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Week of September 13: a session's main service stays its main service

A session that carries a main service plus an add-on now shows and bills under the main service everywhere, and an add-on can no longer be the only service on a session.

New

  • Tell clients when you cancel. The appointment status dropdown has a new Clinician Cancelled choice for when the practice, not the client, cancels. It bills like Cancelled (no fee, never on a claim), records who cancelled, and gets its own slice on the Analytics Appointments card alongside Late canceled. When you save it, a "Send cancellation message?" dialog lists the client and any contacts who receive their reminders, with Email and Text pre-ticked from their own reminder settings, and shows anyone who has no reminders turned on. Choose Send or Don't send. The message says the appointment on that date and time was canceled by the clinician and that no fee will be charged; you can edit the email wording under Settings, Client Notifications. Turn on the new Alerts switch under Settings, Calendar to get the prompt; it is off until you do. Plain Cancelled, Late Cancelled, No Show and a client's own portal cancellation never prompt, so recording a client's phoned-in cancellation stays quiet. Cancelling a group session asks which of the two it is, with Clinician Cancelled selected.

  • A checkbox can have its own text box. In a note template's form section, tick Text response under any option of a Checkboxes or Multiple choice field ("Other", "Assessed:", "Next session scheduled for:"), and add a hint if you like. When you write the note, checking that option opens a text box right under it, and what you type is saved into the note next to the option. Suggest text responses at the bottom of the section ticks every option that looks like a write-in for you to review, and forms you upload as a PDF arrive with them already ticked.

  • Clients sign in with a link, not a password. Every email the client portal sends — invitations, document reminders, new-message notices, bills — now carries a one-time sign-in link, so the button in the email opens the right page already signed in. The portal sign-in page asks for an email address and sends a link (works once, 24 hours). Passwords still work for anyone who prefers them, under "Sign in with a password instead", and Send Password Reset on the client's Portal tab does what it always did. See Getting started with your portal.

  • Mark a conversation as unread. In Messages, the ⋯ at the end of a row now offers Mark as unread for client and team conversations alike. Read something late, mark it unread, and it is waiting with its red dot in the morning, for everyone in that conversation. A practice coordinator asked for this so late-night reads don't get lost.

  • Record more for a note. On an unsigned note that has a transcript, the ⋮ menu now offers Record more.... Pick up where the session left off or dictate what should be added; the new audio is transcribed, added to the end of the note's transcript as a dated block, and the note is regenerated from the full transcript. Up to 15 minutes per addition. A clinician asked for this after a session's recording ended when she opened another part of the chart.

Improved

  • An invoice follows its session's fee. Change a session's fee or service, from the client's Billing tab or from the appointment on the calendar, and the session's invoice updates to match under the same invoice number. If the client already paid and the fee went up, the invoice reopens for the difference; if it went down to what was paid, it closes as paid; anything paid beyond the new amount shows as credit. The billing row's history records each change. Applying a fee change to a recurring series now updates the invoices of future sessions too, instead of skipping them.
  • Choose which email and phone number get each reminder. On a client's Edit page, every email address and phone number now has its own permission (Email OK or Text OK, or Do not use), and the reminder settings let you pick which address and which number receive upcoming-appointment reminders, and which address receives incomplete-document reminders. Marking a number Text OK is the client's consent to be texted at that number. Existing clients keep exactly the settings they had.
  • The Unbilled list shows what the client owes, not the session fee. Under Billing, Unbilled now lists each uninvoiced session at the client's share: the copay on file for an insurance session, the payer's client-responsibility amount once the claim has been paid, and the full fee for self-pay. Sessions the client owes nothing for, such as one insurance paid in full, leave the list. Creating an invoice from a row bills the same amount the row shows.
  • Your referral link is now your practice name. Under Settings, the link you share for two free months reads like practiceharbor.com/r/five-stones-therapy instead of a code. Links you have already shared keep working.
  • Link your own supervisor. A supervised clinician no longer has to wait for the practice owner: under Settings, Profile, Your Access, tick I'm pre-licensed under supervision and pick your supervisor. It lists everyone on the team with the Supervisor role. The "No supervisor linked" reminder on the calendar now takes you straight there.
  • A live session keeps recording while you move around the app. Open the client's files, check the calendar, read an old note: the recording continues, and a red Recording pill in the header (a bar under it on a phone) shows the client, the elapsed time, Pause, and Back to session. Ending the session still happens on the Live Session page, so nothing on that pill can end it by accident. After you end, the same spot says the note is being generated and then links to it. Before this, clicking the left menu mid-session ended the recording without warning, and the only way to add to that note was to start a second one. Note Dictation still asks before you leave its page. (Sept 18: the bar is now a full-width red banner directly under the header, at every screen size, so it cannot be missed.)
  • Owners can edit a team member's details. Under Settings, Team, the ⋮ menu on a member's row now has Edit details: their name and phone and, for clinicians, NPI, taxonomy code and licenses. Before, only the member could change these on their own Profile page, so a missing taxonomy code stayed missing until they got to it, and their claims went out under the default Mental Health Counselor code. The dialog now says so when the taxonomy is blank. See Inviting team members.
  • Edit Role opens full screen. Under Settings, Team, the Edit Role dialog now uses the whole window: roles and the Under supervision setting on the left, directly under the role checkboxes, and a "what can this person do" panel on the right that stays folded until you open it. If you're a practice owner working under supervision, this is where you link your own supervisor: your own row, ⋮, Edit Role.

