Additional Message Settings

On the Main Menu, click Settings > Communicator. In the left menu, under Practice Links — Communicator, click Additional Message Settings

Effective messaging to patients can drive payment collection, reduce no shows, and increase Patient Portal adoption and overall patient engagement. To improve the effectiveness of automated messages, athenahealth may make slight changes to text to emphasize the call to action or alter email subject lines to draw attention to the message (we do not make changes to your branding). athenahealth then compares the performance of the original message against the performance of the slightly altered message; these comparisons are referred to as "A/B testing."

To see the latest athenaCommunicator email or text messages sent to your patients as part of A/B testing, you can use the Patient Communication Activity report and the Patient Communication History page.

athenahealth uses A/B testing to determine how our patient messaging can be improved. At athenahealth, A/B testing means taking an existing message (message A) and creating a minor variant of that message (message B). Message A is sent out for some practices, whereas message B is sent out for other practices. The system randomizes the distribution of these messages to patients.

athenahealth then analyzes how message A performs against message B. Does one message type receive more patient clicks? What is the level of patient engagement for message A versus message B? This data drives the way we optimize patient messaging.

A/B testing involves very minor changes to what your patients see in some message types, such as a slight difference in the text that appears on a button. In some cases, we may add informative copy to an email to learn whether this information drives higher rates of patient engagement.

Important: athenahealth never uses A/B testing to introduce significant changes to athenaCommunicator messages that may potentially confuse a patient.

By default, A/B testing of athenaCommunicator messages is enabled for your practice (no action is needed on your part to enroll in A/B testing). When A/B testing is enabled for your practice, your patients and your staff are actively helping us improve our messaging services.

Note: You can see the latest athenaCommunicator email or text messages sent to your patients as part of A/B testing on the Patient Communication Activity report and the Patient Communication History page.

If you want to disable or reenable A/B testing of athenaCommunicator messages for your organization, you can use the Additional Message Settings page.

1. Display the Additional Message Settings page: On the Main Menu, click Settings > Communicator. In the left menu, under Practice Links — Communicator, click Additional Message Settings.
2. Opt in to A/B testing of messages — Set this option to OFF or ON.
   • The option is set to ON (A/B testing of messages is enabled).
     
     
   • The option is set to OFF (A/B testing of messages is disabled).
     
     

Important: The preference that you set on the Additional Message Settings page requires an overnight refresh to take effect.