Storm and Emergency Preparation
When bad weather or other emergencies approach, your practice’s medical and financial data may be the last thing on your mind. By taking a few simple precautions, you can protect your equipment as well as your patient database and accounts receivable records.
PCC’s Support Team recommends the following emergency preparation measures. If you have any questions or concerns, call us at 802-846-8177 or 800-722-7708. Follow these steps whenever there is a risk of power failure, electrical storm, or flooding in your region.
What if I'm in a hurry? And what does my PCC equipment look like?: If you need to shut down your server immediately, follow the instructions on the Shut Down Your Server article. You can see photos of the PCC equipment in your office on the PCC Hardware Overview article.
Print Out a Week’s Schedule
If there’s a risk you may be without Internet or a working computer system, PCC recommends you open the Report Library in PCC EHR and generate a report for upcoming appointments. You can customize your report to include patient contact information or any additional information you may need.
Protect the On-Premises Physical PCC Server at Your Practice
If you have a physical PCC server located at your practice, perform the following steps.
Perform a Backup
Run a System Image Backup of your server. Although a backup is run automatically every night, you can perform one manually at any time.
First, ask all users to log off the system. Next, type backups at a command prompt or choose “Backup the System” from the System Administrator window. From the list of options in the backups program, choose “System Image Backup.”
Contact PCC Support for a Remote Backup: Please contact PCC support as soon as you know you want to shutdown your PCC equipment, and at least four hours before you plan to shut your system down, so that we can initiate a remote backup. A remote backup may take several hours to complete and the system should only be used for lookup purposes during that time. Any changes you make once the remote backup is started could be lost if we need to restore your system. Once the remote backup is complete, you may shutdown your system.
Shut Down the Server
Shut your server(s) down and turn off the power. Follow the instructions on the Shut Down Your Server help article.
For most systems, simply run the Shutdown program in the System Administrator window, or log in as the root user and type shutdown -h now at a command prompt. Once you see the “Power Down” message on the console screen, your system may power down automatically. If not, press and hold the power button on the front of the server until the machine turns off.
Nightly Backups Will Not Occur While Server is Off: If your server is shut down overnight, normal nightly cleanup programs will not run. They will run the first night after the server is turned back on. Some complex financial aging reports, for example, may not be up-to-date after a night with no power.
Turn Off and Unplug the APC UPS
Your server and other PCC hardware are plugged into an APC UPS battery backup device in your office or server location. The device provides some protection against unexpected surges and brown-outs.
If you know ahead of time that your power may fail or office may flood, you should turn off the APC and unplug it from the wall for added protection.
Use Caution When Working with Your UPS: Your APC UPS device is a large battery. Even when it is unplugged, it has enough current to cause harm or death. Treat it as you would any live electrical outlet.
Turn Off and Unplug Other Equipment
Turn off your printers, PCs, and all other electrical equipment. Even if you use surge protectors around your office, unplugging your PCs and printers will better prevent electrical damage.
Unplug Internet, FAX, and Other Communication Devices
If possible, disconnect your ISP modem (cable, DSL, etc.) and FAX machine phone lines. A power surge on a phone or coaxial cable internet line can also damage your equipment. Contact your phone system provider for information about protecting that equipment.
Consider Covering or Moving the Server and Other Equipment
If there is a possibility of flooding, you should raise the server and other equipment off of the floor and use plastic tarps to prevent water damage. Do not wrap your server in a plastic tarp while it is still running.
Move to a Safe Location
As always, remember that your safety and the safety of your patients is far more important than your equipment. Do not return to your office to perform the above steps unless it is safe to do so.
Stay In Touch
Please call PCC Support (802-846-8177 or 800-722-7708) if you need assistance performing the above steps or if you have any questions. Remember that we are available 24 hours a day and seven days a week for emergency calls.
Installation Specifications for PCC Systems
Introduction
Welcome to PCC. The instructions below contain a detailed explanation of the hardware installation requirements for PCC systems. These specifications define what is included in your PCC Customer Care Plan and provide information to help you avoid problems during the design and installation of your office network.
Please read these instructions carefully, whether you are a new PCC client, opening a new office, or upgrading your existing PCC hardware. Offices that do not adhere to these guidelines violate the terms of their subscription agreements with PCC and may also experience system problems and service delays.
If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to call PCC Support at 802-846-8177 or 800-722-7708, or send your question to support@pcc.com. We are always glad to help!
Read a Summary of Network and Equipment Services: PCC's Technical Solutions Team provides a Network and Equipment Services guide which includes answers to common questions around what PCC installs, how equipment is maintained, how backups are performed, and more.
The PCC Server
Unless otherwise specified, your PCC system will be a LINUX-based server network. This section includes important guidelines for the placement and maintenance of your server.
- PCC recommends that you place the PCC Server away from the front-desk area to limit its exposure to physical activity.
- The PCC Server consists of the computer itself, a monitor, and keyboard. The monitor and keyboard are often called “the console.” The console must be within two feet of the Server.
- A typical layout places the PCC Server on a firm, level desk or held vertically in a computer stand. The PCC Server may have a number of peripheral devices attached directly to it (an uninterruptible power supply, a modem, a backup drive, network switches, etc.), so make sure you have ample space for the PCC Server.
- Do not use the PCC Server console as a workstation. It is for system operations, backups, error messages, or emergency access to your system.
- The PCC Server and attached equipment should be positioned so that your practice’s System Administrator has easy access to them for daily backup maintenance and troubleshooting. Ideally, a phone should be nearby for support assistance.
- Dust is a computer’s worst enemy. Please make sure that the new home for your PCC system is thoroughly cleaned before the computer is installed. Also, please make arrangements for the area around the computer to be cleaned on a weekly basis. Cleaning should be done by someone familiar with the computer system so that if cables or adapters are accidentally knocked loose they can be properly reconnected.
- Ventilation is also very important for your computer. It is preferable to set up the system on a shelf where it is free from other objects and can ventilate properly. If you plan on putting the computer in a closet, make sure the closet is properly ventilated and that the server has ample space around it.
- During a typical install visit, PCC installs your server and connected equipment. However, PCC 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.
- If you need to reinstall or move your practice’s PCC Server (such as in the event of an office move), PCC can provide free telephone assistance, given 2 weeks notice. PCC can also visit your office and reinstall the hardware for a standard per-day on-site charge.
Other Approved Hardware
The purchase and installation cost of your PCC Server and some associated equipment is included in your subscription plan. The purchase and installation cost of your individual PCs, printers, or other workstations is not. For complete details regarding approved hardware, read the PCC Supported Hardware Guide at learn.pcc.com.
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Placement: Place workstations, terminals, printers, and personal computers where they will be most useful to you. Carefully consider how the hardware will be used. For example, each workstation should have enough room in front of it for a keyboard and should be located near a network outlet and power supply. Laser printers need space to open their paper feed drawers.
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Security Updates and Virus Protection: It is important to perform security updates and maintain virus protection on your personal computers. You should have someone in your office learn how to perform these updates or contract with a local vendor for this service.
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Printers: PCC recommends you purchase network capable, PCL or postscript printers that can meet the demands of a busy office. A typical office might choose to purchase a front-desk printer, a lab area printer, a billing printer, and a centralized copier/printer/scanner. Contact PCC Support at (800)722-1082 or support@pcc.com to discuss your printer options or to check on the compatibility of a specific printer model.
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Setup and Installation Help: PCC can help you install recommended hardware. Hardware purchased after your initial installation will be installed by your System Administrator using phone assistance from PCC.
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Other Included Hardware: A standard PCC installation includes one or more network switches, an Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS), and an external modem. You may wish to purchase other equipment, such as additional surge protectors for your individual PCs, but you do not need to supply one for your PCC Server.
Internet Requirements
Operation of your PCC products requires a reliable internet connection of sufficient bandwidth and speed. Business-class internet service over fiber or cable is strongly recommended. PCC will verify that the service you currently have is adequate. If you are ordering new service or upgrading existing service, PCC can help you with your internet service order. PCC requires that your internet service be operational before we install your server and network equipment.
PCC will work closely with you to help you chose the right service. PCC’s minimum requirements are an internet connection with a download speed of 10 Mbps and an upload speed of 3 Mbps. Internet service with download speed of 25 Mbps or better and an upload speed of 5 Mbps or better will give your office superior performance. These requirements may change over time. If you have remote offices that will be connecting to your main office over the internet, there may be additional requirements. PCC requires that your internet service be provisioned with a static IP address. If fiber or cable is unavailable at your office location(s), or you cannot otherwise purchase service that meets our requirements, PCC will work with you to see what other options are available.
Your internet service provider’s (ISP) equipment should be terminated near your PCC router, typically at the PCC server location. Your ISP may require the purchase of a cable modem or similar device, but you do not need to purchase a router or firewall (PCC will provide one). PCC will manage routing of the internet connection and sharing it with the computers in your office.
Electrical Requirements
PCC recommends that you install a dedicated, 3 prong, 110 volt, negative-grounded outlet for the PCC Server’s power supply. PCC will supply a power backup unit, also know as an uninterruptible power supply, to protect the PCC Server from power fluctuations and outages. Please make any necessary arrangements with your electrician to ensure that you have a dedicated electrical outlet.
If a dedicated outlet is not installed, you may use a regular wall outlet, provided that it is properly grounded and that there is no electronic equipment on the same circuit with a heavy electrical draw. Equipment that causes problems often includes (but is not limited to) photo copiers, microwave ovens, refrigerators, coffee makers, air conditioners, and most medical equipment. Hardware on a non-dedicated electrical circuit is more likely to experience difficulties due to power draws and surges.
PCC also recommends the use of surge protectors for each of your peripheral devices (PC workstations, printers, modems, etc.).
Cable Requirements and Specifications
PCC requires that your office has a gigabit Ethernet network using Category 5e cabling (or better). PCC will install and maintain network equipment to support a TCP/IP network in your office, including a firewall(s), Ethernet switch(es), and wireless access points as required. PCC will not install the premise cabling upon which the network operates.
You must contract with a local vendor to install or make changes to your office’s network cabling.
General Cabling Guidelines and Recommendations
- All cabling for devices (printers, PC workstations) must run to one central location in the office where PCC will install a network switch and the PCC Server. The design should look a lot like an octopus, with many arms returning to a central location. Do not run a ringed network, resembling a big circle, around the office.
- If you cannot run all cables to the same central location where the PCC server will reside, you can run them to a central location where the switch and hub will be located. You may then need two or more cables running to the PCC Server location from the switch. Contact PCC for help designing your wiring plan.
- Cables must be labeled at both ends for PCC to identify the cables correctly. Installation delays and additional charges can result if cables are not properly labeled.
- For peripherals located more than a few feet from the PCC Server, cables are typically run through the walls, ceilings, and floors of your office. This not only has aesthetic advantages, but it eliminates exposure of your cables to tugging, tearing, and disconnecting. Plan a path for running each cable. Avoid running cables outside of the walls. Where unavoidable, use wiring guides to cover cables that cross between walls. Ideally, there will be a “home run” through which all cables will travel to a patch bay.
- Finally, PCC suggests that you consider running additional cabling to locations that could house workstations or printers in the future. This will save the expense of rehiring an electrician when you expand your office.
Important: Once you have decided where the servers, workstations, and printers will be located in your practice, you need to arrange to have your office cabled properly by an electrician. PCC cannot install cable in the walls, ceilings, or floors of your office.
Technical Details about Your Network
The details below are for network support personnel or your practice’s System Administrator. In the event that you need assistance from a local network support group or if you are really interested in the technical underpinnings of your network configuration, this is where to look first.
Please Note: The information below describes our desired configuration. Your office may use a different network configuration, especially if you had an existing network before your PCC installation.
IP Address Assignment
Your network will be configured using a DHCP server provided by your PCC Server. This means that whenever you turn on a machine that is connected to the network, it will query the DHCP server on the PCC Server for its IP configuration. This allows PCC to keep the entire configuration of your network in one place and makes it easy to expand, enhance, and adjust your network configuration.
Your network will not use static IP addresses entered into each machine. While this is a very easy way to set up a network initially, it is very inflexible and time-consuming to maintain.
Your DHCP server will assign a specific IP address to each network device, based on that device’s unique MAC address. This will allow PCC software to route printing tasks to the appropriate printer.
Please note: If there is an existing network with a DHCP server, the old DHCP server must be disabled so that the PCC Server can provide DHCP services. A network can only have one DHCP server.
Your PCC Server includes an email server and an available e-mail account for each user at your practice. Users can access their email from any browser using the Roundcube mail software. PCC provides training and support for Roundcube.
PCC will only assist you with configuration, support, and troubleshooting of your PCC email account.
Remote Offices
There are many different ways to connect to your PCC Server from a remote location. PCC will help you design and select solutions to meet the needs of your practice.
Remote connections usually require high-speed internet access in both locations and may also involve additional connections, routers, or other equipment.
The wiring in your remote location needs to accommodate the type of remote office connection used. The termination of the internet connection in your remote location must be in an area near the PCs or routers they serve. As with your main office, the wiring design should look like an octopus, with many arms returning to a central location.
You may have a choice of remote office connection solutions with varying prices and features.
DSL or Cable Internet Connections
Cable and DSL internet connections are the two most commonly available high-speed internet solutions. They are usually sold by your local cable television or telephone service provider. In most situations, routers and additional equipment are not necessary.
When each location has a high-speed internet connection using DSL or Cable service, PCC connects the two locations with single or multiple virtual private network connections, as previously described.
PCC Downloads
This page contains software downloads that help you connect to PCC’s software or that facilitate PCC services. Some of these items were created by a third-party. If you are uncertain what download you need, please contact PCC Support at 802-846-8177 or 800-722-7708.
PCC Downloads Page
Each client has their own download page that can be accessed with a web browser and gives you direct access to important PCC downloads, as well as links to PCC support and our online documentation at learn.pcc.com.
The url is simply your PCC acronym followed by pcc.com/downloads. So, if your acronym was ABCD, your downloads page would be at https://ABCD.pcc.com/downloads
PCC EHR
If you need to download or update PCC EHR software for your individual PC or Macintosh computers, follow these instructions:
Macs running the Sequoia operating system may require additional steps when installing PCC EHR for the first time. Please reach out to PCC Support for assistance.
Tools for Connecting From Home
PCC SecureConnect is a secure way to log into your full PCC system from a supported web browser on any laptop or computer that is connected to the internet. Every practice has a PCC SecureConnect login page from day one.
To learn more about how to log in via SecureConnect, read Connect to Your PCC System from Home
You can find information about how to authorize your staff to use SecureConnect in Authorize Users for PCC SecureConnect.
ScreenConnect and ConnectWise View
Your practice can use ScreenConnect and ConnectWise View tools to grant PCC live access to your workstation for faster support, troubleshooting, and training.
To learn more about how to share your screen with PCC during triage calls, read Share your Screen with PCC.
Adding and Managing Patient Portal User Accounts
Parents and patients can use PCC’s patient portal, My Kid’s Chart, to access their medical records. Your practice manages the login account, and grants secure access to each patient’s records. Read the sections below to learn how to create and configure patient portal accounts.
Review and Update Portal Users in a Patient’s Chart
You can use the Patient Portal Users component in PCC EHR to quickly review portal information and see if mom, dad, or another guardian has access to the patient’s records through the patient portal (My Kid’s Chart).
The Patient Portal Users component is in the Patient Check-In ribbon by default, but your practice can add it to phone notes, visit protocols, or wherever it will be useful for your workflow.
In addition to reviewing and updating portal access, you can use the Patient Portal Users component to understand how the family is using the patient portal. You can see the time of last login and if there are unread messages from your practice or documents they have not reviewed yet. You can also see if a billing account for personal balances is assigned for the user.
If a patient has passed your practice’s emancipation age, you will see a message letting you know that the user does not actually have access to a patient’s records.
You can jump straight to the Patient Portal Administration tool from the Patient Portal Users component, if you need to add a new portal user, or manage an existing user’s portal account, just by clicking either the “Add Portal User” or the “Manage Portal User” button.
Add Portal User
At the bottom of the Account Demographics click the “Add” button under Home and Billing Account’s Portal User. If you’ve added both a Home and Billing account, each will have their own, labeled “Home Account’s Portal User” or “Billing Account’s Portal User”. Click “Add” to create a portal user to link to the selected account.
The “Add” button creates a new patient portal user for the selected account. The portal user’s name is filled in automatically. Select a phone or email address to use as the Portal Sign-In. The phone or email you select here will be used to sign in to the patient portal.
Click “Continue” to create the portal user.
The portal account you selected appears in Account Portal User section. If needed, use the “Unlink” button to remove the portal user from this account.
In some cases siblings will share a Home or Billing Account, but not be connected to the same patient portal user.
The Account Portal User section will indicate this situation with the text “Patient… is not connected to this account’s portal user. Manage portal user to add this patient”.
Clicking “Manage” will open the Patient Portal Administration and automatically connect this patient to the portal user.
Open Patient Portal Administration from the Tools Menu
If needed, a Patient Portal account can be created for users other than the PCC EHR Home or Billing account, such as a second parent or other guardian. Unlinked Patient Portal accounts can be created through the Patient Portal Administration, found under PCC EHR’s Tools Menu.
To find a specific portal user, click on the “Manage Portal User” option and search by name, email address, or phone number.
Click on the “select” link to choose an account to work with.
Can't Find It?: If you are not able to open the Patient Portal Administration tool in your Tools menu, contact your office manager. They can use the User Administration tool in PCC EHR to grant you a role with patient portal administration privileges.
Portal User: Identity Verification
User verification helps to prevent email errors and preserves confidentiality.
Each newly enrolled portal user will need to verify the birthdate of the oldest (living) patient on their account before they can access the portal. They will only need to do this the first time they sign in, unless your practice resets their password.
The portal user will get three attempts to choose the correct birth date from their phone’s date selection tool. If they enter the wrong date three times, they will receive a message stating that the answer is incorrect (even if they have finally entered the right date), and they will be locked out of the account for 15 minutes.
The portal user can either wait the 15 minutes and try again, or they can call your office and ask to have their password reset so that they can try again immediately.
Manage a Portal User’s Account
When you need to make changes for a patient portal user, the quickest way to access their account is by clicking “Manage Portal User” from the Patient Portal Users component.
You can check their verification status, reset their password, edit their contact information, delete their account, grant permission to view patient records, and manage or associate a billing account.
Alternate Method: If you are not in the Patient Portal Users component, you can get to the same screen from the Tools menu, as described above.
Track Your Portal Users’ Identity Verification Status in PCC EHR
You can track the status of your portal users’ verification process in both the Portal Administration tool and the Patient Portal Users component, with the “Identity Verification” field.
There are five possible statuses that may appear within this field:
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Never: displays when there have been no attempts to verify
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Verified: displays when the portal user has successfully verified their account, and created a new password
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Incomplete: displays when the verification process was successful, but the user did not continue on and create a new password
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Failed: displays when the portal user’s most recent attempt to verify was unsuccessful
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Never - requires connected patients: displays when there are no patients connected to the portal user (rare)
Reset a Portal User’s Password / Help a Locked Out Portal User
If a portal user forgets their password or gets locked out of their account, they can call your office to have their password reset.
You can reset a portal user’s password in the Patient Portal Administration tool.
If you reset the password, the portal user will need to go through the identity verification process again, which will require them to enter the birthdate for the oldest child on the account.
Add/Remove Permission to View a Patient’s Records
While managing a portal user, click “Add Patients” to grant the user access to a patient’s medical records. Then, search for the patient by name.
From the search results, click “add” to add permissions for one or more patients. Then click “Done”.
You can add additional patients, or click “Add Siblings” to add a sibling, which will provide a list of patients who share a home or billing account with currently connected patients.
The Manage Portal User screen will display a list of all patients that an account user may access.
Click “remove” to remove access to any patient.
Patients From Different Care Centers?: If your office is part of a large, multi-office practice that uses PCC’s Care Centers feature, you will see which care center a patient is assigned to when you search. Use that information to help you connect the correct patient record to the portal user account.
Display Personal Balance and Associate Billing Account
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).
NOTE: If you do not wish to display Personal Balance for any portal users, and you do not plan to accept payments through the portal, you can use the Configuration tab to turn off this feature for your practice.
Privacy and the Patient Portal
Depending on your state or region’s regulations, emancipation age can vary. PCC can handle whatever age your patients’ medical records become their own. For more detailed information about patient privacy in the portal and elsewhere in PCC EHR, read the Patient Privacy Features Overview article.
Automatic Privacy When the Patient Reaches Emancipation Age
When a patient reaches the age of emancipation set by your practice, their record will automatically become private. The “Privacy Enabled” message will appear beside their name.
Users will still be able to see the patient’s name, and send a message to the physician in relation to the patient, but they will have no access to medical information.
Here are some issues to keep in mind:
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Messages Are Still Available: If your practice uses the Messages feature of My Kid’s Chart, parents will still be able to send your office messages and questions in relation to connected patients, even after they turn eighteen. Your staff should keep this in mind when responding to incoming questions on the Messaging queue in PCC EHR.
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18, 16, or 21?: Age eighteen is the My Kid’s Chart default emancipation age, but your practice can set your emancipation age to whatever is applicable for you, based on your state or region’s regulations.
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Grant Access to Adult Patient Records
Your practice can use the Patient Portal Administration tool to grant individuals the right to access a patient’s information after they are over the emancipation age. Do this for the patient themselves if they use My Kid’s Chart, or when special circumstances apply for an adult patient with a guardian.
In the example above, the My Kid’s Chart user Wilma Flintstone has four patient records attached to her account. However, as shown by the “Hide at age 18” column, when three of these children reach eighteen, Wilma will no longer have access to their medical records (Thoracia has turned eighteen already). The exception is Bambam, an adult patient whose records will remain visible to Wilma.
The patient portal administrator can change the status for any of these patients by clicking in the “Hide at age 18” column.
When a patient who is over eighteen opens a new My Kid’s Chart account, your administrator should set this question to “No” for their account, so as not to hide their records from themselves.
Review Connected Patients: When working with a My Kid’s Chart user account, the Age column can help you know what to expect. If a user is over 18, the age will appear in bold red to indicate they are over your state’s emancipation age.
Audit a Patient’s My Kid’s Chart Record Access
If you need to find out who has accessed a patient’s record in your patient portal, you can review the Patient Portal reports from the Report Library.
You can review all users who have accessed a specific patient’s chart or all patient charts that a specific user has accessed, as well as other information about patient portal activity. You can customize reports to work with your practice’s workflow.
For more information about running reports, read the PCC EHR Report Library article.
Keep in mind, if you believe a user has access to a patient record they should not, you can use the instructions in the sections above to add or revoke access to a patient’s record at any time.
If you need additional help with auditing access to patient records through your patient portal, contact PCC Support.
What is My Kid’s Chart, PCC’s Patient Portal?
My Kid’s Chart is an online tool that patients and families can use to access medical records, review lab results, generate an immunization record, review their visit history (including growth charts), send a message to their pediatrician’s office, or pay their bill online.
My Kid’s Chart is designed especially for mobile phones and tablet devices, but families can also log in on any computer browser on any operating system.
The articles in this help section include a user’s guide, instructions for managing user accounts, and a guide to the secure messaging feature.
Contact PCC Support at 802-846-8177 or 800-722-7708 or support@pcc.com for further assistance.
Get a Patient Portal Starter Kit For Your Practice
PCC provides an informational handout for patients and families, registration forms, and custom flyers for your practice.
You can learn more, download the kit, and request a custom flyer on PCC’s Patient Portal Kit page.
You can download and print a manual for patients and families here: My Kid’s Chart User’s Guide.
My Kids Chart Helps Your Office Meet Meaningful Use Standards
When your patient families sign up to use PCC’s patient portal, My Kid’s Chart, you can meet two Meaningful Use requirements:
- Provide Patients with Timely Online Access to Their Health Information: If 10% or more of your visiting patients have a My Kid’s Chart user with access to their records during the reporting period, you will meet this requirement.
- Provide Clinical Summaries to Patients for Each Visit: If 50% or more of your visiting patients have a My Kid’s Chart user with access to their records during the reporting period, you will meet this requirement.
You can also meet these requirements using a combination of reports and other online services, but you can meet both of them more easily with PCC’s patient portal, MyKidsChart.com. Once you are live with MyKidsChart.com, PCC EHR’s Meaningful Use measure report calculates usage for you.
Receive and Respond to Patient Portal Messages from My Kid’s Chart
Patients and family members can use the patient portal (My Kid’s Chart) to send secure messages directly to your practice. Your practice can use PCC EHR to read and respond to messages, create and send new messages to portal users, and communicate with families and answer questions.
Read below to learn how to use PCC EHR to receive and send messages (and attachments) between your practice and users of My Kid’s Chart.
Working in pocketPCC?: You can also read and respond to portal messages in pocketPCC.
Review Incoming Patient Portal Messages
When a parent or other user sends a message to your practice, it will appear on the Messaging tab in PCC EHR.
Your practice can use the Messaging queue to review all incoming messages from My Kid’s Chart (along with phone notes, follow-up tasks, and other items). You can see a summary of the message, including the date, patient, subject, and whether or not there are any attachments. The “From” field lists which Patient Portal user sent the message, and their relationship to the patient, if one has been entered.
As with other queues in PCC EHR, you can use filters to display exactly the items that pertain to you. If it’s your job today to handle incoming portal messages, you can use the “Task” filter to select “Portal Message”.
Read and Reply to a Patient Portal Message
Double-click on a portal message on the Messaging queue to open it.
Inside the portal message protocol, you can read the full text of the portal message, review any attachments, and type a response and send it to the family member. Your office can customize this protocol with additional components and other information.
As you type a reply, you can use chart navigation buttons to review the chart. You can even leave the chart, save a draft of your message, and return later to finish.
If you send a written reply, the My Kid’s Chart user (usually a parent) will get an e-mail telling them that a message awaits. They can log in to My Kid’s Chart to read your reply message.
Portal Message Templates: If a portal message was sent using a Portal Message Template, you may see fields with specific answers. Your practice can customize these templates to help parents enter the correct information when they request an appointment, a prescription refill, or other need. When you see a template, you might schedule an appointment or take other action, or you could create a new task for a different user.
Complete the Message: PCC EHR considers the message incomplete until you send a reply. It will continue to appear on the Messaging queue, will appear in the patient’s Outstanding Tasks component, and be highlighted as needing attention in the Visit History. If you have reviewed a message and it no longer needs a reply, you can click “No Reply”. For example, you may have reached the end of the conversation, or you may have called the sender on the phone or taken a different action.
Add a Summary to Patient Portal Messages
Clarify vague message subjects or add details by adding a summary, which appears in place of the message’s subject line.
Initially, the message’s subject appears in the summary field. Click the text field and edit the summary line, then save your changes.
After saving your changes, the summary line will appear in place of the subject in the Messaging Queue and Patient History. The original subject still appears in the message itself, below the summary line.
Send a New Portal Message to a Portal User
Click “Add Portal Message” to create a new portal message. (You can also find this option in the Edit menu whenever a chart is open.)
If more than one portal user has access to the patient’s records, use the pull-down menu to select the recipient. For example, the message may be for a parent or intended for the teenage patient. The pull-down list will include all patient portal users who have access to the selected patient’s records.
Next, enter a subject and message and click Send. Optionally, you can add attachments or create a task for the Tasks queue based on this message.
Privacy: The message you send will not be sent by e-mail, nor will it be accessible by the patient or by any other parent or guardian, unless they elect to share their My Kid’s Chart login information. The user will receive an e-mail message telling them that a message is waiting for them in My Kid’s Chart. For more information about sending and receiving messages, read the My Kid’s Chart User’s Guide.
Patient Portal Messages vs. Direct Secure Messaging: The patient portal and PCC EHR support two different messaging technologies. Portal messages are a secure, optional messaging tool built into the patient portal. Patient portal users can exchange messages with their pediatric practice, and the practice can receive and send portal messages with PCC EHR or pocketPCC. Direct Secure Messaging, on the other hand, is a specialized message technology used to share and send medical information. It requires registration with a third-party service and it allows for secure transmission of C-CDA transition of care documents or visit summaries. For more information, refer to Receive and Respond to Portal Messages or Direct Secure Messaging.
