NS - Knowledgebase

ChartPro is set up once and then largely left alone. The work is deciding what your chart notes should contain and in what order, which is done from ChartPro Administration.

How a note is put together

Three things stack up:

• A section is one of the five parts of a note: Subjective, Objective, Assessment, Plan and TxPlan. These are fixed.
• A segment is a block within a section - History of Present Illness, Past Medical History, Review of Systems. This is where practices differ, and it is what you configure.
• A form is the structured questionnaire a segment can carry, where free text is not enough.

The Sections panel shows the five tabs with their segments beneath. Each segment has a short code and a number setting its position, and an Edit to open it. Add a Segment to this section adds a new one.

Setting up a segment

Edit Segment Details holds the name and description. Two settings matter more than they look:

• Include a Form attaches a structured form to the segment. A form that is not attached to any segment never appears anywhere. The warning box at the top of ChartPro Administration lists every form currently in that position - worth reading, because a form built and never attached looks from the outside exactly like a feature that does not work.
• Intake Filtering shows a segment only for the patients it applies to, by Gender and Life Stage. Used well this keeps notes short; used carelessly it hides a segment from people who needed it, so set it only where the segment is genuinely irrelevant to everyone else.

Add to Templates puts the segment into your visit templates.

The other admin areas

• Visit Templates - which segments appear for which kind of visit. A new patient intake and a ten-minute follow-up should not present the same note, and this is where that is decided. It is the setting that saves the most time day to day.
• Systems / Symptoms - the vocabulary behind the Review of Systems.
• Conditions - the condition list used in assessments.
• ChartPro Logs - a record of chart activity, for when you need to establish who changed what and when.

Getting started

Do not redesign everything before seeing patients. The supplied sections and segments are a working note for most practices.

1. Chart a handful of real visits with what you are given.
2. Note what you keep skipping and what you keep typing by hand.
3. Remove the first, add the second.
4. Set up Visit Templates once the note settles.

A note designed in the abstract is almost always longer than the one you end up wanting.

Practices giving IV therapy

The IV form is attached in exactly this way, and it is a common reason the IV panel appears to be missing. Enabling IV therapy in ProductPro settings is only the first step - the form still has to be attached to a segment here. See Setting Up IV Therapy Products.

ChartPro AI listens to a consultation and drafts the chart note from it. The provider then reads the draft and decides whether it goes into the record.

There is nothing to install and no switch to turn on - it is available to every ChartPro practice, and it is marked BETA on screen. What there is to do is decide how your practice will use it, before a provider uses it in front of a patient.

Decide about consent first

This records a conversation with a patient. What you must tell them, and whether you need their agreement, depends on where you practise and is not something this article can answer for you. Settle it with whoever advises you on such matters, write down what your providers should say, and do that before the first recording - not after a patient asks what the phone on the desk is doing.

The draft is a draft

The note is generated from a transcript of a spoken conversation. It can mishear, and it can be confidently wrong about a number or a name. The provider signing the note owns everything in it, exactly as if they had typed it.

Make that explicit when you introduce it. The failure worth guarding against is not a bad draft - it is a good-looking draft accepted without being read.

Start with a few willing providers

It suits some consultations far better than others. A structured follow-up transcribes well; a long, discursive intake with three people in the room is harder. Let a couple of providers try it on their own patients for a fortnight and report back before you roll it out.

Watch the usage counter

The Auto Chart button shows each provider's use for the current calendar month against 40 - as a badge on the button and a bar on the recorder. It turns amber as it approaches and changes again past it.

Going over does not stop anything. The counter is an indicator, not a gate: dictation keeps working. It is there so a provider can see their own pace, and so you can see who has actually adopted it.

Review what it is writing

Review past ChartPro AI encounters opens ChartPro AI - Encounter Review, which lists every encounter with its Date, Encounter # and Note Quality, and shows both the Transcript and the ChartPro AI Note side by side.

Look through it a few times in the first month. Reading a transcript against the note it produced is the fastest way to calibrate how much your providers should trust it, and it is the only place you can see that.

Ask your providers to rate notes

Every note can be rated, and almost none are - across all practices using it, a handful of ratings against hundreds of encounters. A rating on a note that came out wrong is worth far more than one on a note that came out fine, so ask specifically for those.

A protocol is a reusable formulation - a diluent, a set of components and their doses - that can be applied to a bag in one click. Protocols are built once and then used every day, so they carry a deliberate safeguard: a protocol cannot be made active until a prescriber signs it.

