RELEASE NOTES...

Practice Manager for Windows 95/98/ME/NT/2000



Dec 1998—Dec 1999


If you require help or further information on using any of the new features listed, please contact Customer Support by telephoning 01280 824600
DECEMBER '99 CHANGES
Theatre List When adding patients to the theatre list, you can now select planned procedures from the 'User-Defined' list as well as the standard insurance company codes.
Clinic List Now automatically updates every 60 seconds to check if other users have added / amended / delete appointments. (network users only)
Deposits These are now added to the list of unbanked payments ready for banking and inclusion on a paying-in slip
Statements Speeded up generation of solicitor and insurer statements
Patient Details From within the patient details screen, you can now scan in documents by clicking 'Correspondence' then 'Scan Letter' from the top menu.
When clicking the button to show previous and future clinic appointments for the selected patient - this list is now in reverse date order (ie most recent visits at the top of the list).  There is now also a 'Print' button to print a list of these appointments.
Toolbar When customising the toolbar, you can now add icons to 'Scan Letter' and for 'Batch Printing'
Date Validation When entering invoices, payments, expenditure etc, Practice Manager checks and warns if an unexpected date has been entered.  Eg. If you accidentally typed in a date as 01/01/9999.  This is in addition to the existing date validation and intelligent handling of 2 digit years to take into account the millennium.
New Report For Group/Clinic users, there is a now a new Invoices By Specialist, Detailed report from the Billing, Billing Reports, Group Specialist Reports menu.
Report of Deposits and Refund.  Run this report from the 'Accounts', 'Account Reports', 'Deposit / Refund Report' option from the main menu.
For group anaesthetic practices, you can now produce reports of Debt Write-Offs and Credit Notes by anaesthetist - detailed or summary reports are available.  These reports can be found from the 'Billing', 'Billing Reports', 'Group Anaesthetist Reports' menu.
Appointment Letters There are now 2 new extra field codes which can be included in appointment letter templates {Last Appt Location} and {Next Appt Location}
Technical Support Practice Manager now detects if you are on a networked systems and warns to log all users out of Practice Manager before verifying files, re-indexing databases etc.
Security It is now possible to change a users security access to disallow entry to Technical Support options.
Bug-Fix When using the 'Exit and Encrypt Letters' button from the tool-bar, the access violation error has been corrected


NOVEMBER '99 CHANGES
Patient Details You can now record a patients unique NHS number.  This number is 10 digits long and contains a check-sum to ensure that the number is valid and has been entered correctly.
GP Directory You can now record the GP's "National Code" and "Practice Code".Each GP and Practice in the UK has been assigned these codes and they will become increasingly useful (in the same way as the Patient's NHS No.) for audit purposes and integrating data with hospital and other medical software packages.
Summary Statements Added an extra column to show the name of who was invoiced, eg the name of the Insurer, Solicitor etc.
Paying In Slip Added totalling of cash payments and added an overall total to show amount being banked.
Label Printing Practice Manager now supports the full range of Seiko Label Printers.To tell Practice Manager which of your installed printers should be used for printing labels, go to Misc, Preferences, Hardware Preferences and select your label printer from the list.
New Report You can now print out a report detailing any user-defined billing codes which you have added into Practice Manager.  Go to Billing, Billing Reports, User-Defined Billing Report.
Address Book Search When using the Address Book Directory, from the search screen you can now do an advanced search.  This will search ALL fields (including the free-text notes) for the given word.


OCTOBER '99 CHANGES
Billing There is now a 'Price Comparison' button the billing screen to allow you to compare different insurance companies fees for the selected procedure
Practice Manager now displays a warning when you try to invoice a deceased patient.
Click N Store When viewing a patient's photographs there is no longer a limit of 9 photos per patient - you can now store an unlimited number of photos against each patient.  Each photograph now shows the date and category while thumb-nailed.
Clinic Diary Added options to the top menu to allow reprinting and amending/deleting of invoices for the selected patient.
Archive Letters Speeded up, now 5 times faster