Send Attachments in a Patient Portal Message
You can send portal messages with attachments. For example, you could send a lab result or important handout in a portal message with an accompanying explanation, and your families will never lose their copy. Families will see your attachments within the portal message, which makes the document much easier to find.
When you are working on a portal message, click “Add Attachment” to add a document.
You can select from the Recent Documents section, or choose a document from another category. Click “Attach” to attach the document.
As you compose your portal message, you can see information about the attachment, and click “Send” to send the message and attachment together.
What will the family see in the patient portal? The attachment will appear in line with the discussion.
The family can click on the attachment to download and view the document.
Send a Private Document Directly to One Portal User
Portal messages are always sent to one, specific portal user. When you attach a document to a message, it will be sent only to that portal user. However, your practice can also make documents visible to all portal users, as part of the patient portal record. What workflow should you follow to ensure that a document is only shared with one user?
For example, if you’re sending contraceptive information to a teenage patient, or a form intended only for a parent, you want to attach a document to a portal message but not have it appear elsewhere on the patient portal.
When you add a private handout or document to a patient’s chart in PCC EHR, make sure that the “Display in Portal Documents” checkbox is not checked.
Next, reply to or create a portal message and attach the document.
Since the attachment is not visible in portal documents, you can be sure that the document will only be seen by the specific portal message recipient. (If you’d like to make changes you can click “View Document” and then “Edit” to change whether or not it is available to all portal users.)
The document will only appear as a message attachment for the specific portal user.
Maximum Attachment Size: Each portal message is limited to a maximum of 30MB of attachments. Single attachments over 30MB, or multiple attachments totalling over 30MB, cannot be sent.
Receive and Review Attachments from Parents and Patients
If the patient portal user attached a document to the message, you can review it as you read the message.
As you view an attachment, you can click “Edit” to change the document’s tags. You can give the file a new name, category, or re-attach it to a different visit or order. If you move the document to a different visit, it will no longer be attached to the portal message. You can also remove it from the patient’s chart and send it out to the Import Documents tool (for example, if it needs to be put into a different chart).
The 'Display in Portal Documents' Checkbox: When you edit any image or document in PCC EHR, you will notice a “Display in Portal Documents” checkbox. The checkbox is not checked by default, even for documents sent from the portal user. There may be more than one parent or other guardian who has patient portal access for a patient. If you select this box, all patient portal users for a patient will have access to the document.
Check if Your Message Has Been Read
The “status” line for each portal message indicates whether or not a message has been read. When a portal message is opened, the status updates from “Unread” to “Read” with a timestamp of exactly when the message was opened, and which user opened it.
Unread messages include the option to create a new task type: “Follow Up On Unread Message”. Assign that task to a user to have them contact the recipient to be sure that your message gets to them.
Review Draft Portal Messages
When a user at your practice begins writing a portal message and saves without sending it, the draft message is saved. Draft messages are available within the patient’s visit history, and are now also found on PCC EHR’s Messaging queue. Filter the messaging queue by the “Portal Message” task to find both draft and other portal messages, and filter by user to find drafts saved by any EHR user.
To remove a draft message, open the message from the Messaging queue and delete the content.
Double-click, or select the line in the Messaging queue and click “open” to open the message so you can complete and send it.
An EHR user who cannot be assigned tasks will now appear in the Messaging queue’s Assigned User list, so that they can filter to find their own drafts.
You can find draft messages in pocketPCC’s Messaging queue. Messages can be opened and edited there, just like in PCC EHR.
Draft messages do not have their own entry in the Messaging Queue’s task filter, but are included within the Portal Message filter.
Inactive Conversations
Portal Messaging includes the option to prevent replies to a message thread after a selected number of days. If the portal user does not send a reply within the selected number of days, the conversation will become inactive and additional replies cannot be sent. The countdown resets every time a reply is sent.
The length of time before a conversation becomes inactive is set in Patient Portal Configuration.
You can select any number of days, from 1 to 99. Keep in mind that selecting too short a date range can prevent users from replying at all, so select a reasonable length of time.
Delete Portal Messages
Patient portal message can be deleted if needed. Deleting a patient portal message is permanent and cannot be undone. Therefore, Patient Portal Message Deletion is a separate permission within PCC EHR’s User Administration Role permissions. PCC recommends carefully considering which role you assign this permission to, to ensure that patient portal messages are only deleted when absolutely necessary.
When viewing a portal message, users with the Patient Portal Message Deletion permission will find “Delete Portal Message” in PCC EHR’s Edit menu.
Selecting “Delete Portal Message” will open a confirmation window. Clicking “Delete Encounter” will irrevocably remove the message from both PCC EHR and the patient
portal.
My Kid’s Chart User’s Guide
My Kid’s Chart is the patient portal for your pediatrician’s office. You can use My Kid’s Chart to access medical records, communicate with your pediatrician, pay our bill, and more.
Use this guide to learn how to log in to My Kid’s Chart, review your child’s records, and send messages to your pediatrician. You’ll also find instructions for reviewing your outstanding balance and reviewing a log of activity on your account. For more information, contact your pediatrician’s office.
Get an Account
In order to access your child’s information through the portal, you need to get a portal account.
Call your pediatrician’s office; they will ask for your email address or phone number to use as a sign in and will verify which patient records you are authorized to access. Then they will create an account for you.
Next, you will receive an email or text with your temporary login information.
Log In to My Kid’s Chart
After you receive your new account information, you can click on the “sign in” link in or type the URL into a Web browser. You can use My Kid’s Chart on a personal computer or on your smart phone.
You may want to bookmark or save this link for later, or add it as an icon to your smart phone’s home screen.
Next, enter your email address or phone number and temporary password to log in.
If your portal account has just been created, you’ll need to verify the birthdate of the oldest (living) patient on your account. You’ll only need to do this the first time you sign in, or if you ask your pediatrician’s office to reset your password for you.
First Time Login: If this is your first time logging in, My Kid’s Chart will ask you to enter a new password when you log in.
Enable Cookies: My Kid’s Chart uses cookies to keep you logged in. If you have trouble logging in, or find yourself being logged out frequently, ensure that your browser accepts cookies.
Once you log in, you will see your child/children listed, along with any upcoming appointments they may have. You may also see a Messages section for sending messages to the office, if your pediatrician’s office has activated that feature.
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Do You See the Patients You Expect?: If you are a parent or guardian of several children, your pediatrician’s office can add each child to your user account. Patients can also appear on more than one login, so more than one parent or guardian, and the patient themselves, may be granted an account with access to the same patient’s medical records. Contact your pediatrician’s office if you are not seeing the patients you expect to see.
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Automatic Log Out: After 5 minutes of inactivity, MyKidsChart will log you out.
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Does Your Name Appear Correctly?: You can click the “Settings” button to change how your name appears on the screen.
Review Your Child’s Records
Click on your child’s name to open their medical records.
You will see your child’s name and birth date, along with their last physical date. If they have any upcoming appointments, you will see them listed as well.
Scroll down to review your child’s past visits, lab results, medications, and other information.
Review Visit Summaries
How tall was your child at their last physical? What was your pediatrician’s diagnosis when your child had a cough last month? For a complete visit summary, select the visit you want from the list.
For each visit, you can see information that was collected and any labs or diagnostic notes from that visit. You can review the vision or hearing screenings and any other items noted in the chart on that day.
Vitals Percentiles Based on Patient Data: You will notice a percentile value listed with your child’s weight, height, and BMI. These values show how your child’s information compares to that of other children of the same age and sex. If your child has a Down syndrome diagnosis, you will see “AAP-DS”, which indicates that the percentile is based on Down syndrome patients of the same age and sex.
Telemedicine Visits
If your practice uses a third-party telemedicine vendor, they’ll include a link to begin the telemedicine visit in the appointment information. Click the link at the appointment time to begin.
Check Test Results
When you want to review the results of a lab test, vision test, or any other medical procedure or order, just scroll down to the relevant section. Alternatively, you can click on the visit at which the test was given and review results in the visit summary.
The information in My Kid’s Chart is updated automatically from the patient’s medical chart at the office, so you can be sure that the latest information is always available. Contact your pediatrician if you have any questions.
Download an Immunization Record
Do you need a copy of your child’s immunizations record? In the Immunizations section, you can select the PDF button to download a copy.
Review Documents Shared By Your Pediatrician
Your pediatric practice can share educational handouts, plan notes, or other documents with My Kid’s Chart. You will see these shared items in a Documents section on your child’s record.
The five most recent items appear by default, and you can click “More” to see the full list. Documents appear in reverse chronological order, and if a document doesn’t have a title the word “Document” will appear instead. Click on a document to download and view it.
View Growth Charts
Do you want to see how your child’s weight and height have progressed over the past several years, and how they compare to other kids their age? You can see graphs of your child’s growth over time in the Growth Charts section of your child’s record.
Your child’s height and weight are displayed as points on each chart, with gray lines indicating percentile averages. Percentile ranges are specific to a patient’s age and sex, and come from the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Centers for Disease Control (CDC).
You can tap through all available charts for your child, using the arrows shown just above the chart.
For a larger view, turn your mobile device sideways.
You can view the specifics of each entry (including percentiles) by clicking on the “Measurements” button beneath the chart.
Teenagers and Patients Who Are Over 18
If one of your children is over your state’s emancipation age, then their records will automatically become private, and your pediatrician’s office will have to grant special permission for you to view their records. Your pediatrician has a policy on whether or not to give parents access to records for children of different age groups, which must follow state and federal guidelines.
Your pediatrics office can also create a Patient Portal user account for the patient, and provide the patient with access to their own records.
Send Messages, Images, or Documents to Your Pediatrician
As you review patient records in My Kid’s Chart, you can exchange private messages with your pediatrician’s office. You can also attach images or other documents.
After you log in to My Kid’s Chart, you can see a Messages section underneath your child’s name.
Messaging Features May Not Be Implemented: If your pediatric practice would rather communicate via phone or email, they may not use the Messages features described in this section. Contact your pediatric practice to learn the best way to keep in touch.
Send a Message and Attach a Document
Click “Create Message” to create a new message.
Enter a subject for your message, and the text of your question. If you want to attach images or other documents from your device, you can click to do so. Then click Send.
My Kid’s Chart will deliver the message (and any attachments) directly to your pediatrician’s office, where clinical staff can review it and answer your question.
Maximum Attachment Size: Each portal message is limited to a maximum of 30MB of attachments. Single attachments over 30MB, or multiple attachments totalling over 30MB, cannot be sent.
Add to a Message: After you send your message, you can add more information to it. Just open the message, add additional text, and click Send again.
Read and Respond to Messages
If a physician or other staff member sends you a message, or replies to your message, My Kid’s Chart will send you an email telling you that a message is waiting.
Log in to your account to view your messages.
The most recent messages appear on the portal home page. For portal accounts with more than one patient, each message will include the patient’s name. A green dot indicates that a message is unread.
Select a message to read it, or click “All Messages” to see the full message history.
The All Messages view includes a search field. To find a specific message, enter your search term, made up of only letters or numbers, and click or tap the magnifying glass icon.
The list of matching messages will appear, with a count of how many messages match your criteria. To reset search and review the full list again, click the back button.
The list of matching messages will appear, with a count of how many messages match your criteria. To reset search and review the full list again, click the back button.
To reply, select a message from the portal home page or the All Messages list. If the message is a reply to a previous message, or part of an ongoing thread, previous messages in the thread appear below the message reply field, so they can be easily referred to without leaving the draft message.
When your message is ready, click the “Send” button to send the message to your practice.
Messages are Private: Your conversation is not stored in any email account. Your messages can not be read by any other My Kid’s Chart user, even those who have access to the same patient’s records.
Personal Balance & Online Bill Pay
You can see if you have any outstanding charges at your pediatric practice, and can even make a payment through the portal, in the Personal Balance section.
These Features May Not Be Turned On: You may not see a Personal Balance section, and/or be able to pay your bill online, if your pediatric practice chooses not to use either of these features. Contact your pediatric practice if you have questions about this feature.
Review Your Personal Balance
You will see charges for all patients associated with your portal account, whether the patient is privacy-enabled or not. However, for privacy-enabled patients you will only see the date and charge – not the provider, location, or procedure name.
What charges will show up?: 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. You will only see data for patients who are connected to your portal account.
Make a Payment Through the Portal
If your pediatric practice is using this feature, and if a billing account is linked to your portal account, you will see a “Make a Payment” button beneath your personal balance information.
If you have used the mobile payment option previously, you will also see a “Last Payment” listed above the button. Only the most recent portal payment will be shown.
If you have not previously saved credit card information, then when you press the “Make a Payment” button, the portal will prompt you to enter your basic credit card information, billing address, and email address.
If you choose to save the new credit card, it will default to your “preferred” card for future use.
Alternatively, if you have previously made a mobile payment and opted to save your credit card, the credit card information will pre-populate.
If you have multiple credit cards stored, your preferred card will be selected by default. You can select a different card by clicking the drop-down and choosing another stored card.
After the payment is made, you will immediately 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 the practice posts the payment to their billing system.
The BluePay service will send receipts to the email address that you entered on the payment screen.
Manage Your Stored Cards
The patient portal includes a “Payment Methods” setting, where you can add a new card or edit stored cards.
Select a card to make edits.
You can update the expiration date or change your preferred card. If you no longer want a card to be stored, you can remove it.
Expired cards will appear in red.
Download Visit Summaries
You can use My Kid’s Chart to download a visit summary for any encounter.
First, select the visit.
At the bottom of the visit, you have options for exporting the information.
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Download PDF: You can download a visit summary as a PDF.
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Download C-CDA: C-CDA is a data format that allows for easy and accurate sharing of medical data between electronic systems. If you need to share your child’s visit summary with a specialist, for example, you may be able to use this option to transfer information with them electronically.
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Send Direct Secure Email: If your pediatrician’s office has activated this feature, you can use Direct Secure Messaging (DSM) to send a visit history directly to other physicians and medical professionals with a DSM address. You can only use the Direct Secure Message option if both your pediatrician and your desired recipient have activated Direct Secure Messaging. The recipient must supply you with their Direct Secure Messaging address. A normal email address will not work!
Account Settings and Activity Log
Use the Patient Portal Settings to make changes to your basic demographic information, reset your password, or view a history of portal activity related to your account or the patients you are connected to.
Click on the “Settings” button to access your account settings.
Edit Account
Click “Edit Account” to make changes to your name, sign in, and portal notification options.
Click “Save” to confirm your changes.
New Password
Click “New Password” to change your password.
Click “Save” to set the new password.
Opt In a Portal Notification Phone Number
If you have opted the mobile phone number you use for portal notifications out of text messages from your pediatrician’s office, a warning message appears at the top of the Edit Account page and the portal notification phone number appears highlighted in red.
If you want to continue using the phone number for portal notifications, you must opt back in to text messages from the practice. The steps to opt in are presented in the warning message on the Edit Account page.
If you are accessing the portal on the phone that is connected to the opted-out number, you can tap the “Opt in” button on the Edit Account page.
The “Opt in” button automatically composes an opt-in message to the practice. As soon as you send the message, you receive confirmation that you can once again receive texts from your pediatrician’s office, including portal notifications.
Activity Log
If you want to see a history of patient portal activity related to any patients you are connected to in the portal, click “Activity Log”.
The Activity Log shows all activity for your own login, as well as for any other portal user who has accessed one of the patient records that you are connected to. For example, if two parents both have portal accounts related to their child, and one parent downloads a visit summary, makes a payment, or uploads an image, the other parent will be able to see the date and time they did so.
The activity date range defaults to the most recent month, but you can review any date range you wish, by clicking in the date field and using the calendar function to select a new date, and then clicking “Apply”.
The activity shown in the log is only for actions made in the portal.
ICD-10 Training Resources
ICD-10-CM is the official diagnostic code language for U.S. medical insurance billing, as defined by CMS and NCHS. It is a national variant of the international ICD-10 language, and it was officially adopted on October 1, 2015.
This article includes training opportunities, useful links, and other resources to help practices with ICD-10.
Many of the materials below were prepared around the time of the ICD-10 transition. They may still be useful to your practice. In 2015 and 2016, PCC provided free consultation, classes, and system configuration for the ICD-10 transition. Now that ICD-10 is in use by every medical practice, we are happy to help clients as they encounter new coding challenges. Call or e-mail PCC to learn more about our training opportunities, software configuration tools, and other ways we can help you get ready for October.
Attend or Watch PCC Pediatric Coding and ICD-10 Web Lab Training
During the ICD-10 transition, PCC offered a monthly web lab on coding and related topics. We continue to offer periodic web labs as well as “billing drop-in” events. PCC’s certified coder, Jan Blanchard, provides insight on code set conventions, how to document different kinds of visits, and answer your questions about ICD-10 implementation.
Register for a Web Lab: To sign up for a PCC web-lab, visit http://www.pcc.com/weblabs/ to pick a date and sign up.
Watch a Recorded Web Lab: You can review past web labs to get caught up and see more examples of ICD-10 in action. Watch Archived Coding Web Labs
Listen to an ICD-10 Podcast Presentation (2015)
The first episode of PCC’s “Confessions of a Pediatric Practice Management Consultant” podcast is all about ICD-10.
Chip Hart explores the impact of ICD-10 on pediatrics with PCC’s Jan Blanchard, CPC, CPEDC. They discuss the importance of documentation, the state of readiness of pediatric practices, EHR vendors and carriers, the role of episodes of care in coding, resources available to pediatricians, and more.
Click here to visit the podcast page
Watch an All-Day ICD-10 Training Course (2015)
In 2015, PCC offered twelve all-day ICD-10 seminars in cities around the country. Students learned about pediatric coding for ICD-10, both from the clinician and biller point of view.
This video is a 4-hour cutting of our session in Texas. Contact support@pcc.com to learn more.
Watch a 4-Hour Session Video: Click to Watch “2015 PCC ICD-10 Training Seminar“.
You can also download:
PCC’s ICD-10 Don’t Panic Guide (2015)
PCC prepared the following guides in the lead up to the ICD-10 transition.
- PCC Software ICD-10 To-Do List: This at-a-glance checklist shows you all the various configuration tools and issues in PCC Software that you may want to consider in preparation for ICD-10. Use this as a last-minute review to be sure your PCC configuration will be ready for October 1st. If any of the issues on this list surprise you, contact PCC Support for help.
- ICD-10 Notes for Notes: How can you make it easier to select the best ICD-10 codes for each patient issue? PCC’s Jan Blanchard has created a quick reference on pediatric-specific topics, from ADHD and asthma to UTIs and Well Care visits. For each problem, this document provides keywords for quickly looking up the best diagnosis descriptions on the chart note. ICD-10 Notes for Notes is a guide to the details clinicians should be sure they include in encounter notes in order to support choosing the most specific possible ICD-10 codes available. PCC’s ICD-10 training workshops taught attendees how to make their own reference sheet, but in the absence of your own, you can use this one to get started.
- CMS’s ICD-10-CM Tabular Lists and Indexes of Diseases and Injuries: CMS.gov’s page with index and tabular lists of ICD-10 tables.
- Common Pediatric Unspecified Codes: This is a list of common pediatric codes for which the “Unspecified” version may be appropriate and defensible. When you have more detail, you should always document and code for it. This list, however, shows common circumstances where the additional detail may not be available.
- Sample Superbill from AAP
Look Up ICD-10 Codes for Patient Diagnoses
If you are filling out a form or need the ICD-10 code for a patient’s diagnosis, you can use the Diagnosis Flowsheet in a patient’s chart to quickly get the codes you need.
For more information, read the Look Up ICD-10 Codes for Referrals, DME, Requisitions, and Pre-Authorizations article.
Other Links, Resources, and Publications
Here are some other useful links to ICD-10 materials. This list was collected from various seminars and training that PCC either attended or led.
- Donelle Holle’s Famous ICD-10 Pediatric Cheat Sheet: Donelle Holle, pediatric coding expert, put together a list of the most common pediatric ICD-10 codes. The most common of the most common are highlighted in red, and clicking on codes (on supported devices) will open a definition of the code at http://www.icd10data.com. Check it out! (You can also get get Donelle’s Cheat Sheet as an editable spreadsheet.)
- FREE AAPC Code Converter: The American Academy of Pediatric’s online ICD-10 code translator allows you to compare ICD-9 to ICD-10 codes. ICD-9’s 17,000 codes are expanding to approximately 141,000 ICD-10 codes, and this online tool can help you map that expansion.
- FREE WHO ICD-10 Learning Tool: The WHO Electronic ICD-10 training tool is designed for self-learning and classroom use. The modular structure of this ICD-10 training permits users to tailor specific course paths, if desired. For more information, read the introduction and the user guide to the tool.
- ICD-10 Implementation Guide for Small and Medium Practices: Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS)
- CMS ICD-10 Transition: An Introduction: ICD-10 transition basics.
- FREE Codapedia Training Videos: You’ll need to become a member, but it’s free. Once you log in, you’ll have access to free ICD-10 training sessions by coding instructor Nancy Maguire.
- ICD-10-CM Tabular Lists and Indexes of Diseases and Injuries: CMS.gov’s page with index and tabular lists of ICD-10 tables.
Call Us
Call or e-mail PCC Support at any time to talk about ICD-10 and the specific needs of your practice.
We can work with your office to create custom solutions, provide additional training, and work with you to get your practice ready for the changes.
Diagnostic Code Sets (SNOMED-CT, ICD-10, ICD-9) in PCC’s Software and Services
PCC’s software and services include support for several diagnostic taxonomies.
How does PCC software support SNOMED-CT, ICD-10, and ICD-9?
Overview
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SNOMED-CT: In the patient’s chart, clinicians record all diagnoses with SNOMED-CT. They select SNOMED terms during assessment or when updating a patient’s Problem List, for example. SNOMED is a detailed vocabulary that is ideal for charting and is required by industry standards. Programs such as PCMH and ARRA’s “Meaningful Use” prefer SNOMED-CT for the identification of patient diagnoses.
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ICD-10: When billing for a visit, a practice must use ICD-10. Physicians select SNOMED-CT diagnoses in the chart, and PCC EHR can automatically select or suggest the appropriate ICD-10 codes for billing. Physicians can make additional coding choices (such as laterality) in the chart, and a practice’s biller or a billing service can also make adjustments when they review charges for the claim. Each practice can directly adjust the automatic mapping between SNOMED-CT and ICD-10 in order to meet their billing needs.
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ICD-9: While ICD-9 is no longer an active or maintained code set, patient medical records may still contain ICD-9 descriptions and codes. ICD-9 may appear on old chart notes in PCC EHR, in billing records, and even on a patient’s Problem List. As you work with a patient’s chart, PCC recommends that you replace the ICD-9 Problem List entries with appropriate SNOMED descriptions.
Reporting: PCC’s reporting tools, including the customizable Report Library in PCC EHR, the Smart Report Suite, and your Practice Vitals Dashboard, all understand and report on both SNOMED and ICD-10 diagnoses. Some reports also support ICD-9 filtering. Consistent implementation of a coding taxonomy leads to excellent reporting. In addition to meeting requirements for insurance carriers, mandates, or incentive programs, consistent diagnosis language leads to improved patient recall and powerful tools for evaluating your practice’s clinical and financial health.
Look Up ICD-10 Codes for Patient Diagnoses
If you are filling out a form or need the ICD-10 code for a patient’s diagnosis, you can use the Diagnosis Flowsheet in a patient’s chart to quickly get the codes you need.
For more information, read the Look Up ICD-10 Codes for Referrals, DME, Requisitions, and Pre-Authorizations article.
Software and Configuration Considerations
As your office works with SNOMED-CT and ICD-10, here are some configuration topics you should consider. Feel free to contact PCC Support to discuss any of these issues.
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Billing Configuration for PCC EHR: PCC EHR includes a diagnosis billing code mapping for common pediatric codes, but your practice can configure which SNOMED diagnosis descriptions map to which ICD-10 billing codes with the Billing Configuration tool. If you wish to review and update all of your common code mappings, you may find the snomedmap report useful.
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Charge Screens and Posting Charges: Your practice can customize PCC’s software and services to meet their workflow. For example, your practice may adjust both the electronic encounter form that appears in PCC EHR and the charge posting screens to make selection of appropriate codes faster and easier.
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Custom Diagnoses Descriptions: The ICD-10 and SNOMED-CT lists on your PCC systems are a national standard (based on a broader, international standard) and can not be edited. However, your practice can select which alternative or preferred SNOMED description appears in your charts in the Diagnosis Configuration Tool.
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Favorites: When you start to type a diagnosis in PCC EHR, it automatically searches for matching diagnoses to help you. First, it looks from a subset of the complete list, your practice’s diagnosis “Favorites” list. You can customize which diagnoses appear in this smaller Favorites list. Next, you can also right-click in a diagnosis field to search the entire SNOMED-CT list.
2015 Transition to ICD-10
As the medical industry moved away from ICD-9 and towards ICD-10 and SNOMED, PCC offered educational opportunities and created special tools to help practice’s handle the interaction between the different taxonomies. We now continue to offer web labs, videos, and coding classes to help your practice with your ongoing coding challenges.
Read the ICD-10 Resources article to learn more.
Call Us
Call or e-mail PCC Support at any time to talk about SNOMED, ICD-10, and the specific needs of your practice.
We can work with your office to create custom solutions, provide additional training, and work with you to meet your coding needs.
How to Chart for Clinical Quality Measures in PCC EHR
You can use PCC EHR to collect data for standardized measure reporting required by NCQA’s Patient Centered Medical Home (PCMH) Program or other external entities requiring clinical measure reporting from your practice. To learn more about NCQA’s standardized measure reporting, visit PCMH Standardized Measurement.
Read the article below to learn how to chart and configure your system in order to record medical information for each clinical quality measure. By following these recommendations, and training your practice on charting workflow for CQMs, you can make sure that PCC EHR records the correct data to calculate your CQM performance.
Run the Clinical Quality Measures Report to See Your Practice’s Current Results
Clinical Quality Measures (CQMs) are designed to evaluate certain patient populations and compare chart activity to coding. The overall goal of CQMs is to show improvement over time.
You can report on your practice’s numbers for certain custom measures in your Practice Vitals Dashboard.
Pediatric CQMs Overview Chart: Adjust Your Practice’s Configuration and Visit Workflow
For a quick understanding of each measure, use the table below. You can click the “More Details” or “Show Me How” links to jump directly to a longer description, accompanied by screenshots and examples.
| CMS | NQF | Measure Name | Calculation Description | Configuration in PCC | Clinician Workflow |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2 | 0418 | Preventative Care and Screening: Screening for Clinical Depression and Follow-Up Plan | For all patients seen for a qualifying encounter during the reporting period, who were 12 years old or older at the time of the qualifying encounter, who did not already have a bipolar diagnosis or contraindication, who did not refuse the screening, what percentage received a depression screening, and, if the result was positive, received additional follow-up care, such as a mental health care education or a referral to a behavioral specialist? (More Details) |
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| 117 | 0038 | Childhood Immunization Status | For all patients seen by the eligible professional during the reporting period and turning two years old during the reporting period, what percentage had four diphtheria, tetanus and acellular pertussis (DTaP); three polio (IPV), one measles, mumps and rubella (MMR); three or four H influenza type B (HiB); three hepatitis B (Hep B); one chicken pox (VZV); four pneumococcal conjugate (PCV); one hepatitis A (Hep A); two or three rotavirus (RV); and two influenza (flu) vaccines by their second birthday, or had a documented history of the illness, seropositive result for the antigen, or a contraindication for a specific immunization? (More Details) |
PCC EHR’s standard installation includes most of the configuration required in order to chart for this measure.
