If you want to communicate with patients, referring doctors, or other third parties (and have a record of it in Cliniko), letters will help you out! Letters can be emailed directly from your account, and they're stored in the communications log, which makes it easy to have a record of what was sent, when, and to whom.
This guide will walk you through each step of the letter process:
Read on 👇 for how to use letters in Cliniko!
Step one: create letter templates
Before you can do anything with letters, you will need to create templates. Head to Settings, and then Letter templates:
Click the Add letter template button at the top of the screen:
You'll be able to add in the details for your new letter template on the next page. There will be a few required fields!
The template name (this is only for your internal reference)
The body text (what will be shown in the letter)
The default email subject
You can use placeholders for things like the patient's name, your business address, and more. Check out the below example example of new template:
You can add practitioner signatures to your letters, but note that they will only show up on PDFs. Learn how to set that up here.
Click Create letter template, and you're done! 🎉 You can now use this template to write and send letters to patients.
Understanding the letter template editor
When you're writing the content of your letter template, you'll probably want to write some generic text, and use the placeholders:
Placeholders "pull" information into the actual letter when you're writing it. So, for example, the General.CurrentDate placeholder would pull in the date you're writing the letter! Cliniko is pretty smart, so it knows what information to put in place of the placeholder!
The text you include when creating the template can be edited when you're writing the actual letter. If you need to remove or add anything when writing the patient-specific letter, you'll be able to.
Some notes on placeholders in letter templates
Letters can be sent to patients, referring doctors, contacts, or other third parties.
For some of these, you will need to add a specific placeholder to the letter template to ensure that you are able to send the letter to the chosen person. Otherwise, the letter won't function as expected.
We'll go through this below! 👇
Patients
For anything patient-related, select a placeholder from the PATIENTS drop-down (if your account's terminology is set to "client", this drop-down would say CLIENTS):
Contacts
If you want to send a letter to a contact, you'll need to make sure that when creating the template, you select at least one item from the CONTACT drop-down:
In the below example, we can see that the letter template begins with the Contact.FirstName placeholder:
When the contact placeholder is added, Cliniko will know when you create a letter using this template, it's meant to be sent to a contact, and will give you the option to select which contact you want to send to (that person's details will then replace the placeholders). If the contact placeholder isn't use in the template, you won't have the option to select a contact when creating the actual letter.
Referring doctors
If you're planning on sending letters to referring doctors, you will need to make sure to select at least one item from the REFERRING DOCTOR drop-down:
Similar to contacts, Cliniko will understand what to put in any referring doctor placeholders when it comes time to write the letter!
Now that your templates have been created, you can start writing your letters! ✍️
Step two: writing letters
First, find the patient you want to write the letter for. Click on Letters:
Then, press the Add letter button:
On the next page, you'll see the option to select a letter template to use. If you have more than one, you'll be able to toggle between templates. You'll notice that if you select a template that includes a contact placeholder, another field will appear, and you will need to select the contact (and relevant practitioner/business information):
You can give the letter a description (which will be for internal use only), and click the Create letter button:
Creating the letter won't automatically send it, so if there is a typo or you need to make other changes, don't worry! You can edit it before sending.
After you've created the letter, you'll see a preview show up on a new page:
This is just a preview—the letter hasn't been sent! Depending on your account settings, this letter may be visible only to administrators and the practitioner who wrote it, and it may not be visible to receptionists. (An administrator on your account can check those settings if you're not sure.)
On to the next step: sending the letter!
Step three: sending letters
When previewing the letter, you'll see that you have options to edit it, print it, email it, download it as a PDF, or archive it (this last one is probably not going to be used too often, but you could archive the letter if it was created in error or something like that):
Printing the letter will do exactly that—print it (assuming your computer is hooked up to a printer! 🖨️ ). Downloading it will download a PDF to your computer, so you could provide it to the recipient another way (for example, as an attachment from your own email address).
The benefit of emailing a letter directly from Cliniko is that you'll be able to keep a record of it in the communications log. This makes it easy if you needed to check when something was sent, who emailed it, and more!
If you want to email the letter from Cliniko, press the Email button, and you'll see a pop-up that includes all the options for emailing the letter:
There are a few important things to keep in mind about how/who you send to!
The patient's email address will show at the top by default, but you will need to tick the box ✅ next to "Patient" to ensure this letter is sent to them!
If there is a referring doctor linked to the patient, that person's email will show up, too, and you can opt to send the letter to them, as well.
You can even add a custom new email address (or several) by ticking "New recipient", and this will open up an area for you to include the new email address:
The subject line will be what you had set up in the letter template, but the field can be edited so if you wanted to change that, you can!
Also, when it comes to who the letter is being sent from (meaning, who the recipient sees as the "sender" in their inbox), you can choose the practitioner, or the business. In the "Send as" field, you can toggle between your choices:
While all emails that you send through Cliniko are technically sent "from" Cliniko, your patients will see the name of the practitioner or your clinic as the sender. When they reply, their response will go to the email address you've set up—and if you have multiple clinics, you can specify different "reply to" email addresses for each one!
Here's an example of what this letter would look like in a patient's inbox ("send as" was the clinic):
While you will have a record of this outgoing letter in your communications log, if a patient replies, their reply won't be sent back into Cliniko—it will go to your inbox. There will not be a record of the patient's reply in Cliniko.
Finally, you'll have the option of sending the letter as the content of the email, or sending it as a PDF attachment:
If you send the letter as the content of the email, you don't need to add any additional text. If you'd like to send it as a PDF attachment, you'll have the option to include extra email content:
Whenever you're ready, press the Send email button. A little notification will pop up in the lower right-hand corner of the screen to let you know it's been sent:
The letter will then live within the Letters section of the patient's profile:
It will show up in the communications log, too!
For more information on letters, feel free to check out these resources:
Of course, if you have any other questions, our support team is here to help! 🤗