SEPTEMBER '99 CHANGES
Clinic / Hospital Version New version which now allows the 'Specialist' to be recorded against each item of an invoice.  This allows you to bill for the clinic, surgeon, anaesthetist, assistant etc on a single invoice.
Prime Health Added codes and fees for Prime Health - charge band 12
Royal & Sun Alliance Added codes and fees for Royal & Sun Alliance - charge band 13
Directories GPs, Anaesthetists, Clinicians, Insurers, Courts and Solicitors screens now allow a separate page for recording free-text notes/comments.
Automatic Reminders Added the facility to cancel while part way through printing a run    of reminders.
Detailed Outgoing Report Now shows cheque numbers
Produce Paying-In Slip When reprinting an old bank paying-in-slip there is now a search button which will bring up a listing in date order of paying in dates and amounts for you to select from.
New Report Clinicians by Speciality report - prints a directory of linked clinicians grouped by speciality.
Clinic Appointments by Appointment Type. - prints a report of how many of each of the different types of appointments there have been for each consultant within a given date range.
New Report Theatre Cases Report - report of historic theatre cases.
Patient Details When setting a patient to 'deceased', now prompts for confirmation first to prevent accidental usage.
When editing or viewing a patients details, clicking on the search button to the right of GP, Solicitor or Insurance Co. now brings up the full details of the selected person or company.
Summary Statement There is now an option on the top menu to switch to a detailed statement.
Detailed Statement There is now an option on the top menu to switch to a summary statement.
Patient Preferences Now allows patient numbers to be padded with leading zeros to ensure that all patient numbers are of a uniform length.
When setting up 'User-Defined' fields for the patient details screen you can now force these to being upper-case.
Billing Preferences Now allows invoice numbers to be padded with leading zeros to ensure that all invoice numbers are of a uniform length
Messages Added facility to print just the selected message.


AUGUST '99 CHANGES
New Module New module available - Electronic Patient Record.  Currently available for Ophthalmology.  Adds additional screens to record and graph Intra-Ocular Pressure, Visual Acuity (in Logmar or Snellen), History and Medication.  Please contact DGL for pricing information.
New module available - Psion Link.  Allows Patients, GPs, Solicitors, Address Book, Anaesthetist, Hospitals etc to be downloaded to a Psion 5 or Psion 5MX.  Please contact DGL for pricing information
Office 2000 Minor modifications to allow Practice Manager to correctly integrate with Office 2000.
Clinic List When making a new appointment, if the patient is not already entered into Practice Manager you can now click the 'Add Patient' button to add the details in on-the-fly.
New menu option to add in irregular available times.
Find Appointment Made screen layout simpler, show duration in hours & minutes of available times.  When setting the start date from which to start looking for available appointments there is now a calendar button.
Clinic List Added an 'Export' button to the top menu.  This allows the clinic diary to be exported to a file which can then be imported into Outlook for synchronisation with a wide range of pocket electronic organisers (Psion, Palm-Pilot etc)
Billing When billing for items from the 'User-Defined' list, the screen display now shows the code as well as the description.
New Reports A number of new reports have been added for users of the 'Group Surgical' version of Practice Manager. (where a single clinic bills for a number of different surgeons working as a single company).  Reports include summary and detailed breakdowns of amount invoiced, received and outstanding by surgeon.
Patient Details When editing or viewing a patients details, clicking on the search button to the right of 'G.P.' now edits/views the full details of the patients GP.


JULY '99 CHANGES
New Report Report of Notes/X-Rays/Results which are expected but have not yet arrived.  From the main menu, go to Patient, Patient Reports,  Notes/X-Ray/Result Tracking, and select 'Expected but NOT Received Report'.
Report of under/over payments recorded when in Multiple Payment.  From the main menu, go to Accounts, Account Reports,  Under/Over Payment Report.
Users When adding / amending users who are allowed access to Practice Manager, you can now specify whether their password should expire & after how many days.  This is useful to force users to change their passwords on a regular basis.
Theatre Lists When printing theatre lists, each patient is separated by a horizontal line to make report easier to read.
Individual Reminders Fixed bug when printing multiple copies


