Configuring Practice Preferences

The first tab that opens will be the Practice Details tab. This is the tab where you will fill out all the important contact information for your practice including the Clinic name, address, phone/fax number, email, ABN number, and HPI-O (for use with My Health Record). These are located on the left-hand side of the window.

• If your server machine is hosted in a different time zone, you will need to specify this in the area on the top right hand side of the window, to ensure you have the correct time displaying throughout Genie:

• The Allow Invoices to be Deleted box on the right can only be ticked by the Administrator of Genie.

  If this box is not ticked, invoices will not be able to be deleted from the account history of a patient, and you will receive a message like this when attempting to do so: 

• Print Medicare Claim forms allows Medicare forms to be printed for your private billing. Once this is ticked, the radio buttons below will determine if a form is printed for all accounts, or only for unpaid accounts. Commonly the Only for unpaid accounts option is selected as the patient doesn’t usually need a claim form if they have fully paid the account.
• The Print Overseas Student Claim Forms preference is mainly used by university medical centres. The fields below this checkbox allow you to determine the Fee Type and Provider Code for the overseas student claims form printouts.
• Also on the right-hand side of this window will be the Make Default Practice box, which allows you to set a practice as your default practice. Please note: only one practice can have this box ticked at a time, so it is recommended you have this ticked for the most commonly used practice in your system.
• The GST Rate box determines the amount of GST charged on each item number.
• The Financial Year starting option allows you to change the start of the financial year. This is usually left as July 1.
• The Inactive checkbox will make this practice preference record inactive, and it will appear as greyed out in the practice list that appears after navigating to File > Practice Preferences.
• Purged from will show the date that was selected when a Cull Old Invoices was performed via File > Maintenance and Reports > Monthly > Cull Old Invoices, meaning invoices created prior to this date were culled.
• Last Purged shows the date the last Cull Old Invoices was performed.

In the Miscellaneous tab, you will find fields and information regarding several areas of Genie, mainly to do with different billing and financial settings that can be used throughout Genie.

• The Coding System options refer to the type of disease and procedure coding used throughout the practice - either ICPC or ICD10. If you do not use this, it is recommended this is set to None.
• Auto-Generate Chart Numbers for New Patients will generate a chart number for new patients. It is important to note that if this setting is ticked and you decide to create a chart number manually for a patient, the auto-generated chart numbers will continue on from this number, which may cause duplicate chart numbers in your system.
• Make the Chart Number the same as the Patient ID will allow Genie to make the auto-generated chart number the same as the patient ID, which can simplify patient searches in the future.
• Auto-Create Folders for New Patients is used if you do not attach images into patient files within Genie, but would prefer to add these images directly into the patient’s Images folder on the server machine.
• Make Surnames Uppercase lets Genie know the first letter of a patient’s surname in the demographics window and the first letter of a doctor’s surname in the Address Book should be capitalised.

The HIC Online section

The HIC Online section is very important when it comes to using Medicare Online to bill patients electronically.

• Firstly, you will need to ensure the HIC Location ID (which is your GENXXXXX number) is entered in this window correctly, as this is what is used by Medicare to determine which Genie practice you are, and where they need to bill you. Underneath this number, there are a series of boxes that need to be ticked, depending on which features you will be using in Medicare Online claiming.
• If you are using Bulk Bill/DVA transmissions and Patient Claiming, it is recommended all these boxes are ticked, including the Run Real-time by Default box, which will allow Patient Claims to be sent by default when an invoice is completed for a patient claim, rather than having these stored to be batch sent later.
• The Auth Proxy User Id & Password options are used if you are required to log into a proxy server prior to accessing the internet. For more information about how to set this up, see the Genie manual.
• Below the HIC Online section, the Default Receipt Type drop down menu determines which payment type is selected by default when you first open the receipting window to receipt a payment.
• It is recommended that you tick the box Auto-Clean Data When Saving. With this ticked, Genie will perform a clean up of the database whenever a record is saved in the system. This will help prevent indexing issues and database corruption in your Genie. This should not change the performance of Genie, however you can elect to untick this box in case this does begin to impact your practice in any way.
• The Import Changes to appts modified offsite checkbox will need to be ticked in the event you would like to make changes to your appointments when offsite, and would like to import these changes back into your live data. Please note: This will mean when these changes are imported back into your system, any appointments that have been deleted when offsite will also be deleted in your live data.
• The Disable PHP calls checkbox will prevent Genie from searching for a patient’s My Health Record when opening the clinical file, and will also prevent any IHI lookups from working successfully through the demographics window. If you do not use My Health Record, it is recommended this box remains ticked.
• On the right-hand side of the Miscellaneous tab, the Give me a warning if account… section is useful for providing an indication of which patients have an outstanding balance on their account that is overdue.

