User Guide — GroupCall

 

athenaCommunicator services do not place phone calls of any kind on the following holidays. Calls scheduled for these holidays go out one calling day earlier, based on the practice settings for calling days:

• New Year's Day
• Memorial Day
• Independence Day (July 4th)
• Labor Day
• Thanksgiving Day
• Christmas Eve
• Christmas Day
• New Year's Eve

For ReminderCall, GroupCall, ResultsCall, and Self-Pay reminders, the calling system adds a day to the calling window for the day before a holiday.

 

Email and text messages

For the holidays listed above, athenaCommunicator services send email and SMS text messages except for these GroupCall campaigns:

• Immediate Cancellation
• Weather
• Same-day custom campaigns

If messages for these campaigns are configured to be sent on the holiday (or after the message window closes on the day before the holiday), email and text messages are not sent until the next (non-holiday) business day.

Note: For more information about message windows, see Message Windows for athenaCommunicator Automated Messages.

 

Self-Pay Reminders and Bank Holidays:

For Self-Pay reminders, athenaCommunicator observes bank holidays, and on the following days, we do not send any Self-Pay reminders (calls, emails, or text messages):

• Martin Luther King Day

• President's Day

• Juneteenth

• Columbus Day (Indigenous People's Day)

• Veteran's Day

Messages scheduled for bank holidays go out one day earlier, based on the practice settings for message days.

 

 

The Appointment No Shows campaign automatically checks for appointments that are marked with an appointment cancellation reason of "Patient No Show" and sends a message informing patients that they missed their appointment. Appointment cancellation reasons appear in the Reason for cancellation menu on the Check-in page.

Note: Any appointment that is marked with a cancellation reason of "no show" will receive messages from the Appointment No Shows campaign.

 

You can view and edit the appointment cancellation reasons for your practice on the Appointment Cancellation Reasons page. On this page, the Patient No Show column must display "Yes" for the appointment cancellation reason in order for this reason to be recognized by the Appointment No Shows campaign.

Note: If you did not select the Patient no-show option for the cancellation reason on the Appointment Cancellation Reasons page, the Appointment No Shows campaign will not send messages for appointments that were cancelled with that cancellation reason.

 

athenahealth creates this standard campaign for your practice, usually during athenaCommunicator implementation.

Note: If you would like a manual version of the Appointment No Shows campaign to control when GroupCall sends No Show messages to your patients, please contact the CSC by selecting Support > Create Case or Call in the Main Menu. You should request a manual Appointment No Shows campaign only if you decide to delete or not use the automated Appointment No Shows campaign.

 

 

 

The Appointment Ticklers campaign automatically checks for ticklers and sends a message to patients reminding them to schedule an appointment. athenahealth creates this standard campaign for your practice, usually during athenaCommunicator implementation. For ticklers to be included in these campaigns, you must create ticklers with an approximate date in the future.

Note: If you would like a manual version of the Appointment Ticklers campaign to control when GroupCall sends appointment tickler messages to your patients, please contact the CSC by selecting Support > Create Case or Call in the Main Menu. You should request a manual Appointment Ticklers campaign only if you decide to delete or not use the automated Appointment Ticklers campaign.

 

 

 

 

The Cancellation campaign automatically checks for appointments that require cancellation and sends a message to patients notifying them that the practice has cancelled their appointment and that they need to reschedule it. To include an appointment in a Cancellation campaign, you must mark the appointment as "requires cancellation" by deleting the appointment slot on the Manage Appointments page.

Note: The best practice for using this campaign is to mark appointments for cancellation at least one week before the scheduled appointments.

 

athenahealth creates this standard campaign for your practice, usually during athenaCommunicator implementation.

 

 

 

The Immediate Cancellation campaign does not run automatically (unlike the Cancellation campaign). Instead, you use this campaign when you must cancel same-day scheduled appointments using the Manage Appointments page.