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| 155 | 0024 | Weight Assessment and Counseling for Nutrition and Physical Activity for Children and Adolescents | For all patients seen by the eligible professional during the reporting period, who were between 3 and 17 years of age, what percentage had their height, weight, and BMI recorded, and what percentage received counseling for nutrition and/or physical activity? (More Details) |
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CMS2: Preventative Care and Screening: Screening for Clinical Depression and Follow-Up Plan
This measure calculates the percentage of patients aged 12 years and older who are screened for clinical depression on the date of their encounter using an age-appropriate standardized depression screening tool AND if positive, a follow-up plan is documented on the date of the positive screen. (CMS at eCQI)
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Denominator: PCC EHR calculates the denominator of this measure by counting all patients who had an eligible encounter code billed in the electronic encounter form during the reporting period and who were 12 or older before the reporting period. Eligible encounter codes include billed CPT codes for Sick (99202-99205, 99212-99215), Well (99384-99387, 99394-99397) Telephone Visits (98966-98968, 99441-99443), Psychotherapy (90791-90792, 90832-90837), or other counseling services.
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Numerator: PCC EHR calculates the numerator of this measure by counting all of the patients in the denominator who had a LOINC test for depression screening, generally inside a Depression Screening order, with a positive or negative result, on the encounter date. If the result was positive, the patient must have additional care in the form of a completed LOINC test for suicide risk assessment, follow-up or additional evaluation for depression, and/or a referral for depression, and/or a prescription for a depression medication, on the same date as the depression screening, in order to be included in the numerator.
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Exclusions: If a patient already had an active diagnosis for Bipolar Disorder on their Problem List (or in the Diagnoses component for the qualifying visit), they will be counted in the Exclusions for the measure. Some relevant codes to indicate bipolar disorder include ICD-10 code F30.— and F31.—, manic episode and bipolar disorder diagnosis codes that can used as a billed ICD-10 code. In addition, you can use SNOMED code 13746004 for bipolar disorder as a diagnosis code in the problem list or diagnosis component when charting a visit.
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Exceptions: If a patient refused the screening, or had a medical contraindication for it being performed, such as an urgent medical situation or a lack of functional capacity to complete the screening, they are excepted from the denominator (and the numerator) for the calculation and will be counted in the Exceptions for the measure. Marking the screening as refused or contraindicated will count the patient as an exception.
Recommended PCC EHR Configuration for CMS2 Depression Screening
In order to chart depression screenings, follow-up, and suicide risk assessment, your practice can create screening orders and add the specified LOINC tests or SNOMED-CT descriptions to those orders. You can also configure referral orders so that they are recorded with an appropriate SNOMED-CT. Finally, you can add the orders to chart notes so they are easy to select at every visit.
For a step-by-step procedure on how to add codes to orders and add specific orders to chart notes, read Use Orders to Track Measures for Mandates.
Configure Your Depression Screenings
Add SNOMED-CT and LOINC codes to your adolescent depression screening orders in PCC EHR.
For the initial depression screening, you should add SNOMED-CT procedure code 171207006, and LOINC test code 73831-0, “Adolescent depression screening assessment”. (You could also add LOINC 73832-8, “Adult depression screening assessment” for an order for patients 18 years or older.) The test should have a Negative/Positive result.
| Code Set | Code | Description | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| LOINC | 73831-0 | Adolescent Depression Screening Assessment | Link this code to all adolescent depression screening orders |
| LOINC | 73832-8 | Adult Depression Screening Assessment | Link this code to all adult depression screening orders |
| SNOMED | 171207006 | Depression Screening | Link this code to all adolescent and adult depression screening orders |
Do you already have a specific LOINC code that works best for your office? You can add more than one test to a single order. Add your preferred code to the order so that you don’t have to compromise on workflow while still meeting the measure.
What About Other Depression Screening Tests?: Your practice might perform other depression screenings and use other LOINC tests to record discrete results. You can add more than one test to a single order. For example, if you perform a PHQ-9 at each visit, you might first add the “Adolescent depression screening assessment” test, which is used by the clinical quality measure, and then also add the “Patient Health Questionnaire 9 item (PHQ-9) total score” test in order to record the patient’s numerical result. Postpartum depression screening orders are usually billed in association with the newborn patient and are not be tracked by this measure.
Configure Follow-up Depression Care
When a patient has a positive result on a depression screening, your practice might perform one or more additional evaluations, follow-up orders, referrals, or mental health interventions.
In order to affect the clinical quality measure for this additional evaluation, follow-up, or mental health intervention, your practice must also add SNOMED-CT procedures to the screening order. For each order, edit the order, click “Add a Procedure” and search for the appropriate SNOMED-CT description.
Examples:
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Mental Health Care Education: When offering a patient mental health care education, add SNOMED-CT code 41022408, “Mental Health Care Education” to the order.
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Follow-up For Depression: You could also create and add SNOMED-CT descriptions (and LOINC tests, if appropriate) for any number of depression follow-up orders, such as Completion of a Mental Health Crisis Plan, or Coping Support Management. Other options are included in the NIH’s Follow-up for Depression – adolescent value set, found on the VSAC website.
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Additional Evaluation: For an additional evaluation for depression order, you could add one of the SNOMED-CT descriptions for psychiatric evaluation listed by NIH for Additional evaluation for depression – adolescent value set on the VSAC website.
Configure Depression Referral Orders
Add SNOMED-CT procedures to your Referral orders for Depression.
Your practice may have one or more referrals related to depression. For example, you may have referrals for an initial psychiatric evaluation or a specific depression referral. Click “Add” to create a new order, or double-click on an existing order to make changes.
In order for the referral to be tracked as part of a clinical quality measure, you must add a SNOMED-CT description from to the order. The table below contains several SNOMED codes that will work for this measure.
Your practice may have other referrals that may follow a positive depression screening. Add new orders, or double-click on an existing order to make changes. The following table contains generic SNOMED codes that you can link to your follow-up on depression screening orders.
| Code Set | Code | Description | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| SNOMED | 41022408 | Mental health care education | Link this code to an “Intervention provided for positive depression screening” follow-up or screening order |
| SNOMED | 81294000 | Patient referral for psychotherapy | Link this code to the relevant referral order |
| SNOMED | 306227000 | Referral for mental health counseling | Link this code to the relevant referral order |
| SNOMED | 75516001 | Psychotherapy | Link this code to the relevant follow-up or referral order |
| SNOMED | 385726000 | Emotional support education | Link this code to the relevant follow-up order |
Add Depression Screening, Mental Health Care Education, and Referral Orders to Your Chart Note Protocols
After you make changes to the various orders your practice uses, you can add them to chart note protocols to make them easier to order. Your clinicians will then see the “Depression Screening” order, for example, on every chart note.
For information on how to add specific orders to a chart note protocol, read Use Orders to Track Measures for Mandates.
Configure CHADIS Depression Screenings
If your practice uses CHADIS, add a LOINC code to the screening order so that the test is documented for CQM reporting.
The CQM report looks for a positive result on the screening order and a subsequent follow-up action. Be sure to add a result to the order when your CHADIS questionnaires come in.
Adding a result to the order has the added benefit of making the result visible at a glance in patient flowsheets.
Recommended Charting and Workflow for CMS2 Depression Screening
When a patient twelve or older visits your practice, click “Order” to order a Depression Screening.
Optionally, you can assign the screening to another clinician, or complete the screening immediately. When the screening is complete, enter a result.
If the screening is refused, select “Refused” and add a note in the order. If the screening is contraindicated, select “Contraindicated” and add a note in the order. Marking the screening as refused or contraindicated will count the patient as an exception.
Unless refused or contraindicated, a positive or negative result is required. Result interpretation, in the Interpretation field, is not required for the clinical quality measure, though your practice may have configured it to be required for completion of the order.
If the result is positive, record whatever additional care follows. For example, you may prescribe appropriate medication, order an Intervention for Positive Depression screening, or order a referral.
Enter results and take any other appropriate follow-up steps.
When you are finished charting, remember to click “Bill” and select an appropriate visit encounter code. In addition to billing, the visit encounter code is used to calculate the CQM.
CMS117: Childhood Immunization Status
This measure calculates the percentage of patients turning 2 years old during the reporting period who have a visit during the reporting period and have four diphtheria, tetanus and acellular pertussis (DTaP); three polio (IPV), one measles, mumps and rubella (MMR); three H influenza type B (HiB); three hepatitis B (Hep B); one chicken pox (VZV); four pneumococcal conjugate (PCV); one hepatitis A (Hep A); two or three rotavirus (RV); and two influenza (flu) vaccines with evidence of administration prior or on their second birthday.
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Denominator: PCC EHR calculates the denominator of this measure by counting all patients who turned 2 years old during the reporting period, who had an eligible encounter code entered on the electronic encounter form during the reporting period. Eligible encounter codes include billed CPT codes for in-person and virtual sick (99202-99205, 99212-99215), well (99381-99384, 99391-99394), telephone visits (98966-98968, 99441-99443), or home healthcare visits (99341-99350).
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Numerator: PCC EHR calculates the numerator of this measure by counting all of the patients in the denominator who have the full series of recommended vaccines within the appropriate schedule by age two. This measure counts both historical and administered vaccines, and patients must show evidence of meeting all the immunization requirements, either ordered, added manually to the patient record, or billed.
- Special inclusions: There are numerous reasons for a patient to be included in the numerator even if they did not have a particular shot.
- For the MMR, hepatitis B, VZV and hepatitis A vaccines, numerator inclusion criteria include: evidence of receipt of the recommended vaccine; documented history of the illness; or, a seropositive test result for the antigen.
- For the DTaP, IPV, HiB, pneumococcal conjugate, rotavirus, and influenza vaccines, numerator inclusion criteria include only evidence of receipt of the recommended vaccine. Patients may be included in the numerator for a particular antigen if they had an anaphylactic reaction to the vaccine. Patients may be included in the numerator for the DTaP vaccine if they have encephalopathy. Patients may be included in the numerator for the IPV vaccine if they have had an anaphylactic reaction to streptomycin, polymyxin B, or neomycin.
- Patients may be included in the numerator for the influenza, MMR, or VZV vaccines if they have cancer of lymphoreticular or histiocytic tissue, multiple myeloma, leukemia, have had an anaphylactic reaction to neomycin, have Immunodeficiency, or have HIV. Patients may be included in the numerator for the hepatitis B vaccine if they have had an anaphylactic reaction to common baker’s yeast.
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Exclusions and Exceptions: This measure will exclude children who are diagnosed as being in hospice care for any part of the measurement period as well as children who are diagnosed with any of the following conditions on or before the child’s second birthday: Severe Combined Immunodeficiency, Immunodeficiency, Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV), Lymphoreticular Cancer, Multiple Myeloma or Leukemia. Intussusception. For any immunization status exclusions, PCC checks the patient’s diagnosis history, Problem List, and Allergies List.
Recommended PCC EHR Configuration for CMS117 Childhood Immunization Status
When your practice implemented PCC software and services, the initial setup and configuration was sufficient to allow clinicians to chart in order to meet this CQM.
For more information on CVX and MVX codes in your PCC system, read CVX, MVX, VIS and NDC Codes in PCC.
What CVX Codes Are In Use?: Different combination vaccines and different formulations have different CVX codes. To review what CVX codes you administer, visit your immunization refrigerator. PCC Support can also help you compare the CVX codes in your PCC system with the CDC’s library of CVX codes. Common CVX codes for each immunization as of 2019 are as follows: DTaP 20, IPV 10, MMR 03, HIB 49, Hepatitis B 08, Varicella (chicken pox) 21, Prevnar 13 (pneumococcal conjugate PCV) 133, Hepatitis A 83, Rotavirus 116, Influenza (Flu) Preservative Free 140.
Add Age-Appropriate Immunizations to Your Custom Chart Notes
Do all of your custom chart notes have age-appropriate immunization orders ready, easy for your clinicians to click?
If not, follow the procedure below to update your chart note protocols.
Add Age-Appropriate Immunizations to Your Custom Chart Notes
Recommended Charting and Workflow for CMS117 Childhood Immunization Status
When a patient visits your practice, review their immunization history in the chart note or in the Immunization History section of the chart.
Optionally, you can review Forecasting Results and Forecasting Warnings to see what immunizations a patient may be missing.
If you need to update a patient’s past immunization history, visit the Immunization History section of the chart, click “Add Imms” and add any immunizations they received that are not in the chart record.
Use the Immunizations component on the chart note to order any age-appropriate immunizations.
Use the same component (or “Edit Orders” orange indicator tool on Schedule screen) to record that the immunization is administered, refused, contraindicated, or canceled.
When Should Each Shot Be Given?: PCC EHR can display Immunization Forecasting, with results and forecasting calculated by STC’s implementation of the ACIP immunization schedule guidelines from the CDC. Your practice may have their own set of standards for how these guidelines are implemented, and CMS has their own published clinical recommendation based on ACIP’s guidelines. The rules for reporting for the Childhood Immunization Status CQM, however, are much simpler, only requiring the correct number of shots, given more than a day apart.
If you make a decision not to give an immunization, chart the reason in the following manner:
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Contraindications: If a patient has a contraindication for an immunization, click “Contraindicated” in the order, and add the appropriate diagnosis description to the Diagnoses component in the chart note and/or to the patient’s Problem List or Allergies list. For example, if a patient has acute HIV infection, or an allergy to an immunization component, you should record that information in the Problem List and the Allergies List respectively.
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Refused: If a patient or family refuses an immunization, click “Refused” in the immunization order. Marking a vaccine as Refused will remove the patient from the numerator in your Immunization Tracking CQM report. This is not an exclusion or exception.
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History of an Illness: If a patient has a history of an illness for which an immunization would otherwise be administered, add that illness to the patient’s Problem List or chart it in the Diagnoses component.
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Evidence of Immunity: If your practice performs titers, or receives a test result showing that the patient is seropositive for an antigen, record that result as a diagnosis or on the Problem List.
When you are finished charting, remember to click “Bill” and select an appropriate visit encounter code. In addition to billing, the visit encounter code is used to calculate the CQM.
CMS155: Weight Assessment and Counseling for Nutrition and Physical Activity for Children and Adolescents
This measure calculates the percentage of patients 3-17 years of age who had had a visit during the reporting period, and had their height, weight, and body mass index (BMI) documented, and/or received counseling for nutrition, and/or received counseling for physical activity. (CMS at eCQI)
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Denominator: PCC EHR calculates the denominator of this measure by counting all patients who had an eligible encounter code billed on the electronic encounter form during the reporting period and who were between 3 and 17 years old. Eligible encounter codes include billed CPT codes for sick (99202-99205, 99212-99215), well (99381-99384, 99391-99394), telephone visits (98966-98968, 99441-99443), or other counseling services.
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Numerator 1: PCC EHR calculates the first numerator of this measure by counting all of the patients in the denominator who had a height, weight, and BMI percentile recorded at least once during the measurement period. To meet this measure, track each patient’s height and weight (on the same day) during eligible encounters. This measure does not reference ICD-10s, or SNOMED codes.
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Numerator 2: PCC EHR calculates the second numerator of this measure by counting all of the patients in the denominator who received counseling for nutrition during a visit that occurred within the measurement period. To indicate that counseling for nutrition was completed, you can use the following codes:
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Numerator 3: PCC EHR calculates the third numerator of this measure by counting all of the patients in the denominator who received counseling for physical activity during a visit that occurred within the measurement period. To indicate that exercise counseling was completed, you can use the following codes:
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Exclusions and Exceptions: This measure will exclude children who are diagnosed as being in hospice care, as well as patients who have an active diagnosis of pregnancy during the measurement period.
| Code Set | Code | Description | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| SNOMED | 11816003 | Diet education | Link this code to a nutrition counseling screening order |
| SNOMED | 441041000124100 | Counseling about nutrition | Link this code to a nutrition counseling screening order |
| SNOMED | 61310001 | Nutrition education | Link this code to a nutrition counseling screening order |
| Code Set | Code | Description | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| SNOMED | 281090004 | Recommendation to exercise | Link this code to an exercise counseling screening order |
| SNOMED | 304507003 | Exercise education | Link this code to an exercise counseling screening order |
| SNOMED | 41028900 | Exercises education, guidance, and counseling | Link this code to an exercise counseling screening order |
Recommended PCC EHR Configuration for CMS 155 Weight Assessment and Counseling
In order to chart counseling for nutrition or physical exercise, your practice can create screening orders and add the specified SNOMED-CT procedures to those orders. Then you can add the orders to chart notes so they are easy to select at every visit.
For a step-by-step procedure on how to add codes to orders and add specific orders to chart notes, read Use Orders to Track Measures for Mandates.
Configure Your Nutrition Counseling Order
Create or edit a screening order for nutrition counseling.
For the nutrition counseling order, you should select SNOMED-CT code 61310001, “Nutrition education”.
Configure Your Physical Activity Counseling Order
Create or edit a screening order for physical activity counseling.
For the physical activity counseling order, you should select SNOMED-CT code 281090004, “Recommendation to exercise”.
Use the Specified SNOMED Codes: Please note that the 2018 ICD-10 code Z71.82, “Exercise counseling” will not work with PCC EHR reporting.
Add Nutrition and Physical Activity Counseling Orders to Your Chart Note Protocols
After you create the new orders, you can add them to chart note protocols to make them easier to order. Your clinicians will then see the “Nutrition Counseling” order, for example, on every chart note.
For detailed instructions on how to add orders to a chart note protocol, read Use Orders to Track Measures for Mandates.
For each protocol, find or add the Screening Orders component, and then add the nutrition and physical exercise orders.
Recommended Charting and Workflow for CMS 155 Weight Assessment and Counseling
Collect height and weight during normal office visits, well exams and other appropriate visit types.
When appropriate, order your practice’s nutrition and/or physical activity counseling screening order.
When you are finished charting, remember to click “Bill” and select an appropriate visit encounter code. In addition to billing, the visit encounter code is used to calculate the CQM.
Become a Patient Centered Medical Home (PCMH)
Depending on the state you live in, pediatric practices using PCC software can receive payment incentives from payers by becoming a Patient Centered Medical Home.
By adopting the functions of PCMH, you help your patients and families gain access to care and you gain additional benefits for your practice.
What is a Patient Centered Medical Home?
PCMH encompasses a philosophy of patient care as well as a set of standards. It is an approach to care where “practices seek to improve the quality, effectiveness, and efficiency of the care they deliver while responding to each patient’s unique needs and preferences.” (AAFP.org) The core principles of a medical home are defined in the Joint Principles of the Patient-Centered Medical Home document, and endorsed by the AAP, AAFP, ACP, and AOA.
Summarized, the principles are:
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Physician-led practice: Patients have access to a personal physician who leads the care team within a medical practice.
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Whole-person orientation: The care team provides comprehensive care, including acute care, chronic care, preventive services, and end-of-life care, at all stages of life.
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Integrated and coordinated care: Practices take steps to ensure that patients receive the care and services they need from the medical neighborhood, in a culturally and linguistically appropriate manner.
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Focus on quality and safety: Practices use the quality improvement process and evidence-based medicine to continually improve patient outcomes.
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Access: Practices commit to enhancing patients’ access to care. (AAFP.org)
Various state and local organizations, insurance carriers, and other governing bodies have adopted the PCMH standard and created paid incentive programs for practices that implement these principles.
What is the Process of Achieving PCMH Recognition?
As of 2017, NCQA’s PCMH Recognition program includes six concepts that align with the principles of primary care. Within each concept are competencies which are meant to organize the criteria within each concept area. Criteria are the individual structures, functions and activities that indicate a practice is operating as a medical home.
The program includes ongoing, sustained recognition status with annual reporting.
To achieve PCMH recognition, practices must:
- Meet all core criteria
- Earn 25 credits in elective criteria across 5 of 6 concepts.
This ensures a minimum set of capabilities and gives practices the flexibility to focus on activities that not only mean the most to their patient population, but are feasible to accomplish with their resources and the resources of their community.
How Can My Practice Use PCC to Achieve PCMH Recognition?
PCC’s tools and services can help you meet the goals and requirements for PCMH recognition.
PCC has organized the 2017 PCMH Standards on our public wiki website, to provide quick reference to the 2017 standards themselves and, where applicable, documentation showing how PCC functionality applies to individual PCMH factors.
The PCMH standards and guidelines ask practices to show that they meet PCMH principles through using a certified EHR, attestation, and providing report details on meeting Meaningful Use Measures, Clinical Quality Measures, and other standards. Many program requirements are similar to those defined by CMS in the Medicaid EHR Incentive Program (renamed Promoting Interoperability in 2018).
To learn more, read:
- Meet Meaningful Use Measures with PCC EHR
- How to Chart For Each Clinical Quality Measure with PCC EHR
You can also get data for your PCMH application with PCC’s reports. For more information, read:
- Meaningful Use Measures Report: The Meaningful Use Measures report in PCC EHR calculates your office’s performance on the Meaningful Use standards indicated in ARRA’s EHR Medicaid Incentive program and referenced in PCMH requirements.
- Clinical Quality Measures Report: The Clinical Quality Measures report in PCC EHR calculates your clinicians’ performance on CQMs (Clinical Quality Measures).
- PCC EHR Report Library: The PCC EHR Report Library contains several reports specifically designed to help you calculate numbers needed for your PCMH application, including “Care Plans By Date”.
- Practice Vitals Dashboard: Your Practice Vitals Dashboard contains numerous measures that you can use for your PCMH application.
PCC Prevalidation: As of March 2018, practices utilizing PCC can benefit from reduced documentation for criteria designated as “partially met criteria” and have criteria designated as “fully met criteria” marked as “met” in full. If you are interested in learning more about using PCC EHR to achieve PCMH recognition, please contact your Client Advocate.
After Recognition, Are There Annual Requirements?
Once a practice has gone through PCMH for the first time, they are required to meet some annual reporting requirements. These requirements are comprised of a small subset of the 2017 PCMH requirements. Contact PCC support for assistance.
What Are Other PCC Practices Doing to Achieve PCMH Recognition?
PCC sponsors and maintains a public wiki where we share information gathered from PCC clients who have successfully achieved PCMH recognition.
The website includes screenshots and descriptions of how to use PCC’s software to complete your PCMH process. We welcome your input!
What PCMH Programs Are There in My Area?
PCMH programs vary from region to region. You can find out what’s available in your region at the Patient-Centered Primary Care Collaborative map.
PCMH Consultation with the Verden Group
PCC has partnered with the Verden Group to offer discounted consultation services to PCC clients looking to achieve PCMH recognition.
Get in touch with pedsol@pcc.com to learn more.
Prepare for a PCC Software Update
When a software update for PCC is ready for your office, what should you do to prepare?
Notify Your In-House System Administrator and/or Third-Party IT Consultant
PCC EHR updates require the workstation’s administration password. Inform your in-house system administrator or office manager that each workstation will need their attention, and the administration password, on the morning of the update.
Does your practice have a local system administrator or a contract with a local IT professional who updates and services your computers? Do you implement an office-wide network, not monitored and updated by PCC, that requires administrative permissions to make changes? Contact appropriate entities so that they know a PCC update is coming.
Learn About the New Features Ahead of Time
With every software release, PCC answers client requests and implements new features and tools that can improve your office workflow and save you time. You should review the new software feature list and arrange for your staff to attend a training web lab, when needed.
- PCC New Feature Release Notes
- The Pulse: PCC’s Newsfeed announces updates, documentation, web labs and other training opportunities.
Review Important Update Configuration or Workflow Considerations
Some new tools or features in PCC EHR require configuration, or may make your office’s workflow faster and easier. When there are significant configuration or software usage changes, PCC makes note of them in the PCC Release Manual.
Tell Your Doctors and Other Staff
Once PCC schedules your update, inform all of your PCC EHR users. The PCC EHR login screen helps you out the week before the update by notifying all users that an update is coming.
Encourage them to review the “Details” link on the login screen, which points to the PCC Release Overview, Manual, and Video Series.
After the Update: Review New Options, Work with PCC Support
Once your update is complete, you may wish to return to the PCC Release Manual and implement the recommended configuration changes.
Remember that PCC Support (support@pcc.com, 802-846-8177 or 800-722-7708) can help you review your setup and work with you to optimize your PCC EHR work environment.
Review Your PCC Data Conversion
Once PCC completes your practice’s data conversion, you must review the new information to ensure that the conversion was successful. Were all patients and accounts transferred to the PCC system? Are patient demographics identical between your old system and PCC? Are some appointments missing or do any duplicates appear? Are vitals correct? Do all chart notes appear?
The sections below describe PCC’s recommended process for reviewing your data conversion. Use this article when PCC asks you to review your data conversion.
If you find discrepancies, contact PCC. If you are working in a New Client Basecamp project, please do not post Private Health Information (PHI) to that project. Instead, please refer to the patient’s PCC number and not their name. Let us know what you see in PCC EHR and what you were expecting to see. The more details you provide, the easier it will be for us to research and resolve the issue. If you find the same issue with all patients, provide a few examples (using PCC numbers).
PCC recommends that you review a random selection of patients, and that you include some patients with complex names and detailed histories.
Results May Vary: PCC designs a unique data conversion for every customer. We may not have been able to convert every item listed below, and we may have converted extra information specifically for your practice. While following the guide below, keep these potential discrepancies in mind. For more information, read Your PCC Data Conversion.
Review Patient Demographics
For this review, log in to the live database in PCC EHR and select fifteen patients. Open their charts, and visit the Demographics section using the anchor button on the left-hand side of the screen. Verify that the information in PCC EHR matches the information in your old system. Report any discrepancies to your PCC contact or your on-site support technician.
Information to review includes:
- Patient Demographics
- Name
- Date of birth
- PCP (if you track this currently)
- Sex
- Siblings
- Billing and Home Account
- Name
- Address
- Phone Numbers
- Insurance Policies
- Insurance plan name
- Copay amount
- Subscriber ID (which appears as “Certificate”)
- Group number
- Subscriber name
Review Billing History
Billing history can be found under the History anchor on the left side of a patient’s history. Pick several patients and review:
- Dates for each visit
- ICD-10 codes
- CPT codes
- Provider
- Location
Review Appointments
Next, review appointments in the same live database. Pick two dates on which you have several scheduled appointments.. Do not pick a date after the appointment data was gathered from your old system, as it may be missing appointments. In PCC EHR, click on the Appointment Book icon and click on each appointment to review the full details.:
- Patient
- Date and time
- Visit Reason
- Provider
- Location (if you have more than one)
- Length of visit
If you find information that does not match between the Appointment Book and your previous system, please track details in a separate document with the associated patient PCC number. Describe what you see in PCC and how it differs from the appointment record in your previous system.
Review Clinical Data
For clinical data, please make sure you log in to the Sample database, not the live database. At the EHR login screen, click on your practice name, which should appear as a blue link. The login window will display three databases. Pick the one which starts with “Sample”. Use the same login and password for this database.
As with the patient demographics review, you should review 15 patients to review clinical data.
Open the patient’s chart and verify the following details in the chart section indicated:
- Medical Summary
- Allergies
- Problem List
- Medical / Family / Social History
- History
- Visit History
- Previous visits (note that visits may be labeled as “Historical EHR Visit”)
- Visit dates (do all visits appear?)
- Notes, orders, results, and diagnoses for each visit
- Phone notes (note that phone notes may be labeled “Historical EHR Phone Note” and should include a subject line if available)
- Phone note dates
- Text, contact information, or other data from your previous system
- Previous visits (note that visits may be labeled as “Historical EHR Visit”)
- Immunizations History
- Dates for each immunization
- Flowsheet
- Diagnoses
- Vitals data
- Documents
- Documents are under the correct Category, linked to the correct visit date (if applicable), and that multi-page documents have all pages
- Visit History
Backing Up Your Practice Data
Your practice’s PCC Server, either located in a secure cloud or in a physical server at your practice, contains the record of your A/R as well as important patient medical information. A backup protects that data from fire, natural disasters, or a server crash.
Because backups are so important, your PCC Server is configured to perform an overnight backup every night. Your server is backed up to both a secure remote location as well as a local network drive. You can also perform a backup manually at any time.
The sections below describe PCC’s different backup solutions, how to run a manual backup.
