Many times after seeing a patient you may want to schedule a reminder for your staff to call back that client to check on your patient to see how they are doing. In order to schedule the reminder, you can either attach the reminder to a billable item (How do I attach a reminder to a billable item?) or create it manually (How do I create a manual reminder?).
Once you have started scheduling callback reminders, your staff will need to run the Patient Reminders Report for Callback reminders on a regular basis.
Running the Patient Reminders Report
- Navigate to the Menu > Reports on the sidebar.
- To run and/or edit the patient reminders report click on the edit pencil next to it.
- From here you can view past reports by clicking on either the View, PDF, or Excel icons next to the past report, or if you want to create a new report click New Run.
This will bring you to the following screen where you can apply certain filters:
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- Report Run Name - You will need to give the report a name. Typically this would be something like "10/5/15 Callbacks"
- Start Date - This is the date you want the system to start looking for reminders due. This would typically be the current date.
- End date / Number of Days past Start - You will need to enter the number of days past start and NOT the end date. The end date is derived entirely from the number of days past start, so even if you put in a date that is a year in the future, if the number of dates past start is only 30 days, the report will only look 30 days past the start date. Typically you would only be looking at the current date so you could put in a 0 or a 1.
- Types - This is where you choose which types of reminders you want to send. Callback reminders are the only INTERNAL reminders, so you will only need to highlight this type. All the other reminders are considered EXTERNAL and are sent to your clients. For more information on external vs. internal reminders please see this article - Reminder System Overview
- Classification / Client Status - This is where you can choose to only callback certain classifications and/or statuses of clients, if you have these set up.
- Sort by - This will allow you to sort your clients a certain way. This is not typically required when running a report for callback reminders.
- Species - You can choose to only run the report for a certain species.
- Click Generate when you are done choosing your filters
Once you click Generate you will see a list of all your callback reminders and the phone numbers associated with those clients. If desired, from here you can:
- Click on the Client's name to go the client profile. It will open in a new tab in your browser.
- Click on the Patient's name to go their medical record. It will open in a new tab in your browser.
- Click on the Reminder Description to go to the reminder itself. It will open in a new tab in your browser.
Once you call your client you will need to enter that into the Communication Log and indicate the callback reminder has been satisfied (i.e. completed). The below instructions provide a simplified method to accomplish this.
- From the Callback report list of reminders, click on the desired Reminder description (#3 in the screenshot below).
- The reminder opens in edit mode. From here, if desired, you can update the Description field to include necessary information about the call with the client and what you talked about.
- Click the Convert to Communication Entry button.
- Click Yes to the confirmation message to convert the reminder to a communication entry as well as satisfy the callback reminder.
- You'll be brought to the patient's medical record. If you're configured to have client communications to be recorded as part of the Patients' medical record, you'll see a completed reminder entry in the medical record.
- From here, you can click the edit pencil (1) to add more information or, if you did not update the reminder Description before converting to a communication entry to include necessary information about the call with the client and what you talked about, add a separate Client Communication Entry (2).
If you do not wish to convert the Callback Reminder to a Client Communication entry, you will still need to get rid of the reminder itself.
- Go to the Patients Reminder list either from:
- The Client Profile, Reminders section
- The Patient's Profile, Reminders section
- The Patient's Medical Record and clicking the "View Reminders" hyperlink in the Reminders monitoring box at the top of the Patients Highlights section.
- Click the X under the Deleted column to the delete for the Callback reminder signifying the reminder has been satisfied (i.e. completed).
