The Patient Communicator

The patient communicator allows you to send emails or letters to all patients that match the criteria you choose.

For example you can easily select all patients currently travelling to a particular country and send them some health advice or news. The communicator is also a vital tool if there is a Vaccine Batch recall, as it makes the process of identifying and contacting patients very easy.

You can use email templates to manage the content and format of your communication with the patient. Emails support rich html as well as plain text content. Using plain text templates Letters can be created as a PDF documents, these can be printed or saved to your computer for printing.

You can also create messages 'on-the-fly' and email the patients you have selected. This is very useful if there is a health alert in the country your patients are currently visiting.

To access the Patient Communications, click on its tab towards the top of the screen. If there the tab is not visible, you can add it by pressing the + icon to the right of the last tab towards the top of the screen. Look for the Patient Communications link in the next page that appears. Use the 'Customize My Tabs' and select the 'Patient Communicator' from the list on the left and add it to the list on the right.

There are 7 categories that you can use to search for patients

1. A country(s) in a patients itinerary.
2. A Product purchased by the patient
3. Vaccines given or planned to be given the patient
4. Vaccines with schedule type
5. Vaccine Batch Number
6. Patient Details, such as age, gender or chart id
7. Consultation Date

When you click on one of the criteria field, the page changes to an appropriate set of options, such as the visit date or gender, etc.

Any communications sent using the Send button are logged as activities on the Patients/ Records

The release of Inca Clinic Summer 2013 includes the Patient Reminder Generator. This is a new way of automating reminders that get sent to patients, e.g., a reminder to a patient to book an appointment for his/her next visit. The reminders can be set at the end of a consultation and they are queued for delivery at a later date. This is an easier way of sending reminders compared to using the Patient Communicator.

The Patient Communicator is useful for running marketing campaigns, recalls and other ad hoc communications with your patients. For example, you might want to communicate with all patients that are travelled to a particular country, or those that had a consultation between certain dates, and so on.

As of Inca Climic Summer 2013 (version 1.95) we recommend that you us the automated Patient Reminder Generator feature for managing vaccine schedule reminders. The Patient Communicator is very useful for identifying and contacting patients in relation to batch recalls, itinerary plans and in some circumstances for identify patients on a particular vaccine schedule. Find out more about the Patient Reminder Generator feature.

The following example shows how to use the Patient Communicator to send reminders to patient based on the type of schedule they are having and the stage they are at. (Remember, the Patient Reminder Generator is normally the preferred way to have the system send reminders to patients.)

You can create your own email templates that can be used as the basis for email/pdfs sent to patients. You need Manage Public Templates permissions to edit and manage communication templates. See this article to learn more: Manage Email Templates

To manage a template directly from the Patient Communicator, select the template from the drop down list and click preview.

Alternatively, you can manage all the templates used by the Patient Communicator located in the Communications Templates folder called Patient Communications

1. Click [Your Name] - Setup
2. Under Administration Setup click Communication Templates - Email Templates.
3. Select the Patient Communications folder from the drop down box at the top of the page. The templates you create must be saved in the Patient Communications folder.
4. Click Edit to change an existing template.
5. Click 'New Template' to create new one.
6. Select either 'Text' or 'HTML”. Select Text if you also plan to print the communication using the 'Print PDF' button. HTML allows you to create rich content such as hyperlinks and formatting but can only be used in email communications.
7. Inca Clinic uses a feature called Merge Fields. These placeholders allow you to insert information such as the patient's name, the name of your clinic, and so on. When the email/letter is created, the merge field places the name of the patient (etc.) in its place. Here are the merge fields that can be used:
   • {!Contact.FirstName} = Patient's first name
   • {!Contact.Name} = Patient's last name
   • {!Organization.Name} = Name of your clinic
   • {!Organization.Phone} = Phone number of your clinic

• You can send up to 1000 emails in total per day. If you exceed this limit you will get an error and the emails will not be sent.
• PDFs can be created only using Plain Text templates.

Incaplex offers a range of consultancy and customisation services around Inca Clinic. If you would like us to create and manage these templates please contact sales@incaplex.com.