Your Office’s Custom Backup Solution
Every office is different, and PCC works to find the best backup solution depending on your location, office configuration, and other factors.
Here is a summary of PCC’s different backup solutions:
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Network Accessible Storage: PCC typically installs a networked hard drive in each practice’s office that automatically backs up all data. The NAS drive is a fast, local backup that makes data recovery easy.
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Remote Backup: PCC uses a secure, encrypted internet connection to backup your data on a remote server. This solution requires very little maintenance and ensures that data is encrypted and safely stored offsite.
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RAID Array: If your practice has a physical server in your office, that server includes a RAID array, one or more extra hard drives that automatically duplicate all information on the server. RAID is not a backup solution and can not be used to recover deleted files. Instead, your RAID array prevents data loss in the event of a hard drive failure. One faulty drive can be swapped out for a working drive without any interruption of service.
Contact PCC Support at 802-846-8177 or 800-722-7708 or support@pcc.com to discuss backup solutions for your practice. We periodically review the technical needs of your practice to ensure your data is safe and secure from theft, natural disaster, and hardware failure.
PCC Does Not Keep a Copy or Store Your Data: PCC does not maintain a copy of your data at our central office. Your data is kept on a server and on an encrypted local storage device, both of which remain under your office’s oversight at all times. An encrypted copy is also stored at secure remote “cloud” location.
Perform a Manual Backup (backups)
When a nightly backup fails, or when you need to move a physical PCC server or shut it down for an extended period, or a major storm is due in your area, you may wish to do a manual backup of your data.
Ask PCC: You can call PCC support at any time and ask them to begin an immediate back up of your data. Please allow several hours for the backup to complete. If you anticipate needing to restore from that backup, you should stop working on your system after that backup has begun as new changes will be lost.
You can also begin a backup yourself, without contacting PCC Support. Follow this procedure:
Warn Your Staff and All Users
Tell your office staff to log off the system. Make sure everyone has finished their current task and logged off.
Open a Practice Management Window
Run the Backups Program
Run the “Backup the System” option from the System Administration menu in th Practice Management window.
You can also run backups from a UNIX prompt.
Select a Local-Only or Remote Cloud Backup
Select “S) System Image Backup” to backup your PCC server to your NAS device, which is located in your office.
Select “T) System Image Backup (also to cloud)” to backup your PCC server to both your local NAS device as well as to a remote, cloud backup service.
Wait for Backup to Finish
Depending on the option you select and the size of your practice, your backup will take from one to three hours.
Check that the Backup Was Successful
You will see a message telling you whether or not the backup was successful.
Network Vulnerability Scan
Every quarter, PCC performs a network vulnerability scan on your PCC server and network infrastructure. This service is included in your PCC support contract.
What Do We Check?
PCC uses vulnerability scanning software to review connections to your server or router and firewall. We check known vulnerabilities on commonly used system ports available from the internet. For example, we scan the services on your server that run your e-mail, manage remote connections and remote offices, and your built-in web server.
We automatically send your office’s system administrator an e-mail letting you know the results of the scan.
What Happens When a Problem Is Found?
If a high-risk vulnerability is found, an email is automatically sent to support@pcc.com.
We treat that security vulnerability as a top priority. Our Technical Solutions team resolves the issue, and then notifies your office.
Sometimes even high-risk vulnerabilities cannot be remediated without negatively affecting your system, due to an unusual configuration or because your firewall or network is managed by a third-party. When that happens, PCC can help you communicate problems to whomever manages your firewall.
If PCC manages your office’s router, we can apply any required updates or patches. If you use a local or in-house IT technician to manage your network, they must handle the update and upkeep of your router.
Medium or Low-Risk Vulnerabilities
In addition to high-risk vulnerabilities, your network vulnerability scan will find many other medium or low-risk vulnerabilities. Some normal aspects of your network configuration may be labeled as low or medium-risk vulnerabilities, such as when a port is opened to allow communication between remote offices.
Your system administrator can review the e-mailed report and take appropriate action. Contact PCC Support for any questions about the results of the scan.
Shut Down Your PCC Server
If you need to move equipment or are preparing your office for a bad storm, you may want to shut down your PCC server. This might also be needed if a technician is visiting your office.
Follow this procedure:
Tell Your Staff to Log Off
Ask your staff to log out of your PCC system. You should make sure they are finished with their tasks and have logged off before proceeding.
Turn Off Your PCC Server
There are three different ways you could shut down your PCC server. First, you can just press the power button, located in the top-left of the front panel of your server (or under the grille, for some models). Press it once to begin the shutdown procedure.
If you can’t find the button, you could also log into a Practice Management window and select System Administration, and then “Shut down the system”.
Alternatively, you can always ask your PCC CA or PCC technician. They can turn your server off remotely.
Watch Your Server’s Console
Watch the monitor attached to your server as the system shuts down or reboots. If you are rebooting, you can tell your staff that they can log back in once you see the log in prompt. If you are shutting down, your server will turn off on its own.
Do I Have to Perform the Shut Down at the Main Console?: You can perform a shut down or reboot from any PC or terminal in your office. Using the main console is recommended only because it will show you the full range of messages as the system shuts down and it will be easier to observe when the system comes back up after a reboot.
Password Required on Start Up: When you push the power button to turn your PCC server back on, you will need your practice’s decryption passphrase. PCC shares this passphrase only with your practice’s office manager or PCC system administrator.
A Pediatric Practice Hardware Map
Here is a typical hardware and network layout for a PCC office. Your practice may have different equipment or a different configuration, but the image below identifies how a PCC Support technician works with your local IT vendor to arrange the PCC Server, network, and firewall equipment in a pediatric practice.
A Remote Office Hardware Map
Your practice may have one or more remote office locations. PCC can design a custom network configuration for your remote connection needs. This image depicts a typical remote office hardware map.
PCC Router and Firewall
PCC installs a Fortinet Fortigate in each practice as part of your PCC subscription. This router/firewall device connects your office to the internet and secures your network from unauthorized access.
My Practice Already Has One: In some cases, you may already have a suitable router/firewall provided by another IT consultant. In that case, PCC will work with you to ensure the existing device is adequate and configured correctly for use by your PCC equipment and applications. PCC prefers to provide and administer your router/firewall. It is a critical component of your network infrastructure and is the gateway through which PCC updates and administers your PCC server and other network devices.
The router/firewall performs the following functions in your office:
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Router: Your router/firewall device routes traffic between network segments.
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Firewall: Your router/firewall device helps prevent unauthorized access to your network and can help block incoming network attacks.
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Internet Sharing: Your router/firewall device provides a gateway to the internet for all of the devices on your network.
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Remote Connection: Your router/firewall device establishes secure Virtual Private Networks (VPN) between locations, such as your main and remote office or your office and a remote billing service. Your router/firewall devices are the endpoint for the connection at each location. PCC strongly recommends that clients with multiple offices install dedicated point-to-point connections between offices (typically fiber). In select cases, or when those services are not available, PCC may set up a persistent VPN connection between your offices.
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DHCP and DNS Services: Your router/firewall device may also provide DNS and DHCP service to your network devices. (DHCP provides IP addresses to your network devices. DNS resolves domain names to IP addresses so traffic can be properly routed.) Generally DNS and DHCP services run on your PCC server, but in some cases your router/firewall may perform these functions.
Your office’s PCC-installed router/firewall is a configurable unit, allowing PCC’s Technical Solutions Team to add features and change the configuration as your office’s needs change.
Device Specifics
The Fortinet Fortigate is a high-performance, commercial firewall with optional Universal Threat Management (UTM) features. Fortinet is a major provider of network security appliances and solutions.
More Questions?: If you or your network consultant needs more information about the router/firewall devices provided by PCC, contact PCC’s Technical Solution Team at (800)-722-1082.
Hardware Guide: Your PCC System Hardware
PCC may install a server, peripherals, and other hardware in your office. This article is a quick reference for that equipment. You can use the sections below as a photo guide to your PCC hardware.
Contact PCC Support with any questions about your practice hardware.
Read a Summary of Network and Equipment Services: PCC's Technical Solutions Team provides a Network and Equipment Services guide which includes answers to common questions around what PCC installs, how equipment is maintained, how backups are performed, and more.
What About Equipment that Your Practice Purchases?: Read the Personal Computer and Equipment guide to learn about PCs, printers, and other equipment that your practice purchases and maintains.
Introduction: What Does PCC Install at Your Practice?
PCC typically installs the following equipment:
- a PCC server (typically a Dell PowerEdge server) If your practice is hosted in a cloud service, PCC will not install a server
- one or more network switches
- a UPS battery backup unit
- a router/firewall (Fortigate)
- a network-attached storage device (NAS)
- one or more wireless access points
The PCC Server
Unless your practice will host your PCC server in the cloud, PCC installs one or more servers at your practice. The PCC server runs PCC EHR, the Patient Portal, and other PCC software and services. Your personal computers connect to the PCC server using a network connection.
PCC servers use the Rocky Linux operating system and require internet connectivity.
A PCC server includes provisions for failure and redundancy. PCC provides a guaranteed 4-hour response for onsite service. We include a monitor, keyboard and mouse specifically for the PCC server.
Current Server Installations
When PCC installs a physical server, we currently use a Dell PowerEdge server.
Height: 430.3mm (16.94 in)
Width: 218mm (8.58 in)
Depth: 603 mm (23.7 in)
Weight: 26 kg (55.67 lb.)
How to Turn Off Your PCC Server: Whenever possible, your PCC server should be rebooted or shutdown from the System Administration menu in the Practice Management window. Should that not be possible, you can use the illuminated green power switch on the front of the server. Push and release the button. When pushed and immediately released, the server should go through a proper shutdown procedure before powering down. In exceptional circumstances, you can also press the power button and hold it for several seconds to immediately power down the server. If you have any doubt about when or how to reboot or power down your server, please contact PCC support.
Network Switch
For a typical pediatric practice, PCC installs and maintains one or more network switches.
Switches are the center of your PCC network. All network devices, including PCs and your PCC server, plug into a port on the switch, through cabling in your wall. If you have a wireless access point, it also plugs into the switch directly or through a cable in the wall.
You can plug devices into any port on a switch, the ports do not need to be individually configured. Some models have ports with a lightning bolt to signify it can supply power to a phone or credit card machine. Please make us aware if these ports are needed for your practice.
UPS Power Backup System
PCC installs a UPS battery device to protect your new equipment from power surges, brown-outs, and black outs.
A UPS works silently until an electrical problem occurs. When a problem occurs for more than five minutes the UPS will send a signal to shut down the server. It is not meant to power machines for extended periods.
CyberPower Models
PCC-installed CyberPower UPS for an On-Site Server:
Cloud Server Model:
You can read technical specifications for this type of UPS at cyberpowersystems.com.
Router or Firewall Device
PCC installs and maintains a firewall for each of your offices. This device connects your office to the internet, connects remote offices, and provides connections to approved third-parties, such as a remote billing offices. The firewall provides security features that help protect your network. At this time, PCC provides Fortinet firewalls.
Height: 38mm (1.5 in)
Width: 216mm (8.5 in)
Depth: 160mm (6.3 in)
Weight: 0.9 kg (1.9 lb)
Network Attached Storage Device (NAS)
Depending on your practice’s configuration, PCC may install a NAS device. PCC’s NAS device is a RAID array of hard drives connected to your network that is used to store backups. PCC currently installs TrueNAS devices:
TrueNAS-Mini (network-attached storage backup)
How to Turn Off Your TrueNAS: The power switch for the NAS is on the front, in the upper righthand corner, behind the door that closes over the disks.
Wireless Access Points
Depending on your practice’s configuration, PCC may install one or more Wireless Access Point (WAP). A WAP is a radio transceiver that allows your wireless devices to transmit and receive data without a wired ethernet connection.
Height: 48.1 mm (1.89 in)
Width: 220 mm (8.66 in)
Depth: 220 mm (8.66 in)
Weight: 830 g (1.83 lb)
In most cases, a WAP is mounted on the ceiling and connected via a cable to your wiring closet. WAPs can be distributed throughout your office to achieve better WiFi coverage. These need to be properly mounted in the correct orientation to function correctly. They don’t work well if covered with papers or under a desk.
Note: For new installations, your PCC technician will advise you on the WAP location(s) for your contractor to install appropriate cabling prior to PCC’s arrival.
Replacing Hardware
PCC manages the network equipment that we supply. In most cases it is more effective, and less expensive, to let PCC provide network equipment and install and support your backbone network (firewall, UPS, switches, wireless, server and backup). Local IT is great for administering your Windows network, workstations and printers. If you choose to have your local IT manage your network they must supply the equipment.
Details about equipment and services that PCC provides can be reviewed in the fine print accompanying your PCC contract.
Patient Care Centers in PCC Software
If your practice has multiple locations that operate independently, you can turn on the Care Center features in PCC software. Once the feature is turned on, you can assign patients to a specific care center.
When you assign a patient to a care center, a special location flag is added to the patient’s record and many new features and abilities are available in PCC EHR and the patient portal.
The Care Center features will help large practices or multiple-practice partnerships where different office locations operate independently. Read below to learn more.
Use Care Center When Searching for Patients
When you search for a patient chart, you can see the patient’s care center in the search results.
Any office location can open any patient’s chart. When you search for a chart, you can use the Care Center column to know if you have found the correct patient.
Filter the Messaging Queue By Care Center
When your practice uses the Care Center features, the Messaging queue includes a Location filter.
Use the filter to see messages that relate only to the care center location where you work.
By default, all incoming, new messages or tasks on the Messaging queue will have the patient’s care center set as the item’s care center.
If a nurse creates a phone message task, as shown above, or a physician creates a new order follow-up task, the message will be assigned to the patient’s care center location.
However, any user can open the message task and change its care center location to redirect the message to a different care center.
Messages for Patients With No Care Center: If a patient does not have a care center assigned, messages about that patient will be visible to all locations on the Messaging queue.
You can open any message (created after your PCC 6.27 update) and assign it to a care center to make sure the correct office handles the issue.
Review Patient’s Care Center While You Work
When a patient has a care center, the care center information can appear during patient checkin, during scheduling, and elsewhere in PCC EHR.
Display the Care Center’s Address on Form Letters, Reports, and in MyKidsChart
If you assign patients to specific care centers, you can use new care center variables to produce form letters that contain the care center location. You can also configure the care center address to appear on the Health Information Summary report and in MyKidsChart.
Read the PCC 6.27 Migration Considerations document to learn more.
Use Care Center Flag for Recaller and Other Reports
When a patient has a care center, that care center appears as a patient flag. You can filter by the care center flag when you run the Recaller, SRS, or other reports.
Use the care center flag, along with other report options, to report on or contact a precise patient population.
Review Care Center Information When You Add Patients in MyKidsChart
When your practice adds patients to a MyKidsChart user account, you will see the care center information for each search.
Use the Care Center column to correctly identify the patients you should add for a patient portal user.
Turn On and Configure Patient Care Centers
If your practice has multiple locations that operate independently, you may want to turn on the patient Care Center feature. Contact PCC Support to discuss the feature and decide if it is right for you.
Read the sections below to learn how to configure care centers for your practice locations.
Configure Your Location Flags and Practice Locations
After PCC Support turns on the Care Center feature at your practice, you should double-check your location configuration. PCC can intelligently assign care centers based on the flags you are already using, or you can create new flags and locations and assign them to users.
First, each care center should have a location flag in the Patient Flags table in the Table Editor (ted). You may already have this configured at your practice. If not, clone or create new flags.
Next, each care center should have a scheduling location. Contact PCC Support for help updating your places of service. They can add your location flag to the correct place of service, ensure that your scheduling locations are available as login locations, and configure whether or not the location should be a subpart of a main office for claims. After these changes, all patients with the flag will be automatically assigned to the care center.
Assign Login Locations to Care Centers
When you schedule appointments using care centers, PCC scheduling tools need to know which locations belong to each care center.
This is done by a PCC Administrator, using login locations.
Talk to PCC Support about mapping your login locations to the correct care center.
Assign Users to Care Centers
An office manager or other administrative user at each care center location should review and set the care center for each PCC EHR user.
Many features in PCC EHR, including order assignment, provider lists, the Appointment Book and MyKidsChart administration will refer to a user’s care center.
Use the User Administration tool to edit a user’s care center.
The Care Center field controls who each PCC EHR user will see in various drop-down menus, and controls which MyKidsChart location they will access when using the Administration tab of the Patient Portal Management tool.
If your practice uses the Appointment Book in PCC EHR, your scheduling staff will only be able schedule for the locations that are mapped to the care center location(s) that they are assigned to. Similarly, when setting up providers’ default hours, only those locations that are mapped to the care center(s) which the provider is assigned to will be available for selection.
If a user floats between multiple locations, you can leave their care center blank. A user with no care center assigned will see, and be visible to, all other users, regardless of care center.
Have You Linked Clinicians to Billing Providers?: Some PCC features, including Care Center features, rely on having PCC EHR users linked to the providers in the under-the-hood configuration settings found in the Practice Management interface. You can see whether or not your clinicians are linked up in the Provider column in the User Administration tool.
If you believe a provider is not correctly assigned, open the Providers table your Practice Management window and enter the appropriate PCC EHR user.
Move the Care Center Component in Messaging Protocols
After PCC Support turns on the Care Center features at your practice, all message protocols, such as your phone notes, will include the Care Center component at the top.
New messages automatically receive the care center of the patient, but users can change that care center to redirect a message to a different location.
You can use the Protocol Configuration Tool to move the component anywhere in the ribbon.
Clean Up Unassigned Messages
After turning on the Care Center features at your practice, you may need to spend some time answering and completing old message tasks that do not have an assigned care center. All new messages can have a care center, but your practice may have a backlog of message tasks.
Any message without an assigned care center will appear for every location, regardless of the user’s location filter setting.
Train Your Staff to Assign Care Centers for Every Patient
During patient checkin, or whenever you create a new patient record, your practice should assign a care center.
Your staff can select a care center on the Demographics section of PCC EHR, anywhere the Demographics component is added (on a chart note, for example), as well as in checkin, checkout, and the Patient Editor (notjane).
One Care Center Only: Note that if you add a new care center to a patient, PCC will automatically remove the old care center (and flag) for them.
Configure User Selection Lists
In the User Administration tool, you can customize your drop-down user lists for your care center. You can sort users in three ways: by first name, by last name, or in a manually arranged order.
Set Location Filters and Save Your Defaults
On the Messaging queue, your staff can set their location. If they are responsible for handling tasks for patients from several care center locations, they can select more than one.
After setting their location, your staff can click “Save My Defaults” and PCC EHR will remember their preferences the next time they log in.
Any Messaging queue items that do not have an assigned care center will appear for all users, regardless of their Location filter.
Change Your Form Letters to Display the Care Center Address
When you generate a school excuse letter or other form letter, should it display your practice’s default address, or the patient’s care center address?
Review your practice’s common form letters and work with PCC Support to change your form letter variables to display the preferred address.
Configure the Address for the Health Information Summary and MyKidsChart
Use the Practice Preferences tool to set which location address appears on the Health Information Summary report and in the patient portal, MyKidsChart.
After setting this option, the Health Information Summary report and the patient portal will automatically display either your practice’s default address or the patient’s care center address. If the patient has no care center assigned, they will see the practice’s default address instead.
If a parent has several patients who visit physicians at different care centers, both addresses will appear for them when they log in to MyKidsChart.
Other Care Center Features
PCC continues to add and update PCC EHR features to support the needs of offices that use the Care Centers feature. Some of the recent additions include:
- If you assign your PCC EHR users to a care center (see above), the various lists of users found in PCC EHR and pocketPCC will show only those users who share your care center or who have no assigned care center.
- If you assign your PCC EHR users to a care center (see above), when you use the My Kid’s Chart administration tool your settings will refer to your assigned care center so families will see the correct care center-specific practice names and addresses.
- If you assign your PCC EHR users to a care center (see above), and your practice uses the Appointment Book, your scheduling staff will only be able to schedule within their assigned care centers, and your providers will only be able to be scheduled for appointments within their assigned care centers.
Connect to Your PCC System from Home
You can use PCC SecureConnect to remotely access all of PCC EHR and your Practice Management system.
Video: Watch how to remotely connect to your PCC system using PCC SecureConnect.
About PCC SecureConnect
PCC SecureConnect is a secure way to log into your full PCC system from a supported web browser on any laptop or computer that is connected to the internet. Every practice has a PCC SecureConnect login page from day one.
PCC SecureConnect uses two-factor authentication to keep your data safe. Two-factor authentication is a system that requires you to enter a security code at login in addition to your username and password. The security code is generated on your smartphone, which only you should have access to.
Once you log into PCC SecureConnect, you can access all of PCC EHR and your Practice Management system.
Supported Web Browsers: SecureConnect requires Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox. While SecureConnect may work on Safari, Microsoft Edge, or other browsers, PCC only tests and explicitly supports PCC SecureConnect on Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox web browsers.
Is PCC SecureConnect Different from pocketPCC?: pocketPCC is a curated version of your PCC system that you can access from any internet-connected device, including a smartphone or tablet. It does not require two-factor authentication and your practice can set users up without calling PCC Support. SecureConnect grants access to your entire PCC system but requires two-factor authentication and works best on a laptop or computer. Additionally, you must call PCC Support to authorize users. If you are only looking for access to your schedule, certain parts of patient charts, phone notes, and portal messages, get started with pocketPCC. If you need remote access to your full PCC system, read on.
Authorize Users for PCC SecureConnect
Every practice has a PCC SecureConnect login page from day one, but not all users are authorized to connect.
PCC keeps your system locked down so that only approved users can connect with SecureConnect. Your practice’s system administrator decides which users should be allowed to connect from home, a remote office, or while traveling.
Manage User Access Yourself: User administrators can add or remove users from the authorized SecureConnect list. Learn how.
Set Up Two-Factor Authentication
After your practice’s system administrator has added you to the list of authorized PCC SecureConnect users, you can set up two-factor authentication for your account.
Sync Your Phone and Computer Time Settings: Two-factor authentication is time-based and will not work if the time settings on your phone and computer are wrong or do not match. Be sure that the date and time settings on your phone and computer are correct before you begin this process.
On Your Phone, Install and Set Up the Authy App
Each time you log into PCC SecureConnect, you will need to enter a security code in addition to your username and password. Security codes for PCC SecureConnect are generated in a smartphone app called Authy.
If you don’t already have the Authy app on your smartphone, follow these instructions to download it, create an account, and register your device before moving on to the next step.
On Your Computer, Log Into PCC SecureConnect
Set aside your phone, but keep it awake and ready.
Use a supported web browser on your laptop or computer to navigate to your practice’s PCC SecureConnect login page, then enter your PCC username and password.
Upon logging in, the website displays a QR code.
Keep this page open while you turn back to your phone.
What’s My PCC SecureConnect Login Page?: You can reach your PCC SecureConnect login page by typing https://your-practice-acronym.pcc.com/secureconnect/ into your web browser and replacing “your-practice-acryonym” with your practice’s PCC acronym (e.g., https://abc.pcc.com/secureconnect/). Note that the prefix is https, not http.
On Your Phone, Open the Authy App and Tap “Add Account”
Open the Authy app on your phone and tap the “Add Account” button.
Use Your Phone to Scan the QR Code on Your Computer Screen
Tap the “Scan QR Code” button in the Authy app on your phone.
Allow the Authy app to access your camera, then point your camera at the QR code on your computer screen.
Authy automatically scans the QR code and links to your PCC SecureConnect account.
On Your Phone, Customize How PCC SecureConnect Displays in Authy
As soon as Authy links to your PCC SecureConnect account, you can save the connection. Before you save, you have the option to customize how it displays in Authy.
Your PCC SecureConnect account will appear in the Authy app with whichever name and image you choose.
On Your Phone, Save Your Work
Tap “Save” to finish linking your PCC SecureConnect account to the Authy app.
Once saved, you can use the security codes generated in your Authy app to log into PCC SecureConnect.
Optionally, Test It Out
After linking your PCC SecureConnect to the Authy app, your phone will display a six-digit security code on a 30-second timer. To test that your two-factor authentication is properly configured, you can enter this code into the PCC SecureConnect login page on your computer.
The security code should allow you to log into PCC SecureConnect and access your PCC system. Once logged in, click the “Start” button to open PCC EHR.
Security Codes Regenerate Every 30 Seconds: Authy security codes are only valid for 30 seconds. When the time runs out, a new one generates automatically. If you don’t enter the first code before it times out, don’t worry. Just use the next code that appears on your smartphone.
Multiple Authy Accounts?: If you prescribe controlled substances in PCC eRx or have used Authy for two-factor authentication before, you will see multiple accounts in your Authy app. Each account generates a unique code for a specific service. Make sure you have your PCC SecureConnect account selected in Authy when you are finding your security code to log in.
Log Into PCC SecureConnect
After you set up two-factor authentication, it’s easy to log into your PCC system from anywhere.
Go to Your PCC SecureConnect Login Page
Open a supported web browser on your laptop or computer, then type in the URL for your practice’s SecureConnect login page. You can reach your PCC SecureConne
ct login page by typing https://your-practice-acronym.pcc.com/secureconnect/ into your web browser and replacing “your-practice-acryonym” with your practice’s PCC acronym (e.g., https://abc.pcc.com/secureconnect/). Note that the prefix is https, not http.
Then, enter your PCC username and password.
Enter Your Code from the Authy App
Open the Authy app on your smartphone and tap on the PCC SecureConnect account. Use the six-digit security code on your Authy screen to finish logging into PCC SecureConnect on your computer.
Security Codes Regenerate Every 30 Seconds: Authy security codes are only valid for 30 seconds. When the time runs out, a new one generates automatically. If you don’t enter the first security code before it times out, don’t worry. Just use the next code that appears on your smartphone.
Multiple Authy Accounts?: If you prescribe controlled substances in PCC eRx or have used Authy for two-factor authentication before, you will see multiple accounts in your Authy app. Each account generates a unique code for a specific service. Make sure you have your PCC SecureConnect account selected in Authy when you are finding your security code to log in.
Log Into PCC EHR
Once you are connected to your PCC system, click the “Start” button to open PCC EHR.
From here, you can access all software functions of PCC EHR and your Practice Management system.
Sign Out of PCC EHR
When you are finished working remotely via SecureConnect, sign out of PCC EHR before closing your browser tab. Click the “Sign Out” option in the File menu to sign out.
You can also use the Logout option in the Start button menu.
Log Out of PCC EHR Every Time You Use SecureConnect: Please make sure to sign out of PCC EHR before closing your Secure Connect tab or window to avoid multiple login instances.
If you need additional access to remote resources such as printers when working from home, contact PCC Support. PCC can help set up alternate remote connection methods on a case by case basis.
Helpful Authy Links
Sometimes there are hiccups and you need to reset your two-factor authentication account in the Authy app. PCC has found the following links useful for resolving issues in the Authy app.
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Restore Authy Access on a New, Lost, or Inaccessible Phone: Did you lose your phone or upgrade to a new one? Learn how to restore Authy access or recover your account.
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Delete, Hide, or Decrypt Two-Factor Authentication Accounts in the Authy App: Do you need to delete a connection in the Authy app? Learn how.
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Reconfigure Authy After Losing or Forgetting Your Backup Password: Did you forget the backup password for your Authy account? Learn how to reconfigure Authy.
Contact Physician’s Computer Company Support
All PCC clients have a guaranteed support plan. You should always feel free to contact PCC for help with our software, hardware, or services. Talk to PCC when you are considering new hardware or software, making major configuration changes, or moving your office. Let us know so we can help!
How to Contact Support
PCC sets up regular Client Advocate calls with every pediatric practice. You can also email, call, or fax PCC Support at any time.
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PCC Calls You: Your practice’s Client Advocate will reach out and chat with someone at your office at a time that works best for you. These regularly scheduled optional calls are the perfect time to ask for configuration changes, learn how to implement new features and tools at your practice, or get additional training.
