Personal Balance for an Individual Portal User

You can decide for each portal user whether it is appropriate to show the personal balance for the patient(s) they are connected to in the portal.

When you set up or edit a portal user’s account, you can select a billing account that is associated with the patient(s) who the portal user is connected to.

The selection defaults to “Do not display balance”. Users will only see the balance if the portal administrator decides to change the selection.

In the above example, the portal administrator decided not to have Wilma’s portal account include personal balance information, since the billing account was in Fred’s name. If the practice chose to show balance information, Wilma would only see the charges that were outstanding for Pebbles, since Dino’s name is in italics (indicating that his information will not be visible to Wilma).

Turn off the Personal Balance Feature for All Portal Users

If your practice decides not to display personal balance information on your patient portal, you can turn this feature off.

To disable this feature, un-check the Personal Balance selection in the Configuration tab of the Patient Portal Manager.

Create Custom PCC EHR Reports

You can now generate and save custom reports in PCC EHR.

To create a custom report, click the “Customize Report” button at the bottom of any existing report.

Here you can give the report a new title and description, and select which criteria you want to appear on the report. Selection boxes here are sticky, so any options you choose on the Customize Report screen will be the default selections when you run the report.

When you have made your selections, click “Preview”.

In this report preview, you can select which columns will display by default when you run the new report. You can also click “Back” to make any adjustments. To save the new report, click “Save As”.

Once you have saved your new report, you can run it just like any other report. It will appear in the Report Library listed alphabetically along with all other reports.

Editing and Deleting Existing Reports

You can edit or delete any custom report. When you open the report, click the “Customize Report” button.

New Patient Immunization Administration Summary Report

Use the new Patient Immunization Administration Summary report to find all patients who may need to complete a series of immunizations.

In this example, we’ve run a report on all patients from 6 months to 8 years old who have been in in the last year, but haven’t had or completed their recommended flu vaccinations. You could also run reports to find patients with an incomplete vaccine series.

HPV Merck Program: You could use the Patient Immunization Administration Summary report for HPV vaccines to identify patients for the Merck “Health In Focus” program.

Shotcount: Some practices may have worked with their CA to run the shotcount script to get some of this same information. The Patient Immunization Administration Summary report replaces that process.

Updates to PCC eRx During the PCC 8.1 Release Cycle

The PCC 8.0 release included the all-new PCC eRx. Since the official PCC 8.0 release, PCC has rolled out dozens of updates, adjustments, and quick fixes to bugs that you helped us find. Below are some of the PCC eRx updates and fixes that arrived on your system between PCC 8.0 and PCC 8.1.

May and June

Highlights from PCC eRx patches delivered in May and June include:

• Faster: After the PCC 8.0 release, we tracked down many performance issues, including a “slow typing” effect and slow Rx Queue performance. We were able to improve PCC eRx performance without a full update.

• Renewal Requests for Controlled Substances: Authorized prescribers can now approve or deny EPCS renewal requests. They will appear on your Rx Queue.

• DNTF: The “Deny, New Request to Follow” feature for renewal requests now works as expected for electronic renewal requests on your Rx Queue. Note that DNTF does not yet work for EPCS renewals, so for now please deny and then create a new Rx instead for controlled substances.

• Rx Queue History Update: When you review the Rx Queue history, you can now see more information. You’ll see details for denials or DNTF, including the patient, provider, action, and denial reason. You can also review the date a renewal request was made and responded to, and any notes to the pharmacy.

• Patient Mismatch for Renewals: PCC eRx prompts you to find a patient whose name doesn’t quite match a renewal request. This process now works better and allows you to approve a pending refill prescription.

• Better EPCS Token Validation: The EPCS ID-Proofing process was improved with better token ID validation.

• Editing Finalized Prescriptions: It is now impossible to accidentally edit a prescription that has already been finalized and sent.

• New Configuration Option for Discontinuing Medications: Your practice can decide whether you want to be prompted for the “reason for deleting” a medication, a message that appears when you delete a medication from a patient’s record. Contact your PCC Client Advocate for help with this option or other PCC eRx configuration options.

• Support of Ohio Drug Reporting Requirements: Ohio pediatric practices can now generate a Daily Prescription Report from the RxQueue. They can use this report to meet Ohio’s 2-factor identification requirement.

