Several new feature enhancements and bug fixes are included in the product update released in late-August 2023. The major enhancements in this release include the following:

• Evaluations

  • Ability to access Ascend Academic evaluations outside the clinic

  • Ability to print evaluation form templates

• Users

  • Ability to view number of active user licenses and logged in users

• Forms

  • New medical and dental history forms

Important: Enhancements from this release will be available in PROD on August 26, 2023.

Evaluations

Ability to access Ascend Academic evaluations outside the clinic

In some situations, an institution may restrict access to Ascend Academic to specific whitelisted IP addresses as a way to follow patient HIPAA policies.

Example: Users cannot access Ascend Academic from a device using an IP address outside the clinic.

Institutions with location access limitations can now allow users to access Ascend Academic from IP addresses outside clinics without compromising patient HIPAA policies. This allows institutions to offer more flexibility to students so they can submit self evaluations, review faculty or self evaluations, and review the student progress board from home without clinic time restrictions.

Once configured, users can access a location that is considered remote and defined as non-practicing. They are limited to pages and widgets related to evaluations so they cannot view pages that display patient PII and PHI data.

Example restrictions: The Patient Search field is removed and users cannot create appointments from the Schedule page.

Tip: When users access a non-practicing location, an identifying banner displays at the top of the page. Users can clicktap the icon to view a tooltip with additional information about the restrictions.

Setup for this feature includes two parts:

• Contact Support to create a new location and define it as non-practicing.

  Tip: We have added a (new) Non-Practicing Location toggle that is view-only to the Location Information page (Settings > Location > Location Information). A location that is set as non-practicing is set to Yes.

  

• Give applicable users permission to access Ascend Academic from the non-practicing location. To grant permission, a new user role must be created and assigned to each applicable student.

  Important: The new user role must be limited to only Academic Evaluations permissions.

  

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Ability to print evaluation form templates

In some situations, faculty may want to print an evaluation form template.

Examples: They may require paper copies for training purposes or want to have paper copies on hand for students to complete if Ascend Academic is down or not accessible.

When working with evaluation form templates (Settings > Academic > Evaluation Forms), users can now use a (new) Print button to open a new browser tab and print or save a template as a PDF. The (new) button is available from a selected evaluation template or when previewing an evaluation template.

Note: Printing from the template includes the configuration settings and the form questions while printing from the preview includes only the form questions.

Selected evaluation template:

Evaluation template preview:

Tip: When printing the evaluation template from a preview, users can clicktap a (new) Student View toggle to change to student view.

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Users

Ability to view number of active user licenses and logged in users

The User Accounts page (Settings > Location > User Accounts) now allows administrators to view the number of licenses that have been purchased and the number of users that have logged in in the current month. This allows administrators to compare the numbers and better understand how many user licenses are being utilized.

Note: The number of Active users this month indicates how many unique users have logged in since the first of the month. Multiple logins from the same user do not increase the count.

Important: A warning icon displays if the number of Active users this month is greater than the Active user licenses. When administrators clicktap the warning icon, a tooltip displays the list of users that have logged in.

To enable this feature for your institution, please contact Ascend Academic Support.

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Forms

New medical and dental history forms

New versions of the dental history and medical history forms are now available on the Patient Forms page (Settings > Location > Patient Forms).

Tip: When ready to enable the new version of the dental history or medical history form, ensure the old version is disabled first.

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Bug Fixes

Error may display when working with in progress clinical notes

Issue: If a clinical note template with quick-picks is modified and a quick-pick is removed, an error may display when users access an in progress clinical note that uses the template, preventing them from continuing or canceling the note.

Solution: Fixed so that a prompt displays when users access the in progress clinical note, indicating that a quick-pick was removed from the template. When prompted, users can enter a value for the removed quick-pick in the available field and continue with the clinical note as necessary.

Note: In this scenario, users must finish the in progress note and clicktap Done to save their changes. If users clicktap Save Progress to keep the note in progress after adding a quick-pick value, their changes will not be saved.

Error may display when working with multi-code procedures

Issue: An error may display when users attempt to create a treatment plan case using multi-code procedures or add multi-code procedures to a tooth on a patient chart.

Solution: Fixed so that users can create treatment plan cases and add multi-codes procedures to patient charts without error, as expected.

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Imaging

RCI updates

For release 405-2, there are no RCI updates.

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