Patients flow into Artera from your EMR through a real-time integration or regular batch processing. Due to this process, a patient will not exist in Artera until the record is created in your EMR and the patient has an appointment scheduled with one of your Artera Practices. As a result, the best way to add a patient is to schedule an appointment for them in your EMR. This process will create what Artera identifies as a verified patient. This type of patient has had an appointment scheduled in your Artera Practice, allowing users to see that patient's demographic information within their Patient Facesheet. 

However, there are scenarios where you will need to message a patient through Artera who is unverified. This can be everything from a patient who has not had an appointment since you have implemented Artera that you would like to message or a patient who texts your Practice's Line without having an appointment. Additionally, if your organization has a Shell Practice dedicated to Campaigns, the patients in those Practice(s) will also appear as unverified due to how those Practices are configured.

Types of Unverified Patients

Within Artera, there are four types of unverified patients:

1. Patients that were created in your EMR and integrated into Artera but have not had an appointment scheduled yet (Once a patient has an appointment scheduled, their complete profile will flow into Artera and they'll no longer be unverified).
2. Patients that were uploaded to a Campaign-specific Practice.
3. Patients that were manually added to Artera. Click here to learn more about adding unverified patients.
4. Patients who text into a Practice but are not represented anywhere else in the Enterprise (these can be valid patients or spam messages). Typically, these types of inbound messages from actual patients are seen in the Call-to-Text/Abandoned Calls workflows. If the message is spam, we recommend simply closing the channel. Click here to learn more about using Inbound Message Automations for Spam Messages.

These patients will look the same within the Artera environment. However, patients added in your EMR without scheduled appointments will be able to be searched by their MRN (unique patient ID), it just will not appear on their Patient Facesheet. 

Verified vs. Unverified Patient Examples

Verified Patient:

Unverified Patient types #1-3 display like this in Artera:

Unverified Patient type #4 displays like this in Artera:

Verified vs. Unverified Patient FAQ

Will unverified patients be included in the Multiple Patient Same Phone (MPSP) workflow? 

No, only a list of Verified Patients who share the same phone number with the patient who messaged into the Practice will be included when asking the patient to verify who they would like to communicate as. Learn more about the MPSP workflow here.

If I manually add an unverified patient in Artera, will they also display as an unverified patient in other Artera Practices in my Enterprise?

No. Unverified patients are Practice-specific, so if a patient exists in Practice A but then texts a response to Practice B, they will display as a separate unverified patient in Practice B.

Are there messaging limitations to messaging an unverified patient?

Yes. You cannot use secure messaging, email messaging or send Broadcast messages with unverified patients. 

What if the unverified patient shares a phone number with another person (like a family member or a friend)?

If the unverified patient schedules an appointment in your EMR, then the unverified patient's temporary information will be overwritten in Artera. If the family member of the unverified patient schedules an appointment first, the family member's information will flow into Artera and overwrite the unverified patient's information.