When sending correspondence electronically, it's important to have peace of mind that your letters are going out in a timely manner. Sometimes however, there are complications that can prevent your letters from sending; you might find them building up in the 3rd Party Unsent section of your Outgoing Letters, or even get questions from recipients who are waiting on correspondence.
With the different methods for sending these letters, and the different options that need to be set, there are a number of reasons why a letter might not be sending. This article will help you to determine whether a given letter has sent properly, and how to fix any issues preventing this.
Before you begin
In order to properly troubleshoot any issues with your electronic letters, you must first know where your third party correspondence software is installed. Throughout this article, "third party software" will refer to the applications for correspondence software such as:
- Argus
- Healthlink
- Medical Objects
- AllTalk/eQuery
- ReferralNet
- DivisionReport
The software can be installed on any Genie computer, and this will dictate where your letters are exported and sent from. Knowing which computer the software is installed to will ensure that you can check that the letters are sending properly.
The most common way of spotting letters that aren't sending is in the 3rd Party Unsent section of the Outgoing Letters window (Open > Outgoing Letters). This area is for letters that Genie has not yet exported, either because there is a problem with the way the letter (or one of its CCs) is configured or because the letter hasn't yet been properly marked for sending.
Letters in this window will either have True or False listed under the Sent column, indicating whether Genie has successfully been able to export the primary letter. If this column is marked as False, it means that Genie has been unable to export and send the primary letter and/or the CC(s); if marked as True, Genie has been able to send the primary letter, which means the problem lies with the CCs.
To help distinguish between these two possibilities, Genie displays letters without CCs in black text and letters with CCs in green text.
Problems with the primary letter
If the Sent column shows False, this means that the problem lies with the primary letter, regardless of whether the letter is listed with green or black text. To resolve issues with the primary letter, follow these steps:
- Double-click the letter to open it.
- Check the Addressee by clicking on the doctor icon
in the top left. Confirm that the recipient's Preferred Method of Communication and appropriate Carrier Identifier(s) are properly entered. Ensure that you only select communication options from the drop-down menu, as free typing in this field will prevent Genie from correctly identifying the carrier. Click Save when this is done. - Ensure Send via Third Party is ticked. If the recipient's carrier details are configured correctly, the carrier name should appear under the menu in blue to confirm this.
- Tick Ready to Send. Even if the letter is marked as Reviewed, Genie will not attempt to send the letter if Ready to Send is not ticked.
- Make sure the Send button appears. If the above options have been configured correctly, the Save button in the top-right of the window will turn into a Send button instead. If it does, you can be sure Genie is ready to export the letter for the third party software to collect and send.
Problems with the CCs
Even if the primary letter is configured correctly, or even if it's been successfully sent already, problems with any CCs on the letter can leave it stuck in the 3rd Party Unsent list. For any letters shown in the list in green, you should check the CCs to confirm why they're stuck there:
- Double-click the letter to open it.
- Check the CC table on the left. Double-click the CC to open the recipient's record and confirm that their carrier information is entered correctly. Click Save when you're done.
- Confirm what's listed in the Carrier column for the CC:
- If a third party carrier is listed, tick the Send tickbox. This box functions like the Send via Third Party tickbox for the primary letter, and will ensure Genie exports a copy of the letter for the third party carrier to send.
- If the Carrier is listed as Mail, Fax, or Email, you must ensure the Send box is unticked. If it is ticked, Genie will assume it should be exported, and will be expecting you to update carrier details that don't exist.
- Click Save (or Send) in the top-right to close the letter.
Once you've confirmed that the letter and any of its CCs are configured correctly, it may take a few minutes for Genie to export the letters as it checks for any letters periodically in order to send them.
If you've confirmed that the letters are configured correctly but your recipients still aren't receiving them, there may be an issue with the carrier software itself.
First, you should confirm that the software is running on the computer as expected, and that there are no errors on the screen. If the software appears to be running smoothly, there may be issues with the software's configuration; each third party carrier uses its own folders in the Genie folder, and these need to be configured correctly for Genie to be able to export letters to it.
For any issues with the third party software or its folder, you'll need to contact the support team for that third party carrier. Genie Solutions is fairly limited in terms of our ability to support third party applications.
Checking that your letters have sent
After correcting any issues with your letters, you may want to double-check that they are indeed sending successfully. There are a couple of different ways you can do this:
- The simplest would be to check this is from within Genie; once Genie has sent the letter, it will move out of the 3rd Party Unsent section and into 3rd Party Unacknowledged or 3rd Party Acknowledged. The letter will also show True under the Sent column, and opening the letter will show the Send box ticked for the CC (if the CC has a 3rd party carrier).
- You can also check the Correspondence Log by clicking the button at the top of the Outgoing Letters window. This will show all letters send and received through Genie, and will also flag any errors encountered when trying to send these.
- The third party software may also contain an activity log showing the letters that it has sent and received. This should tell you whether it was able to send the letters after you corrected them within Genie.