Helix Updates

1 June, 2023

Update on new feature currently in beta evaluation: Communications Log

Communications Log is currently being evaluated by our beta release users to make sure its providing the value we intended. Our apologies for getting ahead of ourselves with our earlier communications on this. We are planning to release this feature to all Helix users shortly following the beta evaluation.

Bug Fix 🐛

• Claims stuck in Transmit status: Issue resolved where claims previously stuck in the Transmit status during the batching process, can now be retransmit. 

Claims that can be retransmitted will now be indicated in orange. You will now have the ability to retransmit to Medicare. Other claims containing errors, will still follow the same workflow where you will be required to ‘Unblock batch’.

If you do not have the permissions enabled to undertake the Retransmit, please reach out to our Helix Customer Support team.

18 May, 2023

Enhancements 🎉

• Recalls dashboard: Based on customer requests, the recalls dashboard has been equipped with the following changes, as part of a series of enhancements to visual aids and additional options for practice managers to manage recalls efficiently and put them to action.

Printing a Recall letter now has two options giving practice managers the ability to:

a) print and count as contact attempt (where PM feels so)

b) print the document (contact attempt not incremented)

Updates 👍

• May Immunisation Update: In this month’s Helix IMMS update, the following change has been made to standard vaccines and +NIP:
  The Quadracel vaccine has had Strength2 data added (NameDoseFormStrength)

11 May, 2023

Enhancements 🎉

• Recalls dashboard – additions: As part of the ongoing enhancements to the Recalls dashboard , additional column ‘Last Attempt’ has been added to the dashboard as part of this current release.

1. 1. 1. Last attempt displays the last time the practice sent the customer an SMS, recorded a failure or success contact attempt with the customer.

      2. This column gets updated for both urgent and Non-urgent recalls.

      3. This enables practices to follow up on overdue recalls and others that haven’t had a patient follow up for some time

• Death Certificate Deprecation: We have removed the single page Death Certificate to ensure Helix practice’s are following the relevant process in their jurisdictions.

27 April, 2023

Here are some of the new features and enhancements you’ll find in the latest Helix product update deployed overnight. 👀 

Action to take – new Helix print agent 🖨️

• As part of our next Helix release, support for Helix Print Agent versions prior to 1.2.2.0 will cease as the new print agent integrates with Auth0 for improved security.
• This means customers running on print versions below 1.2.2.0 will have to uninstall the old agent and migrate to the new one before our next release in one month’s time. Look for the system alert in the bottom right of Helix and follow the steps in this video to uninstall and install. It shouldn’t take long.

Enhancements 🎉

Recalls dashboard – additions: 

a. URGENT Recalls contact outcome – visual differentiation

We love your feedback and in response to customer requests, the recalls dashboard for practice managers can be differentiated visually to show ‘urgent’ recalls at a quick glance. Successful attempts are in GREEN font and unsuccessful in RED, see below.

b. HCP Name under Next Appointments

The next appointment column in the message centre dashboard now also has the healthcare practitioner (HCP) name with whom the patient is consulting with. This way, practice managers can take next steps around the recall and possibly book/contact patients for appointments with relevant HCPs.

Hovering over the orange icon will provide an explanation as to why you can’t send an SMD message to the recipient.

💉 Immunisation Updates – April 2023: The new ‘MODERNA SPIKEVAX BIV BA.4-5′ vaccine has been added to Helix’s immunisation listings. Updates have also been made to the following vaccine names to bring them in line with Services Australia:

• ‘MODERNA SPIKEVAX’
• ‘MODERNA SPIKEVAX BIV BA.1’

13 April, 2023

Here are some of the new features and enhancements you’ll find in the latest Helix product update as well as our latest what’s new in Helix video. 👀 

SMD organisation search: In addition to sending messages to individual practitioners, you can now search for and send secure messages to organisations in the Healthlink provider directory. If a patient requests a referral to ‘ABC Psychologists’, for example, instead of searching for a specialist working at the clinic outside of Helix and then looking them up by name on the Healthlink directory, you can search for ‘ABC Psychologists’ in the directory lookup within the Helix letter writer and then address the letter to the practice.

Remove from the queue: Based on your feedback, we’ve developed a new feature that will make managing patient queues easier and more efficient. Helix users shared that sometimes patients are mistakenly checked in, or there may be duplicates or early departures that disrupt the flow of the queue. With our latest enhancement, you’ll be able to easily remove these patients from the queue, saving you time and keeping your queue organised throughout the day.

Northern Territory Department of Health Radiology request template: This template includes a ‘preferred name’ field and other tweaks to improve readability.

Recalls: Two of the enhancements around recalls that are currently in the works have been released . We’ll be bringing you further recalls enhancements soon.

Recalls past the due date will now be highlighted in RED to identify where a patient response may be pending.

The patient’s age is also displayed in weeks, months and years based on the following breakdown. This helps practices follow up on critical recalls for minor patients and the elderly.

• Up to 16 weeks is displayed as ‘week(s)’
• After 16 weeks – ‘months’
• After 12 months – ‘year(s)’
• Birth up to 6 days is displayed as 0W (0 weeks)

23 March, 2023

Enhancement 💉

• Immunisation Update 2023: We’ve made a number of updates to our seasonal influenza vaccines in line with 2023’s formulation. These include:
  AFLURIA QUAD (standard vaccine only)
  FLUAD QUAD
  FLUARIX TETRA (standard vaccine only)
  FLUQUADRI
  VAXIGRIP TETRA

Bug Fix 🐛

• Previous patient visit items visible during new consult: Patient consults starting from the queue were encountering a cache issue. This issue has now been fixed.

9 March, 2023

Enhancements 🔋

• MBS Fee Update: We have updated and added new items in this month’s MBS Fee Update. If you haven’t already done so, please update your MBS Fee Schedule with the file provided on our website. If you are experiencing any issues importing into Helix, please reach out to our Customer Support team for guidance.

Bug Fix 🐛

• “Secure Message Delivery” delivery status updates in place: “Secure Message Delivery” delivery status updates in place (Sent/Failed) after HCP shares patient documentations (reports, certificates, others) with another HCP via Helix. This way HCPs can ascertain if the communication was received by the other physician. The status is also accessible in the Patient Timeline.

• Adding item number to patient consult: HCP’s can now select the “Add item number” button within the consult to ensure correct billing is processed.

23 February, 2023

New templates include:

• BHS Radiology

Bug Fix 🐛

• DMS file name:The file upload issue in DMS has now been fixed. Clinicians and Practice managers can now upload PDFs and other files with file names up to 220 characters.

• Appointment notes history: Button has been reinstated and notes are now visible.

To see the most important updates and features that have been recently added to Helix please watch the video below.

8 February, 2023

We’ve made some updates which are useful but not that interesting. We hope to bring you a more exciting release next time.

31 January, 2023

New features 🎁

Preferred name: The preferred name feature will enable practices to use the patient’s ‘preferred name’ across various patient touchpoints including:

• SMS recall template (settings)
• SMS appointment reminders
• Recall letter template
• Template management
• Appointment patient search – lookup
• Appointment list CSV

Ready to bill: Across bulk billing, DVA, pre-employment, workers compensation and private billing, we’ve alleviated potential confusion caused when patients who have been billed and have paid remain in the ‘ready to bill’ state in the patient queue. We’ve made it clearer when these changes take place and what is required from both administrative and clinical users.

Bug Fix 🐛

• Allergies report: As a requirement for accreditation, practices need to submit a report of patients with and without allergies recorded. The report now captures patients with no recorded allergies.

19 January, 2023

We’ve made some tweaks too small to explain and added new templates including:

• Lake Imaging MRI
• Hydrogen-Methane Breath Test – Dorevitch Pathology
• Imaging Request – SA Health
• Imaging Request Prostate MRI – SA Health
• Children’s Early Warning Tool (CWET) 3 months to 1 year
• CEWT 5 to 11 Years
• CEWT 12 Years
• CEWT under 3 months

15 December, 2022

Bug Fix

• Workers Compensation report: We’ve fixed an issue so the Claim ID is printed on Workers Compensation reports.

1 December, 2022

New feature

Signatures in the letter writer: We’ve given health practitioners, nurses and any users with clinician roles the permissions and ability to upload and use their signature in the letter writer.

