When patients are sent Patient Reminder emails, staff can also use this opportunity to have patients confirm their upcoming appointments, which can then be synced back to the EMR and the Ocean eReferral (if applicable).
How to enable appointment confirmations for Patient Reminders
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- Log into the Ocean portal. Click the "Menu" button in the top left corner and select "Patient Reminders".
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- Click "Settings" in the top right corner. Create a new Reminder Rule by clicking Add Reminder Rule or Edit an existing one.
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- In the Edit Reminder Rule page, under the "Appointment Confirmation" heading, use the drop down to select enabled. Remember to Save your changes.
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How patients confirm their appointments via Patient Reminders
1. Reminders via Email
- When appointment confirmation has been enabled, the hyperlink in the email body will appear as 'Confirm Appointment'.
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- The hyperlink in the email will take the patient to the Ocean Health Messenger, where they will be required to validate their identity before proceeding.
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The relevant appointment details will be displayed, and the patient can click the 'Confirm My Appointment' button. Once clicked, the appointment status in your EMR will be automatically updated to 'confirmed'.
Note: The name of your clinic (e.g., "Demo Site" in this example) corresponds with the Organization Title in your Ocean Site.
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- The patient will be prompted to continue to the Health Messenger to access any secure messages or outstanding forms.
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- If a secure message and/or eForms were included in the email template, the patient can now access the message and complete any forms.
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2. Reminders via Text Message
- If a reminder has a secure message and/or attachment and/or eForm and/or appointment confirmation and the patient has an email on file, the text message will instruct the patient to check their email.
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- If a reminder has an appointment confirmation enabled and the patient doesn't have an email on file, the patient will receive a link in the text message to confirm their appointment. After clicking the link, the patient will be presented with a screen confirming their most recent upcoming appointment date, time, and provider.
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Note: The name of your clinic (e.g., "Demo Site" in this example) corresponds with the Organization Title in your Ocean Site.
How appointment confirmations appear in the EMR
- When a patient confirms their appointment, the status for their appointment will changed to 'Confirmed' in PS Suite. This is denoted by a green circle icon by default.
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Note: The existing appointment status in PS Suite must be the default 'No Status' value for Ocean to successfully update it to 'Confirmed'.
- When a patient confirms their appointment, the status for their appointment will changed to 'Confirmed' in Med Access.
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Note: The existing appointment status in Med Access must be 'Booked' in order for Ocean to successfully update it to 'Confirmed'.
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When a patient confirms their appointment, the appointment will be updated to include the 'Confirmed' status in Accuro.
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- The specific icon displayed for the 'Confirmed' status can be customized by an Accuro EMR administrator within the 'Manage Priorities, Reasons and Statuses' Accuro EMR settings area.
Note
- Ocean will always attempt to update the appointment status to 'Confirmed' regardless of any existing Accuro appointment status.
- In the rare case that an appointment is not associated with an Accuro Office ID (generally a result of a data migration issue within the EMR), Ocean will not update the appointment status to 'Confirmed'.
Related: Ocean Reminder Sent Status
Ocean also offers the ability to set a specific custom appointment status to indicate when a Patient Reminder was sent to the patient by Ocean. For information on how to set up your custom status in Accuro, please refer to: Set Your Custom Status.
- If a custom status is set, Ocean will change the appointment status when the Ocean reminder is sent.
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In the Patient Reminder settings area, OSCAR Pro clinics can customize the status value that Ocean will update the appointment to when a patient confirms their appointments by adjusting the 'Appointment Status for Appointment Confirmations' setting. When a patient confirms their appointment, the status of the appointment will be updated.
- In the example image to the right, the 'Appointment Status for Appointment Confirmations' setting has been configured to update the appointment to status code 'h' (the default 'Confirmed' status in OSCAR Pro).
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Note: Ocean will attempt to update the appointment status upon confirmation when there is no existing status code for the appointment, or when the existing status code is code 't' (the default 'To Do' status value in OSCAR Pro), or when the existing status code is the status chosen for the 'Appointment Status for Sent Ocean Reminders' setting within the Ocean Site's Patient Reminder settings area.
Related: Ocean Reminder Sent Status
Ocean also offers the ability to set a specific custom appointment status to indicate when a Patient Reminder was sent to the patient by Ocean. For information on how to configure this, please refer to: Set your Appointment Status Setting.
- In the example image to the right, the 'Appointment Status for Sent Ocean Reminders' setting has been set to code 'h', which has been configured within the OSCAR Pro EMR to represent 'Ocean Reminder Sent'.
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Patient Reminders are only available for integrated EMRs.
How appointment confirmation appears in the Ocean eReferral
If the appointment that the patient is confirming corresponds to the appointment that is scheduled within their eReferral, the referral appointment will be confirmed.
- The 'Confirmed' checkbox within the eReferral becomes enabled.
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- This automatically moves from referral from the 'Booked Unconfirmed' status folder to the 'Booked Confirmed' status folder.
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