Note: Use the Immediate Cancellation campaign to cancel appointments that are scheduled for the current week. When this campaign is run, appointments are not removed from providers' schedules.

 

Your patients receive a message on the same day that you run this campaign to notify them that their scheduled appointment needs to be rescheduled. By default, immediate cancellation messages are sent from 7:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. You can configure an Immediate Cancellation campaign to send messages as early as 6:00 a.m., but athenaOne will not send these messages later than 8:00 p.m.

Important: Use the standard Immediate Cancellation campaign to send urgent messages about cancelling appointments. If you instead create a manual custom campaign for this purpose, the campaign will not usually send messages the same day.

 

athenahealth creates this standard campaign for your practice, usually during athenaCommunicator implementation. If you do not find this campaign in the Campaign Library, you can contact the Client Support Center for assistance by selecting Support > Create Case or Call in the Main Menu.

Note: The phone message delivered by the Immediate Cancellation campaign is the same as the message delivered by the Cancellation campaign. However, Live Operator service is not available for Immediate Cancellation campaigns.

 

 

The Weather campaign allows you to send messages to patients when you need to cancel appointments due to weather-related issues. GroupCall sends weather messages only when you manually select the appointments using the Manage Appointments page.

Note: When this campaign is run, appointments are not removed from providers' schedules.

 

Your patients receive a message on the same day that you run this campaign. Email and text messages are sent within an hour, and phone calls are sent within 2 hours. By default, weather campaign messages are sent from 7:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m., but these messages can be sent as early as 6:00 a.m.

Important: Use the standard Weather campaign to send urgent messages about cancelling appointments due to weather conditions. If you instead create a manual custom campaign for this purpose, the campaign will not usually send messages the same day.

 

athenahealth creates this standard campaign for your practice, usually during athenaCommunicator implementation. If you do not find this campaign in your Campaign Library, you can contact the Client Support Center for assistance by selecting Support > Create Case or Call in the Main Menu.

Note: Live Operator service is not available for Weather campaigns.

 

 

 

The goal of the Portal Adoption campaign is to promote the Patient Portal to your patients who have provided an email address but have not registered for the Patient Portal. The Portal Adoption campaign sends emails to patients on a weekly or monthly basis; it does not make phone calls or send text messages.

Note: An individual patient receives a maximum of six Portal Adoption campaign emails.

 

athenahealth creates this standard campaign for your practice, usually during athenaCommunicator implementation. After you go live with athenaCommunicator, we wait six months before sending the first Patient Portal adoption campaign emails. Also, we send these campaign emails only to active patients (patients who have had appointments in the last 18 months).

Note: To prevent the sending of Portal Adoption emails to a patient, display the Privacy Information page and select the Do not send Portal Adoption Emails option.

 

 

The Campaign Library is your central location for viewing and managing GroupCall campaigns. Each campaign listed on the Campaign Library page includes the name of the campaign (for example, Appointment No Shows or Adolescent Well-Care Visits) and a description of the campaign (either the default description or the description that you entered when you created a custom campaign).

 

At the top of the Campaign Library page, you can click Create new campaign. This link displays the Campaign Builder page, where you create the new GroupCall campaign.

 

A list of existing GroupCall campaigns appears on each tab of the Campaign Library page. The following links appear below the name of a campaign (some links appear only on the Custom tab).

• Activate — Reactivate a deactivated automated campaign.
• Audit history — Display an audit history of changes made to the campaign.
• Continue campaign creation — Complete the creation of a custom campaign that you began previously.
• Copy — Create a copy of an existing campaign to use as the starting point for a new campaign. This link displays the Campaign Builder page, where you can create the new campaign based on the one you copied.
• Deactivate — Deactivate an automated campaign. Clicking Deactivate stops this campaign from producing messages the next time that it is scheduled to run. Deactivating a campaign does not stop messages that are currently queued up for patients. To stop campaign messages from going out to patients, please contact the CSC by selecting Support > Create Case or Call in the Main Menu.
  