View our how to videos

How to upload and use your signature in the letter writer.

Adding the signature within the templates in the letter writer.

18 November, 2022

Enhancement

• Immunisation update: For November’s Immunisation Update, we’ve updated the does of Spikevax. In addition, we’ve added Ixiaro and Spikevax Bivalent Original/Omicron into Helix.

10 November, 2022

Enhancements

• Immunisation update: For October’s immunisation update, MenQuadfi has been added as a new non-standard vaccine.
• Print agent deployment update:An updated version of the print agent has been released. Watch the video linked below to learn how to uninstall the old, and install the new print agent (sound not required). You will also see a Helix system alert in the bottom right corner if you haven’t installed the new agent. Important – the existing Helix print agent will stop working by 22 November. Please install the new agent before then, so your workflows aren’t affected. We will also send you a reminder email with instructions.

Bug fix

• Centre location name alignment in tax invoice: A minor design issue in the tax invoice where the centre location was not aligned with the centre name has been fixed.

27 October, 2022

Enhancement 

• Standardisation of error message styling: A minor improvement has been made to the error message view in the Helix billing section.

13 October, 2022

Enhancements

• Electronic prescribing SMS subsidy: The extension of the electronic prescribing SMS subsidy until March 2023 has been reflected.

• Immunisation Update: For the September 2022 Immunisation Update, ‘ACAM2000 injection’ has been updated to ‘ACAM2000 powder for injection’.

• Generic ingredients and quantities for cannabis drugs: Generic ingredients and quantities for cannabis drugs now appear in Real-time Prescription Monitoring (RTPM).

Bug Fix

• Patient search drop-down: The patient search drop-down no longer overlaps the search field when creating a new appointment.

21 September, 2022

Enhancement

• Reports > Advanced Search: The ‘gender’ field in advanced search has been re-labelled to ‘sex at birth’.

 Bug fixes

• Updates to scripts: The Rabies Vaccine has been removed from the script list and ADACEL has been updated to remove ‘ADACEL injection’.

• Mismatch inbox recipient fields: A rare intermittent issue where the ‘To’ and ‘CC’ recipients would mismatch has been corrected.

• Address book: When editing a record in the address book, the ‘first name’ label is now fully visible.

1 September, 2022

Enhancements

• Immunisation Update – August 2022: Immunisation updates for August 2022 have been made. Spikevax is now provisionally approved in paediatric patients aged six months and above. Nuvaxovid is also provisionally approved in patients aged 12 -17 years. Both vaccines are now available as an option in Helix.
• Medical Record Number displays in inbox results and patient timeline: Updates have been made to reflect when a patient is matched by a Medical Record Number (MRN), these results in the inbox and patient timeline will now display a Medical Record Number.
• Printing invoices with or without adjustment details: Now you can choose to include or exclude adjustment details when printing an invoice on the transaction history screen. To do this – select the invoice using the checkbox on the right and scroll up to the drop down list at the head of the column.
• Setting ‘none’ as a patient’s regular centre: A patient can be now be assigned to ‘none’ in the regular centre drop down within the patient profile.

4 August, 2022

Enhancements

• Removal of handwritten requirements for S8 drug prescriptions in ACT and WA: Following recent prescription legislation changes in ACT and WA, healthcare practitioners are no longer required to handwrite details when prescribing S8 drugs. The prompt and space for the handwritten component on the prescription has been removed for ACT and WA based medical practices.
• ‘To’ and ‘cc’ can be viewed from results in patient timeline: Following the recent work undertaken to improve the visibility of the copied recipients for an inbox item within the inbox area, we have also updated the patient timeline to display additional recipients who have been copied into a patient’s lab result.
• Reviewing patient arrival status in appointment status history: In appointment status history, you can now see a patient’s arrival status, when they arrived and who updated the status to ‘arrived’.
• Additional billing status for an issued invoice: Before this change, Helix allowed for three visit states (Draft, Ready to Bill and Issued). We have added another state for the scenario where an issued visit is edited by adding or removing an item. In this situation, the visit state will show as ‘Pending’ until the practice manager re-issues it.

21 July, 2022

Enhancements

• Removal of handwritten requirements for S8 drug prescriptions in Queensland: Following recent prescription legislation changes in Queensland, healthcare practitioners are no longer required to handwrite details when prescribing S8 drugs. The prompt and space for the handwritten component on the prescription has been removed for Queensland based medical practices.
• New ‘Medical Reference Number’ field in patient demographic: A new Medical Record Number field has been added to patient demographics. This can be used to identify a patient across multiple systems. In future, practices will be able to search patient records using this identifier.
• Patient and provider matching accuracy for inbox results: Enhancements have been implemented to improve the accuracy of the inbox results matching against patients and the provider.
• Select multiple inbox items and reassign to another healthcare provider: A new functionality enables the selection of multiple items for bulk action, including selecting multiple inbox items to reassign to another healthcare provider in your practice.
• New patient filter with ‘All’ and ‘Unmatched’ option in inbox: A patient filter in the inbox with ‘All’ and ‘Unmatched’ options has been introduced to support bulk actions. ‘All’ inbox results from your practice can be viewed, in addition to any inbox results which have not been matched against a patient. View the quick demo in the below video.

5 July, 2022

Enhancements

Immunisation Update – June 2022:

• Changes have been made to differentiate the two different presentations of Adacel (pre-filled syringe and vial) due to differences in the latex status between the presentations.

Role permissions

• A more granular permission has been created to allow for consult notes in the timeline to be restricted, for example to prevent administration staff from accessing. Please contact customer support if you wish to use this setting to restrict access.

 Bug Fixes

Chronic Disease Management (CDM) CarePlan Team Care Arrangements (TCAs)

• An issue has been fixed where the CDM CarePlan for TCAs was previously unable to be saved and printed.

Cloning of specialist letters updates to the current date:

• An issue has been fixed where specialist letters which were cloned weren’t updating to the current date.

Tax Invoice Address

• An issue with addresses on invoices overlapping has been fixed.

Workers Compensation Billing Error Message

• An unclear error message when selecting an account holder or employer while missing details has been improved.

Workers Compensation Invoices

• An issue with workers compensation invoices being displayed incorrectly over multiple pages has been fixed.

Update: 6 July, 3.52pm AEST

MedicalDirector understands the importance of patient and GP privacy in your practice management software. An enhancement in Helix release 71 on Monday 4 July at 11pm AEST had unintended consequences for some practices’ user roles whereby some GP patient consult notes were not visible to other GPs and approved users.

The enhancement has been implemented to provide a more granular privacy permission for the patient record. Based on customer feedback, to resolve this issue, we have further expanded permissions within the application to recognise a broader range of roles. This issue is now resolved.

We apologise to affected practices for any impact this has caused.

Our support team is available should you need any assistance www.medicaldirector.com/support

23 June, 2022

Enhancement

ePrescription SMS subsidy

• The ePrescription SMS subsidy has been updated in line with the Department of Health’s announcement it will continue to reimburse the cost of electronic prescribing SMS notifications to at least 30 September 2022.

Ancillary Provider Number

• Functionality to include the ancillary provider number in the centre settings for all roles has been implemented.

Bug Fixes

Ready to Bill

• A bug where adjusting billing items after a visit has been ‘issued’ resulted in the status changing to ‘ready to bill’ has now been resolved to remain as ‘issued’.

Appointment book

• An issue has been fixed where the cut/copy and paste of an appointment in the appointment book did not work when pasting into time slots outside the current week as well as minor styling issues in the appointment book cards have been fixed.

Appointments

• An issue where a duplicate record was created for an online appointment has been fixed.

9 June, 2022

Enhancement

Inbox

• We have introduced the ability to move the inbox item into actioned in the original doctors inbox if another doctor reviews it to prevent confusion and save time. You will also be able to see the doctors who are copied (cc) and assigned to in the inbox item to assist in clear indication of the practitioners.

Appointment printout

• Any appointment notes are now included when printing out the daily appointments

Bug Fixes

Blank Error Message

• We have addressed an error pop up that displayed a blank error message has now been resolved.