• Fix for eRx Allergies Migrated from DrFirst: If a patient had an allergy listed in the previous prescription system, and that allergy was updated or changed, under certain circumstances those changes would not appear on the patient’s Medical Summary screen. This no longer occurs.

• Improved Support for Pharmacy-Initiated Renewal Requests: Under certain circumstances, it was not possible to approve a renewal request. PCC has improved how this function works.

• Printing: PCC made numerous improvements to printed prescriptions between the 8.0 and 8.1 releases, including alignment and placement of practice name and margins.

July

Highlights from the 7/10 and 8/1 PCC eRx patches include:

• Improved Support For Imported Allergy Records: Under certain circumstances, allergy data from the prior eRx system (DrFirst) was not appearing correctly. In addition, due to DrFirst’s data format, manual updates to those allergies might not sync to PCC EHR. PCC fixed these problems and updated affected clients.

• Printing EPCS Prescriptions in Ohio: For a brief period after a previous patch, EPCS prescriptions could not be printed in Ohio. This issue was resolved with a quick patch.

• Renewal Requests and the SurescriptsRejectionValidationFailed Error: Some renewal requests from pharmacies could not be approved, accompanied by a “SurescriptsRejectionValidationFailed”. This issue has been fixed.

• Pharmacy Name Missing from Review & Sign Component: Under certain circumstances, the pharmacy name was not available when hovering over a prescription in the Review and Sign component. Now it is.

• Improved Rx Queue Refresh: PCC has improved how the Rx Queue counter and list refreshes.

• Retail Rx Hx Results: Due to a mismatch in identifying a pediatric practice’s location NPI, Retail Rx histories sometimes showed very few results, particularly for Provider Agents and Clinical Staff. This has been corrected.

• PCC eRx 'asynchronous error': When a laptop’s internet connection failed, users would sometimes see a “An asynchronous error has occurred while processing your request” message. This has been corrected.

• Formulary Info Absent: PCC eRx has improved eligibility and formulary matching and will now display formulary information when available.

• Dispense Quantity: Under certain circumstances, incorrect dispense quantity could appear on a prescription. This no longer occurs.

• Prescription Component Update Improved: Under certain circumstances, a patient’s prescription component would not update immediately due to a logjam of interface requests. This no longer occurs.

• Prescription Interface Restoring After Down Time: If a practice’s connection to the eRx service was interrupted for more than an hour, it could encounter problems dealing with the message backlog afterwards. This process now works better.

• Improved Prescription Audit report: Under certain circumstances, the Rx Audit and Audit Log reports would fail to run. This no longer occurs.

• Improved Pharmacy Searching: The pharmacy search field is now more responsive. The search field also now accepts unusual characters.

August and September

Highlights from patches delivered in August and September include:

• Prescription Errors Could Cause a Backlog of Updates: If a prescription was unsuccessful for some reason, prescription information could stop synching back to the patient’s chart in PCC EHR. This will no longer happen.

• Inaccurate 'Patient Record Modified By Another User' Message: Prescribers would occasionally see an error message in PCC eRx stating that, “Patient record has prescriptions that have been modified by another user. Click Ok to reload the page.” This message was appearing when it should not. This issue has been fixed.

• Renewal Requests with Unspecified Quantity: Renewal requests for prescriptions marked PRN, or with a dispense quantity of “Unspecified”, could result in incomplete prescriptions in the Review and Sign component that can not be completed. This issue has been fixed.

• The Sleepy Search: Repeating a Search for a Medication Appeared to Freeze: If a prescriber searched for a medication and then repeated the search, under certain circumstances the search would appear to hang or freeze, unless they typed a different search. This no longer occurs.

• Improved Pharmacy Search Results: Some practices had problems searching for pharmacies, due to a set of missing zip codes. We have added the new zip code information to PCC eRx’s zip code library, which will improve pharmacy searching.

• Norvelt Pharmacy Rejections: Under certain circumstances, a code error caused Norvelt (and possibly other pharmacies) to reject electronic prescriptions. This no longer occurs.

• Duplicate Strengths When Renewing From History: When a user renewed a prescription from the patient’s Prescription Hx or Medication Hx, it was possible to click on options in such a way that the strength appeared twice in the prescription. This will no long occur.

• Incorrect Dispense Quantity: For certain medication forms (such as inhalers, patches, and pumps), conversions between dosing forms could occasionally cause the wrong dispense quantity to be sent to pharmacies. This no longer occurs.

