Patients ask the same question every day: “Can you send me my results?”
Until now, the answer involved a printer, a counter, and often a second trip for the patient. From this release, LinkHMS can email documents and updates to patients directly: test results, invoices, visit summaries, and discharge summaries, along with appointment confirmations and reminders.
One principle underpins all of it. A patient’s documents only go to an email address the system has confirmed belongs to that patient.
Why verification is required
Patient documents contain confidential medical information, and you can’t recall an email once it is sent. A single mistyped character at a busy reception desk is the difference between a patient receiving their own results and a stranger receiving them.
That risk is small per transaction but serious when it occurs, which is why LinkHMS confirms the address before sending anything clinical. Unverified addresses receive nothing.
How verification works
It takes about thirty seconds at reception, while the patient is still present.
The receptionist enters the patient’s email and presses Verify. A short pop-up opens with three steps:
- LinkHMS emails a 6-digit code to the address.
- The patient opens the email on their phone and reads the code back.
- The receptionist enters the code.
The address is then verified and marked accordingly on the patient’s record.
This step is effective because it confirms two things at once: that the address works, and that the person holding it is the patient in front of you. A mistyped address either fails to deliver or reaches someone who is not in the room to read back a code.
Codes expire after ten minutes and can be resent if an email is delayed.
Sending a document
Once a patient has a verified email, sending takes one click.
The new Send to Patient button sits beside Print, wherever your staff already print for patients: lab results, invoices, visits, and admissions. If a document can be printed, it can be sent.
The patient receives the same PDF the system already generates, attached to a short email carrying your clinic’s name, logo, and contact details. There is nothing additional to set up.
If the patient has no verified email yet, Send still works. It opens the same verification pop-up; the address is verified on the spot, and the document is sent immediately afterward.
Sending remains a staff decision
Clinical documents are not sent automatically.
Routine results can reasonably go out as soon as they are ready. Others may warrant a conversation first. That judgment belongs to your clinicians rather than to the system, so documents are sent when a member of staff decides the timing is appropriate.
What LinkHMS sends automatically
A small set of notifications runs on its own, as none carry clinical detail:
- Appointment confirmed, when a visit is booked, including the service, doctor, date, and time.
- Appointment reminder, 24 hours before the visit.
- Test results are ready once your lab marks the test as done. This states only that results are available, never what they contain.
- A birthday greeting from your team.
Two account emails support the process: the verification code itself and a confirmation once an address is verified.
One address, one patient
A verified email belongs to a single patient record. If an address is already verified for another patient, it cannot be verified again for a second one.
This preserves the guarantee the feature depends on: when a document is sent, there is no ambiguity about whose records are in that inbox.
Worth noting at reception: a parent using their own address for two children can verify it for one of them. The second requires a different address.
Getting started
There is nothing to configure. Your clinic name, logo, phone number, and address are already in LinkHMS, and every email is automatically branded with them.
Begin collecting addresses at reception: ask whether the patient would like to be contacted by email, verify the address while they are with you, and send their documents with a click from then on.
Fewer return trips for patients, less printing for staff, and results that reach only the person they were intended for.