Multiple Error Messages

• Multiple error messages that were being displayed there were issues with service text has now been resolved to show a single error message.

Data extraction

• Fixed an issue where data extraction failed for multipage RTF pathology results

Unmatched migrated conditions

• Fixed an issue where unmatched migrated conditions were not visible in the letter writer

26 May, 2022

Templates

The following templates have now been added to Helix

• OGUK: Certificate of Fitness for Work at Restricted Destinations
• OGUK: Offshore unsuccessful applicant
• OGUK: Certificate of Fitness for Offshore Work
• PHN-Funded Mental Health Stepped Care Services
• Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre Referral
• Alfred Health – Victorian Melanoma Service
• ATSI Updated Health Check 0 – 5
• ATSI Updated Health Check, 12-24
• Diagnostic Imaging – Adelaide MRI
• Psychogeriatric Assessment Scales

Bug Fixes

Route field no longer editable in printed prescription

• We have addressed an issue where the route field was previously editable in the printed prescription.

Allergy Screen display fixed

• We have addressed a display issue where the action items and text were previously overlapping due to multiple allergies in the Allergy screen being displayed when scrolling was introduced.

Special Characters in Service Text

• We have addressed an issue with special characters in service text not being recognised by Services Australia.

Unallocated amounts in receipts by item number report

• We have addressed an issue with unallocated amounts appearing in the receipts by item number report.

Incorrect amount

• An issue where incorrect amount is displayed for duplicate claim/batch records has been fixed

DMS

• An issue where the files and next button wasn’t disabled even if mandatory information had not been filled out has been fixed

AHPRA/SIRA number

• An issue where the copy and paste function for these numbers was not working has been fixed

Printed Prescriptions

• An issue where error validation was incorrectly shown in the date filed for printed prescriptions has been fixed

28 April, 2022

New Features

Auto-arrival in settings

• You can now determine if you want Telehealth and phone appointments to automatically be added to the queue prior to the appointment due time which can be done in the appointment book setting area.

Enhancements

Prescription and Medication

• You can now see which products have been discontinued and are the active ingredient in both the Prescription and Medication (Health Summary) areas by moving your cursor over the blue and orange circles.

Editing Immunisation details in the Local Record

• Fields in the Immunisation local record have restricted editing permissions to ensure that there are no differences between the local and AIR record details.

Appointment book

• The appointment card tool tip when hovering over the appointment has been updated

Templates

The following templates have now been added to Helix

• Statement of Choices – Queensland

• VCGS Prepair Genetic carrier Screening

• VCGS Percept Nipt

• Castlereagh Imaging

• Childhood Immunisation Exemption form

• NSW Medical Certificate Cause of Death

• Terriotory X-Ray – Imaging

• Northern Territory Cardiac

• QScan Radiology

• South Coast Radiology

• Coffs harbour Radiology

• Dr. Glenn & Partners

• I-Med Radiology

• Beachside Radiology

• Perth Radiology

• Mercy Health

• Infinity Path Pathology

• CVC Program Comprehensive Care Plan

• DDU – Authority Application

• NSW Death Certificate

• DDU – Authority Application MATOD Program

• Dr Mai Nguyen | Issue with text in most of the letters in letter writer

• Calamvale Family Practice

Bug Fixes

Bulk Bill reports

• Unbatched amounts in bulk bill reports are now showing in the claiming section.

Keyboard shortcuts on Ipad

• We’ve addressed an issue where previously a keyboard shortcut ‘\’ used in the Consult notes was available on desktop, however was not working on the Ipad. This has now been resolved.

Appointment book auto-arrival  

• An issue with the auto-arrival of patients after appointment type has been updated is fixed

New Features

Appointment book time intervals  

• You can now change the time intervals for the appointment book (currently only showing 5 minute intervals) to 5, 10, 15 30 and 60 minutes depending on your preference.

Enhancements

Inbox

• We have introduced the ability to delete and restore items in the inbox and the related inbox items in the patient timeline to assist you in the efficient management of the Inbox.

Patient Timeline

• We have enabled the ability to select and print multiple items from the patient timeline to save your time during consultation.

SMD/Outbox

• The permissions have been updated to allow more roles to view the outbox (not the details of the messages), to allow for easier tracking of the status for sent SMD messages

Templates

The following templates have now been added to Helix

• PRP City East Diagnostic Imaging

• Macquarie Medical Imaging

• Neuroscience Trials Australia

• San Radiology

• GV Radiology

• Lumus Imaging – SA

• Lumus Imaging – NSW/ACT

• Lumus Imaging – VIC

• Lumus Imaging – WA

• West Moreton Health Central Referrals

Bug Fixes

Patient Data Extract

• A reported issue preventing patient data to be extracted has been fixed

Recalls

• The recall editor is no longer greyed out when creating a recall from the timeline

Enhancements

Prescriptions

• The LEMI workflow has been enhanced to recommend a brand selection while prescribing by ingredient to minimise clinical risk.

Immunisation

• For the March immunisation update, we have made changes to the immunisation details of few vaccines. This includes the addition of Sputnik vaccine for recording.

Templates

The following templates have now been added to Helix

• Resident Care Conference Form

• Lutheran Services – Community Visit Record

• NPS Medicinewise Antipsych Review Checklist

• Supportive and Palliative Care Indicators Tool

• Verification of medical conditions

• Mental Health Plan

• Mental Health Review – k10

• TAC WorkSafe Certificate Of Capacity

• NSW S8 Referral for Alprazolam or Flunitrazepam

• Vision Radiology

• PBS Authority Application – Opioid

• PIP – Indigenous Health Incentive

• RACGP – IMPLANON NXT – Checklist & Consent Form

• NSW Certificate Of Capacity-Fitness

• NSW S8 Referral for Psychostimulant

Bug Fixes

Transaction Reports

• Transaction reports now display correct total values compared to the sum of invoices calculated for each user

Blocked Appointment

• Blocked appointments can now be edited

Data extract

• Patient and other data can now be extracted to PDF

New features

User Feedback in Helix

• You can now submit any ideas or suggestions on how you think Helix can be improved upon. To do this, go to the user menu on the bottom left corner of the screen and click on ‘Share Feedback’.

Enhancements

Inbox (Results)

• SMD tenant routing can now also be route based on a Provider Number being specified as the Receiving Facility.

Email tooltip feature enhancement

• Email address tooltip displays will now display in white for better visibility and only if the email address has more than 20 characters.

Telehealth for provisional patients

• The status can now change to “Did not wait for provisional patients when conducting a telehealth consult”

Bug Fixes

Consult screen Resume button

• Users will continue to see the consults notes after clicking the resume button in the consult panel.

Reassigning a patient’s results to another patient’s file

• Users are no longer unable to reassign a patient’s results in the timeline to another patient’s timeline.

Unable to complete the deposit process in banking

• Users will no longer receive errors when providing refunds under the wrong work area

Future appointment message

• Future appointments for new patients will no longer receive an error message

Templates

• EPC – Referral for Type 2 Diabetes
• Offshore Medical OUGK Summary
• ATSI Updated Health Check 50+
• nDSS Diabetes and Your Feet – Moderate or High
• WA – Request for Maternity / Obstetrics Appointments
• DVA Referral
• NSW Authority to Prescribe Cannabis (CP03-18)
• NSW – School Immunisation Cert
• Urine Drug Screening
• Individual Allied health referral form

Enhancements

Immunisation

• Nuvavoid Vaccine 1st and 2nd appointment types have been added to Helix, to help facilitate and track these appointments.

Roles and permissions

• Additional default roles and permissions have been added to Helix

Templates

The following templates have now been added to Helix

• ATSI Updated Health Check, 5-12
• Case Conference
• Centrelink – verification of medical conditions
• COMCARE Certificate Of Capacity
• COVID-19 Notification PHU
• COVID-19 Request for alternative vaccine
• CTG – Patient withdraw consent
• Diabetes – Keeping your kidneys healthy
• Diabetes and Kidney disease
• Diabetes And Your Feet – Low
• Diabetes and your HbA1c
• Diabetes, contraception and pregnancy
• EPC – Allied Health
• EPC Dental care
• GP Referral: Brisbane Mind4Kids Program – Form
• nDSS Diabetes and your Blood Pressure Information Prescription
• nDSS Diabetes and Your Cholesterol
• nDSS Improving Your Diabetes Knowledge
• Offshore Unsuccessful Applicant
• OGUK Medical Restricted Certificate
• PIP Indigenous Health Incentive PBS (IP017)
• Urine drug test chain of custody

Bug Fixes

Inbox (results)

• Dates for results coming from pathology and radiology providers will have the target centre’s time zone instead of UTC.
  

