Secure messages, in the record

Why messages belong in the chart

A patient message is clinical context. When it lives in a shared inbox, it is separated from the record it belongs to, invisible to a covering colleague, and one forward away from leaving your control. SideClick attaches every message thread to the patient's chart, so the conversation and the clinical history read as one document.

That placement also answers the continuity question. A locum or a colleague covering your caseload opens the chart and sees the whole exchange, not a summary you had to remember to write.

How it works in practice

A patient replies to their home program with a question about wrist pain during one of the exercises. The message lands on their chart, flagged for you rather than buried in reception's inbox. You answer between sessions from the desktop, or from the mobile app if you are on the road; the reply is on the record, and the next session starts with the context already written down.

Reception benefits just as much: appointment questions, form chases and document requests arrive attached to the right patient instead of a shared mailbox where three people each assume someone else replied.

What messaging deliberately isn't

SideClick messaging is asynchronous clinical correspondence, not a crisis line, and the framing matters for safe use: it carries no urgency guarantees, and practices set response expectations with patients when they invite them. For emergencies, patients need your region's emergency pathway — a boundary worth stating in your invitation message, and one the software's design supports by never promising immediacy it can't enforce.

Boundaries the practice controls

Messaging rides portal invitations, so who can message the practice is always an explicit decision, reversible per patient. Messages travel through the encrypted relay whose mechanics are documented on the sync page; the short version is that no server between you and the patient can read the conversation.

Editions

Messaging arrives with the Portal edition, alongside the rest of the remote patient surface. If a Portal licence ever lapses, existing message history stays readable on your machines — the pricing page documents the exact degradation behaviour.