During critical events like IT outages or severe weather, clear communication is vital for patient safety and continuity of care. Artera streamlines the delivery of urgent updates, ensuring patients and their families receive immediate information regarding closures, power outages, and essential safety protocols.

The following features can be configured and customized to support your team’s urgent communication needs with patients.

After-Hours Auto-Response

Sometimes, patients may message into your Practice outside of its Practice Hours. For urgent situations, configure your Practice’s After-Hours Auto-Response to inform patients that the line is not being monitored. 

Include details about office closures, IT downtime, options for rescheduling appointments, the after-hours phone number, and any other relevant information. Click here to learn more about After-Hours Auto-Responses.

Bulk Messages

The "Bulk Message” action available in the "All Messages" and "Scheduled" views allows you to send the same message to up to 1,000 patients with a single action. Sending a Bulk Message from the "Scheduled" view is especially helpful when notifying scheduled patients about changes to their visit due to unexpected circumstances, like inclement weather. Click here to learn more about Bulk Messages.

Campaigns

When Bulk Messages do not suit your delivery volume needs during urgent situations, consider Campaigns. A Campaign can reach up to 30,000 patients and can be sent as soon as it is configured or scheduled to be sent at a later date. 

In times of urgency, it is recommended that Campaigns be sent from your Enterprise’s high volume toll-free number rather than your Practice line. Sending a Campaign from the toll-free number allows the message to be sent at a faster pace to patients and helps circumvent restrictions that patients’ phone carriers place on the number of texts that can be sent from a single phone number. This helps increase message deliverability, which can be important during an emergency situation. 
NOTE: Campaign calls are always made from the Practice line, regardless of which option is selected when configuring the Campaign.

Campaigns can be configured to support text, call, or email delivery methods. When identifying the patient population to send a Campaign to, you can either upload a CSV file of the patient MRNs or filter for patients with scheduled appointments. Click here to learn more about Campaigns. 

NOTE: We recommend keeping your Campaigns messages short and concise, especially if sending the message to a high volume of patients. For deliverability purposes, when sending out a large amount of Campaigns simultaneously, please ensure that your Campaign text messages consist of 160 characters of less. 

Outbound Triggers

Appointment Triggers allow Enterprise Users to build automatic message workflows that are sent to patients at designated timepoints prior to and after their scheduled appointment. 

To support your team during times of urgency, it is recommended to configure Appointment Triggers that send prior to a patient’s appointment to inform them of important details regarding the situation and how to prepare for their appointment.

For example, if your office is located in a hurricane region, consider configuring Triggers that send one or two days prior to a patient’s appointment and include weather-specific information, safety measures, and/or details on closures, etc.

These Triggers can be created and remain in an “off” status until they need to be enabled. Having the Triggers built and ready to be turned on saves your team time and effort during an urgent situation where impacted patients need to be communicated with as soon as possible. Click here to learn more about Appointment Triggers. 

Inbound Triggers

Inbound Message Triggers can also be created to set up automated responses to patients who send in questions or concerns regarding an emergent situation. For example, if there is a forecasted blizzard in the next two days, consider configuring an Inbound Message Trigger that will be prompted to send an auto-response to any patients who send in a message including the keyword “blizzard.” The auto-response could read as: “Hello. Safety is our first priority with the forecasted blizzard. If you have an upcoming appointment and wish to reschedule due to weather conditions, please call {wellPhone.}” Click here to learn about Inbound Triggers.