Saving suburbs information  

• An issue where suburb information in patient demographic section couldn’t be saved properly has been fixed

Time slots

• The increase time slot length for an appointment by dragging the appointment length will now save

Enhancements

Monash Incentive Fee Items

• To comply with the Rural Bulk-Billing Incentives Changes introduced in January 2022, the admin user is now able to update the incentive fee item in the Centre Management area. The new incentive fee item will appear by default in both the consult and the visit screen.To update your Monash Incentive Fee Item number:

1. 1. Login as Admin

   2. Select Centre settings

   3. Select Billing

   4. Type new item number in the “Bulk Billing Default Incentive Item No:” field

   5. Save

SMD (Secure Message Delivery)

• Added support for HL7 file extension acknowledgements when receiving documents

Tooltip

• For clinicians and practitioners, a patient’s phone numbers, email address and healthcare coverage options now displays in a tooltip in the blue header

Patient Panel

• For practice managers and receptionists, the email address can now be copied from the patient bio panel 

Templates

The following templates have now been added to Helix

• (COVID-19 support) Negative response Letter
• (COVID-19 support) Asymptomatic response.
• Bowel Cancer Screening Program
• Deagon Family Medical Centre Templates – Mind Referral
• Deagon Family Medical Centre Templates – Persistent Pain Management Referral
• Deagon Family Medical Centre Templates –Asthma Aust Referral
• Deagon Family Medical Centre Templates – QCH Referral
• Deagon Family Medical Centre Templates –TeamCare Coordination Referral
• Deagon Family Medical Centre – Templates-Mater Hospital Referral
• Lumus Imaging-QLD
• (COVID-19 support) consent form
• Comprehensive Medical Assessment.
• Tennant Creek General Practice Territory Pathology
• Tennant Creek General Practice NT Gov Imaging Request
• Croydon Medical Centre – SA Radiology
• Lumus Imaging-QLD
• Benson Radiology
• Generic Pathology (without Stationary)

Bug Fixes

Clinical Information Fix

• Previous patient’s clinical information will no longer be displayed on the current patient’s timeline or consult regardless of poor network connection.

DMS (Document Management System)

• When scanning multiple documents, they will now appear in the correct order
• The recalls section no longer shows occasional missing details in the comments column

New Features

SMD (secure message delivery)

• The directory look up will be hidden from within address book

Enhancements

Immunisation Update 

• (COVID-19 Support) Four new vaccines have been added to Helix. These vaccines include: CORONAVAC, BBIBP-CorV (Sinopharm), COVASIN, COVISHIELD

• In addition, this enhancement will now allow patient’s to be recalled for their next vaccination appointment and a reason will be provided for their visit

Telehealth notes

• The notes made in the appointment is now carried across to the queue for telehealth appointments

Templates

The following templates have now been added to Helix

• (COVID-19 Support) Consent form
• (COVID-19 Support) Clearance form 
• Redcliffe Hospital – Metro North QLD
• The Prince Charles Hospital – Metro North Health QLD
• Royal Brisbane and Womens Hospital – Metro North Health
• QLD Template – Caboolture Hospital
• QLD Template – Palliative care
• QLD Template – Maternity shared care
• QLD Template – General pediatrics
• QLD Template – Community and Oral Health
• Tennant Creek General Practice Territory Pathology
• Deagon Family Medical Centre – Mater hospital referral
• Deagon Family Medical Centre – TeamCare coordination referral
• Additions to the Generic Pathology template

Bug Fixes

Inbox (Results)

• Dates for results coming from pathology / radiology providers where the sending lab or facility has not specified a time zone offset will now be interpreted as belonging to the target centre’s time zone instead of UTC.

The real time prescription monitoring warning prompt now displays

• Practices using the Realtime Prescription Monitoring (RTPM) features (QScripts) will now receive warning prompts on display when using the ‘Quick Prescribe’ or for prescriptions on repeat. 

Reports

• Draft invoices that are deleted will no longer appear in the Outstanding Balance Report

Recall

• Health care professional details will now be required to create a recall

SMD Outbox

• Health summary documents will now load as usual 

Appointment book

• Changing HCP in the week view will no longer load the day view

Referring HCP

• Details of the referring health care professional will now show correct information

An updated March, 2023 Medicare Benefits Schedule (MBS) and Department of Veteran Affairs (DVA) file is now available to download below.

From 1 March 2023 there will be several changes to the Medicare Benefits Schedule (MBS) and DVA. These changes include minor administrative and policy changes, as well as the Government’s response to recommendations from the independent MBS Review Taskforce (the Taskforce) and the Medical Services Advisory Committee (MSAC) Executive.

Read the full details on the MBS website.

If your practice has disabled MedicalDirector Automatic Updates, please follow the instructions below.

Download Update

For information on how to add these fees to your fee schedule please navigate to the Adding fees manually section and read this article.

New Features

Medication Charts

• You will now be able to create medication charts in Helix and easily hand over the medication details to the patients on nursing home visits. We have provided the ability to create, save, preview and print these charts and also access it in the patient timeline.

SMD (secure message delivery)

• We are in the process of beginning the rollout of the SMD capability in Helix. This will first be trialled by a small number of customers prior to it being turned on for all users (over the coming weeks). You will be notified within Helix when this feature is available with a link to instructions on how to use this feature.

Enhancements

Online Appointments

• Appointment types for appointments created in Helix are now available to your online appointments provider for recalls.

Patient Search

• Sequence numbers can now be used when searching for vaccination status. This will allow you to search for patients who have received their second vaccination so that you can assess if they are eligible for a booster. Leaving it blank will show all vaccinations.

Templates

• The Mental Health Assessment template has been added to Helix
• The Hospital Emergency Department Attendance template has been added to Helix
• The Mater Imaging template has been added to Helix

Bug Fixes

Patient extract

• An issue where some data failed to be extracted has now been fixed.

Work cover certificate

• An issue where the work cover certification shows up as blank has been fixed.

Enhancements

Appointment Book

• Moderna Vaccine 1st and 2nd appointment types have been added to Helix, to help facilitate and track these appointments.

Templates

• A care plan review template has been added to letter writer, for when a full care plan is not required.
  

Advance Search

• Advance search can now generate the total list of patients who have received either Covid-19 AstraZeneca or Vaxzevria vaccines to aid in the booster rollout.

Enhancements

Appointment Book

• A Covid Booster Vaccine appointment type has been added to Helix, to help facilitate and track these appointments. 

Templates

• The Australian Radiology Clinic Template has been added to the templates in Helix.
  
  

Bug Fixes

Tooltip

• Tooltip error with measurements in the Patient Timeline other out section has been rectified. Tooltip is now only shown for Letter Writers in other out section. 

Enhancements

Immunisations

• The October immunisation update has been completed, including the addition of Spikevax which will populate the reason for visit and recall date.

Templates

• A death certificate has been added to the templates available in Helix.
  

Bug Fixes

Patient extracts

• Scanned and attached documents can now be properly extracted from patient extracts.

Appointment book

• The appointment book will no longer change views when adding patients to the queue.

Enhancements

Observation Results

• The length of the Universal Service Identifier text field for observation results has been increased to prevent some observation results failing due to long Universal Service Identifier descriptions
  

Immunisations

• Error handling has been improved in the immunisation batching screen to indicate when immunisations are not transmitted in some scenarios to assist you in retransmission.

Bug Fixes

Pathology Requests

• An issue with adding multiple pathology favourites in Pathology Request window has been resolved.

Enhancements

Templates

• The Engadine medical imaging request template has been updated to include a date field.

Immunisations

• The September immunisation update has been completed, including additional immunisation details for certain vaccines 

Updates

Electronic Prescribing

• The SMS fees subsidy for electronic prescribing has been extended until 30th June 2022. This date is now reflected in Helix.