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Email PCC: Send all PCC emails to
support@pcc.com. We will route your email to PCC Support, your practice’s Client Advocate, or the appropriate specialist. -
Call PCC: PCC’s support phone is 802-846-8177 or 800-722-7708. Live support techs are available between 8:30am and 8pm ET (5:30am to 5pm PT), except for a few days during the year. Emergency help is available 24/7, 365 days a year.
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Fax PCC: You can also fax PCC a problem at 1-802-846-2197. This works particularly well for work on form letters, reports, or other visual problems. Be sure and identify your office and yourself on the fax and include a number where you can be reached.
What Happens After I Call?
PCC Support solves many problems immediately, during your first call or in response to your first email.
If we can’t talk right away, we’ll call or email you back. Either way, we’ll open a support ticket for you. You’ll get an automated email describing your support ticket.
Can I Follow-Up On Unresolved Support Tickets?
You can visit https://support.pcc.com to review all of your support tickets. PCC Support can help you set up an account.
You can decide which users at your practice should have access to this tool, and whether they should be able to see all support tickets practice-wide, or just the tickets they open.
PCC Support tracks every ticket until it is completed to your satisfaction. If you need something we can’t help you with, we’ll open a development enhancement request or help you find a different tool or workflow.
Your PCC Data Conversion
When you start using PCC at your practice, will your patient and account records already appear in PCC, or will you be entering everything from scratch?
For most practices, PCC performs a data conversion from your previous vendor so you don’t have to manually enter your data. To start the process, you will need to request an export from your previous vendor that can later be imported into PCC. If you are not sure what information to ask for, PCC can provide some communication tips.
This document explains the data conversion process and helps set accurate expectations. By reading it, you will understand:
- Timeline: The step-by-step data conversion timeline
- Available Data: What data we can usually convert, and what data we cannot convert.
- Roles: What PCC does, what your practice needs to do, and what your previous vendor needs to do in order to ensure a successful data conversion
- Results: As much information from your previous vendor as possible will be populated in your new PCC system, or available in electronic document form. An additional encrypted hard drive of your data will be available upon request.
As always, please feel free to call or email us to discuss any of the details in this document.
What Does My Practice Need to Do to Ensure a Good Data Conversion?
The success of the data conversion relies on three things: 1) PCC’s efforts, 2) your communication with your previous vendor or practice, and 3) the cooperation of your previous vendor. When we can all work together to convert your previous data, your first few months with PCC are much easier for you, your patients, and your staff.
The procedure below walks through each step of the data conversion process. But what are the most important points you need to know? What are the issues that practices sometimes overlook or underestimate about saying goodbye to their previous system?
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Keep Your Previous System Up and Running: You will need your existing software system for verification of data conversions, for understanding any discrepancies, and for working down your practice’s existing accounts receivable. We recommend that every practice keep their previous system tools available until several months after the final clinical conversion.
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Identify Who Knows the Previous System Best: Who at your practice will be the go-to for information about your previous system? As PCC designs your data conversion, we will contact your practice to ask questions about logging in and other details about your previous system.
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Prepare For Data Verification: Your practice will need to schedule time for verifying data conversions. We may do a series of data conversions and verifications, and your practice plays a crucial role in making sure all data is brought over correctly. We can’t do it without you!
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Coordinate Communication with Your Previous Vendor: Your practice is solely responsible for communicating with your previous vendor.
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Inform Your Previous Vendor of Your Departure: As long as your practice has a paid contract with your previous vendor, they are obligated to provide you with service. For this reason, we always recommend being up-front and direct with your previous vendor.
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Request a Data Export From Your Previous Vendor: Your clinical data conversion, and in some cases your entire data conversion, will require an export from your previous vendor. PCC can only convert clinical data that we receive from your previous vendor. PCC can provide a list of the data we typically convert to help facilitate your communication with your previous vendor. Do not specify “all data” as vendors may skip important details, which creates delays.
The Data Conversion Process: Who Does What, and When?
Even before you sign a contract with PCC, your practice will need to communicate with your previous vendor about a data export. This process can take time so you want to start the discussion and request the export as soon as possible.
Two Types of Data Conversion: A data conversion involves two types of data: practice management data and clinical data. Practice management data includes your patient and account demographic, appointment, and charge data. Clinical data includes labs, visit history, visit notes, and similar data. While PCC can retrieve practice management data from your system, clinical data requires an export from your previous vendor.
Practice Export: If your patients’ data is housed on a software system belonging to another practice, we require an export for clinical data. Your practice is responsible for communicating with the other practice to obtain the data export.
Below is a timeline of a successful data conversion. For each step, you can see what happens, what PCC does, and what your practice needs to do.
Practice Management Conversion
PCC can usually retrieve practice management data, such as patient demographics, policies, billing history, and appointments, from your current system once you grant access.
Conversion Stage 1: Take Stock of Your Existing System
Before you sign with PCC, or any other vendor, we recommend that you understand the location and service contracts related to your existing data. We cannot guarantee the success of any data conversion, as there are many unforeseen technical obstacles and sometimes difficulties getting cooperation from other vendors. Even the data exported from distinct practices using the same system can differ in subtle or significant ways. However, PCC has experience converting data from dozens of systems of various complexity, from homegrown systems to advanced EHRs.
What Your Practice Does: First, we recommend that you make a list of all the data you have in different software systems and review their related contracts. Do you have an existing EHR, a billing system, a contacts database? Where is your data? Next, ask your previous vendor what type of export is available.
What PCC Does: PCC will provide you with information on how your data can be converted.
Conversion Stage 2: Research Data Availability
As soon as you sign with PCC, we begin asking questions and researching the reports we can generate for your practice management data. If we have worked with your vendor in the past, we may have an existing conversion process that we can start adapting for your system. For example, we may already be aware of the reports available for your practice management data. The scope of the practice management conversion will depend on the availability and format of available reports.
What Your Practice Does: First, you will provide PCC with a description of where your patient and account records are currently stored. Second, you will provide PCC with remote access to your existing computer system with login credentials.
What PCC Does: PCC will maintain your patients’ privacy in accordance with HIPAA regulations. Our data conversion specialists log into your existing system and evaluate the reports available to convert practice management data, which is your patient and account demographic, appointment, and charge data.
As we do this research, we will send your practice questions and sample data to review.
Conversion Stage 3: Map Available Data
For most practices, PCC can retrieve your practice management data. You must request a separate clinical data export from your previous software vendor.
What Your Practice Does: Your practice will communicate with your previous vendor for help exporting the clinical data. Your practice will assist with data mapping as needed.
What PCC Does: PCC will inform you of the reports available on your system for the practice management data conversion. PCC will ask for assistance mapping data as needed.
PCC can provide a written description of the data we typically convert to help you facilitate communication with your previous vendor about the data export.
Other Important Notes
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Prepare for Unexpected Costs: Your support agreement with your previous vendor may specify a cost for helping you access and export your patient data. Depending on the size of your practice, this may be a significant fee. PCC’s approach to the practice management conversion helps you avoid extra costs when possible.
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Your Practice Is in Charge of Communication About Your Data Export: It is important to remember that your practice must be the manager of communication with your previous vendor. All communication occurs in the context of your practice’s existing support contract with your previous vendor, as you are their paying customer. PCC does not have the authority to deal directly with your previous vendor.
Conversion Stage 4: Review, Correct, and Verify Initial Conversion
For most practices, PCC performs an initial conversion of the practice management data for review. Your practice must log in to PCC, look closely at the data and report any problems.
What Your Practice Does: Your practice will log in to PCC, review the data conversion, and report any problems. Did the practice management data come over correctly? Are patient insurance policies appearing? Do you also want to retain additional data, like the previous system’s account numbers?
What PCC Does: PCC will run an initial data conversion of the practice management data. PCC will help you log in and review your converted data.
PCC will work with you to correct issues that you found during your review. Timely and thorough examination, as well as frequent communication during this stage are vital to a high-quality data conversion.
Conversion Stage 5: Review, Correct, and Verify the Final Data Conversion
A day or two before your go live day, PCC runs the final practice management data conversion from your previous system to PCC.
What Your Practice Does: Your practice will review the data conversion one last time. Is the practice management data ready for your go live?
What PCC Does: PCC will complete a final conversion for the practice management data. We will use the data conversion process we developed in the previous steps to import your practice’s patient and family data into your PCC system.
Authorize That Data Conversion Was Complete: For some practices when there needs to be communication between many different physicians or different office locations, PCC may ask a physician or office manager to sign a statement that the data was reviewed, and the conversion was acceptable. We do this so that all parties involved understand that the conversion was completed and reviewed, and so everyone knows that the data expected in PCC is present.
Go Live with PCC
PCC trainers are available to you, usually on site at your office, for the first two days of charting in PCC EHR. This short period is your PCC “Go Live.” Once you start charting in PCC EHR, the practice management conversion is complete.
Clinical Queue Waiting Period
Your practice enters the clinical conversion queue once PCC receives a complete clinical export from your previous vendor. The duration of this period varies based on how quickly vendors send the complete export, and the current queue length.
Your previous vendor should pull the clinical data export once you have seen your last patient in your previous system. Therefore, the clinical data conversion cannot begin until after you go live with PCC.
PCC will confirm receipt of your clinical data export in writing. However, receipt of your export does not mark the beginning of the clinical export. PCC will reach out in writing when we start actively working on your clinical conversion.
You will need to access your previous system for clinical information until PCC has converted your clinical data.
Clinical Data Conversion from Vendor Export
The clinical data conversion involves mapping and importing the exported data from your previous vendor. Clinical data may include labs, visit history, visit notes, and similar patient and medical data.
Just like practice management conversions, clinical data conversions follow the same conversion stages as described above: evaluation, research, sample review, correction, and verification. As with the practice management conversion, PCC needs your input to ensure the clinical data is converted correctly.
Until PCC has converted the available clinical data, you will need to access your previous system for clinical information. This process may take several weeks from when your previous vendor provides the export.
What Your Practice Does: Your practice will follow the same stages as described above to complete the clinical data conversion. That is, your practice will assist with mapping, review sample data, provide corrections, verify the conversion, and communicate in a timely way.
What PCC Does: PCC will research, map, and import your practice’s clinical data into PCC for your review. Once the data is reviewed, PCC will make corrections and complete a final import of your clinical data.
Conversion Complete
Each conversion, even coming from the same vendor, is slightly different. PCC works hard to make sure that your converted data lands in the correct location. We will communicate with you at each step along the way. PCC Support is available to you at any time. Please don’t hesitate to reach out.
Authorize That Data Conversion Was Complete: When there needs to be communication between many different physicians or different office locations, PCC may ask a physician or office manager to sign a statement that the data was reviewed, and the conversion was acceptable. We do this so that all parties involved understand that the conversion was completed and reviewed, and so everyone knows that the data expected in PCC is present.
Once you sign off on your clinical conversion, the entire conversion process is complete. Happy charting!
Data Conversion Results: What Data Will We Get?
PCC knows that your practice’s transition will be much smoother when your new PCC system has as much useful data from your previous system as possible. Here’s a list of what we can usually convert, and what we don’t. The data in your practice’s conversion will be dependent on the reports available for the practice management data and the export received from your previous vendor.
Data We Almost Always Convert
Your PCC data conversion will potentially include the following:
- Demographics: patients, families, family relationships, addresses, and other demographic data
- Insurance policies and your insurance plan list
- Charge History, including diagnoses, CPTs, and procedure pricing
- Appointments, including past and future scheduled appointments
Data We Are Usually Able to Convert
Your PCC data conversion will probably also include the following, though the level of detail varies depending on the export received from your previous vendor.
- Patient and Family Notes, Flags, Etc.
- Patient Problem Lists, Allergies, Family History, Medical, and Social History
- Immunization Records
- Visit Chart Notes
- Vitals and Diagnoses from Each Visit
- Phone Notes
- Scanned Documents
- Lab/Order History (as text)
- Medication History (as text)
Data We Do Not Convert
PCC does not convert the following information.
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Account Balances: Outstanding balances are stored in a way that is too specific to your previous software vendor. We cannot convert your accounts receivable, as the payment and adjustment history between the two systems would not match up. Keep your previous system operational until you have finished outstanding claims and personal balances.
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Open Tasks: Typically we can convert order history, but only as text for reference. Open tasks will not appear in PCC. We recommend generating a report from your previous system to keep track of those tasks and when they are completed.
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Audit Logs: Your previous system may track an audit log of which users viewed and edited data. User accounts cannot be brought over from your previous system, so the audit log cannot be converted. If your practice wishes to preserve your audit logs, your may wish keep a backup of your previous system or maintain a relationship with your previous vendor.
Review a Log of Generated Account Bills
Every time your practice generates a batch of bills, PCC keeps a log of the bill run. Use the Log tab of the Bills tool to review each bill run, including full details of who ran bills, when they were run, and a list of every account for whom a bill was generated or excluded. You can also review a copy of any bill.
Click on the Log tab in the Bills tool to review when and how your practice generated bills.
Double-click on an entry to see details of the bill run.
The log of the bill run displays each account that received a bill, their account number, and the amount billed. You can search for a specific name, amount, or account number. You can click “Accounts Not Billed” to see a list of all accounts that did not receive a bill during that bill run.
Double-click on a family to see the text that appeared on the bill.
A Log of Bills Generated, Not Sent: The Log tab displays a record of every time your practice generated bills. If your practice printed bills without mailing them, or your practice encountered a problem with your third-party bill printing service (OSG, formerly “Diamond Health”), then the bills may have been generated but not sent.
Archived Electronic Communications from Your Ebills Vendor
In addition to reviewing the Log tab in the Bills tool, your PCC system also stores e-bills reports when they are sent by your third-party bill printing vendor. You can access these files with the EDI Reports (ecsreports) program. See Review Archived EDI Reports for more details.
CPT II in PCC
Your PCC system supports the American Medical Association’s CPT II code specification, a subset of the standard CPT codes used for procedures.
CPT II codes, commonly used for Medicare billing, report performance measures and can show how well offices are meeting quality measures (PQRI – Physician Quality Reporting Initiative). They are not like regular procedure codes, and they have no associated price. They identify a condition and the clinical component for assessment of that condition.
Should You Participate?: Some insurance carriers may offer pay-for-performance bonuses to practices that use CPT II codes. You can enroll in these programs with your insurance carriers, use the codes during checkout and billing, and payors will then evaluate whether clinical improvement was achieved and send you an incentive bonus.
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.
Coding with CPT II, an Overview
Providers use ICD-9/ICD-10 diagnosis codes to indicate patient conditions. They use CPT codes to record the office visit and clinical procedures. The provider may use CPT II in addition to CPT codes in order to indicate how diagnoses and treatment relate. Some CPT II codes are redundant with ICD-9 codes.
There may be extenuating circumstances for why particular care is not performed. If you report those circumstances using CPT II codes with special modifiers (1P, 2P, etc.) you can remain in compliance with a carrier’s Pay for Performance goals. This may happen when a family refuses care, for example.
Only a small subset of the total CPT II codes are of interest to pediatricians. The most common relate to Asthma and Pharyngitis. The table below lists common pediatric CPT II codes. Note that new PQRI measurs and CPT II codes are added regularly.
| Code | Description |
|---|---|
| 4015F | Use this code for patients diagnosed with asthma to indicate whether or not they were prescribed long-term medication or acceptable alternative treatment. |
| 1005F | Use this code for patients diagnosed with asthma to indicate whether the patient was evaluated for frequency (numeric) of daytime and nocturnal asthma symptoms. |
| 4120F | Use this code for patients diagnosed with URI (Upper Respiratory Infection) or Pharyngitis who were prescribed antibiotics on or within 3 days of visit. |
| 4124F | Use this code for patients diagnosed with URI (Upper Respiratory Infection) or Pharyngitis who were *NOT *prescribed antibiotics on or within 3 days of visit. |
| 3210F | Use this code for patients diagnosed with pharyngitis who received a group A strep test. |
| 4130F | Use this code for patients diagnosed with Acute Otitis Externa who were prescribed topical preparations |
| 1116F | Use this code for patients diagnosed with Acute Otitis Externa who were assessed for Auricular or periauricular pain. |
| 4132F | Use this code for patients diagnosed with Acute Otitis Externa who were *not* prescribed Systemic antimicrobial therapy. |
| 4131F | Use this code for patients diagnosed with Acute Otitis Externa who were prescribed Systemic antimicrobial therapy. |
| 2035F | Use this code for patients diagnosed with OME (Otitis Media with Effusion) who had assessment of tympanic membrane mobility with pneumatic otoscopy or tympanometry. |
| 3230F | Use this code for patients diagnosed with OME (Otitis Media with Effusion) to indicate documentation of hearing test performed within 6 months prior to tympanostomy tube insertion. |
You can learn more about CPT II by visiting the American Medical Association’s web site about CPT II. Visit http://www.ama-assn.org/ and search for CPT II.
Get Started with CPT II in PCC
Read the procedure below to learn more about CPT II and the steps for PCC system implementation.
Research and Evaluate Your Options
Work with your carriers to understand the guidelines of their CPT II, PQRI and pay-for-performance agreements. Evaluate the additional work your providers, front desk, and billing staff will need to perform to implement CPT II on your encounter forms, charge screens, and during the checkout and billing process.
Sign Up or Enroll
In some cases, you may need to adjust your contract or “opt in” to a carrier’s pay-for-performance program before beginning.
Decide What CPT II Codes to Implement
Study the CPT II codes your carriers accept and develop a plan for the codes your office will use. PCC’s coding expert can answer basic questions, and you can learn more about CPT II from the AMA.
Add CPT II Codes to Your PCC System
Use the Tables tool to create the CPT II code entries in the Procedures table.
- Assign a $0 price for these new procedure codes. Your carriers may have special guidelines or require a $.01 charge for all procedures, so double-check their coding requirements.
- Assign the accounting type of “Revenue – CPT II”. This will ensure that the codes are cataloged properly during reporting.
Adjust Your Office Workflow and Configuration
Work with your providers and your billers. Teach them how to select the correct CPT II codes along with tradition diagnosis and procedure codes. You may need to adjust your encounter forms and charge screens. Contact PCC Software Support at 800-722-1082 for help.
Post Charges and Use CPT II
Once you begin using CPT II, you will be able to run procedure-based reports and track your posting compliance. Contact PCC Support for help finding specific reports.
Post Pay-for-Performance Bonuses
If your pay-for-performance work results in an incentive payment from an insurance carrier, post that money into a holding account. You may create a holding account and patient named for the insurance company.
For your accounts to balance, PCC recommends you post an adjustment when you post the payment. To learn more about posting pay-for-performance bonuses or other unusual income, read Post Capitation Checks, Incentive Payments, Interest Payments, Overpayments, and Withhold Payments. You may wish to create new incentive payment types in the Payments table with the name of the insurance carrier.
Reporting: As CPT II procedures have no revenue, they should not adversely effect your reporting. You can run procedure-based reports to watch CPT II coding trends as with any other code. Posting CPT II codes (which should all have a $0.00 amount) will not affect per-visit reimbursement analysis.
Review Checkin Status: Who Checked a Patient In?
When a patient is checked in, PCC records the time of check in, the user who checked them in, and the office location. You can view that information later to discover who checked a patient in.
You can see who checked a patient in PCC EHR in the Appointment Details component.
You can find that component at the top of a chart note or in Patient Check-In. So, for example, if you wanted to know who checked a patient in, you could highlight the appointment on the Schedule screen and click “Patient Check-In’. Or, you could open the visit’s chart note and look at the top of the protocol.
CARC and RARC Values in PCC
When insurance carriers send payment and adjustment information, either on an EOB or an ERA, they often include a code with a small message. These codes are known as CARC values, or Claim Adjustment Reason Codes, and they are an industry-wide standard. CARC values can include a code, an amount, and an additional group code.
Remittance Advice Remark Codes (RARCs) provide additional explanation for an adjustment already described by a Claim Adjustment Reason Code (CARC). A RARC can be supplemental or informational.
PCC stores and displays CARC information to help you understand charge history, communicate adjustment information on patient bills, and submit secondary claims.
CARC Workflow Example
You may see a 45 on your EOB or ERA, with a note indicating that 45 means, “Charge exceeds fee schedule/maximum allowable or contracted/legislated fee arrangement.” Number 45 is the most common CARC value, and it indicates that the payer has adjusted your charge to their pay schedule.
If PCC received the remittance electronically, it will record “45” when it automatically posts the payment and adjustment.
If you are posting a payment by hand, you can enter 45 when you Post Insurance Payments manually, along with a CARC amount and group, if provided.
You can review the CARC information in most places where payment history appears, such as the Billing History, various Account History tools, and personal statements.
Common CARCs
While there are hundreds of CARC values, the common ones comprise most of the codes you will receive. Here are the top nine:
|
CARC Value (in order of popularity) |
Message Text |
|---|---|
| 45 | Charge exceeds fee schedule/maximum allowable or contracted/legislated fee arrangement. |
| 42 | Charges exceed our fee schedule or maximum allowable amount. |
| 97 | Payment adjusted because the benefit for this service is included in the payment/allowance for another service/procedure that has already been adjudicated. |
| 22 | Payment adjusted because this care may be covered by another payer per coordination of benefits. |
| 96 | Non-covered charge(s). |
| 104 | Managed care withholding. |
| 18 | Duplicate claim/service. |
| 24 | Payment for charges adjusted. Charges are covered under a capitation agreement/managed care plan. |
| 144 | Incentive adjustment, e.g. preferred product/service. |
How CARC Codes Get Into the Account Record in PCC
CARC values enter your PCC system through autoposting or when you post an insurance response manually.
Autoposting ERAs Imports the CARC to the Account Record
When you autopost an ERA, CARC and RARC values are recorded with payments and adjustments to which they pertain, along with amount and group codes required for secondary submission.
Enter CARC As You Manually Post Payments
You will see CARC values on your EOBs and ERAs from most carriers. You can enter CARC values when you manually post or edit payments and adjustments.
For each charge, you can enter a CARC amount, code, and group code.
Do Not Post Other Carrier Codes in CARC Fields: If your insurance carrier uses a non-CARC system of coded messages, do not post them in the CARC column. CARC values are a national standard and do not match up with Georgia Medicaid message codes or other carrier codes. Instead, some PCC users use payment and adjustment types to indicate messages from carriers.
Where Can I Review CARC and RARC Values in PCC?
Once CARC values are entered with payments, where can you find them and how can they benefit your day-to-day work? Is there a way to review RARCs that came in electronically?
CARC and RARC Values Appear on ERAs
While you can automatically post most payments and adjustments, you can also read any ERA 835 files sent to your system from payors. Your PCC system keeps the ERA on file so you can review complete details later in the Electronic Remittance Advice tool.
CARC in Encounter and Account Histories
CARC values appear in the Billing History and Account History, both found in the patient’s chart.
CARC Values Appear on Personal Bills
PCC’s personal bills, whether printed in your office or through a remote ebills service, include CARC values and an explanation of what they mean.
You can review the text of any personal bill in the Logs tab of the Bills tool.
Report on the CARC Values Used By Payers
PCC can help you create reports based on CARCs and amounts in order to understand trends in payer responses. Contact PCC Support for help.
What is a Claim ID Number?
Every insurance claim in your PCC system has a unique identification number. The number appears in various reports and programs, and you can use it to improve claim tracking and payment posting.
Claim ID Creation and Tracking
As soon as a claim is submitted, your PCC system creates a unique claim ID. The number is submitted on the claim, along with the patient’s account number. It should appear on all resulting claim communication, though some insurance carriers have trouble distinguishing the numbers.
When you work to track down a problematic claim, you can see the claim ID number in the Claims tool, when you read ERAs as well as on many other screens.
Find the Claim ID on Reports and EOBs
While your PCC system can identify the Claim ID quickly and easily, different reports and EOBs may display the claim ID in different ways. Below are some examples.
Use the Claim ID to Post Payments and Adjustment
For most claims, your PCC system automatically identifies the claim ID and can post incoming payments and adjustments automatically. When you need to post a payment or adjustment manually, you can use the claim ID to select it quickly.
If you can not find a claim ID for some reason, you can also search by patient name, birthdate, phone number, or other information. See Post Insurance Payments to learn more.
Submit Claims
Use the Claims tool to prepare and submit claims to insurance companies and other payers, work on claims that could not be submitted, and review a log of submissions.
Video: Watch Submit Claims to learn more.
Prepare and Submit Claims
When you are ready to prepare and submit claims to payers, use the Claims tool in PCC EHR.
Open Claims
Open the Claims tool from the Tools menu in PCC EHR.
Click “Prepare Claims”
Click “Prepare Claims” to begin preparing your claims.
Your PCC system will review all charges that are ready to be turned into a claim.
What Makes a Charge Ready to Be Turned Into a Claim?: Encounter charges are ready to be turned into a claim as soon as you post them into PCC’s system. You can also queue up a claim later, when you use the Edit Charges feature in the Billing History in the patient’s chart.
Claim Scrubbing and Preparation: As your PCC system reviews charges and prepares outgoing claims, it removes duplicates; verifies patient, charge, and payer information; and checks over other details, such as whether billing codes are valid for a given date of service. Next, it determines which payer or clearinghouse-specific configuration will be used to format the claim.
Review Claim Processing Results
When it finishes preparing, the Claims tool displays how many claims will be submitted and routed to paper. It also lists how many claims will be held, delayed, or need corrections.
Use the reference below to learn more about each of the sections and totals.
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Selected Batches:
- Claims are grouped into batches. By default “All batches” will be selected. (See the next step for more information.)
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Prepared Claims:
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Claims prepared to submit: Prepared claims that will be sent electronically when you click “Submit Claims”.
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Claims prepared to route to paper: Prepared claims that will be moved over to a paper holding batch when you click “Submit Claims”. You can print these claims later with the
hcfaprogram.
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Claims That Will Not Be Submitted:
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Claims held: Claims held due to a Claim Hold.
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Claims delayed: Claims delayed due to your practice’s claim delay, usually a few days.
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Claims need corrections: Claims that contain one or more problems that prevent the claim from being submitted. These claims will not leave your system until you correct the problems.
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Optional: Select Specific “Batches” to Submit
If your practice divides up billing responsibility by payer, or you have another less common workflow need, you might wish to submit only a portion of the prepared claims.
Click Edit, and then select which batches you wish to submit.
What is a Batch?: A batch represents an under-the-hood custom claim configuration on your PCC system. All the claims in a batch use the same claim configuration, so a batch might be named for a large group of payers. If your practice has an unusual claim configuration need, PCC’s EDI configuration specialists sometimes create a custom batch. Your list of batches may also reflect claim clearinghouses or other entities.
Click “Submit Claims” and Confirm
When you are ready to send the prepared claims, click “Submit Claims”. Then click “Submit Claims” again to verify and proceed.
Submitting claims can take several minutes, especially when you have a large number of claims, as PCC re-verifies claim information.
Review Results
When claim submission is finished, you can review how many claims were submitted and routed to paper.
Click “Close” to close the window.
Additional Prepared Claims: If you prepared claims and then only selected and submitted certain claim batches, you can now select additional batches and submit them.
Print Paper Claims
If some claims can not be sent electronically and need to be printed, they will be “routed to paper”.
Use the hcfa program in your Practice Management windows to print paper claims.
Follow Up on Claims that Need Corrections
If a claim can not be submitted, you can find an explanation of the problem on the Needs Correction tab. See the sections below to learn more.
These claim errors must be resolved before the claim can go out.
Optional: Review Log
When you are finished submitting claims, you can use the Log tab to review the record of what occurred during claim processing.
Work on Claims that Cannot Be Submitted
When you prepare and submit claims, your PCC system checks for claim errors. If a claim is missing an insurance ID number or the policy isn’t active for the date of service, for example, PCC will hold back the claim.
Review claims with these issues on the “Needs Correction” tab in the Claims tool.
For each claim, you can review the patient, the date of service, the insurance plan, and the reason the claim could not be submitted. You can use the Search Filter to find specific claims or issues affecting multiple claims.