The warning will appear in the form of a $ symbol in front of the patient’s name when an appointment is booked in for that patient.

The Invoicing section

The Invoicing section determines the information that will print on all your invoices.

• The Default Patient Type drop down menu allows you to set a default patient type that will be applied to all new patient records that are created. If you mostly bill patients privately, you would select Private. If you mostly bulk bill, you would select Bulk Bill. If you would like to change this at any time, you can make a selection from the Account Type drop down menu in the patient demographics window.
• Print Remittance Advice will display a remittance advice at the bottom of all your invoices, and typically looks something like this: 

  The six checkboxes that appear directly underneath the Print Remittance Advice checkbox will determine which payment options appear on this remittance advice:

  • The Accept BPAY option will print the BPAY Biller Code for the doctor’s default bank account (which can be selected in File > User Preferences for the doctor in question), and will also print the BPAY CRN specified in the doctor's account holder record (Open > Account Holders).
  • The Accept Direct Deposit box will print the bank account details of the doctor’s default bank account on the remittance advice section of your invoices.
  • For more information about configuring bank accounts to accept direct deposit and BPAY, please refer to the Configuring and Using BPAY article.

  The remaining check boxes will print on the remittance advice as checkboxes the patient will need to fill out themselves.

• The Print Invoice Full Descriptions box will ensure the full description for each item number is displayed when invoices are printed. If this is unticked, only a short description will be supplied instead.
• Print doctor and patient DB4 forms on the same page allows you to print the doctor’s and the patient’s copy of the Medicare DB4 form on the same A4 page, instead of printing this on two separate A4 pages.
• Print Total Balance on Invoices will print the total outstanding account balance for the relevant account holder on the invoice.
• The ‘With Compliments’ text that appears above the remittance advice on invoices will appear if you have a value entered into the Credit Terms box. If you prefer this text not to be present on your invoices, you can enter a 0 in this box to remove it from all your invoices.
• Print Label determines the label you would like to identify the patient as. For example, allied health professionals may wish to use the term ‘Client’ instead of ‘Patient’.
• If you would like to add an invoice memo onto your invoices, you can add, edit, and delete these from the Invoice Memos drop down menu. Please note: the Default memo template will display on all invoices, unless another invoice memo is selected at the time of invoicing. This is often helpful for displaying the bank details of a certain provider or print a message directed to the patient.

If you are using a practice letterhead at your new location, whether it is an existing letterhead or a brand new one, this is the window you will use to set this up.

It is important to determine at this point if you would like to use one letterhead across multiple providers, or if you would like each provider to have their own individual letterheads. The box titled Use Individual Letterheads will allow each provider at your practice to use their own letterhead for invoices, statements, and radiology request forms. If you tick this option, you will additionally need to ensure you have set up a letterhead for each provider, under File > All User Preferences > Correspondence. If you are, however, using one single letterhead across your entire practice, you will need to ensure the Use Individual Letterheads box remains unticked. Whether you are using a practice letterhead or individual letterheads will also determine the letterhead that will be imported from the Your Letterhead expression in any letter templates you create.

The  button will create a very basic default letterhead in this window, which contains the name of the practice, the address of the practice, and practice contact details.

If the letterhead you would like to use has been saved as an image on your computer, you can insert this into your Practice Letterhead tab by clicking the  button, which is shown above. If the letterhead has not yet been added to your Picture Library, you can click the  button, then click the  button to browse to the letterhead image on your computer, and select this image file.