Enhancements

Templates

• The following fields have been added to the Generic Imaging Request Template (without stationary):
  • Contrast Studies
  • Iodine
  • Diabetic
  • Renal
  • Creatinine
  • eGFR
  • Test Data(< 6 months)
  • Referring doctor signature & date
  • Card details – Other than Medicare (DVA, HCC)

Pathology Request Indicators

• A checkbox for urgent pathology requests is now available. If selected the phone and fax number will be printed on the request (you may still have to manually tick the urgent checkbox on the actual form).

Pathology and Imaging Templates

• The Institute of Medical and Veterinary Science and Dr Jones & Partners – Medical Imaging templates have been added to Helix.

Bug Fixes

Receipts

• Receipts for multiple invoices will no longer show as double when doing auto payments.

Enhancements

Patient Engagement Provider Integration

• Patient Engagement providers will now be able to see a patient’s SMS consent preference to better enable them for patient reminder integrations.

Immunisations

• The August immunisation update has been completed, including additional immisation details for certain vaccines 

Banking

• The banking/deposit screen will now load and show only 200 records at a time. Additional records will be loaded once a user scrolls down the page.

Templates

• The Chatswood Diagnostic Centre Imaging Template has been added to Helix

Enhancements

Templates

• The Queensland Mater Health form has been added to the list of templates available in MedicalDirector Helix.
• The Covid consent form has been updated to reflect the latest changes.
• The generic pathology template has been updated to include type of specimen, date of collection and location.

Export Appointment list as CSV

• You can now export a list of appointments by date and practitioner as a CSV so it can be opened in Excel and maintained digitally.

Updates

Medicare/DVA Fee file updates

• The latest Medicare Fee Item Updates (valid from 16th of July) is now available to download

Enhancements

 User/Account Page

• The edit user page now has a new interface to support upcoming features.

Immunisations

• You can now add the vaccine name to the reason for visit as a comment while recording an immunisation.

Templates

• The Queensland Metro south health referral form, and the Queensland – Antenatal Mater, have been added to the list of templates available in MedicalDirector Helix.

Additional Titles 

• Additional titles in the patient demographics and the Helix user management sections are now available. The new titles include Mx, Rev, Pastor, Captain, Rabbi, Imam, and Justice.

Recall Filter

• Filtering for recall reason will now work across multiple pages of the recall list and not just the current page being displayed.

New Feature

Bulk document uploading

• You can now upload documents via the DMS in bulk. You can select up to 25 files at a time, each document must be less than 30MB.

Updates

Medicare/DVA Fee file updates

• The latest Medicare Fee Item Updates (valid from 1st of July) is now available to download

Referral Form Template

• The Queensland Children’s Hospital Referral-form template is now available in Helix.

Enhancements

Reason for visit

• You can now select to add immunisation as the reason for the visit by selecting a checkbox during the immunisation recording workflow. 

Recalls for Immunisations

• You can now select to have a recall automatically created as part of the immunisation recording workflow. This is available for COVID-19 Vaccinations (defaults to 12 weeks for AstraZeneca and 3 weeks for Pfizer) and for Flu vaccinations (defaults to 12 months). The time period can be changed within the vaccination workflow if required.

Quick Selection Batch Numbers

• The last 3 batch numbers for each vaccination type will be saved and shown for quick selection during the immunisation workflow.

Bug Fixes

Displaying active work areas

• Active work areas are now displayed centre when Helix users login.

Tyro Invoices

• Users with long usernames can now enter tyro invoices.

OPV Check 

• Editing/changing the IRN number for a patient with a valid Medicare number will now perform a new OPV check immediately.

Updates

Paperless prescribing subsidy

• The subsidy for sending paperless scripts via SMS has been extended until the 31st of September, this date is now reflected within the software. 

Enhancements

Patient extract

• We have improved data extractions for prescriptions, and enabled the ability to extract migrated vaccines.

Bug Fixes

• We have fixed the changes saved notification to stop it from re-appearing in full screen whilst adding comments in the patient queue.
  

Enhancements

Recalls

• The recall template is now customisable. Once customised, it will be the default for all future recalls for the practice. This feature will be released in stages over the next 3 weeks.
• The default time-period for the recall list will now only show upcoming recalls for the next two weeks. The time period can be changed in the filter section on the page if required.  
• We have added a new recall reason for Covid 19 second dose vaccination.

Results

• We have improved the automatic practitioner assigning for results that contain multiple addressees.

Immunisation

• You can now record non-scheduled vaccinations, along with the scheduled vaccinations in NIP.

Banking

• The order of unbalanced records will now show the oldest record first. A maximum of 200 records will be shown in this tab, with new records not appearing on the screen if there are more than 200 records available.

Appointment Book

• The “Future Appointment Book” icon will now be displayed whether a patient has a future appointment or not.

Daily Visits Report

• We have improved the description for the Daily Visits report.

Billing Report

• The information (text) for the “Print Payment Report” button has been improved to help customers know who to contact should there be further problems.

Bug Fixes

• The correct label details on 4cyte pathology request will now be printed.

Enhancements

COVID-19 Appointment Types

• Two additional appointment types have been added – 1st Pfizer COVID Vaccine and 2nd Pfizer COVID Vaccine – to differentiate the appointments for patients.

MyHealth Record

• You can now view the Event Summary and Discharge Summary documents, in addition to Shared Health Summary documents, to assist in efficient patient treatment and care.

Prescriptions

• You can now view the PBS code in authority-printed prescriptions and the patient timeline to assist with accurate dispensing and billing.

Immunisation

• You can now select the vaccine to be recorded in immunisations as there will no longer be a default selection.

Appointment Book

• Clinicians can now see future appointments for the patient that they are currently seeing. The future appointment book is displayed only if the patient has a future appointment. Note: the GP role must have permission to see appointments. This is enabled by default in the settings.

Enhancements

Printing Reports

• Payment reports for batched items cannot be printed the same day they are resolved due to a delay in the sending of reports back to Helix by Medicare. The Helix user interface now informs the user.

Vaccinations

• Recommended vaccines will no longer be selected by default, you can now select the vaccine to be recorded.

Enhancements

Invoicing

• You can now delete and manage draft invoices. A deleted Invoice will delete the related entries in the banking and reporting area (where applicable) as well.

Auto-population of text 

• If a patient can not be found through the search option, adding a new patient record will auto-populate the name originally searched for.

Recall filters

• The filters in the recall section have been updated, including the additional option to filter by recall type.

Pathology requests

• The pathology request module has been upgraded so that once a test has been selected, the focus stays in the search allowing for faster entry and selection of additional tests.

Templates

• The QDI Imaging template has been added.

Bug Fixes

Letter Writer

• Fixed an issue where the images in the letter (for e.g. signature) preview were not visible.

Appointment book – tablet

• Patient name is now shown in the appointment book on tablets.

Patient data extract

• Fixed an issue where some files could not be extracted.

Enhancements

Immunisation

• The Flucelvax Quad and Influvac Tetra vaccines have been renamed to reflect the 2021 formulation.

Bug Fixes

Radiology templates

• The current date is now printed in the i-med radiology form.

New feature

Prescriptions

• We have introduced the nationally implemented Real Time Prescription Monitoring (RTPM) tool which will allow practitioners to make safer decisions about prescribing high-risk medicines.

Enhancements

Letter Writer

• You can now access the Covid-19 consent form in letters.

SMS Recalls

• Recall messages sent via SMS can now be customised.

New feature

Export recall list

•  We have introduced the ability to export the selected recalls in the recall list (details as they appear in the table and not the actual recall letters) as a CSV file that can then be opened and used in Excel.

Enhancements

Template Management

• You can now add patient Clinical Summaries (previously called “Attachments”) anywhere in a letter to suit your preference.
• You can now drag and drop Clinical Summaries (previously called “Attachments”) in any order and to any location in the letter template, and they will appear in this order in new letters based on this template. Read more about Template Management.

Letter Writer 

• We’ve made an update to the style of the Clinical Summary tables in the Letter Writer and printout to improve the professional look and feel.

New filter styling in the Batch area

• We have upgraded the styling of the filters in the Batched area to improve usability.