More Updates Soon!: PCC’s eRx team continues to monitor and troubleshoot errors, large and small, and we will update this list to reflect the latest news of patches in the PCC 8.0 to PCC 8.1 release cycle. If you are experiencing any issues with PCC eRx, chat with your client advocate and let us know!

For more information about PCC eRx, visit PCC’s library of PCC eRx training videos and documentation. We add new eRx videos and materials every month.

Global Opt-In For Text and Phone Notifications

If your practice uses Patient Notifications to send families text and phone messages about upcoming appointments and other issues, you will no longer need to have them “opt-in” with a text message before they can receive messages.

PCC is transitioning practices to use global opt-in during the PCC 8.1 release cycle. For more information, you can read PCC’s Notify Update Announcement Letter, and for more about best practices for handling consent-to-contact, read Best Practices for Use of Automated Communications. Contact your PCC Client Advocate if you have any questions.

PCC EHR “Under the Hood” Infrastructure Update

The “biggest” new feature in PCC 8.1 is mostly invisible: a program infrastructure update for PCC EHR.

This update improves PCC EHR’s stability and paves the way for new features and improvements in the coming year.

There are also some minor improvements you may notice right away:

• Video Audio from Newsfeed: When you click to view a PCC video from inside the PCC Newsfeed, audio now plays correctly for Apple Macintosh and Windows users.

• Cloud Components Display Improved: PCC 8.1 includes a heavily updated web engine, which improves display and rendering of all cloud-based components of PCC EHR, including tools like Patient Education, PCC eRx, and patient portal administration.

• Better Support for High DPI ('Retina') Computer Screens: The PCC 8.1 infrastructure update includes improvements to onscreen rendering and support of high resolution screens.

• Improved Security Options: The infrastructure changes in PCC 8.1 provide PCC EHR with tools it can use to improve security and adapt to upcoming security standards.

2013 Apple OS X 10.9 No Longer Supported: PCC 8.1 does not support the 2013 Mac OSX 10.9 operating system. If you have Apple Macintosh workstations in your practice that run OS X 10.9, you should run a software update before the PCC 8.1 release. MacOS updates are free and can be performed over the internet through the App store application.

New and Updated Interfaces Available in PCC 8.1

With each release, PCC’s Interoperability team expands and updates PCC’s direct connections, partnerships, and integrations with insurance payers, immunization registries, and more. Here are the interoperability updates for PCC 8.1:

• New and Updated Immunization Interfaces: As part of the PCC 8.1 release, PCC updated or developed new immunization registry interfaces for Ohio (OHIIS), Texas (ImmTrac), New Jersey (NJIIS), and Pennsylvania (PASIS).

• New Clinical Interfaces in PCC EHR: PCC developed a new lab interface with Princeton Medical Center, who can now send electronic test results directly to PCC EHR. In addition, PCC updated our clinical data interfaces with Wellcentive and Valence Health.

• New Eligibility Interfaces: PCC developed new real-time insurance eligibility interfaces with Western Southern Life, Meritain Health, and GEHA. PCC also updated our eligibility interfaces with BCBS of Kansas, Centene, and Blue Cross Centennial. You can view patient eligibility information during patient check-in as well as in the Eligibility (elig) program.

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

ICD-10 2018 Update

On September 17th, 2017, PCC will update all PCC products and services to include the 2018 ICD-10 descriptions and codes. Your practice will be ready for the 2018 ICD-10 code changes, which take effect on 10/01/2017.

The ICD-10 update includes new codes for Neonatal encephalopathy, risk of dental caries, and other new codes and revisions to codes your practice may use. PCC’s certified coder, Jan Blanchard, has collected a list of interesting codes for pediatricians. She will share her findings and answer questions in her regular monthly coding weblabs.

