Send a Secure Message

Overview

The easiest way to send a secure message to a patient is to hit the blue Secure Message icon on their profile photo in the patient dashboard. If the Secure Message icon is not blue, the patient will not be able to access the message. More on granting and trouble-shooting patient access to the portal is here.

Related Articles

• Push Secure Messages into SOAP Notes

Table of Contents

• Creating and Sending a Secure Message
• Deleting a Secure Message
• Scheduling a Secure Message for the Future
  • Where to view your scheduled messages
  • What you can and can't do with a scheduled message
  • Troubleshooting

Details

Creating and Sending a Secure Message

Click on the blue Secure Message icon to launch the Secure Message window. There, add a title to the Title: field. Write your message to the patient in the "Message to Patient:" text area just below there.

You can choose to notify the patient via email that they have a secure message waiting for them in the Patient Portal by checking the Notify Patient box below the main message window. This box is checked by default, but you can uncheck it if the patient does not need to be notified that a secure message is waiting for them.

At the bottom of the Secure Message pop up, a gray link and icon called "...Show past correspondence with this patient" will let you view past correspondence with the patient via Secure Message.

It is possible to send Secure Messages from other areas of the EMR, as well. Anywhere you see a blue Secure Message icon, especially in the Patient Portal queue, you will be able to send a message to the patient by clicking on the icon.

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Deleting a Secure Message

1. Open the patient's portal Secure Messages thread by clicking Show/Hide Message History below the Send button
2. Locate the unread message — it will show only a Delete button.
3. Click Delete. This removes the scheduled message and automatically cancels the queued email and SMS notification. This only applies to any unread secure message.

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Scheduling a Secure Message for the Future

You can schedule secure messages to be sent to patients at a future date and time. This is helpful for follow-ups, off-hours communication, or timing messages with patient events. 

Email and SMS notifications are sent only when the message is delivered, not when scheduled. Patients won't get alerts before the message goes live.

1. Compose your message as usual.
2. Before sending, look for the option to schedule the message for a future date — typically a "Send on" or "Schedule for" date/time selector.
3. Choose your desired send date and time.
4. Click Send. The message will be queued and delivered automatically at the scheduled time.

Where to view your scheduled messages

To see everything you've scheduled to go out in the future:

1. Go to Reporting > Non-Financial Reports.
2. Open Scheduled Email Notifications.
3. This report lists every secure message scheduled to send in the future, with the recipient, scheduled date, and message preview.
    

What you can and can't do with a scheduled message

Action	Available?
View the scheduled message	Yes
Delete the scheduled message before it sends	Yes
Edit the content	No
Reschedule to a different time	No
"Send now" / send the scheduled message immediately	No
Schedule multiple patients at once (bulk)	No — schedule one at a time

If you need to change the timing or the content, delete the scheduled message and create a new one.
 

Troubleshooting

• The scheduled message doesn't appear in my message thread history. Check the patient portal view — scheduled messages always appear there. If the EMR-side thread history is missing entries, contact Cerbo Support so we can investigate.

• The "Resend Notification" button shows an error. This is expected for future-dated messages. The notification cannot be resent until the message has actually been delivered.