Med Access: Which Cell Number and Email Address does Ocean use for Patient Reminders?

Med Access has the ability to store multiple contact methods in the Phone List of a patient's chart (e.g. "Personal - Cell", "Work - Cell", "Home - Cell", "Personal - Email", etc).

For Patient Reminders, Ocean will send a text message to the last "Cell" number in the Phone List and send an email to the last email address in the Phone List. If a patient denies text message consent, we recommend storing the mobile number as a different Phone Type 'Group' (e.g. "Home - Phone", "Work - Phone" or "Other").

The image below shows that the last "Cell" number will receive the Text Message Reminder, and that the last email address will receive the email.

Important Note about Multiple "Cell" Type Phone Numbers or Email Addresses

Please note that when a patient chart has multiple "Cell" type phone numbers or email addresses, it is important to distinguish the proper phone number and email address which should have patient reminders sent to. This is done within Med Access by specifying the Sequence Number for each contact method as shown below.

  • Open the patient's chart and navigate to the Demographics tab. Under the "Address & Phone" section, select 'Phone List'.
  • Opening the Phone List displays the list of all phone numbers and emails. To view the Sequence Number for a listed contact method, press the Edit icon on the right hand side. This will open the 'Update Phone' window.
  • Within the 'Update Phone' window, the Sequence Number for the contact method you selected can be seen in the bottom right corner.
  • Ensure that the Sequence Number for the specific Cell type number that you would like Text Message Reminders to send to is higher than the Sequence Number for any other Cell type numbers. Ocean will send the Text Message Reminder to the Cell type number with the highest Sequence Number. Apply the same principle to email addresses, if multiple addresses are present.
  • For example, if a patient has a listed "Personal - Cell" with the Sequence Number of "1", while their "Work - Cell" has a Sequence Number of "2" (or greater), Ocean will send the Text Message Reminder to the "Work - Cell" number, since it has a higher Sequence Number.
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