Release notes

TIP: Looking for release notes for all Axiom products, including current and previous versions? Click here.

NOTE: Download a PDF version of the release notes here.

New features

See What's new.

What to know before upgrading

IMPORTANT: You must apply the Axiom 2022.4 upgrade before applying any 2023.1 Axiom product upgrades. Axiom Software upgrades are backwards compatible so you can upgrade different products at different times, but you must upgrade to the Axiom 2022.4 before the first product upgrade. Refer to the Axiom Release Notes and Axiom Healthcare Suite Release Notes for considerations before upgrading. Apply this update ONLY if you have already applied the release and completed all the manual setup steps from the corresponding release notes.

When upgrading to the 2023.1 version of Axiom Enterprise Decision Support, keep in mind the following:

  • You can replace Syntellis reports. Any report that you created or saved under a different name remains unchanged. Revised reports are available in Document History.
  • Any Syntellis report that was moved to a new location is automatically moved back to its original location.
  • Syntellis product templates and calculation method libraries are replaced.
  • Product task panes are replaced.
  • Process definitions are not replaced. Process Manager will not currently work with the new system tables and web-based pages and utilities. Consequently, please plan on reviewing and potentially revising any Cost Accounting Process Definitions depending on the scope and what tasks have been created and are in use.
  • Driver files are replaced.
  • Security roles and subsystems are reset to their configured settings. Your user security exceptions remain intact.
  • Specific items that are configured as part of your company or organization’s implementation such as imports, exports, driver files, and process management files, remain unchanged. Any required modifications to these areas are covered in the release notes. For example, Process Manager-defined processes for Cost Accounting must be modified by Client Success and has limitations with accessing web-based tasks.
  • Shared tables might have any of the following changes:
    • Columns reordered
    • New columns added

    • Old columns removed (rare)

      If you copy and paste into or from Axiom tables, review the column order of those tables after upgrading to assess the impact to your internal processes.

Preparing for and scheduling upgrades

Summary of the upgrade process:

  1. Review product release notes – Review this document to familiarize yourself with the new features and functionality.
  2. Schedule an installation date – Submit a request to your organization's Axiom System Administrator to contact support by creating a support ticket to schedule an installation date and time with at least three days of advance notice. The request should include the following information:
    • Desired Axiom platform version.
    • Desired Axiom for Healthcare product and version.
    • Indicate whether to first refresh the Axiom test sandbox with a copy of the production instance of Axiom and apply update(s) to it. If so, provide the soonest that Syntellis can do this.
    • Propose an approximate two-hour downtime window when Syntellis can apply update(s) to the production instance of Axiom during regular business hours, Monday through Friday 7 AM to 7 PM Central (except holidays recognized by Syntellis).
  3. Complete manual configuration updates – After installing the upgrade, review any manual setup steps needed to enable features for this version.

Getting help and training

Syntellis provides world-class resources directly within the Axiom system. Axiom Help provides topics, knowledge base articles, documents, webinar/training announcements, and videos to guide you through managing your system. To access these resources, do any of the following:

  • Windows and Excel Clients – From the Main or Admin ribbon tab, click Online Help, and then select the product. Axiom Help opens in a new browser window.

    NOTE: The online help opens only for products you are licensed to use.

  • Contextual help – Form/web-enabled features and products include contextual help directly within the user interface. This information provides a quick summary and instructions specifically related to the page you are using. You can access this information by clicking the question mark in the upper right corner of the page. To access the full Axiom Help system, click Open Help at the top of the contextual help dialog.

Syntellis Central

Syntellis Central provides centralized self-service content and resources for the Axiom Enterprise Decision Support platform and suite of products. Using Syntellis Central, you can:

  • Search help across all Axiom products.

  • Access tips, tricks, and best practices in our knowledge base.

  • Find training and certification content including on-demand, video, webinars, labs, and instructor-led courses.

  • Submit a Support issue, find suggested content, and manage any outstanding issues directly with Support.

  • Review open Software Service project status and details.

2023.1 - Issues resolved

The following table lists resolutions for issues addressed in 2023.1, released on February 13, 2023:

Issue Description
Volumes and amounts do not reconcile between Cost Item Usage (CIU) and Cost Detail (CD) in some systems [158759]

Summary: The volumes and amounts did not synchronize between Cost Item Usage (CIU) and Cost Detail (CD) as expected for clients populating the time component of Service Date.

Resolution: Changes include the entire last day of the cost model costing period as part of the costing calculations. Previously, the last day was using 12:00 AM as the time portion of the date parameters.
Calculator issues causing small dollar over-costing in some departments when both Relative Value Units (RVU) and Ratio of Costs-to-Charges (RCC) cost methods have been run [158762] [161711] Summary: Some departments leveraging both RVU and RCC methods were calculating final results leaving small dollar variances from expected amounts.

Resolution: Increased the scale of some RVU calculation columns in working tables from 4 to 8 decimals to improve result accuracy and eliminate costing variance issues when using the RVU method.
Cost Variance between Cost Detail Category Calculation (CDCC) and Cost Results [161631] Summary: Total costs were not reconciling for some clients when comparing cost detail category calculation (CDCC) and cost results.

Resolution: Costing Exclusions were not always being appropriately applied to the summarization process.

