What’s new in the CHR
Improvements
Improvements to demographics snapshot
The patient’s email address is now included in the demographics snapshot.
If the patient’s Gender Identity is Prefer to describe, the description now shows in the demographics snapshot.
When hovering your cursor over the coloured bar to the left of a patient’s appointment, the demographics snapshot now remains onscreen for a few milliseconds so you can navigate to it and copy information.
Adding social history and obstetrical care data variables in encounter and letter templates
You can now include specific social history and obstetrical care data in encounter and letter templates. For example, you can insert a patient’s smoking status and number of cigarettes per day, or a baby’s current estimated date of birth and gestational age.
When creating the template, click Insert Variable > Add Health Profile Variable. Choose Social history record or Obstetrical care record and then the specific variable and data point.
For more information, refer to Adding data variables to letter, message and encounter templates.
Navigating and sorting a patient’s prescriptions list
📌Note: TELUS Health must manually enable this feature following the release. It could take up to 24 hours before you see the functionality.
When opening a patient’s prescriptions list from Start/Open > Prescriptions, we now display 25 prescriptions on a page and you can navigate to previous prescriptions using the page numbers at the bottom. This makes the prescriptions list easier to navigate and more responsive.
You can also sort the prescriptions by clicking the arrow at the end of the column you want to sort by.
Role-based access control: Additional permissions for Medical History
To provide more flexibility and make it easier to create roles with different levels of access, the Medical History permissions now include List and Update.
Previously, the List permission was granted by the Read permission, and the Update permission was granted by the Create permission. So that no functionality is lost, all users with the Read permission now automatically have the List permission, and users with Create permission automatically have the Update permission.
For more information, refer to Role permission options (role-based access control).
Introducing CHR Connect Pro
The pro level subscription is now available for CHR Connect. With CHR Connect Pro, you have access to additional features such as patient-initiated messages, automatic message replies, push notifications and in-app clinic branding. Refer to TELUS Collaborative Health Record Connect Settings for information on these features.
Additionally, you can send in-app broadcast messages to your patients. If the patients have consented to receive marketing broadcasts from your clinic, they see the message at the top in a Broadcasts section of the Home page when they log into CHR Connect. For example, you can notify patients of your holiday hours. The message must be 150 characters or less.
For more information, refer to Sending CHR Connect campaigns to patients.
📌Note: There is a $35 monthly fee per provider for CHR Connect Pro. Contact chrconnectsupport@telus.com to upgrade or for more information.
CHR Connect: Collecting payments using a patient’s saved credit card
If your clinic is using CHR Connect and your CHR is configured with a Stripe integration, a patient can save their Payment method in the CHR Connect app, and you can use that saved credit card when recording a payment in the CHR.
📌 Note: The patient must be using version 24.21 or later of the CHR Connect app to save their payment method.
To enable this feature, you must create terms and conditions that will appear in the CHR Connect app that the patient has to accept in order to save their credit card information. From Settings > CHR Connect App > Billing, enter the terms and conditions in the Save credit card on file section. For more information, refer to TELUS Collaborative Health Record Connect Settings.
Once a patient has saved their credit card information, when you add a payment for a private or eClaims bill, select Patient payment method on file (Stripe) as the payment Method. For more information, refer to Collecting payments from patient charts using Stripe.
📌Note: If you do not have an existing Stripe integration and want to sign up, contact chrconnectsupport@telus.com.
CHR Connect: Improvement to CHR Connect status in the activity log
If a patient connects their CHR account to a clinic and then disconnects it, in the activity log for that patient's chart (Dashboard view > Recent Activity widget), you can now see if and when they reconnect their account. The log details show the patient's name and the date and time they reconnected.
For more information, refer to Viewing activity and access logs for a chart.
Using a point of sale terminal to collect payments
If your CHR is configured with a Stripe integration, you can collect payments from patients in the office with a point of sale (POS) terminal.
You must first log into your Stripe dashboard to purchase a terminal and then configure your location. For more information, refer to the Stripe help to Manage locations and Register readers or contact Stripe.
⚠️Important: Only the BBPOS WisePOS E is supported for use in the CHR.
After creating the bill, when you add a payment select Terminal Payment (Stripe) as the payment Method. Then select your location in Point of Sale and then select the Card Reader.
Once you click Submit, the Stripe terminal will prompt for payment.
For more information, refer to Collecting payments from patient charts using Stripe.
📌Note: If you do not have an existing Stripe integration and want to sign up, contact chrconnectsupport@telus.com.
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 you edit a patient’s Qnaire response, the responses are now displayed in the language they were completed in.
When sharing a lab report (for example, when faxing it), the font is darker and larger, making it easier to read. Also, in Ontario, HRM reports are now displayed on a white background to improve readability.
When a form has text that overflows a field, when you click Next to scroll to the field, it becomes visible and is not hidden behind the warning banner.
If a patient has a care team member who is no longer a Practitioner type, letters load as expected instead of blank.
When opening all patient charts from the Visits dashboard, the patients’ names are once again shown in the sidebar.
Appointments with pre-visit Qnaires now display the correct inbox as specified in the appointment type, rather than the inbox of the provider the appointment is booked with.
The Private Billing Settings are now greyed out for users who do not have permission to update them (i.e. all users except the TELUS CHR Support account).
For clinics with role-based access control, users who do not have Appointments or Referrals permissions no longer see the related permission denied error when opening a patient’s chart and accessing areas of the chart they do have permission for.
The last line of a multi-line annotation is shown when you view the document after saving the annotations.
If an appointment has a status of Note Signed, Cancelled or Rejected, the coloured bar on the left that triggers the demographics snapshot is grey instead of the original colour of the appointment.
Ontario: If Soft Validation is not selected in Insured Payment Setting, when you attempt to save a bill for a patient without a health number, an error appears and the bill is not saved.