PCC 10.4 Release Manual
Contents
- 1 Billing
- 2 Self-Scheduling
- 2.1 Enable Portal Scheduling by Care Center
- 2.2 Customize Search Rules in Portal Scheduling
- 2.3 Schedule Even More from PCC’s Patient Portal
- 2.4 Use Patient and Account Flags to Prevent Scheduling in Patient Portal
- 2.5 Speed Up Portal Scheduling of Siblings
- 2.6 Find Exactly the Right Appointment in Patient Portal
- 3 Searching and Finding Patients
- 4 Prescribing
Billing
Work Outstanding Personal Balances in PCC EHR
When you need to find accounts with outstanding personal balances, create a worklist with your preferred criteria in the Personal Balances tool. For workflow details about the Personal Balances tool, read Follow Up on Personal Balances in PCC EHR.
Open the Personal Balances Tool
Open the Personal Balances tool from the Tools menu.
Set Your Criteria
Choose to view either balances or credits for your worklist, and select the minimum value that you want to work with. You can filter by the length of time since the account’s most recent review, bill and payment.
You can optionally include or exclude by account flag to further refine your criteria.
Generate Your Worklist
Click “Generate” to see the account list filtered by your selected criteria.
The balance view displays the account name, current balance, billing date ranges, total personal balance, as well as the most recent bill, payment, and review dates.
Open an Account
To work with an account in more detail, select an account row and click “Open Account”. This will open the selected account in the Payments tool.
You can review balance details, update account information, and add notes about billing topics within the Payments tool.
To learn how to post personal Payments and adjustments, read Post Personal Payments and Write Off Charges.
Return to Your Worklist
Click “Save + Exit” in the Payments tool to return to your worklist.
Mark an Account as Reviewed
When an account has been reviewed, select the account row and click “Mark as Reviewed”. This will sign and date the account entry on your worklist. The next time you generate your worklist with the same criteria, the list will only display items that have not been reviewed.
If you accidentally mark the incorrect account, you can revert your reviewed signature with the “Revert Reviewed” button.
Set Permissions for Personal Balances
After receiving the PCC 10.4 update, users with access to the User Administration tool will automatically have access to the Personal Balances tool. Other user roles must have access to the Payments Tool in order to access the Personal Balances tool.
Send Account Forms in PCC EHR
PCC 10.4 introduces the new Account Forms component.
Forms Configuration Tool Only: Practices must be using the Forms Configuration tool to make use of the Account Forms component.
Just like patient forms, you can add, edit, clone, and generate account forms and include specialized account variables.
You can select “Account” as an option when importing documents. Account documents save to the Account tab in the patient’s document history.
Work on ERA Responses That Can’t Be Autoposted
Sometimes your PCC system can't automatically post something found on an ERA. Maybe the family paid for an encounter already, the payor changed the procedures on the claim, or you made major changes to the encounter after you sent the claim.
After you autopost ERAs, use the Posting Exceptions worklist in the ERA tool to address each adjudication that could not be autoposted.
Open the Posting Exceptions Worklist
Click on the "Posting Exceptions" tab in the Electronic Remittance Advice tool.
Review the List of Unposted ERA Responses
On the Posting Exceptions tab, you can review a list of payor responses that could not be autoposted.
For each encounter, you can see the status, the date the ERA was processed, the check number, the remittance date from the ERA, the payor, the patient, the date of service, and the exception reason description.
You can click on columns, search the list, or use filters at the bottom to find specific encounters you wish to work on.
Status: By default, each ERA response that cannot be autoposted is assigned a status of "Needs Attention". By filtering by this status, you can isolate the encounter responses that still need to be addressed.
View More Details of a Posting Exception
Double-click on a posting exception to review more details and address it.
Review ERA and Full Encounter Billing Details
On the View Details screen, you can review details from the ERA along with encounter details, if the ERA can be matched to a billed encounter on your PCC system.
You can review the ERA and use the Encounter Billing Notes, Account History, and Claim History to understand the full story of what's happened with the encounter so far.
Edit Charges and Other Encounter Details
If you need to edit something about the encounter in order to post the payor's response, click "Edit Charges".
From the Edit Charges screen, you can edit diagnosis and charge information, the responsible party for charges, and other details about the encounter. You can optionally jump to Patient Demographics in order to adjust the patient's policies. When you are finished making changes, you can optionally queue up a new claim.