New Codes of Interest to Pediatricians

F50.82 Avoidant/restrictive food intake disorder	P29.30 Pulmonary hypertension of newborn	P29.38 Other persistent fetal circulation	P78.84 Gestational alloimmune liver disease
P83.81 Umbilical granuloma	P83.88 Other specified conditions of integument specific to newborn	P91.811 Neonatal encephalopathy in diseases classified elsewhere	P91.819 Neonatal encephalopathy, unspecified
P91.88 Other specified disturbances of cerebral status of newborn	Q53.111 Unilateral intraabdominal testis	Q53.112 Unilateral inguinal testis	Q53.13 Unilateral high scrotal testis
Q53.211 Bilateral intraabdominal testes	Q53.212 Bilateral inguinal testes	Q53.23 Bilateral high scrotal testes	R06.03 Acute respiratory distress
R39.83 Unilateral non-palpable testicle	R39.84 Bilateral non-palpable testicles	T14.91XA Suicide attempt, initial encounter	T14.91XD Suicide attempt, subsequent encounter
T14.91XS Suicide attempt, sequela	Z71.82 Exercise counseling	Z91.841 Risk for dental caries, low	Z91.842 Risk for dental caries, moderate
Z91.843 Risk for dental caries, high	Z91.849 Unspecified risk for dental caries

Deleted (Replaced with greater specificity) Codes of Interest to Pediatricians

N63 Unspecified lump in breast (laterality, quadrant)	P83.8 Other specified conditions of integument specific to newborn (specific condition)	P91.8 Other specified disturbances of cerebral status of newborn (specific condition)
Q53.11 Abdominal testis, unilateral (location)	Q53.21 Abdominal testis, bilateral (location)	T14.91 Suicide attempt (encounter)

Revised Code Descriptions of Interest to Pediatricians

F41.0 Panic disorder [episodic paroxysmal anxiety]

Q82.2 Congenital cutaneous mastocytosis

Z68.1 Body mass index (BMI) 19.9 or less, adult

Z79.890 Hormone replacement therapy

As always, PCC software will intelligently implement the new code set changes. If your billers attempt to bill with a retired ICD-10 code, they’ll see a warning when they attempt to post charges (in checkout) and the claim will be held for review before it leaves your practice (in ecs when you generate claims).

Map Codes for Billing: After the 9/17/2017 ICD-10 patch, you may wish to review billing configuration for your diagnoses and take advantage of new ICD-10 codes. You can use the snomedmap report to review ICD-10 code changes on the codes you use, and you can open the Billing Configuration tool to configure which ICD-10 diagnoses are mapped to each SNOMED-CT description in PCC EHR.

Not Yet Ready for CQM 0024 for PCMH or Meaningful Use: One of the new 2018 ICD-10 billing codes is “Z71.82 Exercise counseling”. This code has not yet been integrated into the CQM requirement reporting and will not improve your practice’s score for the counseling element of CQM 0024, “Weight assessment and counseling for nutrition and physical activity”. For more information about how to configure PCC EHR and chart a visit in order to meet Clinical Quality Measures for PCMH recognition, read How to Chart for Each Clinical Quality Measure.

Other Feature Improvements and Bug Fixes in PCC 8.1

In addition to the features described above, PCC 8.1 includes these smaller improvements and squashed bugs.

• Better Process for New Labs in Interfaces: When PCC EHR receives an electronic lab result that it doesn’t recognize, PCC EHR will now automatically add the order codes into your system so you can add them to a Lab Order. You can set up the lab order in the Lab Configuration tool right away, and then import the lab results to the patient’s chart. You no longer need to call PCC Support for assistance.

• PCC EHR Report Library Search Field Improvement: If you search for a patient or for other data in a PCC EHR Report Library filter, such as the patient search in the Prescription Activity report, you can now click an “x” to erase the field and search for a new patient.

• Visit Status Counter Refresh: Under certain circumstances, the Visit Status Counters in the lower-right corner of PCC EHR would not update immediately after you logged in. Now they will.

• PCC Learn Videos Required Full Screen: On some computers, videos on learn.pcc.com would not appear until you clicked the “Full Screen” option. PCC has recompiled these videos and they will appear and play as soon as you visit the video’s page.

Macintosh Users Will Experience an Extra Minute During the Update

If you use Apple Macintosh computers in your office, your staff may notice that the installer will take a little extra time during the update.

PCC 8.1 includes easier to read fonts and colors, and the installer needs to rebuild your Macintosh’s font cache.

Contact your PCC Client Advocate or the PCC Technical Solutions Team with any questions about completing the PCC EHR update on your Mac.

Windows Users May Need to Review and Adjust Font Scaling After Your Update

The new PCC 8.1 does a better job of displaying fonts in appropriate sizes on your screen. If you or any of your colleagues have used Microsoft Windows’s built-in tools for increasing font sizes, usually found in the Display Settings control panel, you may need to make adjustments after your PCC 8.1 update.

For more information, read How to Adjust Computer Workstation Font Sizes.