Communication

Everything that arrives, and everything you send

A practice does not communicate through one channel. Referrals come by fax. Patients want a text. Staff need to reach each other without walking down the corridor. Records get requested by other providers. Handled separately, each of those becomes its own pile — and the pile that matters most is usually the one nobody is watching.

In NovoClinical they run through the same system as the chart, which means what arrives can be attached to the patient it belongs to rather than left in a tray.

Fax that lands in the chart

Fax is unglamorous and it is not going anywhere. Incoming faxes arrive electronically, are routed to the right person or queue, and can be mapped directly to the patient and the appointment they relate to — so a referral letter or an outside result becomes part of the record instead of a scan somebody has to file later.

Outgoing faxes are sent from within the system, with status tracked, so you can tell whether something actually arrived rather than assuming it did.

Patient messaging by text and email

Send appointment reminders, recall notices and practice announcements by SMS or email. Messages can be sent to one patient or in bulk, using templates so the wording is consistent and nobody is composing the same message for the four hundredth time.

Replies come back into the system rather than to somebody’s personal handset, and the exchange is recorded against the patient. Reminder text can be tailored to the reason for visit, so a patient coming in fasting is told to fast.

Secure messaging between clinicians

Direct secure messaging supports clinician-to-clinician exchange with other practices and health systems using the recognised standard for it — so clinical information moves without being printed, faxed and re-scanned at the other end.

Internal chat, without the side channel

Staff can message each other inside the system while working on the same patient record. It keeps the “is room three ready?” conversation off personal phones and out of channels the practice has no record of and no control over.

Referrals, tracked both ways

Referrals out are recorded with who you sent to and why. Referrals in are logged and mapped to the patient. What is usually missing in a practice is the closing half — whether the patient was actually seen and whether anything came back — and that is visible here rather than assumed.

Records requests

Requests for medical records are handled as a tracked piece of work rather than an email somebody is dealing with. The request, what was released, and when, are all recorded — which matters when the question is asked again a year later.