What is External Communications Ingestion?

External Communications Ingestion allows your organization to consolidate patient messages from various systems, including Artera, your EMR, and third-party vendors, into one place. While Artera offers API integrations for direct message delivery, External Communication Fusion provides a solution for systems that do not use these APIs, enabling the display of external messaging data within Artera. This creates a comprehensive view of all communications with patients.

By unifying messaging data, staff can gather a complete understanding of patient interactions, improving the patient experience and facilitating better communication across the care journey.

How does External Communications Ingestion work? 

Your organization will share .CSV files with Artera through an SFTP containing the messages your organization has sent to patients. These messages will then be processed and displayed within Artera’s Patients Area and Analytics Plus reports.

Patients Area Example

There are two ways to view External Communication for a patient through the Patients Area.

Navigation Bar

In the Navigation Bar, select Patients. On the Patient Search page, enter the first name, last name, full name, or the unique patient identifier of a patient. As you type, suggested patients, with their unique identifiers, will appear in the drop-down.

Once you select a patient, you will be routed to their History tab.

Use the Message Type filter to filter by External.

External communication history for the patient will display.

Patient Facesheet

In the Patient Facesheet, select View Patient to navigate to a patient's communication history.

Then, use the Message Type filter to filter by External.

How is External Communications Ingestion set up?

Please connect with your Customer Success Representative. Your Artera Project Manager will run all necessary meetings and your Technical Project Lead will engage with you or your third-party vendor counterparts for the integration setup. 

Operational Decisions

Your Artera Representative will work with you to align the concepts in your external messaging service to Artera’s specifications. 

Customers will need to review their existing APIs with Artera, particularly the use of MessagingAPI to ensure that the external data Artera is ingesting from the .CSV is not redundant. 

Artera Practices

Your Artera Representative will work with you to create a new Shell Practice for message ingestion and storage purposes. 
NOTE: External communication messages that were delivered to patients will not display in Patient Channels. These messages will only appear in the Patients Area and Artera Analytics Plus.

Integration

Your Technical Project Lead will work closely with you and your vendors to configure the Artera-hosted SFTP if one does not already exist.

Once the SFTP is configured and the value mapping is complete, you or your vendors will send a sample file to Artera for review.

Reporting on External Communications

Artera Analytics Plus customers can use the External Communications Ingestion Dashboard to determine how many messages are being consumed into Artera by this process. 

FAQs

1. What is the frequency that the flat file should be sent through the SFTP? What frequency is Artera checking to see if a flat file is available in the SFTP?
   This varies by customer and the database you are using to retrieve the data from, along with the size of the .CSV file. 
2. Are External Communications Ingestion messages visible within the Patient Channel?
   No, these messages are only visible within the History view in the Patients Area.