JUNE '99 CHANGES
Patient Details There is now a 'More' box next to Solicitor.  This allows you to store 2 solicitors, their reference numbers & a Court against each patient.  This is to facilitate changes to Medico-Legal reporting as outlined in the Lord Woolfe reforms.  You can also record which solicitor is acting for the claimant Within this screen you can also click on then new facility 'Notes/X-Ray/Results tracking'.  This allows you to record when you have requested notes/x-rays etc, who they were requested from, when they are expected to arrive, when they did arrive & when you returned them.  You can also record free-text notes/comments for each item requested.
Court Directory There is now a new directory to store names and addresses of Courts.
Digital Photography Now included automatically as standard for all existing users. On the patient menu you will now have a 'Click N Store' option.     You can load .JPG format photographs stored on smart-media,
Backup Practice Managers backup is now faster.
Digital Photography Now included automatically as standard for all existing users.  On the patient menu you will now have a 'Click N Store' option.  You can load .JPG format photographs stored on smart-media, floppy, hard-disk, PCMCIA cards etc and store them against a patient.  You can also categorise, date and annotate each photo.  Before using this option you should go to the 'Misc' menu, select 'Technical Support', 'Load Photography .DLLs'.
Patient Details There is now a tick-box on the patient details screen to denote if the selected patient is deceased.
Clinic Diary If using the multi-user diary facility to keep diaries for more than one person (or resource) you can now click the 'Multi View' button      to compare all diaries side-by-side.
Mailshot's Automatically exclude deceased patients.
  There is now the facility for mailshotting letters/envelopes/labels to Insurers
New Report Report of invoices where patients who have been sent the final reminder and still not paid the outstanding invoice.  From the 'Accounts' menu, select 'Reminders', 'Unpaid Invoices despite Final Reminder'.
Patient Notes Added facility to print out free-text notes.
Group Anaesthetists For group anaesthetist practices the summary reports now be produced in alphabetical or financial order.
Group Anaesthetists New workload report.
Individual Reminder You can now override how many copies are to be printed.
Screen Resolution Now supports resolutions up to 1200x1024 even with 'large fonts'.
Multiple Payments Fix minor bug when scrolling through list of multiple-payments.  Now supports up to 50 sub-payments.
Financial Year Summary Display of figures & analysis now clearer.
Emergency Backup Now includes word macros in emergency backup.
Deceased Patients Patients who have been flagged as deceased in the patient details screen are now automatically written to as 'Executors to the Estate of the Late Mr/Mrs/Miss X
Clinic Lists When printing clinic lists fixed bug whereby patients with very long names overran the DOB.


MAY ’99 CHANGES
Billing Added facility to Defer printing of an invoice.  If an invoice is future dated, there is now an option to not print immediately, but instead defer printing until the account date.  Practice Manager automatically checks each morning whether any deferred invoices are due to be printed.  To enable this option, from Misc, Preferences, Billing Preferences,  & tick the ‘allow deferred invoices’ box.  This facility is particularly useful where you want to enter the invoice into Practice Manager immediately but don’t want the invoice arriving at the patients home before they have been discharged.
New Report Report of deferred invoices - go to Billing, Billing Reports, Deferred Invoices Report
Report of Estimates - go to Patient, Estimates, Estimate Report
You can now report on patients by Sex, Age, GP, Clinician & Solicitor.  Go to Patient, Patient Reports, Patients By... then select the required option.
For Group Anaesthetist Practices there is now a detailed report of payments received by Anaesthetist. Go to ‘Billing’, ‘Billing Reports’, ‘GAS reports’, ‘Payments Received’, ‘Detailed’>
Report of unpaid invoices that have had the final reminder. Go to‘Accounts’, ‘Reminders’, ‘Unpaid Invoices Despite Final Reminder’.


