2020

Modified on Tue, Nov 29, 2022 at 6:56 AM

December 23

A new, "question/answer," workflow was added to the chat. Now, users will have an option to post their message as a "question." When posted in this manner, a large reply button will be featured within the message and other users can use that to respond directly to the message. These replies will only appear beneath the question and will not appear in the normal stream of messages.
Similar to the client and service searches, there is now a service group-specific search. Several filters are available on this page, and all results will be linked to service groups, not services.
Forms can now be added directly to a client's profile without needing to be associated with a service. This can be helpful for forms that are typically used by associating a single copy for a client and updating that form regularly.
Services have always been "locked" after they've been billed, meaning that users could not make changes unless they had the proper permissions. While they were not previously, an update was made so that the associated forms are now locked as well. (Any changes can be made on copies of the forms so that services can maintain their integrity).
A "select all" option was added to ease the selection of permissions and capabilities when configuring staff roles.
Previously, when switching billing rates, all associated fields would be cleared. Now, the dates will carryover where applicable.
A bug was fixed that was causing filtering issues on the "pending review" and "pending approval" lists.
Reports were updated so that they would not load results immediately. This resulted in the page itself to load much more quickly, and allows users to modify the filters before showing the results.
A setting was added to change the default range for all date range filters.
A bug was discovered, and has been fixed, where services where unable to be deleted from the Reimbursements page.
Several minor updates were made to the service calendar in order to improve the readability.
Clients who are able to schedule appointments are now required to select at least one activity before searching for an available staff member.
Clients who schedule an appointment will now receive a confirmation email. This email will have very little information, but should provide some peace of mind that their appointment has been scheduled.
Added the ability to print service activities when they have associated custom fields.

November 22

A major update has been made to the client and service search pages allowing filters and results to be added directly from the search page itself. These "filter + result" configurations can then be saved as well, so users can maintain and quickly access multiple different search and results combinations.
Clients who have access to the client portal and are allowed to create appointments, can now update and cancel those appointments as configured.
A time zone bug was causing issues on the client portal. This has been fixed.
A multi-select dropdown option was added as a custom field option.
A list of who a staff member is supervised by has been added to their profile.
Minor configuration updates were made to better accommodate very specific use-cases.

November 6

A simple service import was added to the Configuration page. Administrators can now, quickly and easily, import large numbers of clients, staff members, and services.
A universal chat search has been added, which will allow users to search for chat messages with specific content. The search will be conducted throughout all chat groups associated with the user.
An option to enforce unit tracking has been added as an option for each client's tracked units. When enabled, services will not be able to be created that exceed the maximum unit limit. Access to this configuration option requires the "Clients: Configure" permission.
The Scheduler was updated to take existing client appointments into account during the availability check.
Deleted (not archived) client and staff members will now have their email removed from the system so the same user will be eligible to be added at a later time without causing a conflict.
A configuration option was added to allow clients to access specific activities through the client portal. This will give them access to digital forms and custom fields, allowing them to complete any "paperwork" or questionnaires prior to or during appointments.
Custom fields have been added to the service print view.
For services that are part of a service group, a link has been added at the top of the "detail" column (right) to allow users to quickly navigate to the service group.
Some minor layout updates were made in the form library that should simplify navigation and configuration.
Various minor updates were implemented. Most of these were not directly affecting users, but will lead to a more stable and efficient solution.

October 16

An option to export the table of results has been added to all reports. From this point forward, that feature will be a staple of all reports. Please let the support team know if you run into any issues with this new feature.
You can now add external links to the navigation menu for staff members. Links can be added from the Configuration page (from the new tab in the right, details pane).
You can now reply to a specific chat message using the icon in the top, right corner of the message. When you reply to a specific comment, detail will be included in both showing the relevant reply.
EVV timestamps will now be shown in a service, regardless of the billing input types. Previously the end time was hidden if the billing type asked for a "unit" input.
EVV timestamps and GPS information has been added to the Reimbursement page, in the extended details, for each service where it is applicable.
"Cities" was added as a filter to the Client Map report.
Inputs on several forms were tweaked to improve usability.
The navigation menu was updated to work better in certain edge cases, like having zoom enabled in your browser.
Personal reminders can now be edited.
Unit tracking entries can now be removed from the tracking bars and Dashboard notifications on a case by case basis through the "Hide from tracking" option you'll see when editing an individual unit tracking entry.
A billing rate timeline report has been added to report library. This report will show a timeline-style view of which billing rates were used for a client during which time periods.
A setting has been added allowing you to control if the end time should be displayed in the service calendar views.

