As you might be aware from our previous announcement, our developers have been working to improve the way Genie's Email module stores email addresses for patients and other contacts. This was prioritised in order to resolve the issue outlined in that announcement, which allowed for possible mismatching between email addresses and the person they belong to. With the release of version 9.3.7, this has been resolved with a significant update to the Address Book function within the Email window
There are two main aspects to this change; 1. Changing the way the Email window handles these email addresses and ensuring that they remain directly linked to the right person, and 2. Updating the current list of email addresses used in the Email module to ensure that any existing mismatches are fixed.
For the first point, the email addresses in the Email module are linked directly with the Patient or Address Book record they belong to. Clicking the Address Book icon 
in the email window will now open a much more comprehensive list of the email addresses in your database, all of which are pulled directly from the current data in a person's record. This can be sorted and filtered by Patient records, Address Book records (that is, providers and other contacts), and other email addresses added as once-off recipients who aren't in your Genie database.
If you’re in this Email Addresses window and you need to update an email, you can double-click a record to edit it, which will open the relevant Patient or Address Book record for you to make the necessary change. Previously, editing an email address from within the Email module itself didn’t necessarily update the contact details for the person it belongs to, which was one of the major causes for the mismatched data that had been reported. This no longer occurs - when you edit the person's email address, it's updated properly no matter where you opened their record from.
For the second part of this change, your list of email addresses will be automatically converted, but you'll be made fully aware of all changes. Upon updating Genie to version 9.3.7, your existing list of email addresses will be double-checked against the contact details for all your Patients, Address Book records, and related contacts. The result of this will be that every person with an email address in their record will appear as a matching record in the Email Module.
To prevent this process from updating email addresses that shouldn’t be overwritten, you'll receive an alert when this has been done.
Please note: This process occurs when the Genie data file is updated via the Genie Solo application. If the person carrying out your update is not the person best suited to review the report, click Remind Me Next Login to ensure that the report can shown to the appropriate user.
Clicking View Report will produce a PDF document outlining all the details of the records that Genie has updated to accommodate this change:
Please note: Records marked with * Record deleted or merged * indicate that the removed email address was linked to a record that no longer exists. One of the most common reasons for this will be merged records, where two emails remain in the list, but only one version of the patient records still exists. This will also occur for any patient or address book records that have previously been deleted, leaving an email address remaining in the Email window.
We recommend saving or printing a copy of this document for your own reference, and reviewing it thoroughly to ensure that all of the changes made by Genie have resulted in the correct email address is being used. Any email addresses that should not have been removed can be added back into the appropriate person's record.
Comments
14 comments
Having upgraded to 9.3.7 I am finding the pop up "Message recipients box" which allows you to delete email recipients of a letter or to move the addresses to the bcc option, is very slow to open, and the ability to type into the search box also very slow.to add a new recipient.
Brian Conway Adelaide
Email very very slow. Having rebooted our server and client terminal, I have tried the email again, and also had feedback from other practitioners in our practice, the pop up "Message recipients box" is just excruciatingly slow to load, please fix this bug.
Brian Conway Adelaide
Genie's email is antiquated. I think time would be better spent on allowing Genie to flow to external email such as Outlook.
Apart from sending a letter, I notice our email address book loads (very, very slowly) and has 23,000 addresses, if I take patient contacts out it is down to 20,000, if I uncheck "Other" [and doing this unchecking is also very, very slow] not much change, if I uncheck address book then goes down to 13,000, the changes to the email module have made it very nearly unusable, having unchecked all those boxes leaving only patients checked if I close and reopen the address book, again it opens super slow, and all the boxes are checked again! Can't seem to find a preference setting to not load all 23,000 addresses each time.
Dr Brian Conway Adelaide
I am very keen to update to 9.3.7, but am afraid that the email change may make it not worth it.
