A client asked a question of me today, and it helped me discover a little trick I wanted to share with our readers. It concerns invalid email addresses when sending email reminders. (This assumes that you do not have Cornerstone Practice Explorer; if you do there is another guide coming for that instance)

When email reminders are sent there are, almost inevitably, some that will not send correctly. You will receive a message in your Outlook Inbox stating that the message failed to send due to an invalid email address. The question now becomes "How do I discover which client had the bad email?" Sometimes it is pretty straightforward: if the email address is john.smith@gmil.com you can safely assume the client is John Smith, and his email is supposed to end in @gmail, rather @gmil. Other emails are a little more troublesome, and without Practice Explorer, Cornerstone cannot generate a report that contains both a clients name and email address. Additionally, the returned emails in Outlook only contains the pet name, and if that happens to be a rather common name, you could end up searching Cornerstone Patient Lists for quite a while. There is, however, a way to discover this information without frustrating yourself searching through Cornerstone; additionally, you do not need to resend the emails to retrieve this info.

1. If you have not already done so, generate email reminders for the appropriate dates. This can be done by left-clicking "Activities" in the menu bar, left-clicking "Reminder Selection", and then left-clicking "Generate Reminders".

2. In the "Generate Reminders" window, enter in your "Beginning date:" and "Ending date:". In the "Distribution type:" field use the drop-down arrow to select "Email Reminders Only". Left-click the "OK" button when you are finished.

3. The "Generating Reminders" window will appear showing how many email reminders have been generated. Left-click the "OK" button to close this window. The "Reports Preview" window will appear, allowing you to preview the reminders. You can close this by left-clicking the "Cancel" button.

4. Now we will locate the file the reminder information is saved into. First go to the computer desktop, then double left-click "My Computer", then the "C:" drive, followed by the "Cstone" folder. Once you have the "Cstone" folder open, scroll down until you find a file named "namelist.csv". Double-left click this file to open it; it is best viewed using the Excel program from Microsoft Office.

5. The "namelist.csv" file contains the information created by the email reminder generation. If you scroll to the right, you will a list of all the email addresses. You can expand this window by double-clicking the line between the columns titled "AA" and "AB".

6. You can now use the search function in Excel to locate the invalid email addresses and their associateed clients. On the Excel menu bar, left-click "Edit", then left-click "Find..." (you can also open it by holding the "Ctrl" key and the "F" key at the same time.)

7. In the "Find and Replace" window, type in all or part of the invalid email address, then left-click the "Find Next" button. If this does not take you to the email address for which you are searching, left-click the "Find Next" button until the correct email address is found. Left-click the "Close" button to close the "Find and Replace" window. You can now scroll left to find the corresponding client name. Once you have this information you can return to Cornerstone and locate the clients record, allowing you to make contact and update your records to include a valid email address.

Once again, we strongly urge our loyal readers to make sure you are taking the necessary precautions to protect yourselves from the seemingly sudden onslaught of illegitimate 'antivirus' products, also known as 'ransomware'. I encountered another one today called "Antivir 2010". Below are two screen shots. The first is of the fake antivirus, the second is of the legitimate product AVG. You'll notice that the fake antivirus is using the exact same icons as the real AVG antivirus product. A good rule of thumb: If a warning pops-up about an infection, and you are unsure if it's from a legitimate product you installed, do not click anything.

Antivir 2010 (fake antivirus program)

AVG Antivirus (legitimate antivirus software)

Introduction to the Whiteboard

The patient whiteboard is designed to allow staff members to keep track of patients currently in the hospital. It is designed primarily for treatments, but can be used to track surgeries and other reasons for visits. The medical notes (if required) transfer to the patients history, and invoice items transfer to the PVL.

Opening the Whiteboard

There are a couple of ways of accessing the whiteboard in Cornerstone. The first is to left-click “Activities”, then left-click “Electronic Whiteboard”, then left-click “Whiteboard”.

If you are in the patient clipboard you can also right-click the patient name, then left-click “Electronic Whiteboard”, then left-click “Whiteboard”.

