This enhancement allows a customer to configure RIS Insurance Eligibility to apply Eligibility Special Conditions to only certain Sites or Practices.  This is useful when Carrier Codes are used differently in various markets and different rules need to be applied depending on the location of the study.

Two new columns have been added to the EligibilitySpecialConditions configuration editor.  Adding a value to either the Site or Practice column updates the logic for evaluation of eligibility special conditions.

These columns are mutually exclusive: only Site or Practice can be configured per rule. 

To add one or more Sites or Practices, simply click the field, which will display (all) until a more specific selection is added.  A pop-up window will appear to select the desired Sites or Practices, as shown below.

This enhancement updates insurance eligibility messages to support sending the Availity payer an additional Service Type of 30 in the 270 Availity request.  This can be beneficial when the main Service Type Code brings back some Patient Financial Responsibility information, but Service Type 30 brings back an additional piece that was missing.  For example, Service Type 4 returns only the co-pay and Service Type 30 returns the remaining deductible and co-insurance (but not the co-pay).  In cases like this, the only way to obtain all of the necessary information is to send both Service Types and combine the results.

The configuration table AvailityPayers has been updated to add the column Include ST30 in 270 Flag.  When this flag is configured to Y:

·         Messages will include an additional Service Type of 30 on the 270 request.

·         The 271 information from Service Type 30 will be displayed in the JSON’s Plan section

Previously, the Insurance Verification Status column was only relevant for orders where manual eligibility checking was used.  Orders using automated eligibility showed a blank in the column, as the Eligibility Flags are used for this process.  While the flags can display much more information (via the tooltip), it is beneficial to show the basic eligibility status for these orders in the Insurance Verification column as well.  This enhancement adds the automated eligibility statuses to the Insurance Verification Status column on the following worklists where it is displayed:  IVT, Confirmation, Reception, Technologist, Labwork.  

Possible statuses for automated eligibility:

·         Approved

·         Warning

·         Error

·         Denied

·         In Progress

Possible statuses for manual eligibility:

·         Required

·         Verified

·         Not Required

The historical PreCert Status named Denied, which is used to indicate that there was a denial from the insurance carrier for the billing code, sometimes requires additional follow-up.  Therefore, the Denied status needs to remain on the IVT worklist while that process takes place.   However, after attempting to appeal the denial and obtain approval, there comes a point at which a user with the appropriate authority will determine that the denial is final and there is nothing else that can be done.  At this point, the item no longer needs to appear on the IVT WL (unless there are additional billing codes that are not in a final PreCert Status or some other reason required it, unrelated to PreCert).  This status will persist through rescheduling. 

To accommodate for this workflow, a new PreCert Status named Denied (Final) has been added.  To select this PreCert Status, the user will need to have a special access string: Clinical.IVT.PreCertDeniedFinal (Default = NONE). 

Users without FULL access will not see the Denied (Final) option in the dropdown, unless it was already selected by a permissioned user. 

Previously, the Last Contact Type column that exists on a number of worklists used a Contains filter that only allowed the user to select a single contact type from a dropdown.  We recently added a Select Values option that allows users to select multiple contact type options for worklist filtering.  However, the filtering field itself was still constrained with a dropdown, instead of allowing typing. 

This feature allows users to type in the filter box for both the Last Contact Type and Next Follow-up Type columns for any worklists on which they appear.  The filter is now a textbox instead of a dropdown. 

This enhancement updates inbound messaging to utilize AUC consultation information included with inbound messages.

Previously, RIS supported accepting AUC consultation values on incoming messaging for exams that include billing codes only.  With this enhancement, a provider sending information for a single consultation that matches to a procedure code will apply that AUC consultation information to all billing codes that require consult on that procedure.  If the provider sends information per billing code, RIS can accommodate that as well.

Consultation information continues to be stored for each billing code.

RIS will now attempt to identify billing codes and match up AUC information from provided information for the following scenarios:

1)       Procedure code sent without billing codes, but default billing codes are configured in RIS

2)       Procedure code sent without billing codes, but NO default billing codes are configured in RIS

3)       Procedure description sent that uniquely identifies a procedure code with default billing codes

4)       Procedure description sent that uniquely identifies a procedure code without default billing codes

5)       Procedure description sent that does NOT uniquely identify a procedure code

This enhancement will display a warning during scheduling when a patient has an identical procedure already scheduled in the future.  The goal is to prevent inadvertent duplicate scheduling of the same procedure, which can sometimes occur when the patient is unaware that their doctor’s office already scheduled an appointment on their behalf.  

For example, if a scheduler is attempting to schedule a CT Chest WO for a patient, and the patient already has a scheduled CT Chest WO in the future, the user will be notified of the potential duplication:

If there are multiple studies that are potential duplicates, they are listed on separate lines each with their own date and time.

This warning will be displayed under the following conditions:

·         Status code of the existing exam is Scheduled.

·         Scheduled date (Schedule Start Date) of the existing exam is greater or equal to today's date and time.

·         Procedure Code for the existing exam and possible duplicate exam are the same.

·         If Body Part exists, the existing exam and possible duplicate exam have the same body part.

·         If Laterality exists, the existing exam and possible duplicate exam have the same laterality.

This feature will be expanded upon in the future to recognize additional scenarios where it will be beneficial to alert the scheduler to another exam for the same patient which may impact whether or when the current exam should be scheduled.

This enhancement introduces an option for real-time archiving of scanned documents.  When enabled, scanned document pages will be written directly to the current archiving location instead of getting written to the database.

As a result, this feature reduces the size of database transaction logs and improves performance of SQL Server transaction log shipping functionality for sites using that functionality to keep data synchronized between servers.

This feature is controlled by the new ScanDocumentArchivingInRealtime RIS System Configuration setting.

RIS has been validated to be fully functional when configured with Microsoft SQL Server 2017 database.

No compatibility issues have been identified.

This enhancement allows a non-proxied user to perform a Patient search in the Provider Portal.  This can be useful for Imaging Center staff, such as Marketing Representatives and internal IT users, who may need to view patients in the portal to support providers or perform testing.

Previously, the Provider Portal search page returned an error for users who were not proxied to a provider.  With this change, credentials for the currently logged in user will be used when the user has no specified Referring Physician.

When the Include patients outside my practice checkbox option is selected, the search will now return results, although users will not have permissions to create an order or schedule a study.

Previously, if a provider wished to switch between the Web Viewer and the Full Viewer while viewing a patient, they had to click a link that would navigate them away from the patient’s images to the Account Page where they could make a different selection in the Image Viewer section.  This was not efficient because the provider would have to search for their patient again after changing the viewer setting. 

This enhancement allows the provider to toggle between viewer modes without leaving the patient.  The link will now be labeled Switch to Web Viewer when in Full Viewer mode or Switch to Full Viewer when in Web Viewer mode. 

A badge will briefly display at the top of the screen to indicate that the viewer has been switched:

This change takes place without leaving the current patient, so the user can now view the patient’s images using the selected viewer. 

All images will be launched in the newly selected viewer mode throughout the user’s session—until log-out.  Even if the user leaves the Images Tab or the Patient Detail screen, future images will display in the selected Image viewer mode, until log-out or the user selects a different mode.

The Accounts Page > Image Viewer tab will continue to allow the user to set their DEFAULT image viewer.  This is the viewer that is set upon log-in.

Many providers do not have an email address for their patient, but do have a phone number.  Previously, email was a required field when adding a new patient during the Create Order workflow.  This has been updated so that email is no longer required and phone number is required instead.