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Communications
Write letters, medical certificates, referrals, and email or send them securely.
Communicate with Patients
Users can communicate with patients electronically using SMS and email.
SMS
Send scheduled SMS messages from Helix to patients for appointment and recall reminders, or send ad hoc messages as required.
Enable SMS
Before you can send SMS messages from your practice to a patient, you must enable SMS messaging for your centre and seek and record a patient's consent to receive SMS messages.
Enable SMS Messaging for Your Centre
Before you can send SMS messages, configure your centre's settings.
Enable SMS Appointment Updates
Enable sending SMS messages from the appointment book.

Communications
Write letters, medical certificates, referrals, and email or send them securely.
- Communicate with Patients
  Users can communicate with patients electronically using SMS and email.
  - SMS
    Send scheduled SMS messages from Helix to patients for appointment and recall reminders, or send ad hoc messages as required.
    - Enable SMS
      Before you can send SMS messages from your practice to a patient, you must enable SMS messaging for your centre and seek and record a patient's consent to receive SMS messages.
      - Enable SMS Messaging for Your Centre
        Before you can send SMS messages, configure your centre's settings.
        Enable SMS for Your Centre
        SMS Sender Name
        When you send an SMS message to a patient, you can indicate that it came from your practice using your own sender name to help your patients easily identify messages sent from your practice.
        Enable SMS Appointment Updates
        Enable sending SMS messages from the appointment book.
        Enable sending SMS Messages From the Patient Record
        Enable sending SMS messages to patients from their clinical or patient record.
        Enable SMS Recall Reminders
        Before you can send SMS recall reminders set up your template and enable SMS for recalls.
      - Record a Patient's Consent to Receive SMS
        Before a patient can receive SMS messages from your centre, they must have consented to receive SMS message and their patient record must have this consent recorded.
    - Appointment Reminders
      Helix can automatically send appointment reminders to patients via SMS.
    - Send SMS
      If configured, send SMS messages to individual patients from the appointment book or the patient's record.
    - Track SMS
      Track the delivery status of SMS messages sent from Helix.
  - Email
    You can send emails to patients and healthcare providers from the Letter Writer.
  - Letters
    Use letters or templates to write medical certificates, WorkCover certifications, referrals, health assessments, death certificates, veterans affairs requests, and so on.
- Address Books
- Message Centre
  Use the Message Centre to manage recalls, tasks, investigation results and health summaries, and to send messages and review the communications log.
- Referrals
  A health care professional writes a referral to request that another HCP or healthcare organisation provide an expert opinion, diagnosis, or treatment for a patient's medical condition.
- Create and Send Secure Documents
  Send referral letters, medical certificates, health assessments or other medical documents securely to other clinicians using Secure Message Delivery (SMD).
- Printer Settings
  Configure up to four printers for general printing, imaging requests, pathology requests, and prescriptions.

Enable SMS Appointment Updates

Enable sending SMS messages from the appointment book.

Before you begin

Permissions:

Update Centre Settings
Set up and send patient SMS

About this task

If you want to send SMS messages to patients about updates to appointments or other appointment-related information, enable this option for your centre.

Procedure

Select user > Settings.
Select Centre > Patient Messaging.
Select the SMS from appointment calendar tab.
From the Centre list, select the centre for which you want to enable SMS.
To create a new template for the centre, click Add template.
In the Template name field, enter a name for the template.
In the message field, enter your message. To personalise the SMS, click + Add field and insert fields that are substituted for patient or other information from the patient records.

Tip:
Limit the template to fewer than 160 characters to ensure that the SMS message is sent as a single SMS to reduce costs. An estimate of the number of characters is displayed below the message. The actual character count may vary, depending on the data inserted for any fields.
Click Save.
Toggle Enable SMS for appointment book messages on.

Results

SMS messaging for appointments is activated for the selected centre.

What to do next

If required, to create an additional template for the centre, click Add template icon Template and repeat the steps.

To delete an existing template, hover your mouse over a required template, click Delete icon Delete.

To send an SMS message from the appointment book, click Send SMS icon SMS patients. For more information, see Send SMS appointment updates.

If required, to edit a sender name, select Settings icon Settings > Patient messaging settings > Sender name. For more information, see SMS Sender Name.