What’s new in the CHR
Improvements
Auto-filling forms with social history and obstetrical care information
You can now configure your forms to auto-populate Social History and Obstetrical Care information from the Health Profile.
In Settings > Templates > Form, open an existing form and select a text box or checkbox. For the Auto Fill Configuration, select Health Profile. Click the gear icon and select Social history record or Obstetrical care record and then the specific variable for that category.
When you add the form to a patient’s chart, select Health Profile in the Auto Fill Templates window. The form auto-populates with the most recent value for that health profile variable. For example, for past pregnancy information, the pregnancy with the most recent end date is displayed.
📌Note: For Social History variables, if multiple entries exist for the same variable, the information is not auto-populated since the CHR cannot determine the most recent entry. For example, if you’ve recorded recreational drug use for more than one type of drug, the drug use information is not auto-populated.
For more information, refer to Configuring your form and cover page templates to autofill.
Displaying patient names in your preferred format
📌Note: TELUS Health must manually enable this feature following the release. It could take up to 24 hours before you see the functionality.
You can now choose the format of patient names in the patient header and in the list of Opened patient charts. By default, the name now displays in the following format: First name “Preferred name” Last name. To change this, click your avatar > Profile > Preferences and select a different option for Patient name.
📌Note: Preferred name/First name Last name displays the patient’s preferred name and last name. If there is no preferred name, the CHR displays the patient’s first name and last name.
📌Note: This setting does not apply to externally-facing patient names, such as in letters, forms, and on the patient portal.
For more information, refer to Modifying your user preferences.
Viewing important patient demographic information at a glance
📌Note: TELUS Health must manually enable this feature following the release. It could take up to 24 hours before you see the functionality.
You can now hover your cursor over the patient’s name in the header and in the Opened patients list to see additional demographic information. This limits the number of times you need to navigate away from your task to look up patient information such as contact numbers, preferred pharmacy, and status tags and ensures you have critical patient context when and where you need it, to provide better patient care.
In the future, this feature will be expanded to more areas of the product, providing quick access to crucial patient data when you need it, further streamlining your workflow by reducing the need for multiple clicks and page navigations. Next up: the hover is coming to the schedule!
Navigating encounters in the patient summary
We now display up to 15 encounters in the Encounters section of the Summary view, and you can navigate to previous encounters using the page numbers or arrows at the bottom. This makes the list of encounters easier to navigate and more responsive.
If you configured the Encounters section to show All Records, or you specified a Latest Record Length or Only my encounters and the number is larger than 15, only the most recent 15 encounters are shown on the first page.
Creating and viewing bilingual Qnaires
If you have French enabled in your CHR, you can now create Qnaires in both English and French. This provides flexibility in managing Qnaires in bilingual clinics, and patients can complete Qnaires in their preferred language. Existing Qnaires show the same text for both languages until you add a translation. In the Qnaire builder, click EN or FR to add the text for that language.
📌Note: Adding a question, deleting a question, and adding a section break apply to both languages.
Qnaires initially display in your current language when you create or edit a Qnaire, and when you view a list of Qnaires - for example, from the main menu > Qnaires or when attaching a Qnaire to an appointment.
When you send a bilingual Qnaire to a patient and the Qnaire is not linked to an appointment, the Qnaire opens in the same language as the Qnaire notification. If the Qnaire is attached to an appointment (e.g. a pre-visit Qnaire), the Qnaire opens in the patient’s last selected language. In both cases, the patient can change the language before completing the Qnaire. If you complete a Qnaire with a patient during an encounter, the Qnaire opens in the last language you selected in a Qnaire. When you view or generate a PDF of a Qnaire response, it is in the language in which it was completed.
For more information on creating bilingual Qnaires, refer to Creating and modifying Qnaires.
Role-based access: Granular permissions for Social History and Family History
For clinics using role-based access control, you can now set specific user permissions for the Social History and Family History sections of the Health Profile. These permissions affect any areas where you can view social and family history, such as in the patient summary and risk factors. This improves data security and privacy for patients while providing more flexibility to create customized roles and access levels for users.
The new Social History and Family History permissions you can set are All, List, Create, Read, Update and Delete. Previously, access to social and family history was controlled by the Patients permission. So that no functionality is lost, all users with the Patients permission now automatically have the corresponding Social History and Family History permissions.
For more information, refer to Role permission options (role-based access control).
CHR Connect: Updated default referral accepted notification
When a patient receives a notification that their referral to your clinic was accepted, the message now clearly states that the patient needs to log in or sign up for CHR Connect.
CHR Connect: Viewing a patient's CHR Connect status in the activity log
In addition to the icon beside the patient’s name, you can now see when a patient connects or disconnects their CHR Connect account in the activity log for that patient's chart (Dashboard view > Recent Activity widget). The log details show the patient's name and the date and time they connected or disconnected.
For more information, refer to Viewing activity and access logs for a chart.
Ontario: Overriding default billing rules
You can use the new Override Rules checkbox if you create a bill that would fail validation in the CHR, although it is valid according to the Ministry of Health. For example, if you are billing an anaesthetist code that doesn’t require a diagnosis, you can now submit the bill without a diagnosis for that fee code.
The Override Rules checkbox will override the diagnosis required rule, as well as any rules for the specific MDBilling fee code you are billing.
Ontario: Changing your specialty code on a bill
For providers who bill with more than one specialty, you can now select the appropriate specialty code on the bill. The default Specialty in your MDBilling integration is pre-populated when you create a bill, but you can change it.
You can also set favourite specialties. Click the Specialty field on a bill, search for your specialty, and click the star icon to mark it as a favourite. When you change the specialty on future bills, the favourites appear in the list without having to search for them, making changing the specialty quick and easy.
Fixes
Below is a list of bugs we have identified and fixed in this release. For more information, contact our TELUS Health support team.
When recording an injection, the Site Given and Route lists are now sorted alphabetically.
When you add a file to a patient’s chart and click in the File Name field, Chrome’s auto-fill suggestions no longer appear and cover the list of default file names.
You can once again start an encounter from a group visit in the schedule.
When viewing the CHR in French and applying flexible or vacation schedule templates to provider schedules, the labels are now correctly translated when you specify a Custom repeat schedule.
A server error no longer appears when deleting encounters created in error.
You can now see account vacations on the schedule when booking an appointment from a referral.
When you assign a room on a Pathway card in the Pre Visit phase, the room number now also appears on the booked appointment.
An empty validation error no longer appears when setting Require file ownership by default in the Patient File settings.
When you create a new patient chart while creating a referral from an inbox item, the file from the inbox is now included in the Patient Files section of the patient’s chart.
If an admin note on a patient chart is marked as private, when any user other than the author of the note prints the chart, the admin note is not included.
CHR Connect: If you merge two patient charts in the CHR, the link to the patient on CHR Connect is maintained and patients can register themselves and book appointments.
For clinics using role-based access control, users who have the Medications: Read permission can view medications attached to a referral.
The description for diagnosis 729 in the AB, BC, and ON Diagnostic List is now “Soft tissue disorder”.
Ontario: You can now view HRM reports received in HTML format within the CHR; you no longer have to download a zip file.
PEI: Multiple labs with the same accession number received at the same time in the CHR show only once in the Inbox.