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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 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.
Compose SMS message
Compose and preview the SMS message sent to patients when an SMS appointment reminder template is run.

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.
      - Create SMS template
        Add an SMS appointment reminder template for each different appointment reminder and frequency that you want to send.
      - Compose SMS message
        Compose and preview the SMS message sent to patients when an SMS appointment reminder template is run.
    - 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 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.

Compose SMS message

Compose and preview the SMS message sent to patients when an SMS appointment reminder template is run.

To set up and manage SMS reminder templates, the Communications module must be enabled and you must belong to a user group with the SMS Administration system right.

First, specify the scheduling details on the Create Your Template tab.

To compose an SMS template message:

Select Tools > Manage SMS Appointment Reminders.
In the SMS Appointment Reminder window, click New Template.
On the SMS Message tab, in the SMS Template field, enter a message of up to 320 characters. Typically your message will be a combination of free text and keywords. Keywords are substituted with real details when the message is sent.

Tip: To add a keyword, click the keyword you want, or type it in angle brackets < >. Keywords are case sensitive. Remember to add spaces around your keywords. If the keyword you type is incorrect, it won't be substituted with example text in the preview.

The word count is a combination of free text and the text of each keyword and does not account for the text that will be substituted for the keywords. If you exceed 320 characters in the SMS Template field by adding a keyword, the count is highlighted in red.
Review the SMS message in the Preview field. The preview is updated as you type or add keywords and shows example text substituted for the keywords, highlighted in blue.
To check your template settings and enable the template, return to the Create your template tab. For more information, see Create SMS template.

When the template is next run at the scheduled time, this message is sent to the patients who meet the criteria specified in the template.

Keywords are substituted with details from the patient record, the appointment book, the provider settings and the organisation settings.

14 November 2023