Contacts are people (or companies) who aren't patients, but are professionally related to your patients in some way. Perhaps they're a referring GP, or an insurance company, or a practitioner at another clinic.
If a contact is set up as a referring doctor, you can easily send letters to them—but what if someone you add to your contacts settings is not a doctor who referred the patient to you? You can still send them letters, but there will be a bit of setup first!
We'll walk you through the steps below! 👇
Step one: add the "contact" placeholder to the letter template
Head to Settings, and then Letter templates:
Click the Add letter template button at the top of the screen:
(If you're wanting to add contact placeholders to an existing template, simply select one from your list.)
Make sure that when creating or editing 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.
Save the template!
Step two: select contact details when creating the letter
If you want to send the letter to a contact, you'll have the option to select them when writing the letter.
You will need to be sure to select the correct template when creating the new letter—the contact placeholder details from step one will be required here, and unless you have chosen a template that includes contact placeholders, it won't work.
Add a new letter for the patient, and select the contact you want to send to:
Cliniko will automatically put the contact's name and other relevant details where the placeholders were:
Create the letter! 🎉
Step three: email the letter to the contact
When you email the letter, you'll see the contact's email address as an option to choose:
Tick that "Contact" box! ✅
Cliniko knows which contact to send the letter to based on what you did in step two (select the contact name).
Send the email, and you're all done! 🎉
If you have any questions about contacts, letters, or anything else, our support team is here to help! 🤗