Bug Fixes

Pathology/ Radiology templates

• Fax numbers are now printing in full for radiology requests.

Enhancements

Tasks

• The “Archive Task” feature now deletes tasks instead of archiving them.
• Deleted tasks can be viewed with an admin login, in the Settings > Audit log section within Helix.

Enhancements

Prescriptions

When a Recipe is prescribed, the printed prescription now includes a label “(Custom Product)” beside the Recipe, to comply with Active Ingredient Prescribing legislation.

Immunisation

COVID-19 and the latest Influenza vaccines are now available in Helix to assist you in reporting to the Australian Immunisation Register.

SMS recalls

When sending more than one SMS recall, a pre-check will be performed to determine if all the required information such as valid mobile number, and consent is provided. A message will indicate if any of the recalls selected in the batch cannot be sent.

Bug Fixes

Stability improvements to the recall module.

Enhancements

SMS Recalls

Recalls can now be sent via SMS.

How to send a recall as SMS: In the recall screen simply select the patient for whom you want to send an SMS too (they need to have opted in to receiving SMS messages as well as have a valid mobile number), this will activate two buttons at the top allowing you to either send the message as SMS or print it out as a recall letter. Selecting the SMS option will send a message to the patient informing them of the recall, and to contact the practices to make a booking.

Note: This is just the first release in improving the management of recalls. In upcoming releases we will add items such as:

• Ability to customise SMS and recall messages/letters,
• Set preferred recall communication method,
• Ability to print the recall list,
• Updated filtering,
• Ability to customise the default recall period,
• Ability to add/edit your own recall types,
• General fixes and improvements based on your feedback.

Templates

• Community Specialist Palliative Care referral has been added to the list of templates and can be used in letter writer.
• The following assessment templates have been improved by adding important Practice, Practitioner and Patient contact details to the assessment template.
  • Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale
  • Hamilton Rating Scale for Depression
  • Mini Mental State Examination
  • DASS 21
  • K10
  • AUSDRISK
  • Asthma Action Plan
  • Nutrition Assessment
  • Cardiovascular Risk Assessment
  • Medications Review
  • Epworth Sleepiness Scale

Enhancements

Templates

• You can now use the given name field in the Address Book category when setting up a template.
• The Deakin Membership Application form templates are now available.

Reports

• Helix Reports now include a description that provides more details about what information is shown in the report and what it can be used for.

Active/Inactive patient management

You can now manage inactive patients, set rules for automatically changing a patient’s status to inactive, or manually set a patient’s status.

By default, the inactive feature will be set to ‘Never’ meaning that no patients will automatically be set to inactive although the function to manually inactivate a patient is still available.

To change this according to the preference of the practice, anyone of the access role of practice manager or administrator can apply the rule most suitable to the practice.

To do this, go to Settings -> click Patient Management at the top and then click the Active/Inactive tab.
View more detailed instructions.

Note: Every time the setting is changed, a synchronisation of the database is triggered. This synchronisation happens overnight, so changes will not be visible until the following day. Further, a change in setting may also override any manual changes to a patients active/inactive status in line with the new rule applied.

This feature will be gradually released over the coming 1-2 weeks, so if you do not see the option available for your practice yet, rest assured it will automatically be turned on for you shortly.

Bug Fixes

Billing

• The description of items in an invoice printout were at times previously cut off. This is now fixed.

Enhancements

Prescriptions

• Active Ingredient Prescribing (AIP) is now available,  which enables the inclusion of active ingredient names on all RPBS/PBS prescriptions, and allows for the identification of a brand if the prescriber deems this to be clinically appropriate for the treatment of the patient. To assist you while prescribing, we have visual cues and warnings when it is clinically relevant to consider brand inclusion for the LMBC drugs (list of medicines for brand consideration), and when the it is not a part of Active Ingredient Prescribing (AIP) legislation such as the LEMI list (List of excluded medicinal items).

Tasks

• Tasks can now be archived from from the patient timeline and patient consult.
• A task that has been archived is no longer visible or can be brought back with a filter.
• A task can be archived by anyone who has access to see the task.

Claims

• Claims with errors will display a warning if they would be rejected by Medicare.
• Claims with errors may still be batched but not transmitted.
• When attempting to transmit a batch to Medicar and it contains claims with errors, the user is prompted to remove the claims with errors so that the remaining claims can be transmitted.
• Claims removed from a batch can be managed in the unbatched claims section.

Templates

• An Application for approval template to prescribe controlled medicines is now available.
• A referral template for Heartscope Victoria is now available.

Bug Fixes

• Task details now load correctly for the relevant patient where previously it was not always displayed accurately.
• The Billing item search on the patient health summary is no longer cleared from the search if the related item was deleted.
• The billing type no longer changes from private to Medicare when changing via the appointment.

Step 1: Initial Setup

The Practice

Prior to sending an Electronic Prescription, your site must be registered with eRx Script Exchange to send eScripts. Please check if the practitioners have entity ID in user settings and have an active account. If the entity ID is missing in the user settings, please contact MedicalDirector Customer Support to assist with the setup.

Each practice must have an HPI-O (Healthcare Provider Identifier – Organisation) number, which must be added to the Centre Settings (accessible via the System Administrator login).

Practitioner

Each registered practitioner must have an HPI-I (Healthcare Provider Identifier – Individual) number, which must be updated and saved in the User Settings in Helix.

Ensure all practitioners wishing to participate have Electronic Prescribing enabled in their Preferences settings.

Step 2: Prescribing Electronically

The prescribing workflow in MedicalDirector Helix has been amended to enable ePrescribing. To view the new workflow, read the step-by-step guide.

Read the instructions

Enhancements

• Two new appointment types are now available and can be added in the appointment book settings – Recall and New Patient Consult.
• MBS bushfire subcategories are now available.
• A new pathology template is available for St Vincents Pathology.

Bug Fixes

• A practitioner set up in multiple centres will now appear only once in the Appointment Book.

Enhancements

For customers who have ePrescribing enabled

• Additional timeout options have now been added, and can be accessed via Settings
• SMS fees are continuing to be subsidised for ePrescriptions until at least March, 2021, per Government guidelines

Billing

• A default billing type can now be set for each practice

Medicare

• We introduced an automated validation on provider numbers entered into Helix, to improve the Medicare submission workflow

Enhancements

Immunisations

For the efficient management of immunisation transmissions:

• You will now see detailed warnings before deleting immunisations,
• We have made Updates to prevent “Java API errors” after transmissions,
• And we have removed errors for successfully resubmitted immunisations that are accepted by the Australian Immunisation Register.

Pathology Templates

• We have added new templates for Healthscope Pathology and South East Radiology.

ePrescribing (for customers with ePrescribing enabled)

• We have made the following changes to comply with the legislation requirements of ePrescribing:
  • You can add “prescriber type” in user settings, which will appear in preview while ePrescribing controlled substances in the A.C.T. and South Australia.
  • You can now add an authorisation reference number while prescribing certain drugs electronically. Please note that for printed prescriptions, handwriting of the authority number will still apply.
  • For Azure Active Directory users, you will be prompted to re-authenticate while ePrescribing controlled substances
• You can now exclude certain medications from a patient’s active script list to ensure patient satisfaction and provide optimal care.

Bug Fixes

• A change has been made for SMS appointment reminders and patient replies. An appointment can only be cancelled if a patient responds ‘No’ to the appointment booking confirmation. A ‘Yes’ response will confirm the booking and all other responses will be marked as having received an unclear SMS response.
• We have updated the prescription search report to display the relevant prescriptions.
• A patient’s full name will always be printed on a prescription, even with long names. Previously the full name was not being printed if their name was unusually long.
• In the patient queue, the default work area and HCP filter now both update correctly when a user changes between different centres.

Enhancements

ePrescribing (for customers with ePrescribing enabled)

• We have made the following changes to comply with the legislation requirements of ePrescribing:
  • You can add “prescriber type” in user settings, which will appear in preview while ePrescribing controlled substances in the A.C.T. and South Australia.
  • You can now add an authorisation reference number while prescribing certain drugs electronically. Please note that for printed prescriptions, handwriting of the authority number will still apply.
  • For Azure Active Directory users, you will be prompted to re-authenticate while ePrescribing controlled substances
• You can now exclude certain medications from a patient’s active script list to ensure patient satisfaction and provide optimal care.