These claim errors must be resolved before the claim can go out. For example, you may need to update patient, account, or charge information. As these claims have yet been submitted, you do not need to file a “corrected claim” or include a payor claim control number. You can fix the problems and then return to the Submission tab to prepare and submit claims again.
Review Details and Resolve Claim Problems
Double-click on a claim to work on it.
You can see encounter details and the reason the claim cannot be submitted. The window also displays suggested instructions for correcting the issue.
To get a better understanding of the problem, you can click a disclosure arrow to review patient, account, and policy information.
Use the buttons at the bottom of the screen to open different tools and resolve the issue. You can jump to the patient’s demographics, for example, if you need to edit certificate numbers or start and end dates for the policy assigned to the claim.
If you need to edit any aspect of the encounter, change the responsible party, or generate a new claim, click “Edit Charges”.
When you are finished making corrections, you can click “Close” or “Next” to continue on to the next stuck claim on your system. PCC EHR will revalidate the claim and check if you have resolved the issue. If there is something else wrong with the claim, PCC EHR will let you know.
If in the process of fixing the problem you generate a new claim, you can delete the old one that is waiting on the Needs Correction tab.
Read Claim Error Reference to learn about each possible claim processing error and how to fix it.
Validate a Claim Needing Corrections
After you update the patient and/or charge record, click “Validate” to recheck all claim information.
If there are additional problems with a claim, you will see the newly discovered issue in the “Reason” column. If a claim is now ready to submit, the Status will change to “Validated”.
You can filter the list of claims on the Needs Correction tab to see claims that need corrections or are validated.
Re-prepare and Submit
After you fix the problems with claims on the Needs Correction tab, you can prepare and submit claims on the Submission tab. Clean claims will then be processed and sent, and the Needs Correction tab will refresh with any new issues that need your attention.
Delete a Claim
If you fix an issue and need to generate a new claim for an encounter, you may need to delete the old claim. For example, after you generate a claim for a different insurance policy, you can select the old claim on the Needs Correction tab and click “Delete Claim”.
Deleting a claim on the Needs Correction tab will only remove the claim. The charges will remain on the account.
Where Do I Change the Responsible Party for Charges and Generate a New Claim?: If a claim is pending the wrong insurance policy, you can open the encounter in the Billing History in the patient’s chart and use Edit Charges to update the responsible party for each charge. See Change the Responsible Party and Copay for Charges.
Review Claim Submission Session Logs
When you use PCC EHR to submit claims, you can use the “Log” tab in the Claims tool to review the details of a claim submission. You can also review which claims were held, delayed, needed corrections, or were routed to paper.
The Log tab displays a record of all claim submissions run from PCC EHR, filtered by year. In addition to date and time, you can see which user at your practice submitted the claims and how many claims were held, delayed, needed corrections, were routed to paper, and were submitted. If only some batches were submitted, you can see how many under the Batches column.
Where's My Log?: The Log tab displays claim submission sessions submitted from PCC EHR. If you prepare claims but do not submit, the Claims tool will not add a record to the Log tab. Also, if your practice sometimes uses the previous Practice Management tool to process and submit claims, those submissions will not appear in the logs.
Double-click on a session log to see more information.
On the “Claims – Submission Session Log – View” screen, you can review details about each claim that was processed during the claim submission. If the user prepared and submitted multiple batches during the same session, they can use the drop-down menu in the upper-left to select and review each submission.
Use the Search Filter to find claims by name, date of service, insurance plan, batch, or claim ID.
Review Held Claims
To see details about all claims held due to a claim hold, select “Held” in the session drop-down menu.
Your practice can configure custom claim holds based on dates of service, billing providers, and insurance plans.
Review Delayed Claims
If your practice uses a customizable claim delay, select “Delayed” from the session drop-down menu to see claims that were delayed.
You can review the details of claims that didn’t go out because the claim delay period had not yet passed. The claim delay period is displayed in the upper-right corner. Typically, practices ask PCC Support to configure a claim delay period of a few days, in order to ensure enough time has passed for charges to be reviewed before claim submission.
Review Claims that Need Corrections and Can Not Be Submitted
If PCC’s claim processing found problems with claims that prevented them from being submitted, you can review these issues by selecting the Needed Corrections option.
You can see all claims that could not be submitted at the time of the submission. You can use the Needs Correction tab to work on these claims, but this log lets you review what the system found at that time. See Work on Claim Errors and Rejections and Claim Error Reference to learn more.
These issues must be resolved before the claims can go out. For most problems with an outgoing claim, a biller updates patient, account, or charge information. If this alters the responsible party for the encounter, they may need to edit the insurance information for the charges, generate a new claim, and delete the old claim. See the sections above to learn more.
Review Claims Routed to Paper
If some claims needed to be routed to a paper batch for printing, you can select “Routed to Paper” to review details.
To generate and print paper claims, use the HCFA Form Generation program in your Practice Management windows.
Reverse an Insurance Payment (Post a Takeback)
When you receive an insurance payment reversal or “takeback” from a payor, you can post it automatically or manually.
Video: Watch Reverse an Insurance Payment (Post a Takeback) to learn more.
Automatically Post Reversals
When you autopost an ERA that contains a payment reversal, PCC EHR can usually post both the reversal and the updated adjudication from the payor. When this occurs, a reversal adjustment is linked to the original payment and associated with the provider of the originally linked charges.
However, your PCC system cannot automatically post a reversal if any charge, payment, or claim detail does not match what is found in your PCC system. For example, if the amount reversed does not match your records, or the payor fails to provide identification information, the takeback will not autopost and you will see it when you review the ERA after autoposting and on the Posting Exceptions worklist.
Read Post Insurance Payments to learn how to autopost an ERA and then review responses that could not be posted.
If a reversal cannot be automatically posted, or you received a paper notification of the reversal, you can post it manually in the Insurance Payments tool using the procedure below.
Manually Reverse an Insurance Payment
Open the Insurance Payments Tool and Find the Patient
Open the Insurance Payments tool and find the patient for the takeback.
Select the Payment the Payor is Reversing
On the History tab, find and select the payment that must be reversed.
You can use the Search Filter and the disclosure triangles to ensure you have identified the payment and adjustment indicated by the payor.
Click “Reverse Payment”
Click “Reverse Payment”.
Update the Transaction Date and Select a Transaction Type
On the Reverse Payment screen, optionally update the transaction date for the reversal. Then select an appropriate Transaction Type, such as a “Takeback” adjustment.
As you finalize your selection, you can use the original payment details on the screen to double-check that you are working with the correct encounter.
Click “Save” and Choose Whether to Repost
Click “Save” and then decide whether to repost the payment while making changes to the adjudication, or just reverse the payment.
After you make a selection, the payment will be reversed and any adjustment(s) deleted. The encounter charges will pend the original payor.
Post Updated Adjudication, or the Denial, and Add an Account Note
On the posting screen, you can review how to original payment was applied and make the changes found on the new ERA.
Typically, an ERA or EOB that indicates a reversal also includes updated adjudication information for the encounter.
As you post the updated payor response, you can use the components on the screen to update policy information, contact the family, and record additional details about the reversal in Account Notes.
Review the Results
Back on the History tab, you can review that the original payment is struck through, with the date and reversal transaction listed in the Refunds/Reversals column.
Reversing a Payment Posts an Adjustment: When you reverse a payment, you create an adjustment that links to the original payment. The adjustment behaves like any charge or procedure on your PCC system, and it is associated with the provider of the original charge (or charges) paid off by the payment.
Reversals That Appear With Other Encounters vs Sending a Check: After you post a takeback, you might continue posting other responses on the same ERA. The check’s total is often lowered by the reversed amount, and when you run reports to review posting, you will see the takeback among the other payments. In some cases, however, you may be required to mail a check to the insurance company.
Undo (Delete) an Insurance Payment Reversal
If you post a takeback to the wrong account or encounter, you can delete it and the payment will be redirected to the original charges.
First, find reversal in the History tab of the Payments tool. Double-click or click “Edit” to make changes.
Then click “Delete” to remove it from the account record. PCC EHR will reapply the payment towards the original charges for which it was intended.
Insurance Reversals Need an Amount Due: If you delete an insurance reversal, what happens to the insurance payment? PCC EHR will reapply the insurance payment towards the original charges for which it was posted.
If the original charges have been paid off or deleted, you will not be able to delete the reversal. First edit the encounter’s payments and make charges due again, and then you will be able to delete the reversal.
Configure Transaction Types for an Insurance Payment Reversal
When you post an insurance payment reversal or “takeback”, you select a Transaction Type to record the event.
Your PCC system should already have an “Insurance Takeback” or “Insurance Reversal” transaction type, which you can pick from the drop-down menu.
If you need to edit or update the available transaction types, use the Procedures table in the Tables tool. All procedures with an accounting type of “Receipt – Refund” are available in the Transaction Type drop-down menu when you post an insurance reversal. For help making changes, contact PCC Support at 802-846-8177 or 800-722-7708 or support@pcc.com.
Reverse an Insurance Overpayment from an Overpayment Holding Account
You may receive an insurance reversal for a payment you posted to an overpayment holding account. If so, you can post a refund to that account and link the payment to that refund, releasing the amount to either be sent back to the insurance company or applied to charges on the new ERA.
To learn more, read Post Capitation Checks, Incentive Payments, Interest Payments, Overpayments, and Withhold Payments.
Review Insurance Reversals on End-of-Day Reports
You can review aggregate data of all refunds over a period of time with the Total Charges and Payments by Provider and Month report.
To see line item details for insurance reversals, along with all payments and adjustments, run the the daysheet report. Run daysheet, choose the “wide” report, and review the NSF/Refunds column.
Insurance reversals do not show up on the deposit report. Posting the reversal along with other payments on an ERA will increase the day’s deposit total, but deposit does not display “negative” payments. When you perform an insurance takeback, you should note this variance and share your actions with the other billers in your office. You can use the daysheet report to ensure your end-of-day numbers match expectations.
Insurance Billing Overview
PCC’s insurance billing tools help you process and prepare claims, send them electronically or print them, review rejections and denials, fix problems and resubmit, and work down your insurance accounts receivable. You can maximize the use of your time as you pursue proper payment.
Learn All Steps for the Biller Role: For a complete guide for billers, see New User Training for Billers. You can use that outline to learn how to complete all billing tasks in PCC EHR.
Here’s an overview of the insurance billing process with PCC:
Ensure All Charges Are Posted
Before you bill insurance, your practice can use PCC’s tools to post charges and then review that all charges were posted.
Generate and Submit Claims
Next, your practice processes and submits claims.
Work on Claims that Can’t Be Sent or Were Rejected
As you process your claims, your PCC system checks for errors that prevent claims from being sent. You can work on those claims inside the Claims tool. If the payor responds with a rejection, you can review the rejection reason, correct the problem, and queue up a new claim.
Post Insurance Payments and Adjustment (and Submit Remaining Charges to the Next Responsible Party)
When your practice receives ERAs and EOBs from payors, you can automatically post most payments and adjustments and then manually post any that need your attention. When payments and adjustments do not cover the full amount of a charge, or the payer sends an unusual adjustment or denial, you can fix account problems and resubmit the charges, send them to a secondary policy, or bill the family.
Work on Outstanding Claims
While the above steps should ensure that every claim is accounted for, your practice also needs to track accounts receivable and follow-up on old unpaid claims and ongoing problems with payors.
Edit Encounter Details and Recreate Claims
During any of the above steps, or even before you first submit a claim, you may need to fix a problem with an encounter’s charges or claim information and queue up a new claim.
Check Patient Insurance Eligibility
PCC automatically checks insurance eligibility for all upcoming appointments. You can also review a patient’s eligibility as you schedule, during Patient Check-In, or at any time.
Do You Trust Automated Electronic Eligibility in PCC EHR, or Do You Have to Visit a Payer's Web Site?: PCC wants automated eligibility to be 100% reliable, the perfect tool to give billers a heads-up about upcoming encounters. If you encounter an eligibility status in PCC EHR that doesn’t match a patient’s status on a payer’s web site, please notify PCC Support at 802-846-8177 or 800-722-7708 or support@pcc.com. Let us know so we can track down and correct the issue.
Insurance Eligibility Highlights
Here are some important notes about verifying eligibility in PCC:
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Not All Carriers: Not all insurance carriers support electronic eligibility, and different payers support it to varying degrees. PCC keeps track of your carriers and will configure your practice for all that are available. To request help setting up an EDI connection with a payor, contact PCC Support.
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Automatic Real-Time and Nightly Eligibility Reports: PCC checks eligibility as soon as a patient is scheduled or whenever you change demographic information or update an active insurance policy for a patient with an appointment. If you schedule a sick visit today or change appointment information, PCC will immediately check eligibility.
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Check Manually at Any Time: You can also request an instant eligibility update at any time. If you haven’t scheduled an appointment, PCC will request eligibility for today’s date. If you’re working in the context of an appointment, you can recheck eligibility during Patient Check-In or in the Insurance Eligibility tool. (Note that if an insurance company does not support instant eligibility requests, PCC displays a batch request result, usually answered from the previous evening.)
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Who Will Check Eligibility?: Your practice can confirm eligibility a day or two early, and/or your front-desk staff can recheck eligibility at checkin. You can work with your New Client Implementation specialist or PCC Support to figure out the best eligibility workflow for your practice.
Review Eligibility for Upcoming Appointments
Use the Insurance Eligibility tool to review and confirm eligibility for upcoming patient encounters. You can find it in the Tools menu.
The Insurance Eligibility appointment list shows all scheduled appointments for the next day, but you can select any date.
You can see if a patient is active or inactive in the Coverage Status column. You will see an “n/a” if eligibility is not available electronically for an insurance carrier or if the patient is not insured (self-pay). “Unknown” means that an error occurred when eligibility was last checked, or the payer returned an uncertain reply. If the field is blank, eligibility has not yet been checked.
Click “Request Eligibility” to request an eligibility update for all visits that either have not yet had eligibility checked, or that received an error when the request was previously made.
After responses arrive, you can work with individual records. Double-click on an encounter to open the Review and Verify window.
On the Review and Verify window, you can review information sent back from the insurance payor along with general information about the patient’s policy and demographics.
Select a “Status” to mark the encounter’s eligibility status as reviewed. Enter a note if needed. Then click the “Save + Next” button to move to the next patient.
Read the Understand Eligibility Responses, Errors, and Reports section below to learn how to read the payer’s response and any eligibility errors you may encounter.
Configure Your Custom Review and Verify Ribbon: The Insurance Eligibility – Review and Verify window includes the Insurance Eligibility component, Policies, and other useful components. You can add other components to this ribbon in the Insurance Eligibility Builder within the Protocol Configuration tool.
Where Else Can My Practice Confirm Eligibility?
In addition to using the Insurance Eligibility tool (which shows each day’s encounters) your front desk staff, clinicians, and billers can review patient insurance eligibility at other times.
Check Insurance Eligibility Without an Appointment
You can check a patient’s insurance eligibility before you schedule using the Insurance Eligibility component. When you are scheduling an appointment, for example, you can use the component in the Patient Details ribbon.
When you click “Request Eligibility”, PCC will contact the payor and retrieve any available eligibility responses using today’s date as the date for the encounter. If the payor responds, PCC EHR will display the “Active” or “Inactive” result.
If you wish to review the complete eligibility report from the payor, click “Edit”.
Eligibility For Future Appointments: When you request eligibility without a scheduled appointment, the payor returns eligibility information for today’s date. The patient may not be eligible for future appointments.
Confirm Eligibility During Patient Check-In
Your front desk staff can verify eligibility when a patient checks in. By default, an Insurance Eligibility component appears on the Patient Check-In ribbon.
When you first open Patient Check-In, PCC EHR will automatically check eligibility. If your front desk adds a new policy to a patient, PCC EHR will check eligibility automatically. You can also click “Request Eligibility” to manually refresh eligibility (for example, if you changed the Date of Birth or other information about the policy or patient).
Read the Understand Eligibility Responses, Errors, and Reports section below to learn how to read the payer’s response and any eligibility errors you may encounter.
Check Eligibility While Charting
Your practice can add the Insurance Eligibility component to chart note protocols. Then a clinician can review eligibility during the context of working with the patient during an encounter.
When the chart note is opened, Insurance Eligibility is displayed in view mode. You can make changes by clicking the “Edit” button.
Read the Understand Eligibility Responses, Errors, and Reports section below to learn how to read the payer’s response and any eligibility errors you may encounter.
Check Insurance Eligibility While Posting Charges
When the biller posts charges for an encounter, they can review and update a patient’s insurance eligibility on the Patient Details section of Post Charges in PCC EHR.
Billers can check insurance eligibility for scheduled appointments, as well as billed phone note and portal message encounters.
Post Charges is the only place where it is possible to verify insurance eligibility information for billed phone note and portal message encounters. It is not possible to record eligibility notes or verification statuses for phone note and portal message encounters.
Read the Understand Eligibility Responses, Errors, and Reports section below to learn how to read the payer’s response and any eligibility errors you may encounter.
Select an Eligibility Status
Whenever you review the eligibility information for a patient’s encounter, you can optionally select a Status and enter a date.
This “Verification Status” is a useful note to your practice that you’ve reviewed eligibility for the encounter. It will appear wherever your practice sees eligibility information for the encounter. It also appears in the “Verification Status” column in the main Insurance Configuration tool in PCC EHR.
Resubmit After Making Changes
If you update a patient’s insurance information or other demographic information, click “Request Eligibility” to submit a new request to the insurance carrier. The request will run in the background, so you can continue to work on the screen while the eligibility request is processing.
Understand Eligibility Responses, Errors, and Reports
You can use the information and tools inside the Insurance Eligibility component to review the response from the insurance payer and then mark the encounter’s eligibility with a status.
Whether you are looking at the Insurance Eligibility component inside the Review and Verify window, during Patient Check-In, during Post Charges, or on a patient’s chart note, the tools are the same.
When a patient has multiple insurance plans, each plan will be displayed within a separate bubble. Each eligibility request is performed independently.
Eligibility Response
The Eligibility Response field will display “Active” in green, to indicate that the patient is covered, “Inactive” in red, meaning that the patient is not currently covered, or “Eligibility Undetermined” if the payer’s response is not sufficient to make a determination.
In some cases, such as when the eligibility request could not be submitted, you might also see a response of, “The eligibility request cannot be submitted.”
Whatever the Eligibility Response, you can read Alerts, Explanations, and Actions to know what to do next, and click to review the payers Summary Report and Full Report, when available.
Alerts, Explanations, and Actions
When an error has occured, PCC EHR explains the error and gives you action steps to fix the problem.
If the underlying issue is missing patient or policy information, you can quickly correct the problem and click “Request Eligibility” to try again.
If eligibility isn’t working due to underlying configuration, PCC EHR will provide you with useful information so you can contact PCC Support.
PCC EHR also summarizes more complex responses from the payer, and then provides the full payer report, when available.
Summary and Full Report
If the payer has responded to the eligibility request, you can usually read a Summary and/or Full Report.
Click the disclosure triangles to see full details from the payer.
Requeue Large Numbers of Claims and Resubmit
When a clearinghouse fails to process and acknowledge your claims, or claims for a specific payor or date range fail, you may need to create and submit new claims for a large number of encounters. You can use PCC’s under-the-hood Resubmit Claims (maketags) program to queue up new claims for encounters.
Maketags is a Power Tool: Only use maketags in those rare cases when you need to resubmit a large number of claims based on a date of service or other criteria. You can create a new claim for any single encounter by opening the Billing History in the patient’s chart and clicking “Edit Charges”. See Resubmit a Claim.
Video: Watch Requeue Large Numbers of Claims to learn more.
Sample Problems for maketags
Why would you need to find and resubmit a large batch of claims?
- You have used the wrong tax ID number for the last three weeks of claim submissions. You received the rejections, you corrected your tax ID, and now you need to resubmit every claim from the last three weeks.
- You have been working with an insurance company that has denied claims improperly. They have asked you to resubmit all claims for visits by their patients between January and October of last year.
- You have billed a procedure using the wrong procedure code. After you correct the code in the Procedures table, you need to find every claim that had this procedure code and resubmit.
- You submitted claims to a claim clearinghouse or payor, but never received an acknowledgement or response.
Use the Billing History section of the patient’s chart to resubmit single claims. Use maketags when you need to queue up claims for a large number of encounters.
Find Encounters and Create New Claims (Basic)
Follow the procedure below to create new claims for encounters.
Have You Fixed the Problem?: The maketags program does not address outstanding billing problems and will not increase revenue. Before you recreate a large number of claims, you should understand why claims were rejected (or need correction) and adjust your configuration or use other PCC tools to work on unpaid claims. Contact PCC for help.
Run Resubmit Claims (maketags)
Run the maketags program from your Practice Management windows.
Select Criteria
Use the criteria options to tell maketags which charges you need to resubmit.
Include Entire Visits?: When the Resubmit Claims tool finds encounters matching your criteria, do you wish to resubmit only the unpaid charges or all charges for each encounter? If the “Include Entire Visits” question is set to No, then only procedures that meet your chosen criteria will appear on the new claims. If the question is set to “Yes”, then all charges for the matching encounters will appear on the resulting claims.
Press F1 – Find Claims
If a criteria option requires more information, you will be asked to make additional selections.
Review Total and Optionally Review List of Encounters
You will see the total number of encounters that match your criteria.
Press F8 – Show List to review or print the list of encounters that maketags found.
Press F1 – Create Tags to Create New Claims
After the claims are batched, you can prepare and submit your practice’s claims.
Find Encounters and Create New Claims (Advanced)
Do you need to resubmit all claims with a certain billing status, procedure, place of service, or for accounts with a specific status flag? Use the “Restrict with SRS” function to create more detailed custom restrictions.
Override Criteria: When you use the “Restrict with SRS” function, all of the criteria you specify on the first screen will be overridden by the advanced restriction options you select using the SRS screens as described below.
Follow the procedure below to create new claims for encounters based on SRS criteria options.
Run Resubmit Claims (maketags)
Run the maketags program from your Practice Management windows.
Indicate Whether or Not to Include the Entire Visit
When the Resubmit Claims tool finds encounters matching your criteria, do you wish to resubmit only the unpaid charges or all charges for each encounter? If the “Include Entire Visits” question is set to No, then only procedures that meet your chosen criteria will appear on the new claims. If the question is set to “Yes”, then all charges for the matching encounters will appear on the resulting claims.
Press F5
Press F5 – Restrict with SRS.
Indicate Whether to Include Charges Regardless of Balance
Indicate whether to include only charges with a balance due or all charges regardless of the balance.
Enter a Date Range
Enter a date range within which PCC will search for encounter charges to resubmit. Indicate whether to use the date of service (“Transaction Date”), or the posting date. Press F1 – Generate Report to continue.
Select Insurance Plans
Next, specify the insurance plans for which you need to create new claims.
Press F2 – Select to select individual plans, press F5 – List By Group to quickly select a group of plans, or select by the pattern of your choice using F6 – List By Pattern. Press F3 – Select All to include all insurances and all personal charges.
After you finish selecting plans, press F1 – Process to continue.
Create Claims for Charges Pending Personal?: Do not select “Personal” unless you want to create new claims for encounter charges that are currently pending the patient or family.
Review Criteria
Review your chosen search criteria.
Optional: Select Additional Criteria
If you wish to restrict by billing status, provider, place of service, or another criteria, press F8 – Add/Edit Criteria. Then add as many criteria as you need.
You can use the asterisk (*) symbol to view a list of available criteria.
Press F1 – Accept Criteria to continue.
Optional: Enter Restriction Details for Additional Criteria
For every criteria, PCC will ask you for specific details. Select your desired criteria from each screen and press F1 – Accept Criteria to continue.
In the example above, the user added the “Current Billing Status” criteria to the report, and selects the status of “Claim Generated”. By using this criteria, you can find all encounter charges for which a claim was submitted but never acknowledged.
Review and Accept Criteria
Once you have added all of your restrictions, press F1 – Accept Criteria to accept your criteria. Your PCC system will gather encounter charges based on the criteria you specified.
Review Results and Queue Up New Claims
Once you have added all of your restrictions, press F1 – Accept Criteria to accept your criteria. Your PCC system will gather encounter charges based on the criteria you specified.
Review Total and Optionally Review List of Encounters
You will see the total number of encounters that match your criteria.
Press F8 – Show List to review or print the list of encounters that maketags found.
Press F1 – Create Tags to Create New Claims
After the claims are batched, you can prepare and submit your practice’s claims.
Save Frequently Used Criteria: As with other srs-based reports, maketags criteria can be saved and reused. If you commonly rebatch claims for one particular insurance or procedure, for example, you may want to save the detailed report criteria you entered and restore it the next time you need to resubmit claims. After entering your criteria the first time, press F5 – Save Rpt Criteria on the summary screen. When you next need that same criteria, press F8 – Restore Criteria from the first srs criteria screen.
Resubmit Claims Criteria Reference
Read below to learn more details about the criteria options shown on the first screen in the Resubmit Claims (maketags) tool.
SRS Reporting Ignores These Criteria: If you use F5 – Restrict with SRS, the criteria options in this reference will be ignored.
Rebatch Charges by Age or Date Range
Use the “Age of Charges” options to select charges of a certain age. You can enter an age range, in days, using one of the top two options. Or, you can input a specific date range.
Rebatch Charges by Paid and Insurance Status
Under most circumstances, you only want to recreate claims if they are unpaid and still pending an insurance company. You may occasionally need to create batches for an entire insurance company, regardless of whether or not there is an outstanding balance. Use these settings to select which charges, based on pending and paid statuses, maketags will batch:
Rebatch Charges by Insurance Plan
If you select “Just One Plan,” you can choose the insurance plan of the claims you wish to resubmit on the first screen:
If you leave the default of “Many Plans” selected, however, maketags will ask you to select the insurance plan or plans when you press
F1 – Generate Report
.
Press Page Down, Page Up, or the up and down arrow keys to select the desired plan and press F2 – Select to mark it. If you want to submit claims from all insurance plans, press F3 – Select All.
Press F1 – Process after you have selected all the needed plans.
Use Groups: Select the “Group” heading at the top of a list of plans to select the entire group. You can also press F5 – List By Group to view all of your insurance groups. By selecting groups instead of individual plans, you can very quickly pick out the different insurance companies whose claims you need to resubmit.
List By Pattern: Press F6 – List By Pattern to search for a word or number, such as “Aetna” or a PO Box number. You can then select plans from the list of results.
Rebatch Charges by Provider
You can sort and resubmit charges for all providers or for specific providers. This comes in handy if you use the wrong provider ID# for a period of time and you need to resubmit all the claims from that time.
Change the “All Providers” field to “No” and press F1 – Generate Report to select a specific provider.
On the provider selection screen, use the arrow keys and press F2 – Select to pick providers or provider groups. Then press F1 – Process to continue.
Review Archived EDI Reports
After you submit claims, your practice will receive clearinghouse and payor acknowledgements as well as ERAs and other electronic notifications from PCC, claim clearinghouses, and payors.
You can use tools in PCC EHR to review these responses. When you need to do deeper research, you can use the EDI Reports (ecsreports) program, which holds a library of all “Electronic Data Interchange” reports sent to your practice.
Learn All Steps for the Biller Role: This article is part of the New User Training for Billers. You can use that outline to learn how to complete all billing tasks in PCC EHR.
Read EDI Responses in the Billing History of the Chart
To view an encounter’s claim history, including the log of submission, acknowledgements, and all responses, visit the Billing History of the patient’s chart.
When an electronic record is available for a claim event, you can click on a link to open it.
Read Review an Encounter’s Billing History or Work on Claim Errors and Rejections to learn more.
Read ERAs in the Electronic Remittance Advice Tool
To review the complete details of a claim response from a payor, open the Electronic Remittance Advice Tool in PCC EHR.
ERAs provide the details about the payor’s adjudication, including payments, adjustments, denials, and unusual circumstances. Read the Read ERA 835s from Payors article to learn more.
Use EDI Reports (ecsreports) to Review Other Archived Communication
In addition to the communication you can review in context in PCC EHR, the EDI Reports (ecsreports) tool logs communication from clearinghouses, payors, and your third-party bill printing service.