September 18

An optional approval workflow has been added to the system. Once configured, you can require approval for services completed by certain users. This adds a level of checks and balances that can be very helpful in certain situations. For more information on the configuration and flow, click here.
When configured, users can now utilize the "sync forms" option for any service (they no longer need to be part of a service plan). This can be setup by enabling "Can Synchronize Forms" for a specific activity. The result is that, when users click the sync icon, the form data for all forms in that activity will be synchronized to the data from the last completed service, with that activity, for that client. Both the "sync'd from" and "sync'd to" forms will be maintained separately, and any changes to the latter will not affect the former.
A new setting was added to the Configuration page, allowing administrators to change the unit display in the progress bars. Valid options include the remaining rate by week, the remaining rate by month, and the total number of units remaining.
The client search and export have both been updated to provide names in "last, first" order for easier sorting.
When sorting by client name on the Reimbursements page, a secondary sort was implemented so they will sort by last name and then first name, for a more accurate order where clients share the same last name.
Minor bugs were fixed with the client and staff bulk upload options. The fixes ensure that all relevant properties are imported correctly.
A timestamp was added to the end of the Reimbursement export to ensure a unique filename, which is required for some clearinghouses.
Client profile custom fields that were designed to be dropdowns were previously appearing as textboxes. This has been fixed.
Updates were made to better support organizations with multiple locations. These included updates to how locations are assigned, as well as changes to the client portal regarding how new appointments are made.
A minor bug was fixed where odd email data was appearing in a client's transaction history. This was reflecting actions taken on the backend of the system that are not relevant to the history, so they have been removed.

August 27

We are excited to announce a formal approval workflow has been added to the HealtheFirst toolset. This will improve supervisors' and administrators' abilities to oversee the day to day operations and catch issues before the reach the billing or auditing process. Click here for more information.
The ability to sync form data has now been extended outside of Service Plans. Now, the forms on any activity can be synchronized with the data from the last completed service, for that client, with that activity. (Note: This means that the "carryover from" activities have been removed from Plans). For more information, click here.
A bug was identified and fixed where billing rate inputs were not properly updating when a billing rate was changed.
A minor change was made to chat shares to make shared items more easily identifiable.
After a UI review, the "Deploy Plan" option was moved from the client profile page, to the "New Service" menu, alongside service groups and reminders.
A few tables and csv exports were updated to sort by client names, and/or provide client names in a "last name, first name" format for easier sorting.
Additional messaging was added to form field overflow pages in order to better communicate their importance and make sure the information there is recognized.
The notifications on the Dashboard have been cleaned up, so they show a maximum of 5 detailed incidents. This keeps a cleaner interface, especially for administrators. Additionally, almost all notifications can be clicked on to view additional details (the resulting page will be different depending on the notification).

July 22

Forms can now be shared with anyone, including a client, in chat via the "share" workflow, which is now accessible from the form editing window.
The renaming effort was extended, and "staff" was added as a search keyword in all places where "care manager" or "user" was previously available.
A bug was discovered and fixed related to certain use cases where files wouldn't appear in the chat when they were linked.
An error was occurring, and has now been fixed, where clients were unable to be created with no name. The bug was fixed by adding additional checks and providing better, more direct user feedback.
A fix was put in place to address an issue relating to the reactivation of archived staff members.
Administrators were previously receiving an error message when attempting to update their organization name. This has been fixed.
Tweaks were made to the scheduler results to better take staff availability into account so staff that are unavailable for the entire time window will no longer be displayed.
Another scheduler update was implemented so that, when used by a client, a 15 minute minimum time frame will be used in cases where no activities are selected.

