Release Notes: 20th September 2017 (iteration 308)

New features, existing feature enhancements, and fixes are included in the product update released September 20, 2017. The major enhancements in this release include the ability to turn off warnings for double booking, transaction lock improvements, the addition of location icons inside the recare management report, and the ability to recapture an image during the course of an exam.

Calendar

• Double booking warnings are now optional. In the Calendar, under the View menu, you will find a toggle named Warn when double-booking. By default it is set to Off, meaning there will be no warning when you double book. If you want to be warned about double-bookings then flip the toggle to On. If turned On, Ascend automatically warns you when you have attempted to put two patients in the same surgery at the same time.

• Provider searches have been improved to exclude providers that do not have working hours defined in your selected location. That is, when you search for schedule openings or click to select a provider for an appointment, only those providers with hours defined for your location will show in the search or select options.

Ledger

Data integrity is important. For this reason, Dentrix Ascend empowers practice owners to set up Ledger Rules restricting the ability to post, edit, or delete procedures and transactions that are older than a given number of days. You get to pick the time period for your organization.

To improve the enforcement of restrictions, Dentrix Ascend has modified the transaction lock to use the created date for calculation, rather than the date on which the transaction or procedure was recorded. For example, if one of the providers saw a patient over the weekend for emergency treatment and left the paperwork for Monday, the backdated treatment date is the date the transaction lock feature uses (rather than the date it was entered into the system).

Some other things to know about the lock feature:

• Locking applies to payments, procedures, charge adjustments and credit adjustments.
• Locked records can be seen but not edited.
• Locked records have a “lock” icon and display a warning if you attempt to edit them.
• You cannot backdate a procedure into a time period that is locked.
• Locked records can be unlocked with the proper credentials, for example if you need to cancel a transaction.

• Formatting large numbers. To improve the readability of dashboards and reports, Dentrix Ascend is standardizing on the format of using “k” to represent thousands and “m” to represent millions. For example, an amount of $1,234.56 will show as $1.23k. The display does not round the number; it just doesn’t display the remaining digits. Formatted numbers display in black with a black dotted line underneath. Hyperlinked amounts will be in blue.

Clinical

• Notifications In the notification subscription page (Username Notifications), the colours associated with each provider were added to the checklist to make identification easier. And when you receive notifications, long notification lists now have a scroll bar. There is a separate scroll bar for each notification category.

Power Reporting

A couple of date categories have been renamed to provide more clarity and consistency within the Ascend application and Power Reporting. Entry Date is now Transaction Date and Posted Date is now Created Date. Similar date column names in the Day Sheet have also been renamed to provide consistency. Dated As is now Transaction Date and Posted Date is now Created Date.

Recare

Location markers have been added to the Recare Management report. The location name appears when your mouse hovers over the icon. If the recare is scheduled, the appointment location is shown. Unscheduled appointments show the location where the recare was created.  The location for patients with no recare will be the patient’s preferred location. This same location marker also appears in the patient Recare page.

Imaging

• Automated notification. The acquisition agent has been enhanced to inform you when an update is available. You will be presented with a dialog box allowing you to have the acquisition agent automatically download and then launch the installer for the update, or wait until later. You must answer “yes/allow” to run the installer. This feature is now available for Windows users and will be available to Mac users in the next release. In order to get this feature you will first need to manually update the acquisition agent to its latest version one more time. Please contact Support for assistance with your update.

• Recover stranded images. If an image did not upload because of a lost connection or other reason the image can now be recovered into the same exam/series where they were originally acquired.

• Retake an image. You can now retake any image in an exam/series (previously you could only retake the image last acquired). Select the image in the series and click Recapture. This feature also works in Resume Exam.

• Navigation enhancement. You can now use the left and right arrows on your computer keyboard to move to the previous or next image in the mini-view of the series or mount. The arrow keys also work in full screen view to move to next full screen image. “Next” and “previous” refer to the order in which the images were captured.