TherapyNotes™ 4.57: Telehealth Beta, Patient Contacts Form, and Much More

We couldn’t be more excited for this release of TherapyNotes™, which includes the beta of TherapyNotes™ Telehealth, many portal improvements including the new Patient Contacts Form, the pre-release of NC HealthConnex, and so much more. In addition to many other improvements, here are the the highlights of this release:

TherapyNotes™ Telehealth Beta

• This release includes our initial version of TherapyNotes™ Telehealth! For now, we're releasing telehealth as a closed beta for a select few practices, allowing us to fine-tune the real-world use of the feature before giving access to more and more users. Thousands of practices have requested to be part of the beta, so give us some time before we reach everyone. Update Our beta program is now open to all users! Practice Administrators can enable TherapyNotes™ Telehealth by clicking the User Icon > Settings > Telehealth and selecting the Enable telehealth checkbox.
• To prepare for telehealth, please make sure your client portal is enabled and customized. Each patient must have a portal account in order to join telehealth sessions, so now is the time to start getting them signed up. Perhaps use this as an opportunity to have them complete a new Patient Information Form or the new Patient Contacts Form.
• This initial version of TherapyNotes™ Telehealth supports HIPAA-compliant, person-to-person connections only. Other participants such as spouses or parents may be able to share the webcam on the patient’s end if they are together. Support for group sessions and so much more will be added in future updates.

Client Portal

• The Patient Contacts Form is a new form you can send to your patients to request information about their contacts, such as their emergency contact, PCP, spouse, or guardian. Patients can also designate the contact responsible for billing. You can preview this new form in your practice's Library. Send this form to your patients as part of your intake paperwork or if they ever indicate they want to update their contacts. Merge their responses with their records to update their contact information.
• We no longer ask for a "Subject" when sharing documents on the portal. This field was discovered to have little value for both TherapyNotes™ users and their patients.
• The maximum file size for uploaded files was increased from 15 to 25MB per file. This affects all areas of TherapyNotes™, such as patient documents and Library documents, but we particularly prioritized this for patients uploading files on the portal, anticipating that patients may need to upload large packets of paperwork.
• We made a number of other improvements to the interface for working with portal forms, for both you (on TherapyNotes™) and your patients (on TherapyPortal™).
• Please note the default message on your patient portal will no longer encourage patients to come 20 minutes before their session. You can customize this language if desired by visiting your Client Portal settings.

North Carolina HealthConnex

• NC HealthConnex is North Carolina’s health information exchange (HIE). All health care providers who receive state funds (Medicaid, NC Health Choice, State Health Plan, etc.) for health care services must connect to NC HealthConnex. With this release of TherapyNotes™, we are now sending real data to North Carolina for our early adopters of this feature. Once NC approves us for connection, we will make this feature available to all.

Scheduling

• Calendar performance for very large practices has been greatly improved.
• The appearance of multi-day events on day and week views of the calendar have been adjusted for consistency and to better fit the event description.
• We fixed a bug in which editing an appointment for an inactive clinician would cause the Clinician field to appear blank. Now, the inactive clinician is still selected.
• We now display a warning if an appointment is scheduled in the middle of the night, just in case you mistakenly switch AM and PM. If a work schedule is enabled, that is used to determine the warning times instead. We encourage work schedules to be enabled for all clinicians when possible.

Billing

• Billing search results and payment posting screen now include a "Rate" column. This represents the total dollar amount charged for this service, including both patient and insurance responsibilities.
• The columns for billing search results have been resized to fit more information, such as the new "Rate" column.
• The interface for viewing and editing both patient and insurance payments has been further updated to be more consistent with other areas of TherapyNotes™.
• If you’re typing in a credit card, you will no longer be encouraged to use a card reader, as you may be receiving that card over the phone.

What's Next?

• A form to accept credit cards on the portal is coming soon! Be sure to sign up for merchant services to be prepared. In the meantime, you can take cards over the phone if you’re not seeing patients in person.