June 15

Video conferencing has been added to the HealtheFirst system. Click here to learn more.
Chat messages can now be "starred." This means that the message will be stored in a separate list that contains all highlighted/starred messages, which may have been marked as important messages or messages that need to be followed up on.
If a user clicks on a link that should bring them to a specific HealtheFirst page, but they are not yet logged in, they will now be brought to that page after logging in. This replaces a workflow that would always direct users to the Dashboard after login, and should improve the workflow for users trying to access a specific chat message or conference.
Chat group sorting was updated to fall more in line with similar applications, by keeping the group with the most recent message at the top of the list, and sorting from there.
A service's scheduled date has been added to the search results for the service search.
A bug with a client's data sorting in the Progress charts has been resolved.

May 28

The ability for clients to schedule their own appointments was added to the client portal. This interface works a lot like the Scheduler on the staff side, but takes a number of settings into account:
- An overall setting to enable this feature in the client portal on the Configuration page.
- Staff availability (set on their profiles).
- A scheduling freeze period where clients that are within X hours of their appointment must call the office to schedule, update, or cancel their appointments.

A bug was discovered on iPads where certain dropdown menus weren't accessible (they would extend off the page and scrolling would be locked). This was resolved.
An update was made that fixed an issue with paging on the service list, where additional pages were not loading correctly.
An explicit delete button was added to chat groups.
During this period, a number of security updates and backend refactoring was completed in order to ensure a secure and speedy experience for users.
An effort was made to rename "patients" to "clients" and "users" to "staff." This change was made to clarify different types of users (especially with the addition of the client portal), and to provide a more universal appeal to the application.

May 8

In order to help with personal time and task management, personal reminders have been added to the system. These reminders will appear on the Dashboard the day they are active in order to help manage your daily tasks. For more information, click here.
There were some form keyword changes that broke some of the auto-complete logic. This has been remedied and all forms should auto-complete correctly.
We have corrected an issue on the Reimbursement page where service costs were rounding up to the nearest dime instead of the nearest penny.
Minor changes were made to the mobile layout to increase clarity and streamline the design.
All configuration pages are now using the current design language.
Attachments have been added back into the patient and user history views.

May 1

Administrators can now specify the name a form should have when it is assigned with a given Activity. This will allow for the standard form names to be overwritten and should help organizations stay more organized.
A bug was addressed that was causing issues entering numbers into custom fields that specifically designed for numbers only.
During the form to pdf process, if the pdf is unable to be generated successfully on the first try, there is an automatic retry loop. A bug was discovered and addressed within that loop.
When attempting to view a patient file, the loading indicator has been adjusted to better communicates to users that a pdf is loading into view.
The file name length for downloaded files in Safari, on iOS has been changed again, so that files do not get automatically renamed by Safari.
The client-side session management logic has been updated to handle the case were the session cookie has been deleted. While we are unaware of why a cookie would be deleted or lost, this use-case is thought to have caused issues for some users, causing them to be randomly logged off without warning.
Patient and user service histories have been re-formatted to better show each service and its details.
Configuration pages for Service Groups and Patient Statuses have been updated to display in our single column view, as opposed to the legacy, two-column view they were previously using. Updates like this will slowly continue over the course of the next month until all pages are using the update layouts.

April 15

The process for "attaching" a service or patient to a chat message has been changed. The lookup inputs below the message window were deemed to be too difficult to use, especially for the service, so they have been removed. They have been replaced with a "Share" button, which has been added to the footer of services and patients. When you click on "Share," you will see a window appear, allowing you to choose the chat group you'd like to share in. We have also added this functionality to files from the patient profile, which will allow you to share a pdf with other users (or patients).
Two new billing rate options have been added, as described below.
- Date + Is Completed: This will allow users to set the date and check a box to mark a service as complete. The reimbursement price will be applied to the completed service (no time or unit totals required).
- DateTime + DateTime with "Is Billed as Visit" enabled: Users will enter start and end times to mark a service as complete. This allows a record of the time it took to complete the service, and the time then be used to calculate payroll if users are paid per hour per service. However, on the reimbursement side of things, a flat rate will be billed to insurance.

