Personal Community supports the following messaging activities:

• Messages sent by members to providers:

  • Asking general, medical, and billing questions.

  • Replying to messages from providers.

• Messages sent by providers to members:

  • Sending provider-initiated messages to members.

  • Replying to messages from members.

  • Attaching files to provider-initiated messages.

For messaging with an external system, you have the following additional features to consider:

• Sending messages automatically when certain events occur in an external system, such as receipt of new health records in the Unified Care Record.

• Attaching files to messages.

• Using   message templates   to:

  • Supply pre-written content for messages.

  • Automatically direct messages that use the template to either the patient’s or the proxy’s inbox.

The mechanism that governs how each message passes to and from each clinical group is known as a   message flow . When a member performs an action that generates a message, that message enters the appropriate message flow. At that point, Personal Community determines if the message goes to the Workbench or to an external system via a custom   delivery interface .

If the message is sent to the Workbench, Personal Community creates a   task   that appears on the Workbench. The message flow specifies the   workflow group   in which the task is placed. Only Workbench users who are associated with this workflow group can claim and process the task.

If a Workbench user is part of a workflow group, the user is known as a   task agent   (also known simply as an agent) or a   task manager   (also known as a manager) for that workflow group:

• An   agent   can process tasks.

• A   manager   can:

  • Process tasks.

  • Oversee which agents are or are not associated with the workflow group.

  • Assign tasks.

  • Change ownership of tasks.

  • Unassign tasks.

To be able to process a task, a Workbench user must:

• Be   enabled   as a Workbench user.

• Hold the   Task Processing   role.

• Be   active   as workflow agent or manager.

• Be assigned to the workflow group.

Once your system administrators have completed configuration, they or healthcare administrators can begin ongoing administrative tasks related to messaging. For information about these tasks, see the HealthShare Personal Community Workflows, Agents, and Tasks Function Guide .

For message handling within the Workbench:

• Providers may reply to messages from members by processing the associated task.

• Providers may also initiate messages to members within the Workbench if personal messaging is enabled. If this is the case, any replies from the member are routed to the Workbench user’s inbox.

When implementing messaging for Personal Community, you must make decisions regarding the following issues:

Supported Message Routes

You must determine which mechanism(s) for messaging you will support:

• Messaging with the Workbench   — Messages are routed solely between the Personal Community public application and the Workbench. Your implementation tasks are primarily involved with items on the Workbench.

• Messaging with an external system   — Messages are routed between Personal Community and external systems. This requires additional implementation tasks, including coding.

Supported Messaging Activities

You must select which messaging activities to support. There are multiple aspects to this decision:

Messages   from   members   to   providers, and:

• Whether or not to enable billing questions.

• Whether or not to allow members to reply to messages from their providers.

• Whether and how to filter the list of providers available for messaging by members.

Messages   from   providers   to   members, and:

• Whether to use pre-written content, available with the use of message templates.

• Whether to allow messages sent on behalf of clinical groups without a provider specified. This is technically possible but keeps the message from being counted for meaningful use purposes.

Additional considerations for messages   from   providers   to   members, via an external system:

• Whether to support message file attachments.

• Whether to scan attachments for viruses, which is strongly recommended for production systems.

• Whether to direct messages based on message templates to the member’s inbox automatically.

• Which messages, if any, will be sent automatically if certain events occur.