Live Update

Live Update Technology has been popularized and associated with award winning products by such as Symantec Corporation, makers of Norton Utilities, Norton AntiVirus and other amazing programs. Visual Practice incorporates Live Update Technology to enable our customers to update their software and their OHIP Fee Schedules as well - all safely, quickly and easily through the internet.

Live Update enables you to connect to our secure company server to check for new program and OHIP fee schedule updates for Visual Practice, and automatically downloads them to update your local copy of Visual Practice.

Live Update is available under the Help menu option as of Visual Practice Release 2001. You must have Administrative rights and a Software Support Services Agreement to perform Live Updates. It is important to note that at no time during the Live Update process is any kind of customer information, patient or billing data transmitted over the internet, or to ACSL. Visual Practice downloads a small configuration file that is used to compare the version that is on the customers computer with the version on the internet. This comparison is made by the customer computer, and if required, the customer computer then downloads and incorporates the new information. Your privacy is always assured during this simple process.

Program Update Guidelines:

1. To perform Live Updates, you must have first established an internet connection. Visual Practice cannot perform Live Updates without having an internet connection.

2. In an Network, with Visual Practice installed and running on multiple machines, ensure all users are logged off Visual Practice before performing any update.

3. In a Network, if you update one workstation, you must update ALL your workstations, or your risk program errors and/or data loss by running different versions of Visual Practice on different computers at the same time.

4. Do not interrupt the Update process or you risk corrupting your program and/or data.

Visual Practice is constantly being updated. Our helpdesk compiles problem lists from user, as well as new ideas and suggestions, and a lot of that feedback goes into our updates to make Visual Practice a better program. Updates are also available on CD once per year, or upon special request.

To update your program files, select the Live Update option from the Help menu, as shown below:

Visual Practice will then use your internet connection to check our secure server for updates. If the version of your program is older than the version we have posted on our secure server, Visual Practice will inform you that an update is available, as shown below:

If you have the time to perform an update, you can click on the "Download Now" button. Visual Practice updates are between 7mb and 9mb, and download in about 25 minutes if you have a dialup connection (56k) and about 35 seconds if you have a cablemodem or other high speed connection. Once you press the Download Now button, the progress bar will begin to increment, showing you the download progress.

Once the download process is complete, you can run the update by pressing the "Run Update Now" button, as shown below:

The Live Update process has downloaded a file called "update.exe" to the Visual Practice folder (c:\program files\vp). This executable file is the update file and can be run separately from the Live Update process should you decide to run the update later. Also, if you have a network, you can copy this update.exe file to your other computers running Visual Practice and update them individually. It is important in a network that if you run the update on one computer, you must run the update on all the computers, or you risk program errors and possible data corruption. Running Visual Practice on a network requires all computers to be running the same version of Visual Practice.

Technical staff at ACSL review the OHIP Bulletins that pertain to OHIP Code changes and modify the OHIP Code Library where necessary. By using OHIP Code Live Update, you can download and incorporate those changes into your program without having to edit your own library. And, should you wish to control changes on one or two special codes and not update those codes from Live Update, you can turn off Live Update for those codes only, but still update all your remaining codes!

This service is very important considering the frequency and number of changes OHIP is currently making to the OHIP fee schedule. Staying up to date is becoming harder and harder, and OHIP has not released a fee change diskette since April 1, 2001 - as a result, customers without Live Update must make all these changes themselves, manually. The OHIP Codes Live Update feature is designed to make updating your codes easy and hassle free.

To update your OHIP Code files, select the Live Update option from the Help menu, as shown below:

Visual Practice will then use your internet connection to check our secure server for OHIP Code updates. If the version of your OHIP Code Library is older than the version we have posted on our secure server, Visual Practice will inform you that an update is available, as shown below:

If you have the time to perform an update, you can click on the "Download Now" button. Visual Practice OHIP Code updates are between 2mb and 4mb, and download in about 12 minutes if you have a dialup connection (56k) and about 15 seconds if you have a cablemodem or other high speed connection. Once you press the Download Now button, the progress bar will begin to increment, showing you the download progress.

Once the download process is complete, you can run the update by pressing the "Run Update Now" button, as shown below:

Press the "Run Update Now" button to begin updating your OHIP Code Library. This process checks every single OHIP Code in your system (18000+ codes) so it can take a while to run (10 to 15 minutes). Allow it to complete. DO NOT SHUT OFF THE COMPUTER DURING THIS UPDATE OR YOUR DATABASE WILL BE CORRUPTED.

Question: If I run the OHIP Codes Live Update, do I need to run the Fee Schedule Disk from OHIP?
Answer: No, the OHIP Codes Live Update will be updated with the modified fees. However, you should always check your most common OHIP billing codes after an update to ensure the updated values match your fee schedule documentation (Schedule of Benefits publications or DataLink Bulletins).

Question: My macros have the old fee values coming up, what's up with that?
Answer: Billing Macros allow you to enter your own codes and fees as part of the macro. You must update your macros and modify the PPU values and ensure they are set properly.

Follow-up Question: Oh dear, I billed under the old code values... Am I going to get under/overpaid?
Answer: No, OHIP generally has a grace period where they will calculate your fee values and provide you with payment based on the new fee schedule. This grace period is anywhere from 3 months to a year, depending on how OHIP decides to handle it. If you spot a code discrepancy OR have not updated your fees, do so right away, so that your next submission contains the correct fee values. OHIP won't penalize you for it unless it is outside the announced grace period.

Remember, you and only you, are responsible for ensuring your fees are up to date. The Live Update system is designed to assist in this effort, but ultimately, it is still the customer's responsibility to read the current OHIP Bulletins and documentation and ensure that they are billing in accordance with the latest fee schedule and coded medical rules.