Fixed

  • Recording consent is asked in every recorder. The consent question that appeared on the Live Session page now also appears when you press Start Notes in a telehealth call and when you record from the mobile app. The first time you record a client you are asked to confirm you have consent, verbally or in writing; tick "Don't ask again for this client" and it will not come back for that client. This is now the only thing the app checks: obtaining and keeping consent is yours, and a signed Consent to Record Audio form stays a document on the chart. Clients you had already recorded may be asked once more. The mobile part arrives with the next app update.
  • A fee or service change can apply to the whole series. Editing the fee, service code or modifiers on one session of a recurring series and choosing "Update this and future appointments" now changes the rest of the series too; before, only the date and time carried over. Sessions that already have an invoice are left unchanged and counted in the confirmation.
  • Tighter access to exported charts and uploaded files. A chart export, and any file newly uploaded by you, a client, or an import, can now be opened only by the people who can open the record it belongs to.
  • The "We didn't hear anything" warning no longer fires on quiet microphones. The live-session recorder judged a recording silent by its loudness alone, so normal speech on a microphone with modest gain could trigger the yellow "not hearing anything yet" notice and the warning at Stop even though the transcript came out complete. It now listens for the pattern of speech instead of a volume level, and the warning names "Upload anyway" as the answer if you were speaking.
  • Payer enrollment no longer rewrites your own NPI. The "Individual NPI" entered while enrolling with a payer was saved onto whoever was signed in. A biller doing the enrollment got a clinician's NPI on their own record, and an owner entering a colleague's NPI had their own replaced. It now only fills in a clinician's empty NPI; otherwise it leaves your profile alone and points you to Settings, Team, Edit details.
  • Re-booking a cancelled appointment clears the cancellation reason. If a client cancelled online and you later restored the same appointment, the "client cancelled" mark stayed on it, so your own later cancellation was reported to you as another client cancellation. Restoring an appointment now clears the reason, and the notice is no longer sent for a reason left over from before.
  • Archived clients no longer get check-in or paperwork reminders. A discharged client who still had a booked session on the calendar could receive "please complete your check-in" or incomplete-document reminders. Those now stop when the client is archived, as appointment reminders already did.
  • The CMS-1500 preview shows the taxonomy code that is actually filed. When the billing provider has no taxonomy code on record, the claim goes out with a default code. Box 33b used to print blank in that case; it now shows the default with a warning so you can set the right code before filing.
  • Claims carry the session's local date. A session held in the late afternoon or evening could go out on the claim dated the following day, because the date was read in universal time instead of your practice's timezone. Claims, the daily invoice run and the statement's uninvoiced-sessions list now all use the practice's local date, matching what the invoice and superbill already showed. If you filed evening sessions before today, check the date of service on those claims.
  • Approval and decline emails reach the client even when the clinician has no email on file. If the "new appointment request" email to the clinician could not be sent, the client's later "confirmed" or "declined" email was skipped too. They are now sent regardless.
  • Withdrawing a request no longer says "declined" either. When a client cancelled their own pending appointment request in the portal, they received the "your request was declined" email about it. They now get no email (they took the action), and the clinician gets a short note that the request was withdrawn.
  • Cancelling an approved request no longer says "declined." When a client requested an appointment online, you approved it, and you later cancelled it from the calendar, the client received the "your request was declined" email. That email now goes out only when a request is declined before it was ever approved.
  • Clicking a client's name no longer reloads the app. Opening a client from the Clients list, or picking one in the header search, used to reload the whole page. That ended a live recording (with a "Leave site?" warning) and dropped any unsaved edits. Both now move within the app like every other link, so a recording keeps going and the recording pill stays put.
  • The main service, not the add-on. When a session has more than one service (say 90837 plus the 90785 interactive complexity add-on), the calendar, the client's superbill, the unbilled list and the claim now use the main service as the session's code every time. Before, whichever service the system happened to read first could become the session's label, so a superbill or the client's appointment list could show the add-on as the session and the claim could list it as line 1.
  • An add-on can't stand alone. Add-on codes (90785, 90833, 90836, 90838, 90840) only pay alongside a main service. Saving an appointment whose only service is an add-on now asks you to add the main service first, and a claim for such a session is stopped before it goes out.
  • Incomplete-document reminders follow your reminder timing. When a client's "Incomplete document reminders" switch is on, the nudge about unfinished paperwork now goes out at the same lead time as your appointment reminders (48 hours before by default, adjustable under Settings, Client Notifications) instead of a fixed day-before and hour-before pair. If the paperwork was sent to a parent or guardian, the reminder goes to them.
  • Measures stay selected when sharing with a minor's guardians. In the share wizard for a minor with more than one parent or guardian, the scored measures you ticked for the first guardian now carry over to the next guardian's step instead of showing up unchecked. Sharing documents with a minor also now starts from an empty list, the same as it does for adult clients, rather than pre-ticking every form in your library.
  • Past-due reminder emails send again, and land in the right place. A fault introduced on September 1 stopped the automatic past-due invoice reminder from going out; it's sending again. Its Pay Now button now opens the client's portal billing page. Before, it pointed at the practice sign-in page, where a client can't sign in.
  • The autopay client list loads again. Under Settings, Payments, Autopay, the list of clients with a card on file had stopped loading since September 1. It loads again, and the same fault has been closed in the invoice-email and monthly-statement steps before it could reach them.
  • The Messages count matches your inbox. The number next to Messages in the left menu now counts only conversations you are part of, or whose client lists you as their clinician, the same conversations the inbox shows. Practice managers and clinicians with a limited client list could see a number over an empty or shorter list.