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Administrative
Add and manage patients, manage appointments and manage transport.
Appointments
Use Communicare appointments to book future appointments and record services provided without an appointment, for example, walk-in patients.
SMS messaging using Burst
Set up SMS Messaging so that your health service can send SMS messages to patients using Burst.

Administrative
Add and manage patients, manage appointments and manage transport.
- Patients
  Communicare uses the term Patient to refer to the clients of a health service.
- Appointments
  Use Communicare appointments to book future appointments and record services provided without an appointment, for example, walk-in patients.
  - Working with the Appointment Book
    Use the Appointment Book to add sessions, book and change appointments, and check patient's in.
  - Appointment Details
    When booking an appointment, after you have selected a timeslot and the patient, the Appointment Details window is displayed.
  - Cancelling and rescheduling appointments manually
    You can cancel or reschedule one or more patients' appointments in the Appointment Book at any time before the consultation starts.
  - Cancelling appointments automatically
    In Communicare V21.1 and later, patients can automatically cancel their appointment by replying to an appointment reminder by SMS and rejecting the appointment.
  - Appointment timeslots
    A timeslot is the period in which an appointment is booked. Timeslots can be of any duration.
  - Appointment session
    An appointment session is the period of time for which a Provider and Facility are allocated to provide services. Sessions are normally divided into timeslots.
  - Appointment Session Status
    Session Status is used to indicate the condition of sessions and session templates.
  - Appointment Session Insertion
    The Session Templates List is displayed when you insert a session into the Appointment Book.
  - Patient Appointment and Service History
    From the Appointment Book or clinical record, use the Service List window to view a list of all upcoming appointments for a patient, and a patient's appointment and service history.
  - Walk-in patients
    Walk-in patients are those who arrive without an appointment. That is, they just walk in.
  - Simultaneous Check-In
    The Simultaneous Check-In window is displayed when checking in a patient who has more than one appointment today. It allows patients with multiple appointments to be efficiently managed through services with multiple providers.
  - Appointment Cancellation Reason
    Use the Appointment Cancellation Reason window to indicate a broad reason category for an appointment cancellation.
  - Online Appointment Booking
    Online appointment booking systems allow patients to find an available provider and appointment time slots 24 hours a day, without the need to interact with the health service to book an appointment.
  - Appointment Book report
    Use the Appointment Book report to print the appointments book in a format that can be used in an emergency as a paper appointments book. It is also useful when reviewing the setup of the appointments book.
  - SMS messages and reminders
    In Communicare V21.1 and later, you can send appointment reminders to patients using Telstra Health's SMS gateway (TH Notify) and a new interface.
  - SMS messaging using Burst
    Set up SMS Messaging so that your health service can send SMS messages to patients using Burst.
    - Sending Batch SMS Messages using Burst
      An SMS can be sent to a list of patients using templates maintained by Communicare or custom, local SMS batch reports.
    - SMS Batch Reports
      You can add new local SMS batch reports to be used to send SMS messages to patients as required. Either request a new custom SMS batch report from Communicare or create it yourself.
- Transport
  Communicare offers two ways of managing transport services.

SMS messaging using Burst

Set up SMS Messaging so that your health service can send SMS messages to patients using Burst.

You can send messages to individuals or groups, including:

Appointment reminders - SMS Appointment Reminders provides a standard reminder which is set by Communicare and cannot be edited
Patient group messages - custom messages of no longer than 160 characters sent to patient groups
SMS batch reports - if configured, use SMS batch reports to send SMS messages, for example, recalls

Note: Patients who do not have a mobile phone number in the Mobile Phone field in their patient record, or who have No Contact set in the Preferred Contact field are excluded from SMS messaging and report results.

Configuring Communicare to send SMS Messages

To configure Communicare to send SMS Messages:

Create a request to have Communicare Support configure Communicare and your SMS Messaging account. You will receive an email with the SMS website login details.
Allocate the SMS system right to the relevant user groups.

Adding credit to your SMS account

You must add credit to your SMS account before you can send any SMS messages.

To add credit to your account:

In Communicare, select Tools > SMS Top-up.
Log into the SMS account website using the account name and password details provided to you by Communicare Support.
Follow the directions and top up your SMS credit.