Could Genie make a comment on Dr Conway's observation
Dr Tuan Pham
Hi Dr Pham
In my opinion it depends how you use the email program. If you just use it for clicking on a single email address in the address book, or the patient demographics, or to send a patient pathology, then it still works ok, so upgrade, but if you send letters to patients via email, or other providers as we do (not Doctors because we send them via Secure Messaging) such as allied health, who by and large have been left out of the secure messaging loop, being a paediatric practice we have lots of Speech, OT, Physio, Psychology, recipients,who often don't have even fax machines, so the real grief with this update if you click the email function for letters, it will load ALL recipients of the letter with an entered email address, even those you are sending to via other means, and all those legacy Argus addresses when the Argus address had to be in the email section, so you have to delete them, and also transfer, for good email etiquette, the recipients to the bcc area, it is the deleting and moving that takes so so so very very long! Even if you just want to send it to the patient, you will still need to delete those others, and I can tell you, I wish I had never updated to 9.3.7, it adds at least 30 minutes a day to every doctor in the practice, it is such a resource and time waster. It needs to be fixed ASAP, so if you send letters from the letter writer, my advice, don't update to 9.3.7.
Dr Brian Conway Adelaide
Thanks Brian for your detailed reply
I'm always grateful for early updaters. You take the bullets for us !
Thanks, I normally try to wait 2 weeks for the same reason, let's hope a hotfix is found. I have changed my workflow, I click email to send, go back to the letter pushing the email to the background wind, send the letter via secure messaging, close the letter and the patient, go to dictate the next letter, once finished that dictation and letter formatting, come back to email outgoing for the previous patient, by then it has finally loaded, click to redistribute and delete unwanted recipients and send email, then email the letter I am working on and so the cycle continues.
Brian Conway Adelaide
I'm with Debra Hall. I thought Genie's Email module was subpar when I first started using Genie in 2006, and we have always used a third party email system (in our case OSX Mail), and encrypted mail for GPs. Understand a lot of resources have been employed to improve Genie Email Module, but maybe this is misdirected, and a better integration with outside email would improve things.
Likewise, the use of Genie to send SMS is both very expensive, and arcane in its interface. We just use iMessage for everything except group SMS reminders. Better integration with third party (secure) messaging would be much better. iMessage is secure only for those who receive in iMessage. iMessage to text is just as insecure as Genie SMS. The option of using "Signal" or similar would provide a better messaging. Genie could just make up their lost revenue with an increased yearly fee.
agree with Michael Knight. Any cheap phone plan will give unlimited SMS, way cheaper than Genie SMS plan
Dr Brian Conway thank you for this feedback and your detailed descriptions on what you have done to try and rectify this.
Would having all the tickboxes unticked when you open the window assist with the issue?
It sounds like the main reason you use this window is to either remove or move recipients and you aren't actually using the address book element of it as such in that context. Would that be a correct assumption?
When would you usually use the address book part of the window? Would you usually search for the contact you wanted rather than display them and scroll through for example?
I would like to see if I can get some sort of fix in for 9.3.8
I have found a workaround, to stop the the dreaded "Message Recipients" window opening, which as I have said is very slow, and basically hangs while it loads all 23,000 email addresses, and that is to look at the recipients and edit the recipient from the letter interface and delete the email address, (mostly for Doctors who we don't actually email), it is much quicker to delete this way, and then the letter is addressed only to those who are going to actually get it via email, and then no need to open the Email address book interface. Still doesn't allow me to hide the email address in bcc, which would be preferred, and does not work if I want to also include the patient,(and when also going to the patient I do want to hide the other addresses) but this has sped up my sending, while awaiting a fix. Spent some time on the weekend deleting email addresses from the address book, a lot of them legacy Argus addresses. If I choose one alphabet letter a day should be able to do that in a month without going crazy! I wonder could a script be run?
Dr Brian Conway Adelaide
Genie, please don't spend any more time and effort on the email system. Outsource it to Outlook. You can't better it.
Also would be good to outsource SMS to stop the cost and clunkiness.
Another bug in the address book message recipients interface. When you drag an email address across another address (when moving between To, CC and BCC), sometimes the email address will change to the other address! Weird behaviour, you lose one of the recipients and the other will get it twice.
Dr Brian Conway Adelaide