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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.
Send SMS
If configured, send SMS messages to individual patients from the appointment book or the patient's record.
Send SMS appointment updates
Send one-way SMS message updates from your practice to one or more patients about their current or upcoming appointment.

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.
    - 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.
      - Send SMS appointment updates
        Send one-way SMS message updates from your practice to one or more patients about their current or upcoming appointment.
      - Send SMS from a patient's record
        Send an SMS message directly to a patient from their patient or clinical 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.

Send SMS appointment updates

Send one-way SMS message updates from your practice to one or more patients about their current or upcoming appointment.

Before you begin

Permissions:

View Appointments
Set up and send patient SMS

Note: Patients cannot reply to SMS messages sent from the appointment book.

Ensure you have created a unique Sender Name for your centre. For more information, see Alpha Tags (Sender Names) and SMS in Helix.

About this task

Procedure

Click to access appointments.
Click SMS Patients.
In the Send SMS to Patients window, modify information included from the selections in the appointment book if required.
To include only those appointments at a given time, deselect All Day, then select the required timeframe.
From the Practitioners list, select one or more practitioners for whom you want to send an SMS.
From the Appointment types list, select the appointment types for which you want to send an SMS.
To retrieve a list of patients who match the appointment criteria, click Find Patients.

Note: In our example, one patient has either opted-out of receiving SMS messages or does not have a mobile number recorded. These patients are listed at the top of the search results and highlighted in orange. If required, to send an SMS to the patient, record a patient's consent in the Patient Details panel. For more information, see Record a Patient's Consent to Receive SMS.
If you change any of the selection criteria, click Find Patients again to refresh the list of results.
In the Message section, compose your message.
- Either select a template from the Template list configured for appointment updates, or type your message into the blank template.
- To insert fields for which relevant data is substituted when the SMS is sent, click + Add Field.
Click Send.
An error message is displayed if not all selected patients will receive the SMS. To continue, click Send to valid recipients. If you want to first update the details of the identified patients, click Cancel.

Results

SMS messages are sent to the listed patients.

What to do next

View SMS messages sent from the appointment book in the Comms Log. These messages have a Message Type of Appt. Book SMS.
Example SMS appointment update in the Comms log

Example SMS appointment update in the Comms log