Manually Post the ERA, or Edit Insurance Payments
When you are ready to post the ERA manually, or if you need to make changes to other payments and then post, click "Insurance Payments".
If the encounter can be identified, the Insurance Payments tool will open to the payment screen and you can manually post details from ERA. The relevant section of the ERA will appear below the payment and adjustment section for your review. If the information on the ERA is not detailed enough for PCC to open the account or the encounter, you will see the Insurance Payment search or selection screens instead.
If you need to make changes to other payments and adjustments before you can post the ERA response, use the Payment History tab.
Add a Note and Update the Status
After you've taken action to address a Posting Exception, you can add a new encounter billing note and then update the exception's status.
By adding a note, you'll have a record of what happened if there are more issues with the encounter later. By updating the status, you can mark the posting exception to indicate it was posted manually, a duplicate, invalid, or cannot be posted and remove it from your worklist.
Self-Scheduling
Enable Portal Scheduling by Care Center
If your practice uses PCC EHR’s Care Centers option,each of your care centers can decide independently if they want to make patient portal scheduling available to their patients.
When Care Centers are enabled, another option is available in the Schedule configuration tool’s Portal Scheduling tab: Care Centers Offering Portal Scheduling. Click “Edit” to select which care centers should be available to be scheduled through patient portal. 
After selecting one or more Care Centers, only patients assigned to one of those care centers can be selected when creating an appointment through the patient portal. Patients assigned to care centers not offering portal scheduling will appear in gray text with the note “please call to schedule”.
Customize Search Rules in Portal Scheduling
Take greater control of self scheduling in PCC’s patient portal by customizing the search rules for each Portal Scheduling Category.
Portal Scheduling, under PCC EHR’s Visit Reason Configuration includes the option to set the start and stop times for each category, Well, Sick, and the new Other category.
Selections made here will determine which open visit slots are offered to your patient portal users attempting to schedule visits within each category: Well, Sick and the new Other category.
The Sick and Other category can be set to offer appointments beginning the day of scheduling, “Today,” or the following day, “Tomorrow.” If “Today” is selected, you will have the option to choose how in the day appointments should be offered, from 10 minutes to 3 hours. Choose the range of appointments to make available for each category: either allow the patient portal to search through all of your currently assigned templates, or limit it to searching for appointments from 1 day to 18 months into the future.
The Well category differs from Sick and Other, in that the default start date for a well visit uses the patient’s Next Physical Due date. If that date is in the past or is blank, then portal scheduling will offer appointments beginning on the current or following day, depending on your choice.
Schedule Even More from PCC’s Patient Portal
Two new Patient Portal Scheduling categories are available so your patients and families can find and schedule the appointments they need: Other and Vaccine.
The Other category can be used for any visit reason that that doesn’t fall under the Well or Sick categories, such as behavioral health or depression visits.
Like the Sick or Well categories, enable the Other category by checking the “Display for Portal Scheduling” checkbox. Select which visit reasons fall under the Other category, and continue to select the providers and locations that handle those visit reasons.
The Vaccine category is available for self-scheduling of vaccine-only appointments. Enable the category, and select which visit reasons, providers, and locations apply to your vaccine-only visits.
To make scheduling for vaccines easier for your patients, families and staff, consider creating separate visit reasons for each vaccine you schedule for, such as a COVID Vaccine or a Flu Vaccine visit reasons. With visit reasons for each vaccine-only appointment, users can select exactly which vaccine they need while self-scheduling and your providers will know exactly what to expect with each visit.
After selecting each of the appropriate reasons, providers and locations for vaccine scheduling and enabling the category, users will be able to schedule through Patient Portal.
Unlike the Well, Sick, and Other categories, the Vaccine category does not offer users the option to select a provider when scheduling. Instead, all matching time slots for providers you added to the Vaccine category are offered, as if the user selected the “All Providers” option.
Review Your Disclaimer: After configuring the new categories, be sure to review the text of your Patient Portal Scheduling disclaimer to ensure that it’s still accurate.
