The After Hours Program Setting will send a standard "after hours" message to patients when their text-based response triggers an alert, so that the patient understands that their care team will follow up on the alert during regular business hours. This article describes how this feature works.
Provider Contact Business Hours
Before we talk about the setting itself, we need to familiarize ourselves with the Business Hours Provider Contact setting. As a brief reminder, a Provider Contact is associated with a Patient's program and is where Alert notifications are sent. To add new contacts as well as view or edit existing contacts, click the Account dropdown in the top-right corner of the screen, then Provider Directory.
Clicking the Edit button for a specific Provider Contact will open the edit modal. Under the Contact Information section, we can see the Business Hours.
The Business Hours can be edited to indicate both days that this Provider Contact works, as well as if they're open all day or the specific business hours that they have. Ensuring that this setting is accurate is important for the proper functioning of the After Hours Program Setting.
Enabling or disabling the setting
The After Hours Program Setting can be enabled or disabled at the account level as well as at the patient level.
Account Configuration
To access the Account Configuration page, click the Account dropdown in the top-right corner of the screen, then Account Configuration, then Alert / Status Thresholds.
Only a sub-set of our programs currently support this feature. We can tell that a program supports it by clicking on a Program. If we see the Inform Business Hour dropdown, that means the program supports the After Hours Program Setting.
Switching this setting to Yes will enable this setting for all patients who are enrolled in that program.
Patient Level
To toggle on or off this setting at a patient level, navigate to that Patient's Details page, then Manage Prescription, then Thresholds.
Switching this setting to Yes or No will only affect this patient's specific program.
Effect once turned on
Once the After Hours Program Setting is turned on, the following will occur:
- When a Patient texts in a value that triggers an alert, CareSignal will check the Business Hours of the Provider Contact associated with that Patient's program.
- If the day and time fall outside of that Provider Contact's Business Hours, the following message is sent:
- For your info: you've reached us after hours. Someone will follow up with you during business hours of M-F 8am - 5:30pm*. If it's an emergency, please call 911
- * This value will change based on the Provider Contact's Business Hours.
- A Spanish version of the above message is sent if the Patient's program is in Spanish.
- This message is not editable.
- If the day and time do not fall outside of the Provider Contact's Business Hours, then the After Hours message is not sent. Also, if the Patient is receiving phone calls for their program outreach, they are not texted the above message.