Bug Fixes

• A change has been made for SMS appointment reminders and patient replies. An appointment can only be cancelled if a patient responds ‘No’ to the appointment booking confirmation. A ‘Yes’ response will confirm the booking and all other responses will be marked as having received an unclear SMS response.
• We have updated the prescription search report to display the relevant prescriptions.
• A patient’s full name will always be printed on a prescription, even with long names. Previously the full name was not being printed if their name was unusually long.
• In the patient queue, the default work area and HCP filter now both update correctly when a user changes between different centres.

Enhancements

ePrescribing (for customers with ePrescribing enabled)

Confidential Consults

• Consultations in Helix can now be marked as confidential. Only the healthcare professional who created the consult will be able to see the reason for visit and consult notes within the practice – this is especially important for mental health and other sensitive consultation types.

Telehealth and Phone Appointments

• Patients booked in for a telehealth or phone consult can now be automatically added to the appointment book 10 minutes prior to their appointment, to support the fact they won’t arrive at the premises to be “arrived” in the appointment book. This feature is not enabled by default. To have it enabled, please contact us.

Audit/Roles and Permissions

• You can now track changes made to roles and permissions, and individual settings for different users in your practice. You can see who made the changes and what changes were made.

Medicare Claims

• Claims that are resolved are now visible in the exceptions screen. And, clicking them will reveal the details of each claim.

New Templates

• The Queensland Police Service Academy Medical Centre trauma sheet template has been added
• The Women’s Ultrsound Malvern template has been added

End User Licence Agreement

• Security is important to us, and so the End User Licence Agreement (EULA) can now be accessed at any time via the taskbar menu on the bottom left corner of Helix.

Bug Fixes

• A bug that prevented users from downloading files from migrated data has been fixed.
• The state/territory field was previously not editable when creating a new patient. A patient had to be saved before it was possible. This is now fixed.
• A bug that resulted in a horizontal scrollbar sometimes appearing in the timeline has been fixed.

Enhancements

Patient Notes

• Admin users can set a patient note as active (is visible) or inactive (is not visible). Previously, the count for patient notes included active and inactive notes whereas, now, only notes that are marked as active will be counted.

Batches with Medicare exceptions

• When a batch contains Medicare exceptions, Helix now indicates both the claims with exceptions, and the number of successfully submitted claims.

Medicare reason codes

• The latest Medicare reason codes and descriptions used to describe the reasons why a claim has been rejected by Medicare are now available.

Additional appointment types

• The following new appointment types have been added:
  • Aged Care Visit
  • Home Visit

Bug Fixes

• Some pathology templates would display the fax number in the phone number field. The templates had minor alignment issues. Both issues are fixed with the phone number field only showing phone numbers now.
• In some cases processing a rebate for fully paid private patient claims resulted in a warning that the OPV check was not successful even when it was. This has been fixed.
• A task could not be acknowledged if the message contained one long word without any spaces used. The “Acknowledge” Button was not visible. This has been fixed.
• When a WC claim was issued with one or more $0 items, it was not displayed in patients transaction history. This has been fixed now.
• Radiology referrals weren’t printing the copies to person on the request form. This has been added to the templates.
• A drawing tool misalignment issue on some screen resolutions has been fixed.
• The issue of not being able to attach results to certain templates has been fixed.

Enhancements

Electronic Prescribing

• ePrescribing has been enabled for practices in Melbourne Metro in accordance with Government timelines.

Two-factor Authentication

• We are starting to roll out two-factor Authentication for MedicalDirector Helix for increased security. Users will start to see this come into effect over the coming weeks.  Once you’ve downloaded an Authenticator app and completed the initial setup, when you login to Helix, you will be asked to verify your identity using a one-time code.

MedicalDirector Service Status

• We’ve introduced MedicalDirector Status Page to keep you up to date on Helix system information, general maintenance, and service outages.  If you’re experiencing an issue in Helix, you can subscribe to receive alerts via email and SMS, or you can visit the Status Page for updates.

Refunds

• When processing a refund in Helix, we have simplified the workflow so that ‘manual refund’ has already been selected, saving time for your Admin staff.

Patient Extract

• All scanned documents from DMS that have been assigned to patient, are now shown in the patient extract file under ‘Documents In’ section.

Phone Appointments

• Patients’ phone numbers can now be captured in the appointment booking flow to make the Teleconsult workflow simpler. Also, the patient record can now be automatically updated with new phone numbers.

Care Plans

• When creating a care plan, you can now complete the plan without capturing a patient’s height, weight or blood pressure, if deemed not clinically relevant to the plan or if you are unable to take measurements at the time, e.g. during a remote consultation.

Claims

• Claims rejected by Medicare because they are of $0 amount, can now be accepted or resubmitted. This helps when a practitioner visits a patient outside the practice and an item worth $0 is created.

Bug Fixes

• The time displayed on Bulk Bill, Receipts Issued and Patient Details reports are both now the same in preview and printed versions.
• Issue reported by some practices when manually confirming or declining an appointment has been fixed
• Issue reported by some practices when saving letters during consults has been fixed
• A scrollbar has been added to show all items added to a consult on the billing screen. Previously when many items were present, they were not all visible.
• Printing a BulkBill voucher from within the In Exception screen now works.
• New items can no longer be added to a claim that is marked resolved.

Enhancements

Tasks 

• Allow patient related tasks to be optionally visible to all users in the patient timeline.

Radiology and Pathology

• Additional Pathology/Radiology providers are available to select as your preferred provider.
  • Direct Radiology (QLD)
  • Southern IML Pathology (NSW)
• The formatting of the Douglass Hanly Moir template has been improved by realigning some of the free text areas

Bug Fixes   

• Changing from 1/3 to the full view in the appointment book caused an intermittent issue where the previous state of the appointment book was not shown. This is now fixed.
• The tasks area has been refactored to add standard pagination, sorting and an additional column for created date solving the issue of tasks going missing after they had been acknowledged.

Enhancements

Address Book 

New specialist types have been added, the following specialist types are now available for selection.

• Dentist
• Orthodontist
• Retina Specialist
• Counsellor
• General Physician
• ENT Specialists
• Colorectal Surgeon
• Oculoplastic Surgeon
• Clinical Myotherapist

Imaging template

• A generic imaging template to print on non branded stationery has been added to Helix

Bug Fixes   

• An intermittent issue where notes within an appointment were unable to be saved is now fixed.

Enhancements

Integrated LiveChat with Support 

You can now to chat to the customer service team live from inside Helix using our updated LiveChat widget. Starting a chat will automatically create a case with our Customer Service team linked directly to your practice, ensuring you are receiving the most up-to-date information and assistance from the most experienced agent for your enquiry. Agents are available to assist from 8am to 8pm weekdays, and 9am to 5pm Weekends and public Holidays. 

Exception Management 

The Exception Management process has been redesigned to make the experience easier and to ensure completed claims are always transmitted to Medicare.

• The new exception management screen lets the user accept an item without having to edit it if it is ready to submit. 
• The new exception management screen lets the user resubmit items with a clear workflow. When resubmitting an item, the item can be edited or a new one can be added. Resubmitting will move this item to un-batched list from where it can be re-batched and transmitted. 
• A claim can now only be submitted when all required information is completed. 
• The claimed vs paid amount is now accurate. 
• Once all items of a claim have been entered, the exception screen will display all the details of the exception, who submitted it, and when it was accepted or prepared for resubmitting. 

Bug Fixes   

• Patient Notes can now be added to a newly created patient. 
• When a batch has been receipted instead of transmitting to Medicare, the resolved status shows paid as zero dollars. The previous logic was only working when transmitting the claim to Medicare or accepting the invoice item from the exceptions screen.

Enhancements

Editing Patient Notes

• Patient notes can now be edited by the user who created the note regardless of the creation date.
• A user can flag patient notes as Important/Unimportant irrespective of who created the flag and the creation date if it was created by the same user.
• An admin can set any note as Important/Unimportant irrespective of who created the flag and the creation date.

