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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 messages and reminders
In Communicare V21.1 and later, you can send appointment reminders to patients using Telstra Health's SMS gateway (TH Messaging) and a new interface.
SMS replies
Patients can reply to an SMS and depending on the configuration of your system, confirm their appointment or cancel it automatically.
Appointments cancelled by SMS
Patients can automatically cancel their appointment by replying to an appointment reminder by SMS and rejecting the appointment.

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.
  - 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 Messaging) and a new interface.
    - Enable SMS
      To configure Communicare to send SMS with Telstra Health's SMS gateway (TH Messaging), enable the module and assign system rights to user groups.
    - Send direct SMS messages
      Send SMS messages to individual patients from their biographics or clinical record.
    - SMS reminder templates
      Use SMS appointment reminder templates to compose and schedule the SMS messages that are sent to individual patients automatically, depending on appointments and other filters.
    - Send bulk SMS messages manually
      In Communicare V21.1 and later, you can manually send SMS messages to multiple recipients using Telstra Health's SMS gateway (TH Messaging).
    - SMS replies
      Patients can reply to an SMS and depending on the configuration of your system, confirm their appointment or cancel it automatically.
      - SMS reply status
        If you use SMS appointment reminders, the status of SMS messages is recorded in the Appointment Book and Service Recording.
      - Appointments cancelled by SMS
        Patients can automatically cancel their appointment by replying to an appointment reminder by SMS and rejecting the appointment.
    - 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.
  - SMS messaging using Burst
    Set up SMS messaging so that your health service can send SMS messages to patients using Burst.
- Transport
  Communicare offers two ways of managing transport services.

Appointments cancelled by SMS

Patients can automatically cancel their appointment by replying to an appointment reminder by SMS and rejecting the appointment.

Patients who receive an SMS appointment reminder sent from Communicare because their appointment fits the criteria specified in an SMS appointment reminder template with Patient can cancel appointments set, can reply to the SMS and cancel an appointment up until the time that the appointment starts.

By default, patient's who reply N or No to the appointment reminder SMS message cancel their appointment. If they add additional text, the appointment is not cancelled.

If a patient receives multiple appointment reminders before replying, the latest appointment in the day for which the reminder is sent is cancelled.

Note: Only the first response is received by Communicare. For example, if a patient replies N to an SMS reminder and then changes their mind and responds Y, the second response is ignored.

When a negative SMS reply is received from a patient:

A reason of Cancelled by patient is recorded and a cancellation comment of Cancelled by SMS Reply is added to the Service List
The appointment is removed from the appointment book and service recording
Linked incoming referrals are updated
Transport management linked with that appointment is updated and the comment Cancelled by patient is added

To display a list of appointments cancelled by SMS, run Report > SMS > Appointments Cancelled by SMS.

15 November 2023