Patient Tags: Creating Tags and Tagging Patients Automatically

Tags group your patients and prospects. They decide who receives a bulk email or text, and which patients go into a marketing export. A patient can carry any number of tags.

A tag gets onto a patient in one of three ways:

• By hand, from the patient's record.
• Automatically, by BackOfficePro rules that check every hour who is new, lapsed, seen recently and more.
• When a visit is booked, through the visit type's tag settings.

Creating tags and automatic tagging are in BackOfficePro. You need the BackOfficePro module, and your user needs BackOfficePro or Administrator access. Tagging a patient by hand works for everyone.

Create a tag

1. From the Tools menu, choose BackOfficePro.
2. Under Marketing & Tagging, on the Marketing Tags card, click Manage Tags. The Tags window opens.
3. Click Add New Tag.
4. Enter a Tag Name of up to 50 characters, without commas, and an optional Description. Leave Active ticked.
5. Click Add Tag.

A tag's name cannot be changed once it is created, so choose it with care. To change the description, or to stop using a tag, click Edit on its row. Untick Active to retire it: the tag stays on patients who already carry it.

To delete a tag, click the delete icon on its row. This removes it from every patient. If an automatic tagging rule uses the tag, take it off the rule first.

Tag a patient by hand

1. Open the patient's record.
2. In the header, click the tag icon (Tag the Patient).
3. Choose a tag from the Add Tag list. It is saved as soon as you choose it.

The patient's tags show as grey labels in the header. To take one off, click the small remove icon on the label (Remove Tag) and confirm. Add several tags one at a time. To tag many patients at once, use automatic tagging or visit type tags below.

If you remove a tag that an automatic rule put on, the rule adds it back at its next hourly run while the patient still matches. Tags you add by hand are never removed by automatic rules.

Tag patients automatically

1. From the Tools menu, choose BackOfficePro.
2. Under Marketing & Tagging, on the Automatic Tagging card, click Tagging Rules. The Automatic Tagging window opens.
3. On the rule you want, choose a Tag and adjust the number of months or visits.
4. Click Preview to see how many patients match now.
5. Tick the rule's checkbox to switch it on, and confirm.
6. Click Save.

Rules run every hour, so saving does not tag anyone straight away. At each run, a rule adds its tag to every patient who matches and removes it from patients who no longer do. It only ever removes tags it put on itself.

A visit counts once its date has passed and its visit type is in the Initial Visits, Return Visits, Procedures or Labs category. Meetings and admin appointments do not count.

Under By visit type, you can also tag everyone seen for a particular visit type within a number of months. On the Add another row, choose the Visit type, the months and the tag, then click Save. Add as many as you need. Several of these rules can share one tag, and a patient matching any of them carries it.

Switching on a rule makes every patient it matches available to Bulk Messaging and to your marketing partner. Leave Skip patients who opted out of bulk messaging ticked unless you have a reason not to. Patients marked inactive or deceased are never tagged automatically.

To stop a rule, untick it and click Save. Its tags come off at the next run.

Tag patients when a visit is booked

A visit type can add or remove tags whenever a visit of that type is booked, for example to tag everyone who books a program consultation. This needs Administrator access.

1. From the Admin menu, choose General Settings.
2. On the Schedule tab, in the Visit Types box, click the visit type you want. The Edit Visit Type window opens.
3. On the Details tab, click in Add Tags on Scheduling and choose the tags to add.
4. Optionally, choose tags in Remove Tags on Scheduling to take them off at the same time.
5. Click Save Visit Type.

The tags are applied when the visit is created, whether it is booked on the schedule, as a recurring series or by the patient through the portal. Editing a visit or changing its type later does not apply them, and cancelling the visit does not take them off.

Where tags are used

• Bulk Messaging builds its audience from tags. See Sending a Bulk Message.
• Marketing exports: the Tags window's Export CSV downloads tagged patients for an outside marketing tool.
• Your marketing partner can retrieve tagged patients through the NaturaeSoft API.