New in 2.1

The following is a list of new features and improvements in the 2.1 release. You should also check Known Issues and the Implementation Checklist.

Features in this release include:

Insurance

Gap Insurance Claims

OpenVPMS can now make gap insurance claims, via PetSure VetHub

These are claims where the insurer determines the benefit for a claim, before any invoices are paid, and the customer pays the gap. The insurer then re-imburses the practice.

Insurance Enhancements

Claim Editing

  • Insurance Claims may now be created without creating an Insurance Policy first.
  • Insurance Claims can be submitted without a Policy Number, for those insurers that support it. The Policy Number will be updated by the insurer, if the customer has a valid policy.
  • The Insurance Policy End Date is no longer required.

Insurance Reporting

A new workspace has been added to support insurance claim reporting.

See Reporting - Insurance for more details.

Charges and Estimates

Multiple charge and estimate item deletion

Multiple charge and estimate items may now be selected for deletion.
Previously, they were restricted to being deleted one at a time.

Patient Summary

When editing multi-patient charges and estimates (e.g. in Customers - Charges or Customers - Estimates or during Check-Out), the patient summary can now be displayed by clicking on the button.

Letter Parameters filled during Invoicing

Letters attached to products will now prompt for any parameters when the product is invoiced.

Estimate Expiry

The default Expiry Date for estimates can now be configured by the Estimate Expiry option of the Practice.

Clinician for invoiced estimates

To ensure that the correct clinician is recorded when an estimate is invoiced, the clinician is now prompted for unless:

Calendar-based service ratios

Service ratios may now have a calendar linked to them, to determine when the service ratio applies. See Service Ratios for more details.

Improved Statement printing

Statement printing can now be performed from both Customers - Accounts and Reporting - Debtors. Options include printing, previewing or emailing:

  • the current statement
  • a previously issued statement
  • transactions between two dates

Previously, statements could only be printed from Reporting - Debtors.

Pharmacy Order Discontinuation

Cubex users can now control when pharmacy orders are discontinued, by setting the Pharmacy Order Discontinue Period option on the Practice.
By default, pharmacy orders are discontinued when an invoice is finalised. This option allows order discontinuation to occur after an invoice is finalised.

Workflow

Simplified Check-In

Patient check-in has now been simplified. Previously, the steps:

  • Select Patient
  • Select Work List
  • New Weight
  • Customise Flow Sheet
  • Print

were each displayed in separate windows. These have now been merged into a single window.

Schedules may also specify a default Work List, in order to automatically create a Task for a patient on Check-In.

Consulting clinician

To ensure that the correct clinician is recorded during a Consult, the clinician is now prompted for at the start of the Consult workflow unless:

Scheduling

Rostering

Rostering of employees to areas in a practice location is now supported.

See How To - Rostering for more details.

Deputy Integration (from OpenVPMS 2.1.2)

  • Two-way shift synchronisation is now supported between OpenVPMS and Deputy.
  • Synchronisation is performed for OpenVPMS Roster Areas that have been mapped to a corresponding Area in Deputy
  • Synchronisation is performed for shifts starting today, and 30 days (by default) into the future. Historical shifts are not synchronised
  • OpenVPMS shifts that cannot be synchronised will be flagged as an error in Workflow - Rostering

For more details, see Deputy Integration.

Scheduling and Work List automatic refresh

Scheduling and Work Lists can now be configured to automatically refresh to display new and updated appointments and tasks.
This is determined by the Scheduling Refresh option of the Practice, which sets the interval between refreshes.
This also affects the new Rostering workspace.

Find Free Appointment Slots by clinician

Free Appointment Slots can now be searched by clinician.
This will only return those slots that the clinician is rostered on to.

Macro support

The selected appointment in Workflow - Scheduling and task in Workflow - Work Lists are now available for use in macros. These may be accessed using the $appointment and $task variables, respectively.
These can simplify generating SMS messages and emails to customers.

See Sample Expressions for examples.

Alerts

Mandatory alerts

Customer and patient alerts can now be flagged as being mandatory alerts.
When a customer or patient is selected that has a mandatory alert, the alert will be displayed in a popup window. The user must acknowledge the alert to continue.
A user only needs to be acknowledge an alert once in a 24 hour period.

See Concepts - Alerts for more details.

Alert Enhancements

The customer and patient summary alert display has been improved:

  • Current alerts can now be edited by clicking on them and selecting Edit
  • Hovering over an alert displays the alert reason as a tooltip, if one is present
  • The window shown by View All now allows alerts to be edited

This also applies to the alerts displayed when editing appointments.

Patients

View Patient History while editing Notes

Patient history is now displayed while editing Notes and Addendum records.
This makes it much easier to review existing history, and to copy text.

Improved patient search

The patient search launched by Patients - Information - Select and Patients - Medical Records - Select can now supports patient selection by customer, patient and/or contact.

Patient history product type search

Patient history in Medical Records Summary and the Visit Summary can now be filtered on Product Type. This can be used to quickly find vaccinations for example.

Patient history sort order

Patient History preferences now have a History Sort Order option to determine the order that Visits are displayed in.

Products

Stock Control

In multi-location practices, users now only see the Stock Locations associated with their Practice Locations. Previously, they could see all Stock Locations.
This improves access control.
This affects:

  • Stock Adjustments
  • Stock Transfers
    Users can still tranfer stock to any location. This allows stock to be transferred to another location without giving users access to that location.
  • Orders
  • Deliveries

Reporting

Scheduled Reporting calculated date parameters

Scheduled reports can now be configured to run with calculated date parameters e.g. "End of Year", "July 1 - Last Year", "June 30".

Previously, only fixed dates could be used.

See Scheduled Report- Parameters for more details.

Administration

Application Cache configuration

Caches for appointments, tasks, calendars and lookups can now be configured via the Application Caches window, launched from Administration - System - Caches.

Previously, these could only be set in configuration files.

Mail Server timeout

The mail server timeout is now configurable via the Timeout field of Mail Server.
Previously, this could only be set in configuration files.

Diagnostics

System diagnostics may now be viewed in the Diagnostics window, launched from Administration - System - Diagnostics.

This can aid quick diagnosis of problems where access to the server or database is limited.

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