Overview
Communicating with your patients is simple using CCIQ’s messaging tool. Messaging allows care team members and patients an easy and seamless method for secure, bidirectional correspondence.
The care team messaging section below lists a few use cases to show how
messaging can be used to communicate with patients:
Care Team Messaging
Send a message to re-engage the patient to provide health updates. For example:
“We haven’t received an update from you since last week. How are you? Please submit your health update as soon as possible. Remember, it’s important that we get frequent updates from you to ensure your doctor knows how you’re feeling. If we don’t receive an update today, we’ll give you a call tomorrow. Thanks!”
Send a message to the patient to let them know their status has been reviewed and is within normal limits. Patients like getting positive feedback. For example:
“We’ve reviewed your health readings for this month and everything looks great! All of your responses are within normal limits. Keep up the good work!”
Send a message in response to a patient’s request. For example:
“We received your request to schedule an appointment with your doctor. Our scheduling team will reach out to you within the next 24 hours to get you scheduled. Please let us know if you need anything else. “
How to Send Messages to Patients
Follow these simple steps to send a message to a patient in the application.
Navigate to the patient’s chart in CCIQ
Select the “Comments” tab
Click “Send Message”
Type the message & add any applicable offline time (offline time should only be added for non-face-to-face activities performed outside of CCIQ). There is also an option to delegate the time to a specific type of billing in the offline time panel.
Click the blue “Send Message” button to complete
Patients will receive a notification when a message has been sent. The notification is sent in the same format as the patient has set up for reminders. Upon patient sign-in, a new message icon will be displayed. Patients can view all messages under their “Messages” tab on the website or on the CCIQ mobile App.
Note: Patients must be set up via the technology method to receive messages within the application. Patients also must login to their CCIQ account to view messages for security and privacy reasons. To keep direct messages brief, reliable, and secure, CCIQ does not allow attachments in the messaging feature.
To send a message to a patient, navigate to “Send Message” to directly communicate with patient:
Care Team view of patient message dialog. Offline time can be added for any time outside of CCIQ that was spent on non-face-to-face patient activities:
Example patient view of message from care team. Patient will be alerted they have a message, but must log into their CCIQ account to view these secure messages and maintain privacy:
Patient Messaging FAQs
CCIQ allows patients to send simple, text only messages directly to the care team. These messages are limited to 250 characters and do not support attachments due to security and concise messaging requirements for quick submission.
Patients often communicate through messaging to ask questions related to their care. For example:
“Can I get a refill on my blood pressure medication?”
“Would you provide a referral for my physical therapy?”
” I’ve experienced new symptoms since starting my new mediation, is this normal?”
Patients may send simple messages if they’ve tried to contact the care team and have been unsuccessful with other methods. For example:
“I called and left a voicemail with the nurse. Please contact me at your earliest convenience.”
Patients also communicate availability through messaging to keep the care team updated on when to expect health updates. For example:
“My family will be going out of town next week and I’ll be unable to send in my information. I’ll be back the week after and will resume updates.”
“I experienced chest pain yesterday and have been admitted to the hospital. I’ll keep you updated.”
How Patients Send Messages to their Care Team
Patients have the option to send messages to their care team within the Messages section of their account. Accounts can be accessed via the main patient website www.cciq.me or via our Mobile App.
Mobile App patients navigate to their “Messages” menu to read incoming messages or send a reply:
Patients using our website at www.cciq.me navigate to the “messages” tab on the top of their screen to view incoming messages or can send a reply message in several areas:
Patient Message Alerts
When patients send messages to your care team through the CCIQ application, the patient’s status displays as a red alert on the CCIQ Monitoring Dashboard. In addition, the Monitoring Task Panel will display a task item for viewing all unread patient messages. Simply click the task in the list to view the list of patients with unread messages.
Steps to view and clear unread patient messages:
Click the task in the Monitoring Task Panel to view the list of patients with unread/non-cleared messages
Click the alert status icon and select “View Message” to navigate to the patient’s chart in CCIQ. The message is viewable within the comment tab.
Unread messages will be highlighted and display the option to “Clear Alert”.
Once the message has been read, users may click the “Clear Alert” button to remove the message alert status. Please note, clearing message alerts does not remove a clinical alert status for the patient.
Messaging Deactivated Patients
Patient messaging also works for deactivated patients which gives your practices the ability to communicate with patients even if they aren’t actively monitored.
Active patients show as an alert on the dashboard whenever a message is pending. Deactivated patients, however, are not visible on the dashboard. Instead, there is a special task that appears anytime a message is pending for one (or more) of your non-monitored patients. The screenshot below is an example task.
This new task appears on your dashboard shortly after a patient sends a message. The task stays open until all alerts are cleared from patient’s with messages.
In the cases where your practice doesn’t want deactivated patients to continue using CCIQ, the deactivation dialog includes a convenient option for locking out patients. The dropdown has two options:
Yes – allow patient to continue logging in
No – block patient from logging in
Like always, staff may manage log-in access for deactivated patients via the Edit Patient dialog and Reset Password dialog.