Placing Patients on the Whiteboard

There are different ways to add patients to the whiteboard as well. The first is done from the patient clipboard. Right-click the patient’s name, then left-click “Electronic Whiteboard”, then left-click “Patient Orders”. This brings up the Patient Orders screen.

You can also add patients directly from the whiteboard. On the left-side of the whiteboard, right-click in the area underneath “Patients”, then left-click “Orders for New Patient”. This also brings up the “Patient Orders” window.

Patient Orders

 The patient order window is where you enter in the required procedures and treatments for patients. You can set the “Admit” and “Discharge” dates using the drop-down calendars. The “Supervising Dr.” and “Current Care Dr.” fields are required; any staff members’ initials may be entered in. The status window is usually set to “Inpatient”; this will need to be changed later on. The bottom half of the window is similar to the PVL: select what is to be performed, whether each performance of the treatment requires a separate line, what category the procedure is, how often it is to be performed, whether a note is required, and the start date.

Once the information is completed, left-click “OK”. The orders will now appear on the whiteboard. Leaving the mouse over the patients name will bring up a window with all the information.

Performing Treatments and Entering Notes

When a scheduled task is to be performed for a patient, you can access the patient treatment window by double-clicking the light-blue box for the appropriate time.

The Patient Treatment window shows the patient information, as well as what treatments are to be performed at this time (the top line) and all other treatments that are to be performed for that patient, but not specifically at that time (Vital Signs through Communication/Discharge).

Double-clicking the light-blue box for the appropriate time will open a new window. Here you will enter the staff ID of the member performing the treatment, whether to use the scheduled time or the time it was actually performed, whether it was completed or not performed, medical notes pertaining to the treatment, and any additional invoice items (the scheduled treatment will automatically fill in). Make sure the “Save to history” box is checked to save the notes to the patient record. Left-click “OK” when finished.

The treatment window will now show a green box marked “Completed” for the scheduled treatment. Double-clicking this green box allows you to view the information the performing staff member entered.

Removing Patients from the Whiteboard

Patients are removed from the whiteboard when they are invoiced out. To do so, right-click the patient name on the whiteboard and select “Patient Orders”. In the Patient Orders window, use the drop-down box to change their status to “Ready to go home”. Left-click the “OK” button, then right-click the patient name on the whiteboard, then left-click “Patient Visit List” to open the PVL.

 All completed treatments will automatically transfer to the PVL. From here you proceed normally with checking out a patient. Once they are checked out, they will appear as “Discharged” on the whiteboard. You can right-click in the patient area of the whiteboard, then left-click “Hide Discharged Patients” to only show patients currently in the hospital.

Tips and Tricks

It should be good practice to left-click the “Refresh” button in the bottom-left corner of the whiteboard to make sure the whiteboard information is current. The whiteboard refreshes  automatically (this can be set in the Practice Defaults), but refreshing will help prevent duplication of treatments.

The whiteboard uses different colors to indicate patient and treatment status. Patients overdue to go home will be hightlighted yellow instead of white. Recurring scheduled treatments are light-blue, single-scheduled treatments are dark blue, completed treatments are green, and overdue treatments are red.

Notes made when performing treatments will save to the patient record as long as the “Save to history” box is checked. They will appear in the patient clipboard as having been made on the whiteboard. Non-billable items do not transfer to the patient history unless the “Save to history” box is checked.

You can perform multiple treatments at the same time. To select a range of treatments to perform simultaneously, hold the “Shift” key, then left-click the first and last treatment to perform. This will select the first, last, and each treatment in between. To select individual treatments to perform, hold the “Control” key, then left-click each treatment individually. Right-click the highlighted treatments and left-click “Process Selected Treatments”. Each treatment item will open a new treatment notes window.

You can add your own categories, areas, and frequencies to the whiteboard if the built-in ones do not fit your needs. To do this, left-click “Lists”, then “Electronic Whiteboard”, then left-click either “Categories”, “Areas”, or “Frequencies”. A new window will open; left-clicking the “New” button will allow you to create your own options for use on the whiteboard.