Use Patient and Account Flags to Prevent Scheduling in Patient Portal
Limit self-scheduling in the patient portal by assigning flags to prevent scheduling through the patient portal. Within PCC EHR’s Scheduling Configuration menu, the Preferences tab includes the option to select flags to prevent portal scheduling, independent of the option to prevent all scheduling under Appointment Book.
Configuration Menu Change: PCC 10.4 has consolidated all scheduling configuration options into a single menu item. What was formerly the Visit Reason configuration is now “Scheduling Configuration”. The option to prevent a patient or account from being scheduled has been moved into the Scheduling Configuration tool.
Click the “Edit” button on the Account or Patient flag sections and check the box of any flag that should prevent a patient from being scheduled through the patient portal.
Flags already selected under “Prevent All Scheduling” will not be available to select, since preventing all scheduling already prevents patient portal scheduling.
Patients with a flag checked under “Prevent only Portal Scheduling” can be scheduled through Appointment Book but not through the patient portal. If a user attempts to schedule a patient with one of the chosen flags, the patient will be unselectable and marked “Please Call to Schedule”.
Speed Up Portal Scheduling of Siblings
Patient portal users can schedule multiple patients simultaneously, and group their appointments together without the need to call your office.
When configuring Portal Scheduling, each category has the option to “Enable multipatient scheduling” and the option to set a maximum number of patients that can be simultaneously scheduled.
While scheduling in the patient portal, after selecting the appointment category and the first patient, users will have the option to add another patient by clicking “Add Another Patient” up to the maximum number of patients set for that category. Clicking “Continue” will work through each patient, to select a visit reason and add an optional note for each patient. All selected patients’ visits must be of the same visit reason type , so after selecting the first patient’s visit reason, the remaining patients will be limited to matching visit types.
After the portal user selects a provider and location, the patient portal will then search for available, adjacent, appointment slots with enough space for all selected patients.
Review Your Disclaimer: After configuring mulitpatient scheduling, be sure to review the text of your Patient Portal Scheduling disclaimer to ensure that it’s still accurate.
Find Exactly the Right Appointment in Patient Portal
Your patients and families can now find the perfect appointment timeslot without endless scrolling.
After entering in their patient, visit reason, provider and location, the patient portal displays the first day of available appointments. Click the arrow to the left or right of the date to page day by day through appointments, or click the calendar icon to jump directly to any date with available, matching, appointment slots.
Searching and Finding Patients
Filter Search Results by Care Center
Practices that use PCC’s optional Care Centers function can find patients assigned to a single Care Centers and filter out all other patients from their search results in PCC EHR and pocketPCC.
When Care Centers are enabled, patient search results in PCC EHR include a drop-down menu labeled “Care Centers”. Open the menu, select a Care Center, and the search results will refresh, hiding all patients not assigned to your selected Care Center.
Search can also be filtered by Care Center in pocketPCC. The gear icon on the top right of pocketPCC patient search results opens the Choose Filters window. The select a Care Center from the Care Centers drop-down menu, and click “Done”. The results will then show only patients assigned the care center you selected.
View Hidden Inactive Patients in PCC EHR and pocketPCC Patient Search
Choose when you see inactive patients in your EHR patient finder results and when searching for patients within pocketPCC. Everywhere you search for a patient in PCC EHR, the home screen, Appointment Book, E-lab results, import documents and more, any patient with a Patient Flag or an Account Flag that marks a patient as inactive will not appear in search results.
Review Your Patient and Account Flags: Review your Patient and Account flag configuration to ensure that each flag with the “Patients assigned this flag are inactive” option checked is valid and should be used to determine patient inactivity.
PCC EHR patient search includes a checkbox “show inactive patients” which, when checked, reveals the otherwise hidden inactive patients in your search results. PCC EHR will remember your preference. When the box is checked, it will remain checked for your future searches, until you click again to uncheck it.
PocketPCC also filters out inactive patients by default when searching. A gear icon on the upper right of pocketPCC search results includes the option to show inactive patients. Like PCC EHR, pocketPCC remembers your preference and will include inactive patients until you uncheck the box again.
Prescribing
Prescribe Now, Send Later
When you use the 3-month supply option to prescribe several months of behavioral medications, a new option lets you send only the first month while holding months two and three until the patient is due for a refill.
A few days before the patient is due back at the pharmacy, PCC eRx will prompt you to send the next prescription in the series…