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Appointment Reminder Clinic Onboarding and Setup

  • Updated

Background & Purpose
Analysis Phase
     Onboarding Clinics
     Copying toolkit components into the work item folder
     Clinic Specific Settings
     Request for SMS Line
     POS Appointment Analysis
     Appointment Type Report
Dev Phase
     Prepare the PPM
     Prepare the Deployment Instructions
Testing Phase
CC, Deployment Preparation & Deployment
Post-Deployment Tasks

Background & Purpose

A clinic can opt into using appointment reminders, which sends messages to clients via SMS. A new SMS line and additional configurations will be required to deploy this feature to them.

This article focuses on how to onboard a clinic and the next steps if the clinic agrees to use the appointment reminder feature. It will reference files found in the shared folder toolkit:

\\vch.ca\departments\PCAC_EMR\01 - PCCEMR\08-EMR Toolkits\08-08 Appt Reminder Toolkit

For general system information on Appointment Reminder, visit the internal Appointment Reminder Overview article. For clinic workflow or explanation on features that clinic users have use of, please see the external article instead.

Analysis Phase

Notes:

  • Before analysis starts, even if it's gone through intake, a quick check with Informatics (Erika and Jeb) is required to confirm we should apply appointment reminder to this clinic. They have a better sense of the future roadmap and may reject the request.
  • The usual steps should be taken during Analysis phase. The sections below outline additional tasks to take to streamline this phase.

Onboarding Clinics

When discussing with the clinic about integrating appointment reminder into their workflow, the PowerPoint file Appointment Reminder Summary.pptx can be used to facilitate this conversation.

Copying toolkit components into the work item folder

Use the usual work item folder structure as a base, then copying the following files from the toolkit into the specified folders:

  • Analysis subfolder
    • Appointment Reminder Summary.pptx
    • SMS Appointment Reminder POS Configurations.pdf
    • TEMPLATE-ClinicAppointmentAnalysis.xlsx
    • TEMPLATE-Appointment Types.xlsx
  • Dev subfolder
    • SMS-PPM.vbs
  • Emails subfolder
    • Request for new SMS line.msg
  • Work item root folder
    • TEMPLATE-sysconfig.xlsx
    • TEMPLATE-sysconfig-GOLIVE.xlsx
    • TEMPLATE-sysconfig-SOFTLAUNCH.xlsx

Clinic Specific Settings

Send the file SMS Appointment Reminder POS Configurations.pdf to the clinic to fill in the pieces they can customize. Before sending over the file:

  1. Insert the clinic's POS name found in People & Places in the first editable field
  2. Insert the POS Display Name. Note: if their letterhead is using a print variable for this, it will then be found in the POS setting's window > Financial > Letterhead > Name field
  3. Insert the POS Phone Number. Note: if their letterhead is using a print variable for this, it will then be found in the POS setting's window > General > Phone1 field

Limitations to consider:

  • The POS Display Name and POS Phone Number are from what is set for the POS. If they wish to display a different name or number and not affect the letterhead or other areas of EMR, they must use the custom message template route.
  • If the Provider's Name Format is another option than "Title, Full Name & designation (Ex. Dr. Jane Doe, MD)", then it will use the custom message route.
  • The "Covers By" is only available when using the custom message route. If they like the default message but would like "Covers By" support, the default message can be recreated through the custom message route.
  • For preferred time of day to run the scheduled task, it is listed as preferred because there is no guarantee the exact timeframe they request is available. Scheduled Tasks in Profile EMR must be ran sequentially. The typical duration of the job runs around these timeframes will also need to be considered when selecting the start time of the task.

Request for SMS Line

Note: Do this as early as possible. This will take several days to finalize and sign off depending on the speed of all involved parties. Then once the agreement is signed, additional weeks are required to coordinate a time with Intrahealth for deployment. 

  1. Send an email to Zuber Jiwa with CC to Yogiraj Kachhela, requesting a new SMS line agreement document for the clinic. The template is found in the toolkit with filename Request for new SMS Line.msg
  2. Forward the received agreement to the relevant parties to be signed.

  3. Save the finalized signed agreement to the Analysis subfolder.

  4. Send the signed agreement back and organize a time with an Intrahealth resource to assist in deployment.

POS Appointment Analysis

As part of the Analysis phase, use the TEMPLATE-ClinicAppointmentAnalysis.xlsx file to figure out a few key pieces:

  • How much time do we need to allot for the clinic's schedule task?
  • On average, how many segments are anticipated to send monthly? Intrahealth will be billing VCH per SMS segment.
  • What are the typical appointment types the clinic use and which will send out reminders?

The instructions and required SQLS to populate the tables are built into the spreadsheet. A technical resource (dev or EMR SA) is required to run them in the Reporting DB.

Appointment Type Report

Copy SQL2 table results from the TEMPLATE-ClinicAppointmentAnalysis.xlsx into the TEMPLATE-Appointment Types.xlsx to have a presentable format to give the onboarding clinic. The clinic may ask questions or change workflows based on their review of their appointment type summary.