More keywords have been added to the form auto-complete setup. Take a look at the new keywords in the Form Library to see if the new keywords can help your organization.
A small update was made to the logic that automatically generates a patient's display name to make it a bit more clear. Please also remember that the display name can be updated for each patient, manually, from their profile.
The file layout on the patient profile has been slightly changed. The action icons have been moved into a dropdown menu. This helped us tidy up the action list for each file, and also allowed each action to be more clear as we were able to add text.
Services displayed on the Reimbursement page were not properly filtering out non-billable services. This has been corrected.
A recently found bug was resolved where certain forms were unable to be edited from the patient profile if the activity for the file had been deleted.

April 10

A feature was added to the user profile that allows admins to reassign all open services to another user. Please make sure the new user has all of the proper permissions to fulfill services for the appropriate patients - no check is currently being done by the system to guarantee this piece.
Email notifications have been added to the Hef Chat. Emails will be sent to users in the following scenarios:
- When a message is sent to someone who is currently offline, as part of a one-on-one group, an email notification will immediately be sent to alert that user to the message.
- When a message is sent as part of a multi-member group, and someone who is currently offline is tagged (using the "@" symbol), an email notification will immediately be sent to alert that user to the message.
- If any new messages remain unread at the end of the day, a digest email will be sent to the user to alert them to these unread messages. If the user has unread messages, but none of them were added "today," they will not receive a notification.
- (Please note that the online/offline logic will be accurate in most cases. This means that users who end their day by simply closing their browser, instead of clicking "Log Out" may still be viewed as online if their 20 minute HealtheFirst session is still active. We will work on addressing this limitation in future releases.)

If a patient's status is changed from an active status to an inactive status, any open cases assigned to them will be closed.
A few updates were made to forms, mostly surrounding checkmarks and how they're represented in the PDF version of a completed form:
- Checkmarks will appear much more boldly than before in an effort to make the selections more legible, especially in the case of forms being faxed multiple times.
- A minor update was made to the Freedom of Choice forms where additional lines were added to selected options that will border the selected organization. This should make selections much more legible and clear on these forms.
- The Medication Management Review form was updated to allow Q2 and Q3 updates to be properly saved.
A performance update was applied to the Recent Services section on the Dashboard, which should allow that section to load more quickly.
The payroll list is now sorted alphabetically.

April 2

Patients and services now have a history tab that will show the changes made over time, along with the corresponding date and the user who made the changes.
Patient "cases" have been added to the patient profile. These will allow a single patient to have multiple open cases, or different cases at different times that may be for different diagnoses. This should help some organizations better organize patients and services.
Bulk imports of patients and users can now be done from the Configuration page. Each option provides a link to download the applicable import template/spreadsheet, along with an option to submit the upload. Any upload errors will be returned in a file that will automatically download with additional information.
Adding the ability to sort search results for both the service and patient searches.
An issue was found where files with long names were downloading oddly in Safari on iOS. This was resolved by truncating long file names during the download process.
The "Recent Actions" section on the dashboard was replaced with a list of the services that the current user has most recently changed. This section is intesive to create, so it will load asynchronously. Please be patient if you would like to see the information. If you are doing anything else, you are free to click through the system without waiting for that section to fully load.
When deploying a plan, the current user will be selected for each step by default.

