Question: My patient indicated that when they tried to send me a message via MyAHS Connect, they received a reply indicating that direct messaging is not available. Why did it not go to my In Basket, and why are patients able to send these messages?
Context: While patients can send messages via MyAHS Connect to their physicians who are on Connect Care, whether those messages are able to reach a physician’s In Basket is determined by whether that physician is in a department that schedules appointments in Connect Care. If they are, the message will route to the clinical support In Basket pool of that physician’s department, and can then be forwarded by the clinical support pool staff to the physician; these messages can be found in the “Pt. Advice Requests” folder.
A physician working in a mixed context (i.e., working in an AHS facility as well as at a private clinic/office in the community) may be added to a patient’s care team in Connect Care as a Primary Care Provider (PCP) for a patient receiving services with AHS; however, their role as PCP is related to the community clinic. Patient messages sent in this case would not be related to their care with AHS nor to the work the physician does in AHS. As there are no pools or structure to support these messages, the messages are routed to an IT team error pool instead of to the intended physician.
Answer: When IT receives a message sent by a patient via MyAHS Connect that is intended for a mixed-context PCP, IT will confirm that it was intended to go to a physician who does not have a department that schedules appointments in Connect Care and therefore does not have a clinical support advice request pool to support message management. IT will then respond to the patient, letting them know their physician cannot be reached via MyAHS Connect, and to instead contact the community clinic directly. IT will no longer forward these messages to the physician. Connect Care is working on a technical solution to prevent patients from being able to send messages to physicians on their care team who do not have an associated pool structure to support them.