Dev Phase

Prepare the PPM

The only dev piece required is to prepare the Post Process Macro (PPM) code.

  1. Rename the template file SMS PPM.vbs to have the POS code as a suffix in the filename. Example: SMS PPM AVG.vbs

  2. Update the Param1.Value to be the POS code. If the clinic is fine using the standard appointment reminder message, this is the only changed required. Save the file and it's ready for deployment.

  3. If the clinic requests to use their own custom messaging, the code for this must be inserted before the macro call to APPTREMBYPOS. The text string needs to be assigned to Param2. There are comments related to custom messaging in the SMS PPM file to guide the dev on what keywords they can use to have values populated into the string. 

    If building the custom messaging is complex, this will require Tech Review. If it is a simple message or uses the standard appointment reminder message, no Tech Review required. If no Tech Review required, add a note to the JIRA comments or create a Tech Review subtask and immediate mark it done with a comment.

Prepare the Deployment Instructions

Implementation requires coordination with Intrahealth (IH) who have to do part of the setting changes in production, and the clinic who need to prepare their staff before release. Coordination between the two required parties can be difficult, so two routes are possible: single day or a two day deployment. 

  1. If an agreement can be made between the requested target date by the clinic and arranging the IH resource to deploy, use the file TEMPLATE-sysconfig.xlsx and delete the other two sysconfigs. This file already contains the basic steps for deploying appointment reminder to a clinic end-to-end.

  2. If it's best to have IH deploy their portion first and then release the functionality to the clinic at a later date (maybe there's a few decisions that need finalizing with the clinic still but IH is ready to go), use TEMPLATE-sysconfig-SOFTLAUNCH.xlsx and TEMPLATE-sysconfig-GOLIVE.xlsx files, and delete the third sysconfig. These files are already broken down based on when each section should be executed.

For all sysconfig files, update all yellow highlighted cells with clinic specific settings. Reminder to update the reference to the PPM file to match the name change from the Prepare the PPM section. Once all highlighted cells are customized to the needs of this release, remove the yellow highlights.

Testing Phase

A template of test cases are saved under Appointment Reminder Test Case Template folder. Copy of the whole set to the clinic's specific CC test folder, then replace values in the double angled brackets/chevrons with the clinic's specific details and configurations. For example, where <<REPLACE WITH CLINIC CODE>> is found, it should be replaced by QDE if onboarding qathet Diabetes Education Centre

Template location: https://qmsoftwaretest.testrail.io/index.php?/suites/view/18&group_by=cases:section_id&group_order=asc&display_deleted_cases=0&group_id=36489

CC, Deployment Preparation & Deployment

Before the CC is submitted:

  • A date and time must be coordinated with IH resources to setup the SMS line. IH will send a meeting invite once it's decided. 
  • Create two JIRA subtasks: Soft-Launch and Go-Live. Resolve both once both phases are validated, putting the assignee as the SA who deployed.

When preparing the CC submission email, ensure the following information:

  • The Date/time Deployment value is the date and time agreed upon with Intrahealth
  • For the Who to implement section, include the Intrahealth resource's name too
  • For soft-launch, Add to Master Training value is "No - we do not want to setup any Twilio service configurations in the training environments". Go-Live should be "Yes"

Once the CC is approved for soft-launch, create a 15 mins meeting just before the IH meeting for the SAs to remind them to:

  • Log into Profile EMR Production ahead
  • Complete the first part, which is to update the T PRACTICE client to use a valid cell phone number they can check
  • Ensure they have Team Viewer available on their laptop, as the IH resource will need to take control of the computer at some points of the deployment. If they don't have it available yet, it can be downloaded at www.intrahealth.com/tv 

For deployment, ensure the SA attends the meeting sent by IH and have followed the pre soft-launch tasks outlined in the meeting beforehand. They will run through the sysconfig instructions with IH. As mentioned earlier, we do NOT want to deploy this in VTM. We will not be supporting this feature in any of our training environments. 

Post-Deployment Tasks

For validation, the best way to confirm it has been deployed properly is to wait until the scheduled task is next due to run. To verify:

  1. Review its Scheduled Task. The Last Run Result should be Completed and the Last Run Time should be the expected first run time.
  2. The next verification is one of two options:
    • If appointment reminders are expected to send, review the Control Centre > Manage > SMS Log module.
    • If the clinic has not done preparations before their go-live to ensure the first run has reminders to send (ex: did not collect any client consent to contact), the next best way to check is to go to Reports > Stored Reports. Even if no messages are sent, there should be an item for the job run. The name of the stored report starts with Scheduled Patient Appointment Reminder. Below is an example. In the case if the clinic did not prepare ahead for reminders to send out during launch, the Clients contacted value should be 0 instead.
      Internal-StoredReports.png

Post validation, notify the clinic that they are now integrated with appointment reminder and let them know how many were sent on the task's first run. This would also be a good time to remind them of the external Zendesk articles that are relevant to this feature:

Also post-validation, update the Appointment Reminder Overview Zendesk to add the clinic's information under the Appointment Reminder Enabled Clinics section.