Sending & Receiving Electronic Letters

If you have subscribed to a third party carrier service such as Healthlink, Argus, or Medical Objects, Gentu can send and receive letters and correspondence electronically.

For an overview of Gentu's electronic correspondence capabilities, and instructions on initially setting up your Gentu to use electronic correspondence, see the Electronic Correspondence Overview article.

Before you begin

Before you can begin sending electronic letters to other providers, you will need to set up your database accordingly.

1. In Settings > Practice Preferences, make sure you have entered any third party carrier credentials. More information.
2. In your Address Book, make sure you have added the recipient and set their Preferred Contact Method and identification. You may need to contact the intended recipient to obtain this information. More information.
3. In Settings > Letter Templates, make sure you have set up your letter templates. More information.

Outgoing Correspondence

The Outgoing Correspondence area can be used to view and manage letters all letters that are being sent to another healthcare professional. Letters are divided into four statuses: Draft, Ready to Review, Ready to Send, and Sent.

Creating Letters

A new letter can be added by selecting the ADD > Letter from an appointment, or the patient record. Before you can start writing the letter, you will need to select that the letter is being addressed to a doctor. You can then select a template from the dropdown menu, and select OK.  

Only letters to other health professionals can be sent electronically. All letters must be associated with a patient.

Gentu will assign the Addressee as the patient's referring doctor, however you can clear this to enter a different addressee. You can also add CC's if required. All recipients will list a contact method next to their name. This will display the Preferred Contact Method from the Address Book, or Mail if nothing has been set. You can click on the recipient's name to choose a different contact method. 

If no addressee is selected, clicking into the Addressee field will display a list of suggested addressees:

• The current referring doctor
• The patient's nominated GP (as set in Patient Details)
• The patient themselves

Once you have specified who the letter is being sent to, and how the letter is being sent, you can begin writing the letter itself. For more information, please see Writing a Letter. 

Sending Letters

Please note: it is not possible to email letters within Gentu. If you would like to email a letter, you will need to print the letter to PDF and email using an external email program on your computer e.g. Outlook.

For letters Addressed to Doctor, there are three statuses it can fall into before landing in the Sent status. The status is set below the letter, and letters are sorted into these statuses in Reports / Letters > Outgoing Correspondence. 

It is not necessary for letters to go through each of these stages before sending. If a letter needs to be sent immediately, you can set a status of Ready to Send, then select the PRINT & SEND button to send the letter. This bypasses the Draft and Ready to Review statuses. 

After sending the letter, it will move to the Sent tab of the Outgoing Correspondence window, and the tile on the left will display the date and time it was sent. Beneath the sent letter, you can also review which recipients received the letter electronically in the Audit Trail.

Acknowledgements

When a letter is received and imported to the recipient's Practice Management Software (PMS), an electronic acknowledgement is generated and returned to the sender. Acknowledgements help you to know that the letter was received successfully, or if there was an issue sending. 

When the letter is awaiting acknowledgement it will display an orange hourglass icon underneath the letter within Outgoing Letters > Sent.

When the letter is received by the addressee and acknowledged, a green tick will show on the letter in the list pane.

If the letter does not receive an automatic acknowledgement, you can open the letter and tick the "Ack" checkbox to manually acknowledge the letter. You should only do this once you have confirmed that the recipient did in fact receive the letter. If you hover over the recipient, Gentu will advise when the letter was marked as being acknowledged. 

If the letter later receives an electronic acknowledgement, this will overwrite the manual acknowledgement. 

If the letter is unable to be sent, or is unable to be imported to the recipient's PMS, it will return to the Ready to Send tray, and will display an Error notification.

If this happens you can click on the letter to view further details of the error. This will help you identify the issue, which can then be rectified. After fixing these issues, you can select the PRINT & SEND button again to attempt to re-send it.

Incoming Correspondence

The Incoming Correspondence area can be used to view and manage letters all letters that have been received from another healthcare professional. Letters are divided into three statuses: Unlinked, Pending, and Linked.

For a letter to be viewable in a patient’s clinical file, you need to link the letter to the patient. When you link a letter to a patient, the file will immediately move to the Linked section within Results / Letters, and Gentu will display the next unlinked letter for review. Linked letters will also appear within the patient’s clinical file, under the Correspondence filter. 

Matched Patients

If Gentu is able to find a patient within your database who matches the Name and DOB that is found within the letter file, the patient name, date of birth, Medicare number and next appointment date will be shown above the letter

If a patient is matched, but there are discrepancies with the DOB or Medicare number, these will be highlighted with a red icon. This could indicate that the wrong patient has been matched, or that the data needs to be updated. If the DOB or Medicare number cannot be identified from the letter or has not been recorded in the patient file, a message will be shown indicating it was not available.

Once you can confirm the matched patient is correct, click the button beneath the record.

Selected Patients

If Gentu is unable to find a matched patient, or the matched patient is incorrect, you can use the button to select a patient from your database.

When selecting a patient from the search, any additional letters related to the same patient can be updated to the selected patient as a bulk action. Any reports which do not also need to be updated can be deselected before any changes are made.

NEW SCREENSHOT

Selected patients will also show the date of their next appointments. Once you can confirm the selected patient is correct, you can click the button beneath the patient record.

Creating New Patients from Incoming Letters

If you are unable to locate an appropriate patient record from the search, you can quick create a new patient record from the letter by clicking the Create patient from report option in the search results list.

This will use the patient name, DOB and Medicare details to add a new record in your patient list, and will update your selected patient for the letter at the same time. Any additional letters for the same patient can also be updated during this process.

Once you have confirmed the added patient is correct, you can then click the button beneath the patient record.

Last Consult Note

Beneath your received letters, Gentu will display the last consult note for the patient for your convenience. The last consult note is based on the most recent entry at the time the letter was received. 

If there is no previous consult in your database, Gentu will display a message that There are no consultations recorded for the matched patient prior to this correspondence being received. 

Notes & To Do

If you need to create a To Do based on a letter, then you can do so by using the To Do button in the top-right corner of the letter when viewing from a desktop, or by selecting the Add To Do option from the drop-down menu when viewing on a mobile device.

Desktop	Mobile

This can be done without linking the letter to the patient, and can be used to prompt an action, such as contacting the patient for an appointment. For more information, please see the To Do Tasks page.

If there are no actions required, but you would like to write a note about the letter, you can do this by choosing the menu option from the letter tile, then selecting Note. You can also choose the Note from the top right corner of the letter.

When viewing on a mobile device, an existing To Do will show in green and an existing Note will show in pink.

For more information, please see the Notes for Results & Letters page. 

Filtering Letters

All areas within Results / Letters include the ability to filter records by a practitioner or a patient. This can be used to focus on what is addressed to you, so contents received for other providers can be dismissed. Letters will be matched to a provider based on the addressee's provider number in the file received. For more information, please see the Results & Letters Filters page.

Frequently Asked Questions

Please see the Correspondence FAQ page to view a list of Frequently Asked Questions.