About the Recalls Automation Feature

This article explains what the automation feature of Healthengine's Recalls solution is and how it works. We have a number of related articles to help you learn how to set up automation, as well as answers to frequently asked questions, and you can find these linked below:

What It Is

This feature enables your clinic to automate certain tasks in Recalls, such as sending an SMS, queuing a phone call contact attempt, and queuing a letter contact attempt. This takes a lot of the time and effort out of processing your recalls since, based on the rules you configure in your settings, the system will automatically work out what needs doing and when. All that's left for you to do is to periodically review your 'To Action', 'Calls', and 'Letters' tabs to complete any outstanding actions. 

How It Works

To begin using automation, you must first ensure that you have set up all of your recalls preferences. Read more about how to do this here.

The automation feature works using "automation rules". The "automation rules" are applied to recall categories. If you are not familiar with recall categories, please read our related article here.

An example automation rule is "2 SMS + 1 letter". In this example, the automation rule would automatically send 2 SMS and 1 letter for each recall with a reason and/or urgency assigned to that recall category. The send times of each contact attempt are based on the settings configured in your Recalls 'Preferences'.

While the automation feature will automatically send SMS's, it is important to note that it cannot automatically make phone calls or automatically download, print, and send letters. However, it can queue up phone calls and letters for you so that you only have to check the 'Calls' and 'Letters' tab every so often and go through the recalls in those tabs. You can find everything you need to know about actioning these below:

• How to Send a Letter Recall
• How to Process a Phone Recall

Other Important Information

There are some other important things to know about how the automation rules work:

• Automatic contact attempts continue regardless of any manual contact attempts made, e.g. if a recall has an automation rule of "2 SMS + 1 letter" and 1 SMS has been sent, then you make a manual SMS contact attempt, the automation rule will still send the second SMS and the letter. 
• If a practice updates the due date on an existing clinical reminder rather than creating a new one (for example, moving an annual health check reminder forward a year after the patient attends), the recall's action due date is now updated to match. Previously, changing a clinical reminder's due date did not update the action due date, which could cause the next contact attempt to be sent too early or too late. The recall keeps its existing automation history: if the automation rule is "2 SMS + 1 email" and the patient has already received the first SMS, contact attempts continue from the second SMS rather than restarting. If the patient had already received all automated contacts before the due date changed, automation will not restart automatically. You can still open the recall and make a manual contact attempt if one is needed.
• Audit notes are recorded in the patient record in your Practice Management Software (PMS) for automatic contact attempts in the same way as for manual contact attempts to provide a complete audit history.  
• Once an automation rule completes (i.e. all automatic contact attempts are completed), the recall will move to the 'To Action' tab in your Recalls. From here, you could mark the recall as "No further action required" if no more contact attempts are needed or as "Doctor's Attention Required" to check with the doctor whether contact attempts should continue. To continue contact attempts, you can make manual contact attempts as usual. 
• You can pause an automation rule at any time using the 'Pause automation' action button. To pause automation for multiple recalls, simply select all of the recalls you wish to pause in the 'Synced Recalls' tab and click the 'Pause automation' button. This action will be logged as an audit note in the patient record in your PMS. 
• You can manually resume an automation rule that has been paused at any time using the 'Resume automation' action button. To resume automation for multiple recalls, select all of the recalls to be resumed in the 'Synced Recalls' tab and click the 'Resume automation' button. This button will not show for recalls that aren't paused. This action will be logged as an audit note in the patient record in your PMS. 
• If a patient has an appointment booked within the next 30 days, automatic contact attempts will be paused until the appointment time passes or is cancelled. After this, the automatic contact attempts will resume as usual. You control which appointment types trigger this pause in your Recalls 'Preferences' — if the patient books an appointment type you have not selected, automation continues as normal.
• A recall category can also be set to stop automatic contact attempts once the patient has viewed the recall message. Where this is turned on, no further automatic contact attempts are made after the patient opens the message and the recall moves to the 'To Action' tab. This is set per category, so it can be on for reminder-style categories and off for categories where you need the patient to book.
• If an automation rule is removed from a category, any recalls with recall reasons and/or urgencies assigned to that category will revert to manual processing, regardless of whether the automation rule was completed for those recalls.
• If an automatic contact attempt can't be completed due to missing contact details in the patient record in your PMS, this will be logged as an audit note. After this, the automation rule will try each contact attempt in the rule until it is successful so that the patient is contacted as soon as possible by whichever means possible. 
• Automatic contact attempts will only be made between 9am and 5pm in your practice's local time to ensure patients are not contacted too early or too late in the day. Any contact attempts not completed during this window will be delayed until the following day (e.g. if too many automatic sends are queued to complete them all within a day). 

When Automation Stops

An automation rule can end or pause in four ways:

1. The rule completes — all automatic contact attempts in the rule have been made, and the recall moves to the 'To Action' tab.

2. The patient books a qualifying appointment — automatic contact attempts pause until the appointment passes or is cancelled, then resume. Only the appointment types you have selected in your Recalls 'Preferences' will pause automation.

3. The patient views the recall message — where the category is set to stop on view, automatic contact attempts stop and the recall moves to the 'To Action' tab. This is most useful for clinical reminders, where the goal is to make the patient aware rather than to secure a booking.

4. You pause it manually — using the 'Pause automation' action button described above. In each case the recall remains visible in your Recalls, so your practice decides what happens next.

How Contact Attempts Are Delivered

Automatic contact attempts are delivered using the channel set in the automation rule, with one exception: age-based communication rules. These let you nominate age ranges that receive a letter instead of an SMS. Practices commonly use this where the mobile number on the patient file is likely to be shared with a parent or carer, so a recall about a young person's results is not delivered to someone else's phone.

Age-based rules change how a contact attempt is delivered, not when. The timing still follows your automation rule and your Recalls 'Preferences', where age-based rules are also configured.

Need additional help?

If you experience any issues, need assistance with making changes, or would like to book in a Recalls training session, reach out to our friendly Healthengine Support Team Contact Us page.