APRIL ’99 CHANGES
Patient Details There is now a ‘More....’ button next to the second telephone number field on the patient details screen.  Clicking this button allows you to record additional information - Mobile No., Pager No., Fax No. & Email address.
Billing Added VHI Schedule of Procedures (charge band 7) for Eire users.
Directory Preferences There is now an option off the Misc, Preferences menu to set up to 5 user-defined fields of additional information you wish to record for GPs, Solicitors, Clinicians and Anaesthetists.
New Report There is a new ‘Insurance Co Price List’ report off the Billing, Reports menu..
Archiving Letters There is now an option off the Misc, Tidy Letters menu to Archive Letters onto floppy disk (or zip disk).  This option is useful if your computers hard disk starts to run out of available space - old letters can be moved to floppy or zip disk and free up valuable hard disk space.  Letters are compressed and encrypted before being copied to the archive disk.

Previous Correspondence

If you Print or Edit a letter which has previously been archived, you will be prompted to insert the relevant disk before continuing.


MARCH ’99 CHANGES
Billing Practice Manager now includes the full Norwich Union and Cigna schedules of operations/procedures and prices.  When billing, set charge band to 8 for Norwich Union, or 9 for Cigna.  Multiple procedure will automatically use the correct calculation approved for each insurer.
Previous Correspondence There is now a new button 'Edit Copy of Letter'.  This button will create a copy of the selected letter and allow you to edit it while retaining the original letter unchanged.  This will be necessary for keeping revisions of documents (especially Medical Reports) with the new Woolf Reforms which apply to expert witnesses for claims under £15,000 and come into force on 26th April 1999
GP Search You can now search for a GP by the name of the Surgery.
New Report New report of patients who HAVE been seen between specified dates.  Go to the 'Patient' menu, select 'Patient Reports', select 'Patients who HAVE been seen since....'
Duplicate Patients When adding a patient and Practice Manager detects you may be duplicating a patient already on the system, you now see full details of the possible duplicate & have the option to edit the patient already on Practice Manager.
Amending / Deleting Invoices When adding/amending invoices, the audit trial now additionally records the exact time the invoice was amended/deleted and who by.
Operation Fees When setting operation fees, there is now  a button to set the fees to the maximum benefit.  You can also add/subtract a percentage and round charges to the nearest  £1, £5 or £10. (go to Misc, Preferences, Operation Fees)
Recalls Due Report You now access patients previous correspondence from within this report to allow easy checking of recall reminders previously sent.
Theatre Lists When adding a patient onto a theatre list, when selecting the planned operation from the insurance co.  lists, you can now change the wording of the operation.
Document Scanning You can now configure the scanning of documents to chose the required resolution, auto-deskew, auto-invert, use Automatic Document Feeder. You can now scan & view multi-page documents (instead of scanning individual pages of a document  separately)
Toolbar You can now add a button to the toolbar to access previous correspondence.  (go to Misc, Preferences, Main Menu Preferences, Customise Toolbar)
Clinic Lists In Clinic List Preferences you can now chose whether or not AVAILABLE time slots are included on the printed clinic list.
Multiple Payments When entering in multiple payments, there is now an option to print receipts as you enter the sub-amounts.
Patient Details When adding additional family members as patients, you can now enter the postcode & click the search button to automatically fill in the address.
Batch Printing Fixed bug when clearing all entries from the batch


FEBRUARY ’99 CHANGES
Correspondence There is now the facility to store duplicates of any invoices, receipts, reminders and recall letters in the patients correspondence.  To activate this option go to ‘Misc’, ‘Preferences’, ‘Correspondence Preferences’.  This option means you always store an exact copy of the original document sent - even if you have subsequently changed your templates, changed your address/headed stationery, the patient has moved address or married etc. the copies remain unchanged.  As these copies are stored in the patients correspondence they can be then be reprinted, edited, archived, previewed, faxed or e-mailed if required.
Electronic Claims Claims can now be transmitted electronically to PPP. If you already use electronic billing, please contact Customer Support for details on how to add electronic billing for PPP.
Reprint Invoice You can now select multiple invoices to be reprinted. When you have selected the required patient, hold down the Control key and click the required invoices then press the Print button.
Previous Correspondence You can now select multiple letters to be Edited, Printed or Deleted by holding down the Control key, clicking the required letters from the list and then pressing the ‘Edit’, ‘Print’ or ‘Delete’ button.
Letter Preview When scrolling through the preview of correspondence for a selected patient, the screen now displays the date, type of letter and comment for each.
One-off Labels & Envelopes If selecting a patient label and the patient has an alternative address, you are given the option to use the alternative address instead.
Document Scanning The document scanning facility has been improved to provide direct scanning with scanners which were previously incompatible. All TWAIN compatible scanners should work correctly - all models of Hewlett-Packard, Epson & Fujitsu scanners have been tested.
Supplier Invoices Report Added improved handling for showing supplier credit notes
BUPA Hospital Users For Medical Secretaries working from BUPA hospitals there is now the option to add a button to the toolbar to run ‘Star’ terminal emulation.
Billing When adding an invoice, you can now click a search button next to the patient’s balance to show a summary patient statement.
Payment Received &