Once you have opened the letterhead image in Genie, give it a title and click  to add this to your Picture Library. Once you have added this image file, ensure it is selected in the list on the left-hand side, and click  again to add this to your Practice Letterhead.

When you are printing statements for unpaid invoices from under File > Maintenance and Reports > Monthly > Unpaid Invoices, you can tick the Use Single Letterhead for Statements box to use the letterhead in this window for all statements.

In order to be able to view images that are saved in your database, you will need ensure the correct folder pathway is listed in this window. The Images folder on the server machine is typically where your images are stored. If you have changed the location of your Images folder (perhaps as the result of a server migration), you will need to ensure this window is updated accordingly.

As such, it is important the folder pathway reads something like this:

• Macintosh HD:Applications:Genie:Images (Mac)
• C:\Genie\Images (Win)

The  button in this window allows you to browse to the correct Images folder location on the server machine.

The  button will enter the default Images folder location in the Genie folder as seen above.

Please note: if you have more than one Practice Preference record , you will need to ensure this folder pathway is the same for all practice records, to avoid the possibility of Genie using the incorrect folder pathway to search for your Images folder. If this folder pathway does not match the folder pathway on the server, you may receive an error message when trying to access images from a client workstation.

There are also instructions provided in this Images & Attachments tab which give further assistance in understanding the folder pathway that is required to be entered.

Use FTP for file transfers between client and server enables the FTP communication between the Genie Clients and the Genie Server application. By default, this is deselected, which prevents practices from becoming dependant on third-party FTP software for file transfers.

The settings at the bottom of the window for When the image resolution has not been specified correctly in a TIFF image determine if Genie will try to fix the image resolution automatically, if you would like Genie to ask before attempting to fix this, or if you would prefer Genie to do nothing to fix the resolution of the image.

In this window, you are able to determine how your pathology downloads are configured for your practice. It is important to know the difference between the options provided here, as if you select the incorrect option, you may encounter issues with your result downloads.

The Allow Pathology Import on Server box should be ticked if your pathology results are set up to be downloaded onto your server machine, and will allow these results to be imported automatically onto each client machine connected to the server.

The box titled Import Pathology Automatically on Client should be selected if your pathology software is installed on a client workstation. This will allow the pathology results to be imported into Genie automatically from the client machine the pathology software is installed on.

Please note: it is only possible to have one of these options selected at a time, and it is recommended you only have your pathology software installed on one machine at your location to avoid confusion and loss of functionality with pathology downloads.

Set Printing by User Name allows you to associate the File > Printing Preferences to username, rather than computer name. This can especially be useful if your computer name changes often, and is most commonly used by practices connecting to Genie using terminal services.

Select CDA Stylesheet allows you to browse your computer for a CDA stylesheet to use in Genie, and Download CDA Stylesheet allows you to download the CDA stylesheet.

Also in the Clinical tab is the My Health Record section, which allows you to active My Health Record for your practice if you have a HPI-O number entered in your Practice Details tab, and gives you the option to select the My Health Record certificate that is registered to your practice.

For further information on setting up My Health Record at your practice, please refer to the Genie Manual section.

The Import RTF letters to 4D Write tickbox allows Genie to import RTF letters sent via third-party correspondence as 4D Write documents, and will be placed into Open > Incoming letters. If these letters appear as blank, you may need to untick this setting, and revert back to importing the letter as an attachment into the patient file directly.

Please Note: If you are using a version of Genie prior to v8.8.2, you will have an additional checkbox titled Export Argus Letters as HL7. Prior to v8.8.2, Argus letters were sent in PIT format. This checkbox can be ticked if Argus have confirmed your practice can send HL7 format letters. In all versions after v8.8.2, Argus letters are sent in HL7, so this checkbox is not visible.

If you are sending and receiving electronic correspondence using either Alltalk/EQuery or DivisionReport, you can enter the Carrier Identifier for these software providers in the relevant fields in the Carrier Identifiers tab.

Also in this tab, the Create a task when importing a letter box will determine if a task is created when importing letters. If Genie can determine the recipient of the letter, the task will be sent to that user. However, if the recipient is not able to be determined, the task will be sent to the administrator of Genie.