FootFall Release 6.3.8

Simple and condensed email and SMS notifications have been introduced to protect practices from unnecessary costs that are associated with sending longer SMS messages. We’ve also improved the recording and tracking of acknowledgement messages which can be viewed within the patient episode.

See below for a full list of updates in the 6.3.8 release.

FootFall Release Notes

Version: 6.3.8

Release date: 24.08.22

Release impact: LOW

This release is considered to be a low impact release.

There should be little or no staff training required and this should not impact dashboard users experience.

What’s changed?

ENHANCEMENTS
Automatic Acknowledgments

Currently when a patient submits a form they receive an automatic acknowledgement from the practice. The acknowledgment is sent by SMS or email (or both) depending on the patient’s preference. The content of the SMS or email will contain the acknowledgement text, which is defined by the practice.

This has been changed so that the acknowledgement is written to the episode, and the patient is sent a link to the episode. The advantages of this are:

  • The patient has immediate access to their episode which enables them to view their request as well as the acknowledgment. Previously they would not get access to their request until the practice replied with a Patients have often asked to have access to a copy of their request immediately upon submission.
  • The practice can view the acknowledgement in the episode so can see the full extent of what the patient has been Up until now the acknowledgment was hidden in another part of the dashboard.
  • The acknowledgement is defaulted to a collapsed state (see below): the down arrow needs to be selected to view the full message.
  • When sending an episode to the clinical system the acknowledgement is automatically defaulted to OFF so will not be sent unless the dashboard user explicitly selects it.

 

 

SMS

The acknowledgement SMS is now sent as a shortened message with a link to the full text and request, saving the costs of unnecessary SMS messages.

Previously the entire acknowledgement message was sent as an SMS. SMS is charged per segment, each segment being up to 160 characters. Sending long acknowledgements would often take multiple segments, inflating the cost of the SMS service by several factors. In its new format the SMS will usually fit within one segment.

The new message format is:

“Dear [Patient Name],
You have a message from [Practice Name]
[Link to message]”

Emails

For emails, the message has been shortened to a similar format for consistency.

When the patient selects the link they will need to enter their date of birth as they do currently for a reply. They will then be able to view the acknowledgement message and their original submission from the link provided.