Re-print Receipt

Instead of asking ‘Do you want to print a receipt (yes/no)’ Practice Manager automatically shows a list of available receipt templates.  If you do not require a receipt, just press Escape.
Misc Minor memory leak fixed which occasionally caused a crash when changing between consultants.
Remote Support Now asks whether to run PCAnywhere or Laplink to allow DGL to dial in to your computer to provide assistance.
Consultation Fees When in Misc, Preferences, Consultation Fees - as well as being able to amend the fees for each type of consultation, you can also edit the wording.
Hospital Users For Practice Manager users who are on a network with over 20 consultant licenses the logon screen has been changed to be in alphabetical order - you can press the first letter of the Consultants surname to move through the list of consultants.
Release Notes Now in Microsoft Word format (easier to print).
Clinic Diaries Added option to record court attendances.
Security If a user does not have the required access level to view Directory Reports, if they access the GP or Insurer directory they do not see the usual referral information (number of referrals, date of last referral, turnover etc)


JANUARY '99 CHANGES
New Reports From 'Patient Reports' there are now reports allowing you to analyse information stored in any user-defined fields set up on your patient details screen.  You can produce summary or detailed reports.
From 'Patient Reports' there is now a 'Patients By....' option this allows tabular reports on patients by town, county, insurer similar to the Patient Graphs analysis. (Summary and Detailed reports are available)
Patient Mailshot Added facility to select patients by date last seen
Reports Changed credit note & debt write-off reports to include patients name.
Backup Preferences Added option to set the default as to whether or not the computer should be shut down after backup is complete.
Automatic Reminders Added a 'None' button to un-tick all reminders due from the list.


DECEMBER '98 CHANGES
Clinic Lists Fixed small bug which was causing a memory leak when printing morning / afternoon lists.
Patient Details Made entering of 'Invoice To' easier.
Previous Correspondence When emailing a letter, a copy of the letter is automatically made with a .DOC extension so that the person receiving the email can view the attachment more easily.
Clinic Lists Corrected 'Week View' for user who have set up multiple diaries.
Reprint Invoice This screen now has an 'E-Mail' button, allowing you to email a copy of an invoice to Insurers.  Note - you should ensure you have a digital signature and encryption to maintain patient confidentiality.
Patient Search When searching for a patient you can now also search on any user-defined fields you have set up on the patient record card.
GP Directory When adding a new GP you can search for the address by specifying the Surgery name. This is particularly useful when entering a number of GPs who all work from the same practice.
Solicitor Directory as above.
Mailshot Envelopes Fixed bug effecting some users who link with Microsoft Word 7 (Office 95).
Electronic Claims Added support for sending claims via EDI for group anaesthetist practices.
Label Printing Added support to one-off labels, patient detail labels, address labels etc to support the new version of the Seiko Smart Label Printer Pro.
Recall Report On the report of patients due for recall, there is now a 'None' and an 'All'  button to untick / tick all entries on the report when selecting who to send letters to.
Start of Day On start of day warnings, there is now also an option to warn if you haven’t checked the recalls due report for more than x days.
Outgoing Expenditure In outgoing expenses, when selecting the payment groups you can now add/amend payment groups 'on the fly'.
Outgoing Reports Detailed Outgoing Report can now be run based on 'Date Invoiced' or ‘Date Payment Made'  depending on whether your accounts are done on an 'Invoice Raised' or 'Payment Received' basis.