Onboarding a new employee, matching permissions between staff, or just tracking down that one setting that would make everyone’s day easier — these are the kinds of tasks that add up for clinic managers. Healthquest has a handful of tools built specifically to make them faster.
Employee Permissions
Every staff member and provider has an Employee tab on their client card, generated automatically once their client type is set to “Employee.” Only staff with System Administrator access can create, end-date, or edit that tab — everyone else can only view it.
When setting up a new hire, Assign Access Based on Role gives you a sensible starting point rather than building permissions from scratch.
A faster way to match staff: go to Admin > Security Reports > Setup User Access, click Retrieve, and you’ll see every employee’s permissions side by side. If two staff members do the same job, this makes it easy to spot the difference and check off whatever’s missing so their access matches.
Some settings live outside employee permissions entirely — they’re user-specific program setup options. Rather than walking around the clinic asking everyone to update their own settings, use the Copy Program Setup Settings Between Users option (available from the same Security Reports screen, or from the bottom-left of the Employee tab) to copy an existing staff member’s settings onto a new one in a single step.
Tip: if you’re not sure what a specific permission does, open a client card, press F1, and select “employee permissions” from the table of contents for a full description.
Program Setup Options
Program Setup (under Setup > Program Setup) is available to everyone, but not every setting behaves the same way:
- Regular text = a user-specific setting anyone can change for themselves.
- Italicized = a workstation-specific setting.
- Bold = a database-wide (clinic-level) setting, which only a system administrator can change.
With hundreds of options available, the search bar at the top is the fastest way to find what you’re looking for — some settings live in places you wouldn’t necessarily guess.
A few worth knowing about:
- Use New Letter Wizard Dialogue (Letters, user setting) – shows a guided wizard when generating a new letter, cutting the process down to a couple of clicks.
- Prompt to Update Matching Addresses (Client Card, database setting) – flags related family members’ charts when a shared address changes, so pediatric patients’ records stay current automatically.
- Employee Can Print Practitioner Signature on Forms (Charting, user setting) – lets staff reprint or fax a requisition with a provider’s signature when a provider isn’t on-site, or a patient has lost their copy. This does not extend to prescriptions — only providers can print those.
- Use WHO PDFs as Growth Charts (Charting, database setting) – pulls up a WHO growth chart directly from the Vitals section of a pediatric chart, ready to print for a patient or parent.
- Mark All Client Appointments (Scheduler Defaults, database setting) – when a patient has multiple appointments booked the same day, checking one in as arrived prompts you to update the others at the same time, instead of hunting for each one individually.
- Find and Open Appointment Details on Client Lookup (Scheduler Defaults, workstation setting) – searching a patient in the lookup opens their appointment detail window and marks them arrived automatically, which is especially handy on a busy schedule.
- Use Client Dashboard (System/Window, database setting) – enables color-coded critical notes and a hyperlinked patient name in the chart. Hovering over a colored note (say, a parent’s name on a pediatric chart) shows the detail without digging through the Relations tab, and clicking the hyperlink opens additional information — including full eFax history, with the date, sender, recipient, status, and a preview of exactly what was sent.
Why It’s Worth Exploring
None of these settings are hidden on purpose — there are just a lot of them. Taking even fifteen minutes to search through Program Setup for keywords relevant to your clinic’s workflow (or comparing two staff members’ permissions when something doesn’t match) tends to turn up small adjustments that make a noticeable difference in day-to-day operations.
FAQ
Who can edit an employee’s permissions in Healthquest?
Only staff with System Administrator access can create, end-date, or edit the Employee tab on a client card. Other staff can only view it.
How can I quickly match a new hire’s permissions to an existing employee?
Use Copy Program Setup Settings Between Users, found under Admin > Security Reports > Setup User Access or on the Employee tab itself, to copy settings in one step instead of updating them individually.
How do I know if a program setup option affects just me or the whole clinic?
Check the formatting: regular text is a user-specific setting, italics indicate a workstation setting, and bold indicates a database-wide setting that only a system administrator can change.
Where can I look up what a specific employee permission does?
Open a client card and press F1, then select “employee permissions” from the table of contents for a full description.
Next up, the final post in this series: built-in reports and schedule templates — the tools that help you see the bigger picture and keep your calendar under control.