Open the protocol library:

• In OfficePro, open ChartPro admin.
• Click IV Protocols.

Import a protocol: use Import IV Protocols to copy a published formulation into the practice. Importing also creates any component products and service codes the practice does not already have, and never overwrites something you have already set up. An imported protocol arrives inactive and is not chartable yet.

Map every component to a product: open the protocol and check each row has a product selected. A row left unmapped is shown highlighted and marked bills nothing, moves no stock - it will still appear in the note as documentation, but it produces no charge and no inventory movement.

Sign the formulation: at the top of the protocol is a Prescriber sign-off panel. A provider reads the statement, ticks the box and clicks Sign this formulation. Until that happens, the Active field offers only No - not chartable and shows needs sign-off.

• Only a user account linked to an active provider record can sign. Other staff can build and edit a protocol, but the panel tells them they cannot sign it.
• The signature records the provider's name, credential, licence and NPI as they were on the day of signing, along with the exact wording agreed to.

What withdraws a signature: the signature covers the formulation - the components, their doses and the diluent. Changing any of those withdraws it, and the protocol is deactivated on save with a message saying why. It has to be reviewed and signed again.

Renaming a protocol, editing its description, reordering the rows or changing its notes does not void the signature. This is intentional: the sign-off is about what goes into the patient, not about the paperwork around it.

Where library protocols come from: protocols supplied with the software are proposals, not recommendations. Only formulations with a named clinical author can be published to practices, and adopting one is a clinical decision made by the prescriber who signs it. Review the components and doses against your own standards before signing - do not assume a supplied number is correct for your patients.

Building one from scratch: click + Add component to add rows, set the diluent and its volume, and watch the Preview panel update the osmolarity and total volume as you type. A protocol you author yourself follows exactly the same sign-off rule.

Before anyone can chart an IV treatment, the practice has to switch the module on and describe every substance that can go into a bag. This is a one-time setup, done by an administrator.

Turn on the IV module:

• Open ProductPro settings.
• Tick Enable IV therapy charting for this practice.
• This adds the IV Protocols button to ChartPro admin and lets the IV Therapy panel appear on an encounter. Leave it off for practices that do not give IVs; nothing else in OfficePro changes.

Mark a product as an IV component: every diluent, additive and flush is an ordinary ProductPro product with extra IV details. Open the product, then tick Use in IV admixtures to reveal the IV fields.

• Role - Diluent (the carrier bag), Additive (goes into the bag), or Flush.
• Strength and Container volume - the strength of one vial, amp or bag and how many mL it holds. Together these convert a dose into a volume, work out how many whole containers must be opened, and record the wastage.
• Osmolarity per mL - for additives and concentrates.
• Osmolarity of the bag - for ready-to-hang diluents, as supplied. Normal saline is 308 mOsm/L, D5W is 252, lactated Ringer's is 273.
• Billing service and One billing unit = - the service code the component charges as, and how much of it makes one billable unit. See the note on billing below.
• Default dose, Max dose per bag, Max push rate, pH range and Compatibility notes - optional. The dose and rate ceilings drive warnings in the builder; the notes are shown to whoever is compounding.

Why osmolarity data matters more than it looks: osmolarity is the number that decides whether a bag can safely go through a peripheral line. The builder adds up what you have told it and bands the result:

• Under 500 mOsm/L - within the range routinely given peripherally.
• 500 to 900 mOsm/L - peripheral with caution: large vein, slower rate.
• Above 900 mOsm/L - central access indicated.

A component with no osmolarity figure still charts normally, but it contributes nothing to that total. The bag is then marked osmolarity incomplete and the number shown is a lower bound, not the real value. A blank field is treated as unknown rather than as zero, deliberately - but it does mean an incompletely configured catalogue produces a safety figure that reads lower than the truth. Fill these in before the first patient.

Billing: IV components reach the encounter as services, not products. A service line can carry a HCPCS or J-code and reach an insurance claim; a product line cannot. Set Billing service on every component the practice charges for, and One billing unit = so a dose converts to the right number of units. Cash-only practices can still price components this way. Components with no billing service are documented in the note and moved in inventory, but never billed.

Check your work: from ChartPro admin open IV Protocols, then Product setup. That worksheet lists every IV component with its osmolarity, container volume and billing code, and highlights what is still missing.

Acupuncture is an optional ChartPro module. Switching it on takes three steps: enable it for the practice, import the point catalog, and attach the form to a note segment.

