Understanding contact notes

Contact notes are a key feature of Bp Comms available to practices who have upgraded to Indigo Service Pack 1.

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What is a contact note?

A contact note represents any attempt by the practice to contact a patient, by phone, letter, or any electronic method consented to by the patient. A note records: the details of the patient or person contacted (if a next of kin or carer responds, for example); the contact reason; communication method; the number of contact attempts for related communications; and the success status.

Contact notes demonstrate a detailed history of patient contact throughout clinical workflows such as pathology and clinical reminders.

When can I raise a contact note?

You can create a contact note from the following functions of Bp Premier: 

• Appointment book
• Follow up Reminders
• Follow up Inbox
• Patient demographics
• Patient list
• Patient clinical record.

The Record note button will be visible from the function's toolbar, or the right-click menu in the appointment book. Click to open a notes window. You can also resend electronic messages from a notes window. The process to record a contact note is the same no matter where you click Record Note.

Contact reasons

A contact reason indicates why the practice contacted the patient. Indigo SP1 supplies a diverse set of system contact reasons that cannot be deleted, but you can create your own in Configuration > Setup > Lists. Custom contact reasons can only be selected from manual contact notes, not from Bp Premier functions such as Follow up Inbox or appointment reminders.

Notes recorded directly from the Contact Notes list screen will default to the 'General' reason. If you have created your own practice contact reasons, you can change the reason. For example, you may create a reason of 'Invoice' , which you can use to record a contact note when you contact a patient about an invoice.

When you raise a contact note from a specific function, however, the reason will be automatically selected and you cannot change the reason. For example, contact notes raised from the appointment book default to 'Appointment'. Notes raised from Follow up Reminders default to 'Reminder'.

Viewing contact notes

So that users do not have to search or scroll through long lists of messages, when you open a notes window to view or add notes, the list of contact notes displayed is limited to the associated reason, patient, and clinical context. For example, if you click Record note to follow up a result from the Follow up Inbox, the Result note window will only show notes recorded for the select patient and report and with a reason of 'Inbox Result'.

Following up contacts and resending messages

To review the contact notes recorded for all patients, from the main menu, select View > Contact Notes, and use the filters to limit the notes displayed. By default, this will show only the last month's contact notes and default to messages that have failed. The general Contact notes windows provides an audit and allows you contact the patient again about the message either by phone or by resending the message.

To view all contact notes for a single patient, open the Patient list (F10), select a patient, and click Contact notes from the bottom row of buttons. Or open the patient demographics screen from any areas and click Contact notes.

Counting contact attempts

If you create multiple notes linked to the same report (or correspondence, etc.) Bp Premier will automatically increment the Contact Attempt No. value. You cannot change this value.

Permission to access contact notes

The user permission 'Send SMS Reminders' has been renamed to 'Send Bp Comms Messages' in Indigo SP1. This user permission now governs all electronic communication methods sent from anywhere in Bp Premier.

Permissions have been updated in Indigo SP1 to also govern access to contact notes linked to clinical functions. For example, to view contact notes created from Correspondence in in the patient record, the user must have the 'Correspondence In' permission set to 'View only' or greater. To delete a contact note linked to an investigation report, the user must have the permission 'Investigation reports' set to 'Add / Edit / Delete'.

Contact notes with a reason of 'General' can be viewed by any user with the 'Send Bp Comms Messages' permission set to 'Allowed'.

See Set up Bp Comms for SMS for more information.

Patient consent

Consent to enrol in SMS messaging and receive different types of messages from a practice is recorded in patient demographics. See Bp Comms Consent for more information.

Message status

The Message status in the bottom right of a notes window indicates whether the contact was successfully delivered, and depends on the Contact method. For example, communications by letter can be 'Sent' or 'Returned to sender'. Communications by phone can be 'Successful' (contact was made) or 'Unsuccessful' (phone rang out).

Contact Method	Message Status	Description
Face-to-face	Successful	Talked face to face with the patient.
Face-to-face	Unsuccessful	Use at the practice's discretion. An unsuccessful face to face contact.
Home ph.	Successful	Successfully contacted the patient on their home phone number.
Home ph.	Unsuccessful	Tried to call the patient on their home phone number, but could not reach them.
Letter	Sent	A letter was sent to the patient.
Letter	Returned to Sender	A letter sent to the patient, but returned to the practice.
Mobile ph.	Successful	Successfully contacted the patient on their mobile phone number.
Mobile ph.	Unsuccessful	Tried to call the patient on their mobile phone number, but could not reach them.
Phone	Successful	Successfully contacted the patient on their phone.
Phone	Unsuccessful	Tried to call the patient on their phone, but could not reach them.
SMS	Sent/Pending Delivery	The message has been sent from Bp Premier. A delivery confirmation has not yet been received.
SMS	Delivered	The message has been sent from Bp Premier and a delivery confirmation has been received. The message is available on the patient's phone.
SMS	Sending Failed	Attempted to send the SMS from Bp Premier but failed.
SMS	Delivery Failed	SMS sent from Bp Premier successfully but failed to be delivered to the patient's phone. Possible reasons include phone number no longer active or phone switched off for extended period.
Work ph.	Successful	Successfully contacted the patient on their work phone number.
Work ph.	Unsuccessful	Tried to call the patient on their work phone number, but could not reach them.
Email	Sent	Successfully sent an email to the patient.
Email	Sending Failed	The email failed to send from the practice.
Email	Delivery Failed	The email sent successfully from the practice, but failed to deliver to the patient. Possible reasons include invalid email address.

Clinical actions and contact notes

Clinical actions that result in a communication to a patient, such as generating reminders from a schedule, will automatically create a contact note against a patient with a corresponding contact reason. See Bp Comms from the patient record for more information.