No. If I am reading you correctly, you "Sign-Off" on the progress note (but it is still a live note), you "Sign It" on the next page. Now, you may be looking for the first one to do the same thing, but it can't. Once you sign it, the note is now a saved encounter and can never be changed except by fraudulent means or adding an addendum.
The benefit of signing the note is it is now contained in previously billed. At the top of the main screen you will see a tab called billing and, although we don't use PM either, it is good for my biller to be able to go to that screen or similar ones and see what actual patients were actually seen and billed. You can pull by date or patient.
You can set the date range, so you can sex from January 1, 2016 to today's date and see every patient who was seen. From within the window under Billing, you can select patients seen by physician and/or location.
There is also a VERY helpful thing which this window can help with when information given to your biller on a Superbill does not match with the note coding. I can't recall exactly, but my biller would be able to. I think she scolds me about it all the time.
I used to be in your shoes. Still am in one of your shoes. We use Medware and do nothing with AC billing. But, ICD-10 came along, and became the GREATEST thing in medicine since MiraLax.
I now do all my own coding. I don't leave the room until I have chosen a billable diagnosis. I don't leave the room until I have chosen CPT codes. No more circling a list of codes on the right hand side of the Superbill. Then my biller gets the pile of the paper billing codes. This shows her that these patients have been seen and SHOULD have a progress note. She can't bill them until she sees my code in AC. She can print them all out or she can do it one by one in AC. If one is missing it is due to not entering one of the codes. She knows how to do this.
Also, if your NP or PA is not getting co-signed, the notes won't show up. You basically don't want to bill for a patient who wasn't seen. For instance, I almost always finish my notes during the visit, but if I save it and wait, my biller will get the Superbill and know I did the work, but there is no note to prove it. If she bills, it is insurance fraud.
Finally, and I don't know why it won't let you do this right from the window, but at least the window doesn't dominate the screen (have to be shut before using another window in AC -- which is one great likely unintentional part of AC), she can enter the patient ID (simpler) and scan the note and make sure I documented correctly.
Short answer: No
Long answer: It is actually very helpful
