• Directions 2006 Conference
• Medicare Payment Hold
• New Clinical Features
• New Resident Funds Change
• Security Enhancements

Directions 2006 User Group Conference
The ULTRACare Users' Group Conference is scheduled for September 26-28, 2006 at the Portsmouth Renaissance Waterfront Hotel and Conference Center. We're finalizing all the registration and program materials now, so keep an eye on your email for notification when registration opens in early August.

The conference schedule will officially begin with an opening reception and vendor showcase on Tuesday evening, September 26th at 5:00 p.m. and will conclude Thursday, September 28th at 5:00 p.m. There will be two optional pre-conference sessions on Tuesday, September 26th at 1:00 pm for "ULTRACare 101 - What Every New User Should Know" and "Crystal Reports with ULTRACare". All events will take place at the hotel.

The host site is the same location we enjoyed for the 2005 conference on the Portsmouth, Virginia waterfront - so please mark your calendars now! You can take a look at details about the location on the internet at http://www.renaissanceportsmouth.com. We recommend making hotel reservations early - the deadline is August 26th. Call the hotel directly at 1-888-839-1775 and ask for the Monette Information Systems rate of $115.00 per night.

Don't miss out on this once-a-year opportunity to participate in ULTRACare training and discussion groups. We look forward to seeing you at the conference!

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Medicare Payment Hold in September
CMS has announced that a brief payment hold will be placed on Medicare payments for claims during the last 9 days of the Federal fiscal year (September 22-30, 2006), as mandated by the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005. All claims held during this time period will be paid on October 2, 2006.

This policy will apply to claims subject to payment, and does not apply to full denials, no-pay claims, and other non-claim payments. During this delay, no advance payments will be allowed, no interest will be accrued and no late penalties will be paid due to this one-time payment hold.

For complete information on this payment hold, please refer to the MedLearn Matters article on the CMS website at
http://www.cms.hhs.gov/MLNMattersArticles/downloads/MM5047.pdf.

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ULTRACare Includes New Clinical Features
Last month we announced that the latest version of ULTRACare features more electronic charting features. These include the eMAR, eTAR, and many user definable codes that allow you to continue the move to electronic medical records. Electronic signatures can also be enabled for the MDS and orders to require an additional level of authentication using a PIN.

There continues to be much in the press about medication administration errors and the need to have systems in place to do proper order to patient matching. Did you know that ULTRACare's new features allow you to set up the room and resident order in which medications will be distributed? You can use bar coding, wrist bands, and on-screen displays of resident photos to insure proper matching.

For more information about these features, follow this link to our Secure Site https://support.monetteinc.com/documentation and log in with your normal customer login and password.

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New Resident Funds Change
The July 2006 update of ULTRACare included a helpful change to the default date used when entering Resident Funds transactions. The default transaction date is now the accounting period date you have set for Resident Funds instead of the current system date.

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Security Enhancements
ULTRACare's Security module already allowed you to set up your users' profile, access levels, link to their network login and password, and create a PIN to be used for additional authentication. Now, ULTRACare can require that the PIN must be changed by the user every 90 days.

This feature is included in the July 2006 monthly update posted on our Secure Site. If you have not already done so, please download the update and install per the instructions provided on the site. This is specifically for ULTRACare 2006 - Version 14 - please be sure you have loaded all previous updates as well.

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