Amended the summarization process to exclude data as appropriate from RVU and RCC costing methods consistently. This outcome can be checked using the Multiple Table Comparison report.
Encounter from EncounterStaging - Update field in AdmitType Transform [155559] Summary: In Encounter from EncounterStaging > Edit Transform page, the Description column for the Alternate key in the AdmitType table was causing issues when importing data.

Resolution: The Description column with entries up to 50 was changed to AdmitType column with entries up to 25.

With this change, you may need to adjust your data import entries accordingly.

 

2023.1.1 - Issues resolved

The following table lists resolutions for issues addressed in 2023.1.1, released on March 31, 2023:

Issue Description

Publish reporting tables

Scheduler errors for some clients when publishing reporting tables [167391]

[167010] [166873]

Summary: The inclusion of newly imported and uncosted data prevented clients from successfully completing the Publish Reporting Tables job.

Resolution: Added logic to include this data in the tables for reporting.

Scheduler error for client with 100+ costcats when publishing reporting tables [167571]

 Summary: A SQL overflow error occurred when an extreme number of cost categories were configured in client system.

Resolution: Modified the SQL logic to accommodate the maximum length dynamic string.

Reverse Markup

Reverse Markup method is not calculating results on transactions with negative values [166959]

Summary: Because markup schedule tiers were defined as strictly positive numbers, transactions with negative values did not calculate results.

Resolution: Revised the calculation logic to include negative values based on their absolute value when performing the calculation.

Reverse Markup method producing results outside the cost processing timeframe [167303]

 Summary: The reverse markup method used the cost model end date instead of the cost period end date when selecting transactions for calculation.

Resolution: Updated the markup to use the intended cost period end date instead of the cost model end date.

Data imports

Standard Staging to Production imports occasionally experiencing excessive processing times on the delete transform [166190] [166189] [166191]

[166192] [166193]

Summary: Clients experienced inconsistent performance times when running standard staging to production imports, specifically in the delete transform.

Resolution: Updated SQL in the transform to improve performance efficiency for the following standard imports:

  • Encounter CPT from Staging

  • Encounter Diagnosis from Staging

  • Encounter Payer from Staging

  • Encounter Procedure from Staging

  • Encounter Provider from Staging

PM EDS hierarchical file parser truncating PMPrep staging tables between files [166457]

Summary: For clients using the Multiple Files option, the parser utility truncated the staging tables between files.

Resolution: The parser utility was updated to truncate only once per job rather than once per file.

PM EDS hierarchical file parser causing client system performance issues for other users when processing [165797]

 Summary: Clients experienced general performance issues when they ran the parser utility.

Resolution: Modified the parser utility to update the status of the scheduler task at task completion rather than during processing.

Other

Running Summarize to Encounter from the web UI is not properly summarizing data to encounters that span multiple cost models [167684]

Summary: For encounters with cost detail spanning multiple models, when the Summarize to Encounter model was processed from the web UI, only the current active model was included, which produced incomplete results on the encounter.

Resolution: The Summarize to Encounter model now includes results from all models in which the Summarize to Encounter model is configured.

Navigation between cost models not consistent in web UI [167012]

Summary: Clients were unable to change cost models in the web UI when any model was missing a valid begin date.

Resolution: Modified the UI to function correctly for navigation, even when a date configuration might be incomplete.

Costing General Ledger (CGL) offsets for microcost inadvertently deleted upon processing [168184]

Summary: When processing some subsequent costing tasks, microcost offsets in the Costing General Ledger (CGL) were deleted.

Resolution: Modified logic that previously searched for a valid configured "version" of microcost, which became obsolete with the update for microcost to be Year Month (YRMO)-specific.

Transaction Detail Category Calculation virtual table displaying incorrect costcat names in reporting for some clients [167830]

Summary: The Transaction Detail Category Calculation (TDCC) virtual table was incorrectly configured to link the CostcatID column to the CostCat table.

Resolution: Updated the linking in this virtual table to use the CostcatVersionConfig table.

 

2023.1.2 - Issues resolved

No client-facing issues were addressed in 2023.1.2, released on April 24, 2023.

2023.1.3 - Issues resolved

The following table lists resolutions for issues addressed in 2023.1.3, released on May 26, 2023:

Issue Description

Publish Reporting Tables – subtotal columns not calculating appropriately [54160] [51935] [51869]

 Summary: For some clients, total and subtotal columns were not calculating appropriately.

Resolution: Modified the Publish Reporting Tables job for using underscores in costcat names and various costcat configurations.

Encounter Dirty Transform missing on CostDetail from Staging table [53947]

Summary: Encounter Dirty Transform was missing from the Staging table on CostDetail.

Resolution: A new transform was added to the transform list for the CostDetail from the Staging table.

Variance exists when summarizing EncounterTotalCosts to Encounter [53802]

Summary: In certain circumstances, previous costing data was left in Encounter tables and not getting cleared when costing was re-processed.

Resolution: Implemented code changes to clear out all Encounter Costing columns prior to running the Summarized to Encounter process.

 

2023.1.4 - Issues resolved

No client-facing issues were addressed in 2023.1.4, released on July 17, 2023.

2023.1.5 - Issues resolved

No client-facing issues were addressed in 2023.1.5, released on October 9, 2023.

Technical considerations

No technical considerations or instructions needed for this release.