Open the ecsreports program in your Practice Management windows.
Reports are grouped together by the date they were received, with the most recent delivery date appearing at the top. Press F8 – List By Type to review reports by type instead. For each report, you can see the title or type, the general category, the time it was received, and how many times it has been printed.
Your office can use this screen to review the history of EDI-related communication sent to your PCC system. If your practice prints ERAs, Bad Claim reports, or other claim responses you can use the “Times Printed” column to facilitate that workflow.
Reports Recycle: Because your practice receives thousands of reports every year, ecsreports does not keep all old reports on your system. Instead, reports will remain on the system for one to two years. If you would like to change the length of time that EDI reports remain on your system, contact PCC Support.
Examples of Archived EDI Reports
Here are some reports you may find in the ecsreports program, along with sample text.
preptags/tagsplitBad Claim Report-
This report identifies claims that could not be approved for electronic submission. The PCC EHR Claims tool replaces this report. If you use the claims programs in Practice Management instead of PCC EHR, you will be prompted to print this report after you submit claims.
Bad Claim Report Generated On: March 11, 2005 Date: 03/10/05 PCC #: 243 Patient: Pebbles Flinstone Guar PCC#: 751 Cus PCC#: 751 Claim is for an insurance company no longer on the account Charge filed with: Cigna $0In the example above, a claim was rejected because the insurance company (Cigna $0) was no longer listed on the account. The insurance information was probably updated by another user, and the claim probably needs to be pended and re-batched using Edit Charges in the Billing History in the patient’s chart.
- ECS Batch Log
-
This report is a log, sorted by insurance batch and patient name, of all the claims sent out on a certain date. The PCC EHR Claims tool replaces this report. Your PCC system generates this report when it finishes processing and submitting claims.
Run date: 20050310 Batch: PCC – Aetna Claims 03/08/05 * $ 111.00 – Flinstone, Pebbles 03/08/05 * $ 165.00 – Doe, Johnny 03/07/05 * $ 111.00 – Crusher, Wesley 03/08/05 * $ 81.00 – Duck, Louie Total claims processed: 4 Total claim charges: $468.00
The report excerpt above shows four claims that were sent out in the Aetna insurance batch on 3/10/05.
- PCC Daily Submission Summary
-
This is a record showing that PCC has received your claims and sent them on to the clearinghouse or payor. The Billing History in the patient’s chart jumps directly to the correct segment of this report, but you can also review the full log in
ecsreports. Your system receives the log within 48 hours of submitting claims. The report indicates that your connection to PCC was active and provides a “paper trail” proving that each claim passed through PCC’s central claim system. Your PCC system automatically parses this report and adds a note to each account history to indicate the claim was received by PCC, so under normal circumstances there is no need to review this report directly.PCC CLEARINGHOUSE DAILY SUBMISSION SUMMARY FILE PROCESSING DATE: 03/11/2005 ******************************************************************************* 030501021 BEDROCK PEDIATRIC PRACTICE CLAIM BILLING DATE: 03/10/2005 ******************************************************************************* PATIENT / CLAIM PATIENT NAME CLAIM ID NUMBER LAST FIRST MI FROM DATE CHARGES ***************** ****************** ********** * ********** ******** AETNA HMO 15 PAYOR ID: 60054 243 10077 FLINTSTONE PEBBLES 03/08/2005 111.00 AETNA EPO 10 PAYOR ID: 60054 394 10078 DOE JOHNNY 03/08/2005 165.00 AETNA PPO 8 PAYOR ID: 60054 848 10079 CRUSHER WESLEY 03/07/2005 111.00 AETNA POS 20 PAYOR ID: 60054 1068 10080 DUCK LOUIE 03/08/2005 81.00 030501021 TOTAL CLAIMS: 4 CHARGES: 468.00The above section shows that PCC received and processed four Aetna claims On March 10, 2005.
- Payor Electronic Batch, Acknowledgement, Response, Summary, Rejection, Status, Unprocessed, and Exclusion Reports
-
PCC works to ensure that all claims route through the most efficient claim clearinghouse and reach the payor. In some cases, PCC builds a direct claim submission connection to a payor. As your claims travel from PCC, to a clearinghouse, and to a payor, the organizations involved send reports back to your practice. PCC parses these reports automatically and updates account histories. You can access specific replies in the Billing History section of a patient’s chart. The full reports are archived in
ecsreports. - RelayHealth ebills Reports
-
If your practices uses a third-party bill printing service, you can review acknowledgements and other reports in the
ecsreportstool. The provider of these services was originally known as RelayHealth, but has since been named and renamed Diamond and OSG. The reports your practice may receive from OSG include:-
File Receipt Report: OSG’s acknowledgement of receiving an ebills submission file from your practice’s system.
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Remote Statement Processing File Summary: OSG’s report of the total number of accounts, pages, and returns generated for a given ebills submission.
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Suggested Address Correction Report: An error report sent by OSG when an address needs to be changed. In some cases, OSG will correct the address automatically, or it may indicate that a bill was “marked by USPS as unsuitable for delivery of mail.”
-
Print Paper HCFA Claim Forms
Hopefully your practice can submit almost all of your claims electronically. Some claims must still be printed on paper, however.
Video: Watch Print a Paper HCFA Claim Form to learn more.
Read the Submit Claims article to review the basic steps of submitting both electronic and paper claims.
This reference article provides additional details about generating paper claims.
What Claims Require a Paper HCFA 1500 Form?
Why would you need to print a paper claim?
-
Secondary Claims That Require EOB: In some cases, a secondary claim requires a copy of the EOB from the primary payer, and therefore can not be submitted electronically. You will need to print out the claim and staple a copy of the EOB to it.
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Unusual Rendering Provider Situations: When a charge is posted to a non-provider, such as the “Office” provider or a nurse, you may encounter a situation where a claim can not be submitted electronically. You should speak with PCC Support for help configuring which providers are valid for electronic submission. Whenever you add a new provider, inform PCC Support so they can properly configure your provider for electronic claim submission.
Print a Single Paper Claim
In those rare cases when you need a paper claim, you can print one from the Edit Charges screen.
When you are ready to print a claim, select “Generate a claim for this encounter” and then click “Print”.
When you click “Save + Post”, you’ll be prompted to print the claim form from your workstation.
Print Batches of HCFA 1500 Claim Forms
When claims cannot be submitted electronically, your PCC system will queue them to a “paper batch” for printing. Use the HCFA program to print batches of paper claims.
Review the steps below to learn more about each step.
Open the HCFA Program
Select the Print Paper Claims (hcfa) program in the Insurance Billing & Collections section of your Practice Management window.
Review and Select Claim Batches
When you run hcfa, you are first presented with a list of batches.
On this screen, you can review the number of waiting claims, the date the batch was last printed, and the name of each batch. Select any batch and press Enter to begin printing.
Is that the Number of Claims that Will Print?: The number of claims in this list does not represent the exact number of claims that will print. When you select a batch and press Enter, PCC processes the claims and may discover that some of the claims no longer exist, were printed and submitted earlier, reference charges that have been deleted, or reference charges that have been corrected and regenerated (creating an unneeded duplicate tag).
What are the ECS Batch Lines For?: The hcfa program can generate paper claims for any set of claims waiting to be submitted. You can even print out claims that are supposed to be submitted electronically by selecting one of the “Z_ECS” lines listed in hcfa. This is not recommended and should only be done in an emergency (i.e., your internet connection is down and a timely filing limit is approaching). Even then, it is probably preferable to open a patient’s chart and use the Edit Charges option to print the claims you need one at a time.
Review Claims as They Are Prepared
The hcfa program processes all of the tags waiting in the batch you chose. You will see a message listing the claims:
I am getting ready to process the claims.
I am now processing the claims.
Flinstone, Pebbles 07/01/04 $ 50.00 B MEDICAID
Flinstone, Bam Bam 04/02/04 $ 50.00 C MEDICAID
Canning, John 03/03/04 $ 26.00 C MEDICAID
I am done processing the claims, and am ready to print them.
Optionally Print a Test HCFA 1500
Next, hcfa gives you the option to print a sample form to make sure your paper is properly aligned. This is especially important if you print HCFA 1500 forms on a pin-fed printer.
I can print a test form for you, so that you
can check the alignment of the paper.
Do you want a test MEDICAID form printed (yes or no)? Yes
Do you want another test MEDICAID printed (yes or no):
You can print as many test forms as you need.
Confirm You Are Ready to Print
The hcfa program double-checks that you are ready to print your claims. You can type “No” and then follow the prompts to quit, or type “Yes” to print out your claims.
I am all ready to print these MEDICAID forms. Are you?
If you say yes, I will print them, otherwise I won’t:
Confirm Printing Was Successful
In case there was an error while printing, hcfa asks if the claims printed successfully. You should wait until the claims finish printing and review them before answering “Yes” to this question.
Here Goes… I am printing the forms.
Are you satisfied with the MEDICAID forms printed? If you are,
I shall clear out the queue for this type of form. If you are
not, I will give you another chance to print them.
Are you satisfied with the MEDICAID forms?
Print a Log of Which HCFA Forms You Printed: A log of all the HCFAs generated will automatically print out when you quit the HCFA program.
Reprinting Batches
Your PCC system stores a record of the last printing of each HCFA Batch so you can easily reprint it. At the bottom of the list of batches, you will find options to reprint the last run of each batch:
If you need just a log of the last batch printed, but do not need to print the batch itself, simply select the “Reprint…” option for the needed log, and then answer “No” to the subsequent questions (do not print any claims). Upon quitting the hcfa program, the log will reprint.
Force a Large Number of Claims to Requeue
If you need to requeue a large number of claims for some reason, contact PCC Support for help. This is not a common need. For more information, read Requeue Large Numbers of Claims.
The Claim Journey Explained
How is a claim created, and what happens in the background to make sure your practice is paid? Read below to learn some of the “under the hood” workings of claims with PCC.
Your Practice Posts Charges for Each Encounter, Creating a Claim Tag
First, a clinician sees a patient. They create orders and enter diagnoses on the chart note, and they also add billing details and select visit codes on the Bill screen in PCC EHR. (learn more)
Next, either the front desk or a biller reviews those diagnoses and procedures and posts them as charges. PCC queues up those charges and creates a claim tag, an under-the-hood entry which contains a collection of charges that are ready to be turned into a claim. (learn more)
Your practice creates claim tags in other ways, too. When you fix a problem with a charge, such as changing the responsible party, you also generate a new claim, which creates a new claim tag. As another example, a new claim tag is created automatically when you post payments and adjustments and the remaining balance pends the next responsible party.
Your Practice Prepares and Submits Claims, Which PCC Sends to Clearinghouses and Payers
Next, your practice uses the Claims tool in PCC EHR to transform claim tags into outgoing claims. (learn more)
Your PCC system sorts the tags, checks for errors, filters out claims that should be delayed or held, routes certain claims to be printed on paper (when needed, learn more), provides you with a list of stuck claims that need corrections before they can be sent out (learn more) and then sends electronic claims to PCC for routing.
Claims travel through additional verification on PCC’s servers. Then we route them either directly to the payer or to a claim processing clearinghouse, which then directs the claim to the payer.
Usually, the clearinghouse and payer acknowledge receipt of the claim, which your practice can see in the encounter’s claim history (learn more).
Next, the payer adjudicates the claim. They send payment and adjustment details back through PCC and into your system as an ERA (electronic remittance advice). You can post most ERAs automatically and enter any denials or unusual responses manually. (learn more).
During the above steps, your PCC system logs errors, acknowledgements, rejections, and other reports sent by claim clearinghouses and payers. Your practice’s billers review those logs and other “EDI responses” (learn more).
Finally, billers use PCC tools to respond to rejected claims (learn more). If the payer never responds to a claim or an appeal, or an encounter was not billed correctly, billers can track the entire insurance A/R and create custom worklists of all unpaid encounters with insurance balances. (learn more).
For more information, or for help understanding how claims are created or why a claim can be rejected, contact PCC Support at 802-846-8177 or 800-722-7708. PCC also hosts free interactive drop-in sessions where you can ask billing, coding, and practice management questions.
PCC's Pre-Submission Claim Error Scrubbing: When you process claims, PCC “scrubs” them, checking for common errors that would prevent the claim from being accepted and paid. Your system stops those claims and lets you correct the problems before they are sent. Check out the Claim Error Reference to learn what claim details are verified on claims during processing.
Under-the-Hood Vocabulary: When you speak with PCC’s EDI teams, you may hear references to tags (which are queued up claims on your PCC system), and the underlying tools that manage tags, interface with your practice’s custom needs, and turn tags into claims (preptags, tagsplit, splitconfig, and consorttags). If you want to know the true nerdy side of what these words mean: when you process claims, PCC’s preptags program calls the tagsplit program according to your practice’s settings. The tagsplit program processes queued-up claims (“tags”) and sorts them by insurance batch while doing a number of other validation checks, all of which refers back to your practice’s custom splitconfig configuration. The preptags program automatically runs the ECS program, which is the underlying software which sends your claims out the door through a secure internet connection to PCC.
Refund or Write-Off Account Credits
If a family paid you for a copay that they did not owe, or if they pay you twice for the same visit, you may decide to issue them a refund.
If you have a credit that cannot be refunded, or it is on an insurance holding account and will not be taken back, you may sometimes need to write off that credit and count it as revenue.
Read the procedure below to learn how to refund or write off a credit on an account.
Watch a Video: Watch a video to learn how to refund personal credits in PCC EHR.
Refund or Write Off a Credit
When you need to refund or write off a credit on a billing account, use the Payments tool in PCC EHR.
Open the History Tab of the Payments Tool
In PCC EHR, open the Payments tool, find or select an account or patient, and then click on the History tab.
Review the Account’s Credit
Before you refund a credit on an account, you may wish to review the account’s balances and the Payment History to understand why they have a credit.
For example, you might find a payment that is greater than the amount due on a charge. You can click the disclosure arrow next to a payment to review how a payment applies towards charges.
Click “Refund Credits”
Click “Refund Credits” to post a refund or write-off.
Enter the Transaction Date
Optionally adjust the transaction date (which defaults to today).
Select the Refund Type
Select your practice’s credit refund type. If you are refunding the credit to the family, the default option on PCC’s systems is “Personal Refund”.
If you are writing off a credit, the default option is “Credit Write-Off”.
Your practice can customize what refund types are available on your system.
Enter the Amount
Enter an amount to be refunded or written off, up to the total credit balance on the account.
After you enter the amount and press Tab or Enter, the Balance will update to indicate the result of the refund.
Click Save
Click “Save” to save the refund.
You’ve now recorded that you refunded the amount. Or, if you are posting a write off, you’ve now indicated that the amount is revenue.
Review Results in the Payment History
After you refund or write off a credit, you can see the change in the Account Balances component. You can also review your payments in the Payment History index to see the linked adjustment.
Refunding or Writing Off a Payment Posts an Adjustment: When you post a refund or write off, you create an adjustment that links to the original payment. The adjustment behaves like any charge or procedure on your PCC system, and it is associated with the provider of the original charge or charges paid off by the payment.
Optionally Enter an Account Note Explaining the Refund
After you refund or write-off a credit, you can visit the Posting tab and enter an account note explaining the steps you took.
If this is an insurance overpayment account, for example, your practice can use the Notes component to track details of the patient and date of service for each overpayment and when it was written off or refunded.
Delete a Refund or Write-Off
If you refund or write off an account credit incorrectly, you can delete it.
First, find the credit refund, write-off, or reversal in the History tab of the Payments tool.
Double-click or click “Edit” to make changes.
Then click “Delete” to remove it from the account record.
You can then link the payment to charges or repost the correct refund amount, for example.
Deleting an insurance reversal (a “takeback”) is slightly different, as the resulting credit must be applied towards an insurance charge. See Reverse an Insurance Payment (Post a Takeback) for more information.
Configure Your Practice’s Refund and Write-Off Adjustment Types
When you post a refund or a write-off, it appears as an adjustment that offsets a payment or credit on an account. By default, this is done with a “Personal Refund”, “Refund – Personal”, or “Credit Write-Off” procedure.
Your practice can post other types of adjustments as well. You can edit or add new refund or offset adjustments in the Procedures table in the Tables tool. Any adjustment procedure with an accounting type of “Receipt – Refund” or “Revenue – Credit W/O” will appear in PCC’s tools for posting refunds or payment offset adjustments.
To learn how to edit procedures on your system, read Edit Your Practice’s Procedures, Codes, Adjustments, and Prices.
Post a Returned Check or Other Personal Payment Reversal
When a check bounces, or a credit card payment is stopped, you can quickly reverse the payment in the Payments tool in PCC EHR. You can optionally post a fee, in accordance with your office’s financial policy. Follow the steps below to learn how to manage personal payment reversals in PCC.
Watch a Video: Watch a video to learn how to reverse a payment in PCC EHR.
Post a Returned Check or Other Personal Payment Reversal
When a check bounces, or a credit card payment is reversed, you can quickly mark the payment as returned and optionally post a fee.
Open the History Tab of the Payments Tool
In PCC EHR, open the Payments tool, find or select an account, and click on the History tab.
Select the Payment in the Payment History
Locate and select the payment that needs to be reversed.
You can optionally use the Search filter to quickly locate a payment by check number, date, or other criteria. You can only reverse checks or credit card payments.
Optionally Review Payment and Account Information
Before you reverse the payment, you can click on the disclosure arrow to review how the payment is currently applied.
You can also visit the Payments tab to read the Account Notes and/or contact the family to see if there is any information about the account or payment that may inform your decision.
Click “Reverse Payment”
When you are ready to proceed, click “Reverse Payment”.
Enter the Transaction Date and Select the Reversal Type
Optionally change the date of the reversal (the default is today), and then select your practice’s reversal type.
PCC includes the “Returned Check” type on practice systems by default, but your practice can create other custom reversal types.
Select a Fee Type and Adjust the Fee
If you also need to charge the account a fee, select a fee type and enter a fee amount.
Your practice can customize your fee types and amounts. If your practice configures a default fee amount, it will appear automatically when you select the fee type. If you select a fee by mistake and you don’t wish to post a fee, simply change the amount to $0.00.
Click “Save”
Click save to reverse the payment and post a fee (if entered).
Review the Result in the Payment History
In the Payment History, you can see the original payment is now crossed off. You can also see that it is now linked to a returned check refund procedure and the fee that you charged.
You may also notice that the account’s personal balance has increased by the amount of the returned payment and the fee, which may result in a personal bill when your practice next generates bills.
Enter an Account Note, Contact the Family, or Take Other Actions
Use the Account Notes component on the Payments tab to record any additional details. You might also wish to contact the family, generate and send a personal bill immediately, or send the account a portal message.
Remove a Payment Reversal
If you reverse a payment by mistake, or the payment actually clears and you received the message in error, you can delete the reversal and the fee.
Select the payment in the Payment History and double-click (or click “Reverse Payment”).
Then click “Delete” next to the reversal and/or the fee to remove them from the account.
Configure Your Practice’s Payment Reversal Adjustments and Fees
PCC software includes a Returned Check adjustment and Returned Check Fee procedure by default. Your practice can customize the adjustment and the name of the fee in the Procedures table in the Tables tool, found in the Configuration menu.
You could also create distinct adjustments to handle stopped credit cards, other reversed payments, and custom fees.
For more information about creating or updating adjustments in your Procedures table, read Edit Your Practice’s Procedures, Codes, Adjustments, and Prices.
The default procedures are:
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A “Returned Check” procedure with the accounting type of “Receipt – NSF.” This adjustment procedure is used to offset the reversed payment.
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A “Returned Check Fee” procedure with the accounting type of “Revenue – Non Service.” This procedure is used as a penalty or processing fee for the returned check. You can set a default price for this procedure, or leave it at $0.00 and adjust it at the time of posting.
PCC Annual Users’ Conference
The PCC Users’ Conferences offers three to five days of pediatric practice management-focused learning opportunities, along with advanced PCC EHR and Practice Management training, financial analysis help, pediatric coding lectures, and more!
In 2023, PCC’s Annual Users’ Conference celebrated PCC’s 40th birthday in Burlington, VT. In 2024, the Users’ Conference was in Denver, Colorado. See UC 2023 and UC 2024 to watch session videos and download materials.
PCC's Coast-to-Coast UC History: The 2009 PCC Users’ Conference was held at Walt Disney World® Resort, Florida. The 2010 and 2011 conferences were in Burlington, Vermont. The 2012 PCC Users’ Conference was back at Disney. In 2013 and 2014, we returned to Vermont. In 2015, the conference was in San Francisco, California. In 2016 and 2017, PCC returned to Burlington, Vermont. In 2018, we were in Denver, Colorado. In 2019 we returned to Burlington, VT. UC Courses during 2020 and 2021 were held online using new remote conference tools. In 2022 and 2023 the conference returned to Burlington, VT, and in 2024 we returned to Denver, Colorado!
Stay tuned to pcc.com to see the schedule and get registered for next year!
Conferences and Training In Your Area
In addition to PCC’s annual conference, we sponsor and take part in numerous conferences and events around the country. Come see us at your local event! Get in touch to learn more, and check out the event sections on PCC.com.
Archived Handouts
You can access some of the handouts from past Users’ Conferences here:
- UC 2021 Course Materials Archive
- UC 2022 Course Materials Archive
- UC 2023 Course Materials Archive
- UC 2024 Course Materials Archive
- UC 2025 Course Materials Archive
PCC-ers Living it Up w/ Donald and Goofy at UC 2012!
Turn an Account Over to Collections
With a solid practice financial policy and ongoing personal A/R management, you may have very few accounts that require a collection agency. When you need to use one, however, you can update the account record to indicate it is in collection and adjust charges so they will be handled correctly.
PCC has two different recommended procedures for turning an account over to a collection agency. Your office can consider these options and create your own collection policy.
Which Accounts Should a Practice Turned Over to Collection?: You can review accounts with high, old personal balances using the Personal Money Tracking Assistant (persview), and many other PCC reports can produce lists of accounts with old, outstanding charges. Contact PCC support for help learning these reports.
Option A: Turn An Account Over to Collections and Adjust Off Their Charges
When you turn charges over to a collection agency, you can post an adjustment against those charges. The charges will no longer generate a personal bill when you process bills, and the amount due will be removed from your accounts receivable.
The steps below require a bad debt adjustment in the Payment Types table in the Tables tool in PCC EHR. You could name the payment type “Bad Debt Adjustment (Collections)” or “Sent to Collection”.
Follow these steps to turn an account over to collection and adjust off the charges.
Print Charge Information for the Collection Agency
Use the Account Balances component to produce a summary of outstanding charges for the collection agency. You may want to print to a PDF file and keep a copy for your practice’s records as well.
Use the Payments Tool to Write Off the Charges
Open the Payments tool for the account and post a debt adjustment, applying it towards the overdue charges.
To learn how, read Write Off Charges and Bad Debt.
Add Status Flag(s) and Record Your Actions
Add account and/or patient status flags to indicate the account is in collection. Your practice can configure certain status flags to prevent scheduling for the patient or any dependents on an account. To learn more, read Use Custom Flags for Scheduling, Alerts, and Reporting.
Use the Notes component to record information about your process, including the total amount sent to collection, dates of service, or any other information that may be useful.
When you receive a payment from the collection agency, you can post it in one of two ways:
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Delete the adjustment you posted above and then post the payment using a payment type that indicates the payment was from a collection agency.
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Post a “Collection Income” administrative encounter from the Billing History, then post a collection payment against that procedure.
Whichever method you use, be sure and carefully note your actions in the notes for the account.
Option B: Pend the Charges to a Collection Agency
You can pend charges to a collection agency just as you would pend them to an insurance company. The family will no longer receive personal bills from your practice, and the collection agency will bill the account directly. The charges you turn over to the collection agency will remain as balances on the patient’s account, and they will remain part of your practice’s total accounts receivable.
For this procedure to work, you will need:
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An insurance group named “Collections” or similar. You can add this group in the Tables tool in PCC EHR.
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An insurance plan named “Collections” or similar. You can add this plan in the Tables tool in PCC EHR.
Follow these steps when an account is turned over to collection:
Print Charge Information for the Collection Agency
Use the Account Balances component to produce a summary of outstanding charges for the collection agency. You may want to print to a PDF file and keep a copy for your practice’s records as well.
Add the Collections Agency as a Policy for the Patient(s)
Use “Edit Charges” to Change the Responsible Party for Each Encounter
In the Billing History in the patient’s chart, select an encounter, click “Edit Charges” and then use the Procedures component to change the responsible party to the Collections policy on the account.
To learn how to change the responsible party for charges on an encounter, read Change the Copay and Responsible Party for Posted Charges.
Add Status Flag(s) and Record Your Actions
Add account and/or patient status flags to indicate the account is in collection. Your practice can configure certain status flags to prevent scheduling for the patient or any dependents on an account. To learn more, read Use Custom Flags for Scheduling, Alerts, and Reporting.
Use the Notes component to record information about your process, including the total amount sent to collection, dates of service, or any other information that may be useful.
If you use the method above to pend charges to a collection agency as you would an insurance policy, you can:
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Track the Total Amount in Collection: Use the Insurance Balances tool to review the outstanding totals in collections. The amount will appear in the Collections insurance group.
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Follow Up on Unpaid Encounters: Use the Insurance Balances tool to review all unpaid encounters that are in collections.
When you receive a payment from the collection agency, you can use the Insurance Payments tool to post it just as you would manually post an insurance payment. You can then update the status flags and add account notes clarifying that the family is no longer in collection.
Post Personal Payments
Read this article to learn about how to post personal payments in PCC. When a family pays their bill, you can use the Payments tool to enter their payment, link it to charges, and optionally enter account notes. You can also write off bad debt and post other adjustment types.
Watch a Video: For an overview, watch the Post Personal Payments video.
Where Can You Post Personal Payments and Adjustments?
How do personal payments enter your PCC system?
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Post Payments and Write-Offs in the Payments Tool: Use the Payments tool in PCC EHR to review account information and enter any payment at any time. See the sections below to learn more.
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Post Payments at Patient Checkin: You can post a copay, or any payment amount, at the time of service during patient checkin.
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Post Payments When You Post Charges: Later, when you checkout the patient and post charges, you can link the payment collected at checkin and enter any other personal payments.
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Post Payments When You Create a Billing Encounter or Hospital Visit: You can open any patient’s chart and create a billing encounter in the Billing History section of the chart. You can post administrative fees or use the same interface to post a hospital encounter and enter personal payments at the same time.
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Families Can Pay Their Own Bill in the Patient Portal: If your practice uses the service, your families can review their balance and pay their bill in the patient portal.
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Personal Balances Worklist: When you need to find accounts with outstanding personal balances, create a worklist with your preferred criteria in the Personal Balances tool. From your worklist you can hop into the Payments tool to work with the account.
The Payments tool makes it fast and easy to post personal checks, money orders, credit card payments, and cash and link the money to outstanding personal balances. In addition to posting payments, you can use the Payments tool to write off bad debt, reverse payments, and post other adjustments. Payments from insurance companies are posted using the Insurance Payments tool.
Post a Personal Payment
In addition to the personal payment components found during patient check-in, when you posting charges, and in the patient portal, your practice can use the Payments tool to post any payment for any account at any time.
Open Payments
Open the Payments tool from the Tools menu in PCC EHR.
Find an Account or Patient
Find the billing account for the payment.
You can search by account name or patient name.
You can also use other search parameters, such as a phone number. When you search by account, the list of matching search results includes a Dependents column to help you confirm that you have the right account.
Optionally Review and Update Account Information
Before you enter payment information in the Payments component, you can optionally review and update account information.
The Payments tool includes Payments, Account Balances, Account Demographics, and the Account Notes component so you can review balance details, update account information, and add notes about any billing issue with the family.
Enter Payment Information
Next, review and adjust the transaction date, select a payment type, and enter a payment amount.
Enter a check number if applicable.
Optionally Specify How to Apply Payment
By default, a payment is applied towards the oldest charges on an account that have a personal amount due.