Enable the module

1. Open ProductPro and go to Settings.
2. Tick the Acupuncture checkbox and save.

The Acupuncture button appears on the ChartPro admin page once the setting is on. Until then the module is invisible, even though every practice has the tables.

Import the point catalog

1. In OfficePro, open the Tools menu and choose ChartPro.
2. Click Acupuncture, then Import catalog.
3. Click Import the standard catalog.

The import brings in the channels, the classical points and the safety cautions, and reports what it did in a single line, for example “409 points imported, 409 with identification, 177 with safety data”.

The import never overwrites a point your practice has edited. Run it again after an update and your own changes are left alone, while anything new is added.

What gets imported, and what does not

Check the billing codes

Acupuncture bills on 97810, 97811, 97813 and 97814, and dry needling on 20560 and 20561. Most practices already carry the first four from the standard service catalog, and the module reuses whatever is already there rather than creating duplicates — your prices, modifiers and titles are kept exactly as you have them.

Open Service Codes and confirm the prices are what you intend to charge before anybody posts a treatment.

Attach the form to a note segment

1. In ChartPro admin, open Segments and edit the segment you want the panel to appear on.
2. Under Include a Form, choose Acupuncture from the Plan group and save.

Open an encounter on that segment and the acupuncture panel appears in the sidebar.

A protocol is a saved point prescription with its billing lines attached. Applying one is usually most of the charting for a visit.

Build a protocol

1. In ChartPro admin, click Acupuncture, then Protocols.
2. Click New protocol and give it a name — practices usually name them after the pattern they treat, such as Liver Qi Stagnation.
3. Add points, and set the side and technique you normally use for each.
4. Add the billing lines the treatment should suggest.
5. Tick Active when it is ready to use.

A protocol is a copy, not a link. Applying it takes a snapshot of the points and prices as they are at that moment, so editing the protocol later never changes a treatment that has already been charted.

Traditions

Each protocol carries a Tradition — TCM, Japanese meridian therapy, Five Element, Tung’s points, Balance method, auricular, or Western and dry needling. It is a label, not a restriction: it tells your practitioners which school a prescription comes from so they are not offered point combinations that do not match how they were trained.

The tradition on the protocol is copied onto the treatment when it is applied, and appears in the note.

Both an e-stim and a non-e-stim billing line

You can safely put both a 97810 line and a 97813 line on the same protocol. You do not have to know in advance whether electrical stimulation will be used: only one of them can ever earn a unit, and the other is switched off automatically with a note saying why. Neither ends up on a claim by accident.

A point that has been retired

If a point is deactivated in the catalog after a protocol was built, applying that protocol adds everything else and tells you which point was skipped, by name. Either reinstate the point in Point catalog or edit the protocol.

Applying the same protocol twice

Nothing is duplicated. Points already on the treatment at the same side are reported as already charted rather than added again, and the billing lines are not repeated.

Access the ChartPro Admin Page:

• Navigate to the Tools menu in OfficePro.
• Select ChartPro from the dropdown options to open the ChartPro admin page.

View Existing Segments:

• On the ChartPro admin page, you will see tabs for each section of the chart note (e.g., Subjective, Objective, Assessment, Plan).
• Under each section tab, a list of segments will be displayed, with their sort order value shown in parentheses next to the Edit button.

Add a New Segment:

• Scroll to the bottom of the accordion menu within the section where you want to add a new segment.
• Click on “Add Segment to this Section”.

Configure the New Segment: When adding a segment, you will need to fill in the following fields:

• Section: Choose the section under which this segment will reside (e.g., Subjective).
• Segment Abbreviation: Provide a short name for this segment (e.g., HPI for History of Present Illness).
• Segment Title: Enter the full title for the segment (e.g., History of Present Illness).
• Segment Description: Use this field to describe the purpose or use of the segment for the provider's reference.
• Segment Hints: Include any helpful hints or tips for the provider to assist with charting within this segment.
• Provider Specific: Select whether this segment will be assigned to a specific provider or if it will be available to all providers in your practice.

Save Changes:

• After filling out the necessary fields, ensure you save your changes to add the segment to the specified section.

Adjusting Segment Order

• If you need to change the order of segments within a section, you can do so by editing the sort order value next to each segment. This allows you to customize the order in which segments appear in the ChartPro interface.

Conclusion

This process allows you to customize the charting experience in OfficePro by managing segments within the ChartPro admin page. Tailoring the segments to fit your practice's specific needs can enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of your documentation.