About the Recalls Automation Feature Follow

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:

• How to Set Up Automation in Recalls
• How to Use Recalls Categories
• Recall Automation FAQs

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. 
• 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. 
• 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). 

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 via phone, live chat or email support@healthengine.com.au. 

Otherwise, to learn how to set up automation, head back to the top of the page and check out our other articles!