You can specify how much of a payment should be applied.
The Unapplied amount will become a floating personal credit on the account.
You can also click “Distribution” and specify how much of a payment should be applied to each charge on an account with a personal due amount.
Read the section below for more information.
Save the Payment
Click “Save Payment” to save the payment and update the account’s balance.
Review Results and Optionally Add Another Payment
After you save a payment, you can see it in the ledger. Click the disclosure arrow to see how the payment was applied.
If the payment was greater than the personal balance, PCC EHR will apply payments and leave the remainder as a credit on the account.
After you enter a payment, you can enter additional payments if (for example) the family used two different checks.
Print a Receipt
Click “Print Receipt” to print a receipt for the payment(s) you posted this session.
The receipt displays all payment information, along with helpful charge information for the family.
Save Changes and Continue to the Next Payment
Click “Save + Exit” to close the Payments window and save any additional changes you’ve made for the account. If you are posting a stack of personal payments, you can then immediately find the next account.
Review all Payments Posted
At the end of the day, run the Payment Reconciliation report in the PCC EHR Report Library to review all payments.
Write Off a Charge
When you want to write off a charge that is unrecoverable (“bad debt”), or post other account adjustments that reduce the amount due for a charge and decreases an account’s outstanding personal balance, use the Payments tool.
See Write Off Charges and Bad Debt.
Specify How to Apply a Payment (or Adjustment)
By default, a payment or adjustment will automatically link to an account’s oldest charges with a personal balance.
As you enter payment or adjustment information, you can specify how the payment should be applied to charges.
Leave Part or All of a Payment Unapplied
Payments are usually linked to charges. You can optionally specify that only a portion (or none) of a payment or adjustment shall be applied to charges.
The full amount will still be reflected in the account’s balance, but under-the-hood the payment will remain unapplied or “unlinked” from any specific charge.
When you indicate that a portion (or all) of a payment shall be unapplied, you can optionally select a provider for accounting purposes.
Payments are normally linked to charges, which already have an associated provider. If a payment is not applied to charges, you can optionally indicate an appropriate provider manually.
Reporting Unlinked Payments By Provider: If your practice posts an unapplied payment and assigns a provider manually for accounting purposes, PCC reports will reflect your manual selection. As long as some portion of the payment remains unlinked, that amount will appear on reports as being linked to the manually assigned provider. However, once your practice has linked the entire payment to charges, the provider of those charges overwrites the manually assigned provider for the payment. If you need to change the provider for a payment, you can relink it to charges for the correct provider. Or, if you need to unlink a payment and assign it to a provider without specifying linked charges, you can delete the original payment and repost it.
Apply a Payment (or Adjustment) to Specific Charges
Click “Distribution” to review and update how a payment or adjustment will be applied when you click “Save Payment”.
PCC EHR will display all charges on the account that have a personal amount due. You can review how the new payment will be applied, and you can optionally update the amounts to change what charges will be paid by the payment.
When you are finished reviewing or changing how the payment amount will be applied, click “Save Payment” to save and post the payment.
Total Distribution Amount Must Equal the Applied Amount of the Payment: You can’t distribute more or less than the original payment amount (or than the amount you designate to apply to previous balances).
If the distribution total doesn’t equal the applied amount of the payment, you will be unable to save the payment.
Apply a Payment or Adjustment to Charges That Are Already Paid By Unapplied Payments
When you use the Distribution section to apply payments to charges, you may see more charges than you expect. The Distribution list can include charges that are paid off by unapplied payments.
In PCC, unapplied (or “unlinked”) payments on an account are automatically included in personal balance totals. So a charge can be paid off by unapplied money on an account. For example, if a family paid a $25 copay in error, and the copay due was later changed, they may end up with a $25 credit on their account. The $25 will be an unapplied payment. Personal balance totals will automatically consider that $25, and reduce the amount due on personal charges.
When you use Distribution, you will see all personal charges not paid off by an applied payment. The list may include charges that are paid off by unapplied payments, such as an old credit on the account. You can review and clean up unapplied payments on the Payment History tab.
By displaying all charges that are not already paid off by applied payments, your practice can use the Distribution section to control to which charges a payment applies.
Enter and Review Account Notes
As you post payments and account adjustments, you may want to enter notes. Read Enter and Review Account Notes to learn more.
Generate or Print Account Forms
As you post payments and review balances, you may want to generate or print past due letters and other forms for a single account. Use the Account Forms component to generate a form.
For general information on how to generate a form, read Generate Forms in PCC EHR. For more information on how to configure account forms, read Configure Forms in PCC EHR.
Review Posted Payments and Edit Personal Payments
After you post a personal payment, how can you review what you did? How do you review an encounter’s complete payment history, an account’s complete payment history, and edit personal payments that you posted incorrectly?
To learn more, visit:
Reconcile Personal Payments and Prove Out at the End of the Day
At the end of the day, your practice may wish to balance out a cash drawer or check that credit card receipts match what was posted. Use the Payment Reconciliation report to see totals for each payment type.
What Payment Types Can I Post In Different PCC Tools?
When you post a payment or adjustment anywhere in PCC, you first select a “Payment Type”.
Your practice can configure your payment types in order to improve your reports, determine which payment types are available in different PCC tools, and make other configuration changes in support of your billing workflow. Use the Payment Types table in the Tables tool. For each payment type, you can indicate a name, a “base” type (cash, charge, etc.), and answer configuration questions that determine how and where a payment type appears.
For example: if your practice wanted to report a personal check posted during checkin or checkout separately from a personal check posted at other times, you could have two different payment types, such as a “TOS Personal Check” and a “Personal Check”. Both payment types would have the base type of “check”.
Generate Personal Account Bills
Use the Bills tool in PCC EHR to generate personal bills for families. Use the Payments tool to print a single account statement.
Video: Watch Generate Personal Account Bills and Print a Single Account Statement to learn more.
Billing Codes and Descriptions Include Confidential Information: When you print or export billing records, including receipts, bills, and histories, the output includes procedures and diagnoses from patient encounters. These codes and descriptions may reflect clinical information that was marked confidential in the chart.
Generate Bills
Follow the procedure below to generate personal statements for families.
Open the Bills Tool
When you are ready to send out personal bills, open the Bills tool in PCC EHR.
Select Electronic Bills or Paper Bills
If your practice sends some or all bills out electronically to a printing service, select whether you are sending e-bills or printing paper bills.
Electronic Bills are Printed By a Third Party: An electronic bill refers to when your practice electronically sends bill files to a third party, OSG (formerly “Diamond Health”), for printing and mailing to families.
Paper Bills Require a Bills Printer: If your practice generates paper bills, you must have a printer available to print the bills. You may need to contact PCC Support to select which printer your practice will use to print bills or else set your individual user printer settings in the Practice Management window before you open the Bills tool. Contact PCC Support for more information.
Select Age of Bills to Send
Optionally adjust which bills you wish to generate, based on age of the oldest balance on the bill. Or click “Select All”.
For example, your office may wish to send current bills to your electronic printing service but print 90+ or 120+ bills manually.
Click Prepare E-bills
Click “Prepare E-bills” (or “Prepare Bills”) to process account balances and prepare bills. They will not be sent yet.
Review Totals and Optionally Work With Accounts
Review the total number of prepared bills. Optionally, click “Work With Accounts” to see all families for whom a bill was prepared.
Click “Submit E-bills” To Send Bills
When you are ready to send bills to your third-party printing service, click “Submit E-bills”. If you are printing bills at your practice, click “Submit Bills”.
When bills are sent, the account’s individual bill cycle and “Last Bill Sent” date will be updated, indicating that they have received a bill this month.
Automatic Billing Cycle: Your PCC system tracks when you last sent each account a bill. Your practice can configure a billing cycle so a family won’t receive more than one bill per billing period. With cycle billing, you can run bills every day and your system will only generate bills for accounts that either had their last bill sent more than 28 days ago (for example) or have new personal charges due on their account. To learn about your practice’s cycle billing settings, contact PCC Support.
Work Unpaid Personal Balances
You can work down a list of accounts with unpaid personal balances using the Personal Balances tool.
Review a Log of Bills
You can review a log of all bill submissions. Read Review the Bill Log to learn more.
Customize the Messages that Appear on a Personal Bill
Your practice can customize the messages that appear on your bills. Read Customize the Messages on Personal Bills to learn how.
Print a Single Account Statement
When you need to generate a single bill for an account, open the Payments tool, find the family, and click “Print Statement”.
If your practice’s custom paper bill includes room for an account note, you can enter one and it will appear on the bill.
You can print the bill or use your workstation’s print window to save it as a PDF.
Printing a statement updates the family’s “Last Bill Sent” date. If your practice uses a billing cycle (such as 28 days), then when you next run bills, a new bill will not be generated within the cycle unless the family has new charges. For more information, read Generate Personal Account Bills.
Custom Message Tips: The custom message you enter when you generate a single statement is not saved; it appears only on the bill you are generating. Your practice can use Snap Text to define useful re-usable custom messages for bills. Use the Bills tool to define your age-based practice-wide billing messages that appear on every bill.
My Bill Looks Different: The single bill form printed from PCC EHR is not the same format as bills printed by a third-party printing service. The “Print Statement” button prints the default paper bill form on your PCC system.
Personal Billing Overview
From collecting copays to generating bills, to bill follow-up and sending accounts to collections, PCC tools can help you keep your practice’s personal A/R under control.
Here’s an overview:
Collect the Payment and Family Information at the Time of Service
There is no better time to collect a personal balance than while the patient is still in your office. Use PCC’s Patient Check-In tool to review and update demographic information and policies, review insurance eligibility, explain old balances to the family, and post copays and other payments. Everything you collect while the patient is still in the building saves you time and money.
Financial Policy: Have your families review and sign a financial policy that is annually reviewed by your billers, managers, and the owners of your practice. A good financial policy encourages families to remember that they are ultimately responsible for all of their charges.
Generate Bills
Use the Bills tool to generate personal bills. Whether you print and mail your paper bills in the office or send them electronically to a remote printing service, PCC includes features to make your collection process more efficient. You can create custom messages that appear on bills of different aged receivables. You can also review and work on a list of people who need bills before generating them.
Follow Up on Outstanding Bills
At every encounter, your practice can review balances with the family during patient checkin, and go into more detail using the Payments tool. You can also work down a list of accounts with personal balances using the Personal Balances tool.
Post Payments
Patients and families can pay their bill directly in the patient portal. When you receive a check or a payment through some other method, you can post personal payments and link them to specific charges in the Payments tool in PCC EHR.
Send Accounts to Collections
Turn delinquent accounts over to collections. There are different methods for doing this in PCC, depending on whether you want to leave the outstanding balance on the patient’s account or not. You can adjust off collection charges, or you can pend the balance to the collection agency. Don’t forget to enter account notes and add appropriate status flags for reporting and tracking.
Work With Special Accounts (cfs)
Use the Special Accounts Editor (cfs) to work with all accounts with certain status flags or other specific characteristics.
For example, you may want to list all accounts that your office put on a budget plan, or for whom your practice is holding back personal bills until a certain date. You can view and work with all of these types of accounts by using the cfs report.
Run cfs and Select Criteria
You can run cfs from the Practice Management window.
There are two types of lists found in cfs:
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Standard lists that appear on all systems. These include accounts that are Overdue, on a Budget Plan, who have Credits or have Bills Held by a flag.
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Customized lists based on your office’s Account Flags. These include all of the Account Flags on your system. If you add a new account flag and assign it to specific accounts, you will be able to work with those accounts using a report option in
cfs.
Note: The lists stored in cfs are created overnight. Transactions posted through the day will not affect whether an account appears on a list or not. No matter what changes you make to an account, they will remain on a list until the lists are recreated in the evening.
View the Report and Work With Accounts
Enter the letter or number next to a list and press Enter to view it. All accounts on the selected list, along with their balance information and phone number, will appear:
The example above shows all of the Collection accounts. Collection accounts are accounts that have been assigned the “Collection” flag on the status line in the Family Editor (fame).
As you view the list and work with each of the families, you can perform the following functions:
Actions in cfs
F1 – Start of List
Press F1 to jump to the top of the list.
F2 – Jump to Letter
Press F2 and input a letter to jump to a spot somewhere in the alphabetical list of accounts.
F3 – End of List
Press F3 to jump to the bottom of the list.
F4 – Remove Flag
Press F4 to remove the status flag (such as the “Collections” flag) that causes the account to appear on this list. Remember that the account will remain on the list until cfs rebuilds its lists overnight.
F6 – Form Letters
Press F6 to select and print a form letter for any account on the list.
F7 – Oops Account
Press F7 to run the Correct Mistakes (oops) program for any account on the list. In oops, you can view billing history, change insurance pending status, and rebatch or print outstanding claims.
F8 – View Account
Press F8 to run the Family Editor (fame) program for any account on the list. In fame, you can view a detailed family history, run the Collection report (coll) to review outstanding charges, add notes to the account, review insurance information, and more.
Explain Account Balances
Use the Account Balances component to review account balance totals and the details of all charges with a personal amount due.
Unpaid balances are broken down into Personal, Insurance, and Medicaid charges. They are aged across aging categories (0-29 days, 30-59 days, etc.), with the total personal balance due displayed in red.
Click the disclosure triangle to view a summary of the charges that have an outstanding personal (non-insurance) balance.
To print a copy for the patient or family, click Print.
In addition to balance details, the printout includes your practice’s information as well as the date it was generated.
Where Can I Find the Account Balances Component?: The Account Balances component appears in Patient Details (while scheduling), Patient Check-In, the Payments tool, Post Charges, and the Demographics section of the chart. Your practice can add the component to any protocol or ribbon in PCC EHR where it would be useful for your practice.
Connect to PCC’s Web Conferences and Web Labs
PCC uses the WebEx service to connect you to online training courses and training sessions.
When you sign up for a web lab, PCC will send you a direct link to a class or one-on-one session when you sign up.
You can also view available meetings, register, and begin your webinar at one of these links:
Customize the Messages on Personal Bills
Account bills include a text area that displays a custom billing message from your practice. You can adjust the billing message that appears for bills printed by a third-party service and bills you print at your office. You can add a one-time note when you print a single bill at your practice. Additionally, PCC support can add a custom “Pay Your Bill” website address.
Sample Billing Message on a Bill
When you generate bills, your practice’s billing message appears as shown in this example:
Edit Your Practice’s Billing Messages
In the Bills tool in PCC EHR, click on either the E-billing Messages or Paper Billing Messages tab to review your current billing messages.
You can enter a default bill message for all bills and optionally enter bill messages for each bill age category (bills containing balances that are 30, 60, 90, or 120 days past due). As you type, the fields automatically constrain your message to the printing limit for bills printed by the electronic billing service or at your practice.
Click Save to save any changes to your billing messages.
Add a One-Time Note to an Account Statement
When you print a single statement at your practice, you can optionally add a one-time note to the family.
See Print a Single Statement to learn more.
Billing Message Examples
Here are a few examples of messages that pediatric practice’s use:
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New Provider: “We would like to welcome Dr. Smith to our practice!”
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Open House: “Come see our new facilities at 10 Main St. from 9am-4pm.”
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Credit Card Payments: “We now accept VISA card payments.”
In addition to these general messages, you can also include messages specific to each billing category. For example:
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Current: “Thank you for your patronage.”
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Overdue 30: “Payment is now past due. Please send payment promptly.”
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Overdue 60: “Failure to pay balance due in full may result in termination.”
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Overdue 90: “Your account may be sent to collection. Please contact the office.”
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Overdue 120: “Your account will be sent to a collection agency in 30 days.”
When you print or send your bills electronically, the appropriate bill message will print automatically. If a category doesn’t have a specific message, then a default message will be used instead (if it exists).
Change Your “Pay Your Bill On Line At” Website URL Address
Your practice can include a custom website address on personal bills which indicates where the family can pay their bill online.
To customize the website address for online bill pay, contact PCC.
Use Cycle Billing
Your practice can use automatic cycle billing to spread your bills out throughout a month or other period of time. With cycle billing, your revenue and billing workload will stretch throughout the month, and no family will accidentally receive more than one bill per cycle.
What is “Cycle Billing”?
Some offices print current (or “normal”) bills on the first of the month and then print overdue bills on the fifteenth. Some offices break this up weekly. Other offices generate account bills every week (or every day!) and have their PCC system automatically exclude accounts if their last bill was generated within 28 days. These are all different types of cycle billing. You can control your billing cycle manually or automatically.
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Manual Cycle Billing: Your practice can manually control your billing cycle by generating bills on a set date cycle, such as every 28 days, or by altering which aged bills you generate on different weeks.
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Automatic Cycle Billing: Your practice can set a cycle billing period, such as 28 days, to indicate how often an account should receive a bill. When you generate bills, your PCC system will then exclude accounts if their last bill was generated within that bill cycle duration.
When you use automatic cycle billing, you may experience faster collections. You can generate bills every day or every week and accounts with new personal balances will receive their statement sooner. Another advantage of cycle billing is that it spreads the billing workload and income over an entire month (for example), instead of having a busy period of printing and mailing followed by a busy period of handling incoming responses and phone calls.
Contact PCC Support for help configuring your practice’s billing cycle.
Read EDI Responses to Claim Submissions
After you submit claims, your office receives many different electronic responses. Your PCC system logs submission activity, PCC’s central server sends your system a daily summary, claim clearinghouses and other vendors send back acknowledgment reports, and payers send back rejections and ERAs.
Read the sections below to learn what kinds of responses are sent to your practice, which you should review, and where you can go to research responses when you run into a billing problem.
What is "EDI"?: EDI stands for “Electronic Data Interchange.” When you submit electronic claims or receive any kind of electronic reports, you are using EDI. PCC has several different dedicated teams working on EDI, and you can contact PCC Support with any questions.
Learn All Steps for the Biller Role: This article is part of the New User Training for Billers. You can use that outline to learn how to complete all billing tasks in PCC EHR.
What EDI Responses Are Sent To Your PCC System?
PCC, claim clearinghouses, ebill vendors, and payors all send your practice various electronic communication.
Electronic personal bills are fairly straightforward: Your PCC system logs what went out on the bills, and the ebill vendor sends back an acknowledgement that bills were received.
Claims, however, result in a series of logged information, responses, and reports:
For most of these responses, your PCC system automatically receives the report, parses it, and adds appropriate items to each family’s account history. You don’t need to review the full report file, because the information is recorded for each encounter and (in some cases) for each charge. However, the full report file is archived on your system, should you need it.
Which EDI Responses Should a Practice Review?
Which electronic responses are important to review, and which are just for reference? There are three claim responses in the chart above that your practice will always respond to:
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Need Corrections: When you process claims, your PCC system spots claim problems that need to be addressed before the claim can go out the door. You can review the “Need Corrections” claims in the PCC EHR Claims tool. Claims that are stuck also appear on the SRS Billing Error Report. Read Work on Claims That Cannot Be Submitted to learn more.
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Rejections: Claim clearinghouses and payors will sometimes send your practice rejections, which indicate that the payor will not adjudicate the claim. You can find rejected claims in the Insurance Balances tool or review them in the encounter’s Claim History in the Billing History in the chart. Read Work on Claim Rejections to learn more.
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835s (ERAs): After a claim is adjudicated, payers typically send an 835 ERA file, which explains payments, adjustments, and denials. These ERAs replace a traditional paper EOB. Your practice can automatically post most of these payments, and then manually post any that did not match expectations. Read Post Insurance Payments to learn how to post your ERAs. Later, you can review archived responses in the Electronic Remittance Advice tool.
How Do I Review the Archived Copy of any EDI Response?
As described above, PCC includes tools and reports for addressing claim and billing problems as part of your daily workflow. You can also read EDI responses for any encounter.
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Claim History: You can review original acknowledgements and other responses using the Claim History for any encounter. The Claim History is available on the Posting Exceptions detail view, but you can find it at any time for any encounter in the Billing History section of the patient’s chart.
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All ERAs: As described above, you can read the full ERA in the Electronic Remittance Advice tool.
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System Archive: If you don’t know the patient, check number, or payor you can also read archived EDI communication that arrives on your PCC system in the under-the-hood EDI Reports (ecsreports) program. In addition to claim responses, the archive includes acknowledgements from your third-party bill printing service, batch reports for a day’s submission, and copies of other archived output from electronic transactions.
Run Reports in the PCC EHR Report Library
The Report Library in PCC EHR is a suite of reports designed to give you access to information about your practice.
Run a Report
To run a report in the Report Library, select your report, set your criteria, and view the report results.
Open Report Library
Open the Report Library from the Reports menu in PCC EHR.
Open a Report
Click on a row to open a report.
Set Report Criteria
Pick your desired date range and set other criteria.
View the Report Results
Click “View Results” to run the report.
Review and Adjust Output
As you review report results, you can choose which columns to display. You can also sort and arrange results.
For more information on working with your report output, read Adjust Report Output.
Export or Print
Export or print your report results.
Work with Report Categories and Locate Reports
The Report Library organizes reports into categories that are accessible to users with specific roles.
Review Category Contents
Categories are nested lists of reports organized by their use. Reports can appear in more than one category. Select a category and click the disclosure triangle to browse.
A colorful icon marks PCC’s built-in reports.
Search Categories
Use the Search field in any category to find a specific report by name or description.
Manage Category Permissions
You can control which users have access to specific report categories by adjusting roles in the User Administration tool and by managing categories in the Report Library. To learn more, visit Restrict Access to Reports in the PCC EHR Report Library.
Special Categories
The All Reports category contains a list of all the reports in PCC EHR’s Report Library.
The Data Source category includes a number of built-in reports. These reports contain all the criteria available for a given set of data. For example, the Patient List report is equipped with all the account, demographic, scheduling, clinical, and billing criteria you might need to generate a specific list of patients. Data Source reports are often used as a starting point for custom reports or for isolating a very specific data set.
Choose Report Criteria
Report criteria, such as Provider and Location, define which information appears on a report. Selected report criteria will be included in the report output. Once generated, you can select which included criteria to display on the report. See the Adjust Report Output section of this article for more information on working with the report output.
Pick Date Ranges
You can select a period of time from the Last Modified Date drop-down, enter dates manually in any free-text date field, or use the calendar icon when displayed.
Some financial reports run by transaction date or posting date.
Posting Date: Posting date for both payments and charges is the date that information was entered into PCC. Some financial reports allow for sorting by posting date, available during customization. However, PCC recommends running financial reports by transaction date, rather than posting date.
Transaction Date: Transaction date is the date found on the check, EOB, or ERA. Transaction date is the most common default date range for PCC’s financial reports. Both payments and charges have transaction dates.
- The payment transaction Date is the date found on the check, EOB, or ERA.
- The charge transaction date is the Date of Service (DOS). This is the date on which the patient received care.
Include Criteria
Report criteria limit the data displayed in the report output.
You may wish to include by specific criteria when reporting on a narrow data set. When you select criteria such as Provider, Clinical Diagnosis, Location, or Include by Procedure, only the data that matches your selections will appear on the report output.
For example, if only one appointment reason is selected for inclusion, then the report will only display results for that one appointment reason.
Each criteria selection for inclusion builds on the previous selections. For example, if you include patient flags in addition to including account flags, the resulting output will display only results that contain any of the selected patient flags and also any of the selected account flags.
Exclude Criteria
You can exclude criteria to remove related results from your report. This is most useful when you are reporting on a wide data set but need to remove certain criteria, such as specific flags or procedures.
For example, if three patient flags are set to be excluded, patients with the selected flags will not display in your report output.
Each criteria selection for exclusion builds on the previous selections. For example, if you exclude patient flags in addition to excluding account flags, the resulting output will display only the results that contain none of the selected patient flags and also none of the selected account flags.
Example: Select Criteria to Report on Asthma Patients with a Flovent Prescription
To build a report of patients with specific diagnoses, use the Clinical Diagnosis field and include your chosen diagnoses.
Your output will be a list of only the patients with these diagnoses.
To report on a subset of patients with the above diagnoses who also take a certain prescription, keep the diagnoses selected and then select a drug name from the Include by Prescriptions drop-down.
Your output will show only the patient population with the selected diagnoses who also take the selected prescription. Patients with the same diagnoses who take a different prescription will not display on the report.
Navigate the Report Output
After you click “View Results” for a report, the results appear on the screen. Your report criteria appear above the report output, in the report criteria summary.
You can scroll through report data with your mouse or with the scroll bars on the far right of the screen.
The navigation buttons below the report allow you to navigate within, and close, the Report Library window.
- The Back button takes you to the previous screen so that you can select different report criteria and view the report results again. PCC EHR will remember your most recent criteria choices while you work with the report.
- To return to the Report Library home screen with the full list of reports, click the “Report Library” button.
You can use the Search Filter in the report to find specific information within the data.
The results will display in the body of the report as you enter characters in the Search Filter. A tally of your search results out of the total displays below the search results.
20,000 Row Limit: Exports from the report output (View Results screen) in the Report Library are currently limited to 20,000 rows. If your output appears to be exactly 20,000 rows long, it may not contain all of the information that you are looking for. If this occurs, return to the report configuration screen and click “Export Report” to get your full report. Read the Export a Report section below to learn more.
Adjust Report Output
You can organize your report output to display the information most relevant to your needs.
Arrange, Hide, or Show Columns
The criteria that you selected while creating your report will be included in the report output, but may not display automatically. Use the Columns drop-down in the report output to select which columns to display.
To move a column, click and hold the column header to select it, then move it to the desired location and release.
Group and Subtotal Report Output
Select “Group By” to sort your output into subgroups.
Some financial reports use aggregate data. You can organize this data for your practice by including columns during report customization and then grouping the report output.
In this example, the user customized their financial report to display the Location column, then grouped the report output by location.
Numerical columns, when present, subtotal within a grouped section.
Sort Report Output
You can sort your report further by clicking on a column header. To sub-sort with other columns, hold the “Shift” key and click the column headers for your secondary sort, tertiary sort, and so on.
Export or Print a Report
There are a few ways to export reports in the Report Library. You can export to PDF, CSV, export a large data set, or send batch messages to patients via email or text message. The option to print is available from the results screen as well.
The type of export you pick will be informed by what you plan to do with your data. Use the following guidelines to pick the right kind of export for your purposes:
- Export a Curated Report: To work with a smaller report (less than 20,000 rows) that you have already made adjustments to in the results screen, choose “Export to CSV”. Please note, totals and sorting that use Group By do not transfer from the results screen to CSV.
- Export All Data from a Large Report: To work with all information in a larger report (over 20,000 rows) prior to viewing and making adjustments to the results, choose “Export Results” from the criteria selection screen. This method is best for large data sets, such as a patient recall list, or anytime you want a quick download of the numbers so that you can work with the CSV in a spreadsheet. Reports of any size can be exported with this method, and reports larger than 20,000 rows must be exported this way to capture all data during export. There is no row limit when exporting using the “Export Results” option. To learn more about exporting large data sets from the Report Library, read Export Large Data Sets.
- Export a PDF: For a digital version of the printed report, choose “Export to PDF”. The data on the exported PDF cannot be adjusted. This type of export may be useful for sharing smaller, already curated reports with colleagues or consultants.
- Send a Broadcast Message: Once you build a patient list in the Report Library, you can compose batch messages and text or email them to patients and families. To learn how, read Send Batch Messages to Patients and Families.
- Print Your Report: To print the report from the Report Library, click “Print”.
Export Reports to Your Browser While Working Remotely
When you are working remotely through SecureConnect and you need to export a report, click any “Export” button in the Report Library, choose your file type, and export as usual. The exported file will display in your browser’s downloads area, and in your downloads folder.
To export a PDF from the Report Library, use the Print to SecureConnect workflow.
Build a Custom Report
Custom reports allow your practice to select additional criteria and set which elements will display on a given report. Read Create a Custom Report for more information.
Schedule Reports
You can schedule reports, such as daily huddle sheets and monthly recall lists, to run automatically. To find out more about scheduling a report read Schedule Reports to Run Automatically.