Automatic email notifications are triggered for both patients and senders whenever a consult and/or referral status is changed from "New" to "Booked"/"Cancelled"/"Declined", or a referral's appointment date or time is changed.
Simply "Accepting" an eConsult and/or eReferral does not typically send an email notification (unless you are in the uncommon scenario that the eReferral is submitted under an eRequest specifically configured to do so).
Determining which email address(es) notifications are sent to depends on the conditions under which the consult/referral was sent and the nature of the notification.
- An example of the notification email provided to senders, receivers, and patients can be seen by expanding the image on the right.
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Notification Email Rules
Email Notifications for Referrers
Notification emails are sent to the sender/referrer when:
- An appointment date is booked, changed, or removed
- Booking comments are added or changed
- The consult and/or referral is forwarded
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The consult and/or referral is declined and returned to the original referrer*
*Note: If the referral has been previously forwarded to an additional stakeholder who then declines the referral, the original referrer will not receive a notification email regarding the declination.
- A secure message is sent to the sender/referrer (patients do not receive this message)
Notifications will be sent based on the following conditions:
An Ocean user is associated with the referral
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Notifications will be sent to the first email address that is set, based on the following order of email addresses in the user's My Account page (found in the Ocean portal, clicking on your name at top right hand corner, and selecting "My Account"):
- Referral Notification Email
- Clinical Delegate Email
- The user's Email Address
If the referring Ocean user has been removed from the Ocean site, notifications will be sent to the first email address that is set, based on the following order of email addresses in the Ocean Site:
- Default Incoming Referral Notification Email for the Ocean Site
- Clinical Administrator / Ocean Support Contact for the Ocean Site
- The email address associated with the Ocean Site Payer's user account
The referrer was not logged in to an Ocean user account, but provided a specific notification email when sending the referral
Notifications will be sent to the provided email.
Email Notifications for Referral Delegates
If a delegate user sends a referral on behalf of a referring provider, Ocean will use the provider's user settings to determine where the notifications are directed as above.
Accordingly, the delegate user will not receive notifications themselves, unless the provider is no longer a user on the Ocean site, in which case email notifications will be sent to:
- The delegate's Referral Notification Email
- The delegate user's Email Address
In the case that both the provider and the delegate have been removed from the Ocean site, email notifications will be sent to the first available email address from the following list:
- Default Incoming Referral Notification Email for the Ocean Site
- Clinical Administrator / Ocean Support Contact for the Ocean Site
- The email address associated with the Ocean Site Payer's user account
Email Notifications for Receivers
Notification emails are sent to the receiver when:
- Any new consults and/or referrals are received to the site
- A secure message is sent to the recipient
- The consult and/or referral is canceled
- The consult/referral is forwarded to the recipient and then revoked
- Notification emails will be sent either at the offering level, the listing level, or the site level, depending on how notifications are configured for the site.
- Notifications regarding a specific consult/referral will be sent to the first email address that is set, based on the following order of email addresses in the site's Admin View (of the Ocean Portal):
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- Offering Notification Email
- Set by the site in the specific Health Service Offering tagged in the "Service Details" section of a site's "Directory Listing"
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- Listing Notification Email
- Set by the site in the "Advanced" section of the "Directory Listing"
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- Default Incoming Referral Notification Emails
- Set by the site in the "Referrals Configuration" section
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- Clinical Administrator/Ocean Support Contact
- Set by the site in the "Site Account" section
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- Site Payer's email address
- Set by the site in the "Billing" section
- Note: You can list multiple emails under each section by listing them out, separating each email address with commas (,) or semicolons (;).
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Email Notifications for Patients
- For an email notification to be sent to the patient, the patient's email address must be included in the referral (which is only permitted after an acknowledgment of the patient's email consent).
- You can enter, update, or remove a patient's email address at any time by editing the patient demographics within the consult/referral window.
Notification emails are sent to the patient when:
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- The referral is successfully sent
- An appointment date is booked, removed, or changed
- Booking comments are added or changed
- The referral is forwarded
- The referral is canceled
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The referral is declined and returned to the original referrer*.
*Note: In some circumstances, the referral recipient may opt out of notifying the patient of the declination. Further, if the referral has been previously forwarded to an additional stakeholder who then declines the referral, the patient will not receive a notification email regarding the declination.
- For more details about eReferral-related email notifications that are sent to patients, please refer to "What email notifications will patients receive regarding their eReferrals?".
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Disabling Email Notifications
- If you are a receiving site and would like to disable automatic email notifications to patients, you can do so in the "Site Features" section of the Admin Settings page (in the Ocean Portal).