March 18

A configurable service search was added allowing for services to be searched for based on basic information. The search also allows for any custom fields to be added to the filters and/or the results.
Similar to the above, a configurable patient search was also added. The same level of custom field configurability also holds true for this search.
Activity custom fields can now be tracked in a patient's "Progress" charts.
The Service List and Service Calendar have been merged into the same page, and contain the same filters. This will allow for a cleaner navigation menu as we continue to add features.
The navigation menu styling was also tweaked to, again, maintain a cleaner look as we continue to add features.
A report was added to spotlight unit tracking, including the number of days remaining and the rate of remaining units. Basically, this is a report containing the information that shows up in the progress bar element attached to most patient profiles, and will allow you to spotlight under- and over- serviced patients.
The patient display name template was discontinued and replaced with a free form "display name" field on to the patient profile. This field can be used to configure the display name individually.
A bug was discovered where, during the digital form to pdf conversion, checkboxes were not fully being rendered. This has been fixed for all future conversions.
Previously, when attempting to access a pdf that did not actually exist, or was corrupt, the viewing window would get stuck in a loading loop. We have updated this logic to regenerate the pdf automatically, for viewing. If the recreation fails, an error message will appear. This makes for an improved user experience.
A bug has been addressed related to downloading a zip of all patient files. This feature should now be working as expected.

March 2

A new setting was added to enable/disable overall access to the patient portal. This option will be set to "disabled" by default and will need to be updated if an organization would like to grant HealtheFirst access to patients or caregivers.
Organizations with the patient portal enabled will be able to allow external patients or clients to sign up with their organization. The sign up URL can be found on the group profile (click on the group name in the navigation bar). Prospective patients or clients who go to that URL will be able to create a profile in HealtheFirst.
Custom fields can now be added directly to activities in order to create a pseudo-form directly within the HealtheFirst UI.

A bug regarding updates to migrated caregivers without an email address was fixed.
Custom fields for patients were not being saved when they were intially created. This has been resolved.
The formatting of the chat was updated, and it was also added to the patient portal, which will facilitate patient/caregiver communication to an organization.
"Permanent" patient fields can now be hidden, based on the configuration set on the custom fields page.

February 10

For users that are configured to be paid an hourly rate, a Timesheet page has been added. This will allow for basic hour entry and timesheet editing. These entries will be included in the payroll calculations.
Users can now set their regular availability from their profiles. This information is currently used in the Scheduler search.
A major update has been made to the digital form logic, to address the use-case where more text than can be displayed is added to a large textbox. Now, when being converted to a PDF, any text that is not visible will be appended to the end of the form. The original input will be finished with a "continued on..." message, similar to a newspaper article that continues on a later page.
While viewing a service, users can now click on the patient's name to open the patient's profile in a new browser tab.
A "restore" button has been added to views of deleted services, allowing users to un-delete the service.
The activity duration comparison that was part of the Dashboard has been removed and replaced with the "Activity Duration" report. No content was changed, the layout and location has simply been changed.
Patient folders can now be renamed. This was a missing feature that has been added to aid in file management.
Renaming a patient file will no longer change the modified date.
Performance updates have been made to several reports that were taking a long time to load.

January 24

The patient portal now allows patients to update their own personal data (non-medical information).
A new patient import process has been created, allowing for a spreadsheet to be uploaded directly into the system.
A link was added to the patient name in the header of the service, allowing users to view a patient profile in another tab.
Various reports have been updated with new descriptions, new filters, and performance updates.
A bug was fixed where service groups could not be created if you were already viewing a service.
It used to be possible to add duplicate approved units for a patient if the save button was double-clicked. This loophole has been closed.
The settings page has been re-organized to better handle a larger list of future settings.

January 14

Administrators will now see a "Reports" button in their navigation bar. This will bring them to the beta version of our reporting engine. We are still working on tweaking the layout and design of our first three reports. Once that is complete, we will work on building out our library of reports to help provide the insight and analytics needed to run a successful business.
The backend technology was upgraded to the latest version.
Minor bugs relating to patient and caregiver creation were fixed.
Several new forms were added to the system.
An issue was identified where digital forms were "randomly" not converting all pages into the pdf successfully. This has been addressed and all pdfs created should contain all pages, correctly, from this time forward.