• Delete — Delete a campaign. You can restore a deleted campaign by selecting the Show deleted campaigns option at the bottom of the page, and then clicking Undelete below the name of the deleted campaign. Deleting a campaign does not stop it from making calls. To stop calls associated with a deleted campaign, you must deactivate the campaign or enter an expiration (end) date for the campaign.
• Edit — You can edit the campaign's contact methods, instructional messages, and calling window. This link displays the Campaign Builder page, where you can edit the campaign.
• Restart — Run a campaign again. This link is available for campaigns that have a status of Completed.
• Run Activity Report — Run a report that shows the number of messages that the campaign has sent. This link displays the Patient Communication Activity report and preselects the campaign in the Campaigns filter.
• Run Outcomes report — Run a report that shows the number of appointments and the amount of revenue generated from this population health campaign. This link appears for completed, single-instance population health campaigns.
• View Details — Display information about the standard or custom campaign, including the departments configured to use the campaign; the phone, email, and text messages sent to patients; and the schedule for the campaign.

If you need to stop messages that are already going out to patients today, please call the Client Support Center by selecting Support > Create Case or Call in the Main Menu. The CSC can provide assistance to stop today's messages and all associated retries.

 

 

 

 

The Campaign Builder page walks you through the steps to create population health campaigns, health awareness campaigns, and new custom campaigns. (Previously created custom campaigns appear in the Campaign Library on the Custom tab.)

Note: To view and run population health and health awareness campaigns, your practice must use the athenaClinicals service, as well as the athenaCommunicator service.

 

After you create a campaign on the Campaign Builder page, you can run it again and edit it on the Campaign Library page. Click the tab on the Campaign Library page to find a campaign that you created. For example, click the Population Health tab to locate population health campaigns that you created, or click the Custom tab to locate custom campaigns.

 

For a list of magic words for athenaCommunicator, including GroupCall, refer to the Magic Words User Guide.

 

If the Activate providers by default setting on the GroupCall Settings page is not selected, you can enable GroupCall for providers as follows:

1. Display the GroupCall Settings page: On the Main Menu, click Settings > Communicator. In the left menu, under Practice Links — GroupCall, click GroupCall Settings.
   The GroupCall Settings page opens, with the practice-wide settings displayed.
2. Filter by — Select Settings from the menu, and then select the Inactive providers option from the list of settings.
3. Click Filter. All providers for whom GroupCall is not activated are listed on the left side of the page.
   Note: A provider can be listed in more than one department.
4. You can enable GroupCall for all providers in the list, or you can select one provider.
   • The first provider in the list appears in the View Settings for Provider area of the page. If you want to enable GroupCall for this provider only, click Activate.
   • If you want to enable GroupCall for a different provider in the list, click the provider name on the left side of the page. In the View Settings for Provider area of the page, click Activate.
   • To enable GroupCall for all inactive providers (shown on the left side of the page), click Bulk Edit. In the Edit Settings for Multiple Providers area of the page, click Activate.
5. After you click the Activate button for a single provider, the View Settings for Provider view appears. These settings are the settings for the department to which this provider belongs.

 

After you deactivate GroupCall messages for a provider, the provider still appears on the GroupCall Settings page.

1. Display the GroupCall Settings page: On the Main Menu, click Settings > Communicator. In the left menu, under Practice Links — GroupCall, click GroupCall Settings.
2. Filter by — Select Provider from the menu.
   The list of providers appears on the right side of the page.
3. Select the provider from the list, and then click Filter.
4. Click Edit. If the provider appears in more than one department and you need to deactivate GroupCall for that provider in all departments, click Bulk Edit.
5. Select Use custom settings.
6. Message type — Disable the following options (remove the checkmarks from the boxes):
   • Enable phone calls
   • Enable emails
   • Enable text messages
7. Click Save.