Enhancements

Telehealth Appointments

• Telehealth appointment links can now be sent via SMS and email and the appointment link can also now be resent to the patient from the visit screen if required.
• Patient mobile number and email address can be captured or updated when booking a Telehealth appointment, with the information saved to the patient’s record.
• Telehealth appointments booked via third-party providers will be displayed on the Appointment Card within Helix, so you can send the appointment link out of Helix.

Patient Notes

• A Patient Note can now be flagged/unflagged as important by both clinical and practice management users.

Bug Fixes

The following issues have been fixed:

• It is no longer possible to add/edit/delete items for a visit that has been transmitted in the consult and visit screen. This previously led to items being stuck in draft. Users are informed if a visit needs to be edited when hovering over the add button.

Enhancements

Patient Queue

• Notes entered in the appointment book are now visible in the Patient Queue.

Measurements

• Weight can now be entered with up to three decimal points, this will ensure additional accuracy when recording measurements.

Appointment book

• To support remote working, GPs can now arrive patients to the Queue themselves, whereas previously only users with the role of Receptionist or Practice Manager could perform this action.For those who do not want this feature enabled – we can turn it off upon request (we are working on a solution where this can be managed by the practices themselves)

Bug Fixes

Appointment Book

The following issues have been fixed:

• Patients being arrived multiple times in the Queue
• The HCP being set as first available
• Referral details are no longer lost while billing the pateint in the Queue

Enhancements (COVID-19)

Appointment Book and the Queue

• You can now flag an appointment and/or a queue item with a “Caution” label, intended to warn administration staff and practitioners to check the notes for more information on the patient. The flag can be added or removed whilst in the appointment book and queue in the details screen.

Telehealth and Phone Consults Queue

• To better support the workflow for Telehealth and Phone consults, patients for these appointment types will automatically ‘arrive’ (be added) to the queue 10 minutes before the appointment start time. This work has been done to ensure they appear in the queue even though they have not physically arrived at the practice.

Enhancements (General)

Medicare Batching and Transmission Screen

• A label is now displayed next to the symbol on the filter in the Medicare Batching and Transmission screen.

3 April, 2020

What’s New

Advanced Search

• When looking at any search results, you can create a recall for those patients.

Enhancements

Advanced Search

• You now have a search option to include deceased patients.
• You can now add multiple terms at once in the medical filter section (e.g. multiple conditions, medications, allergies and/or vaccinations).

Work Areas

• There is a change to the error message that appears in the billing screen if a work-area is selected that is not relevant to the Practitioner. Instead of a code, it will now show a work area name.

Bug Fixes

Pathology Results

• The header text in pathology results has been corrected so it doesn’t overlap the result.

SMS

• The SMS Template Creator has been fixed to provide an accurate number of SMS messages that will be sent for a single reminder.

What’s New

Appointments

• A new ‘Phone’ appointment type is now available in the appointment book. This will enable you to identify any phone appointments in the appointment card.
• A ‘Phone’ label has been created to identify Telehealth appointments in the patient queue.

Enhancements

Patient Notes

• Notes can now be seen and added in the patient consult screen by Health Care Professionals (HCP’s). These notes are visible to everyone in Helix.

What’s New

COVID-19 (coronavirus)

Based on advice from our Chief Medical Officer, we have released the following items in Helix to support practices dealing with COVID-19.

• New Pathology Requests
• Additional SNOMED codes to record a visit
• MBS Fees

Enhancements

Radiology and Pathology

• Additional Pathology/Radiology providers are available to select as your preferred provider.
  • Illawarra Radiology Group
  • PRP Diagnostic Imaging
  • Cervical Screening Test types have been introduced to replace the outdated pap-smear test type.

Letter Writer Templates

• A new template GP Eating Disorders Plan (EDP) has been added to the Letter Writer and can be accessed from the search field.

Transaction History Screen

• The default setting for the transaction history screen of each patient filters to the status ‘All’ instead of ‘Unpaid & Unfinalised’.

Outstanding Balance Report

• The Outstanding Balance Report now splits any item billed against the Healthcare Provider (HTP) and items billed to the Centre (CTR). CTR items now appear as additional line items in the third section of the report.

Bug Fixes

SMS Reminders

• For sites with over 200 user accounts, SMS reminders can now be sent.

Enhancements

Patient Timeline

• Pagination has been added to the Patient Timeline, which means you can navigate between pages quickly to find the information you are searching for. Now, when scrolling through the timeline, if you view a document and then return to the timeline the scrollbar position will be saved.

Radiology and Pathology

• Additional Pathology/Radiology providers are available to select as your preferred provider.
  • Engadine Medical Imaging

Templates

• The claim number/ID field has been moved underneath the employer field, ensuring you have an easier time when using the Worker Compensation template.

Bug Fixes

Consults

• We’ve improved the process of inputting consult information. When you navigate away from the consult screen, your notes will be stored, and will be there when you return to that screen. This will help you to resume your consult as normal.

Appointment Book

• We’ve updated the daily appointment count, ensuring you can see how many appointments are on that specific day.

Enhancements

Immunisations

• Admin users are not directly associated with a Centre and therefore cannot resubmit immunisation claims. To prevent this, a new tool tip has been added.

Medicare Claiming

• Colour-coding now indicates whether amounts paid by Medicare reflect what you claimed. Lower amounts are displayed in red. Equal or higher amounts are displayed in green.

Demographics

• The current date can now be used as a patient’s date-of-birth.

Radiology and Pathology

• Additional Pathology/Radiology providers are available to select as your preferred provider:
  • The South Coast Ultra Sound
  • Woonona Medical Imaging

Search

• An HCP can now perform an exclusion query during search queries. For example, you can search for all patients over 65 years who have NOT had a flu vaccination in the last year.
• The ability to delete previously saved reports / search criteria has now been added.

Bug Fixes

Queue

• The notes field doesn’t appear when the text has been removed.

Reporting

• Improved performance for the Transaction Payment Report.

Banking

• The receipts in the banking section now display up to 200 records rather than previous limit of 60 records.

Enhancements

Patient Queue

• Move patients around the Patient Queue using drag-and-drop.

Immunisations

• Additional Quality Control applied to patient and vaccination data transmitted to the Australian Immunisation Register.
• Immunisation records are transmitted to the Australian Immunisation Register 6pm daily

Patient Demographics

• A baby’s age is now displayed in completed weeks up until 4 months.

Template Management

• You can now add patient Clinical Summaries anywhere in a letter to suit your preference.
• You can now drag and drop Clinical Summaries (previously called “Attachments”) in any order and to any location in the letter template, and they will appear in this order in new letters based on this template.
• Read more about Template Management.

Letter Writer

• Based on your feedback, we’ve made an exciting update to the style of the Clinical Summary tables in the Letter Writer.

* The new Letter Writer features are currently only available to select group of customer systems. Please contact us for more information.

Radiology and Pathology

• Additional Pathology/Radiology providers are available to select as your preferred provider.
  • Australian Clinical Labs (General Pathology)
  • MERCY IMAGING REQUEST
  • Express Cardio Services
  • Genesis Care-cardiology templates

NSW WorkCover Templates

• The text limit of free-text areas for the NSW WorkCover Template has been increased from 70 to 300 characters. An Auto font size feature is enabled which shrinks the font size where needed to ensure that (up to) 300 chars fit into the text boxes. We suggest you use the ‘free text’ area at the bottom of this template if you require further space, until a more flexible template becomes available.

Patient Search and Reporting

• Past Conditions / Ceased Medications: Search for patients who have had a previous condition or who have ceased medications.
• Allergies / Vaccinations: Search for patients with specific allergies or who have been immunised with a specific vaccine.
• Save: Save the search criteria / reports you use frequently to reduce time to access this information

The patient search / reporting tool is being rolled out to the practices in a staggered approach and will be available to all practices in the next two weeks. See more about Patient Reports in Helix.

Bug Fixes

MBS/DVA Subcategory Integration

It was discovered that the following groups and subcategories had to be added to the Helix MBS/DVA fee file upload manually by customers. These are now incorporated in the MBS fee file upload.

Group ID /SubGroup ID:

• A30 / 5,6,7
• A36 / 1,2,3,4
• I3 / 18
• I4/2
• M16 / 1,2,3,4,6