Spruce Health is a HIPAA-compliant communications and telemedicine platform for providers to use with their patients. With this integration, you can text, email, and securely message with your patients, as well as call them via an integrated second phone line. Additional features include virtual-visit video calls, adaptive clinical questionnaires, easy team collaboration, voicemail transcription, and much more.
To activate your Spruce integration:
Click on 'Admin' on the top menu bar
Click on 'Integrations' from the drop down
Click 'Other Integrations' and select 'Spruce Health'
Click 'Integrate with Spruce Health'
Click 'Connect With Spruce Health'
You then will be redirected to Spruce Health's login page. If you already have a Spruce account click 'login' or select 'get started' to create a new account.
Click 'Connect to Hint'
To complete the configuration and initiate the import:
In Spruce, select the Gear Icon to open your Settings, then select 'Advanced'
Look under 'Integrations'. If the integration was successful, you should see an option to select 'Hint Dashboard'.
If 'Hint Dashboard' is missing, select 'Connect to Hint' and log back in to Hint.
If a message appears saying 'Pending and Try Again', select 'Try Again' to log back in to Spruce.
Send a message to Spruce Support via the app to confirm that your Spruce and Hint accounts are connected and the integration can be finalized.
Once the integration has been set up, Spruce will automatically import patients from Hint and create a new contact for each patient. If a patient has been in contact with your practice prior to them signing up in Hint (i.e. they called/texted the office prior to joining), the contact will still sync from Hint into Spruce and update the unsaved contact with the new information in Spruce. If you see the message 'Multiple Matching Contacts' associated with a patient in Spruce, please click here to read more about what this means and how to remedy.
When a new patient is created in Hint, a corresponding contact for the patient will be created in Spruce. Once the initial import is complete, you can configure the integration to automatically send text message invitations to Spruce for new patients who are added. To read more about auto-invitations and other best practices for this integration, click here.
For more Spruce Help articles, please click here.
What to Expect from the Integration
When a new patient is created in Hint, a corresponding contact for the patient will be created in Spruce. Based on your configuration settings, the system can also automatically create a new conversation with that patient in Spruce.
This integration includes automatic updates between platforms, so patient information added or updated in one system will update in the other. Additionally, all tags including provider, plan, or status tags will be synced to the Spruce contact.
Once your Hint and Spruce accounts have been linked, you will be able to see Hint tags on each patient's contact and/or conversation in your practice. Spruce will tell you whether or not the patient is on a membership plan as well as their billing status.
What information is synced with Spruce?
The following fields will be synced with Spruce:
Name (first, middle, and last)
Date of birth
Gender
Phone number
Email address
Any contact information updated in Hint or Spruce updates the other system; this feature is on by default, but can be turned off.
What tags are automatically applied to patient contacts in Spruce?
Plan name: E.g., HintPlan_Membership
Membership status: E.g., HintStatus_Active, HintStatus_Inactive, HintStatus_Pending, Unpaid
Employer name: E.g., HintEmployer_DeftBrewingCo
Location: Associate patients with Locations (e.g., San_Francisco_Clinic) as part of Location Groups (e.g., California). This is particularly helpful if you are part of a group practice that is growing its footprint regionally.
Provider: (e.g., DrJones). This is helpful if you want to be able to sort contacts on Spruce by Provider. If you would like provider tags to come over automatically, you will need to message Team Support with the tag you would like per provider.
All Hint-related tags are synced to the contact and conversation in Spruce as a default, but this can be turned off to be only the contact that is tagged.
If you would like to disable Hint tags in Spruce and configure the integration such that only patient demographic information is synced, please contact the Spruce support team at support@sprucehealth.com. Unfortunately, we are not able to customize which Hint tags appear on contacts in Spruce at this time.
Why Didn't My Patient Sync to Spruce?
For secure conversations, Spruce requires a phone number and email address on their Hint profile.
For standard conversations, Spruce requires either a valid phone number or email address on their Hint profile.
Why Does My Patient Have Multiple Matching Contacts in Spruce?
Should you see a patient's contact marked with a 'Multiple Matching Contacts' tag, this means that this patient has their number listed under two different contacts in your Spruce contact book.
There are two instances that would cause a patient to have multiple matching contacts:
If a Hint member has the same contact information as another member (home, cell or other phone number or email; usually this is a spouse or a child), the system will import both patients as contacts and mark them with a message that says 'Multiple Matching Contacts'. You can remove the phone number from the person that doesn’t have a phone number (e.g. a child), or you can edit their contact to have their own phone number.
If the contact information of your newly created Hint patient is already in Spruce (i.e. they called/texted the office prior to joining), the system will attempt to find a match based on the patient's demographic & contact information. If the system finds the match, it will appropriately link the Hint chart and Spruce contact. If the system does not find the match, the system will create a new contact and mark the duplicate contacts with the tag 'Multiple Matching Contacts', and your practice can delete one of the duplicate contacts.
Please see this Spruce Support article to read more on how to remedy multiple matching contacts. If you need to manually link a patient's contact in Spruce to their chart in Hint, you can do so by following the instructions below.
Linking Patients from Spruce to Hint
'Linking' patients to Hint is the concept of connecting your patients from Spruce to Hint. This process should be mostly automated when your Hint account is initially integrated to your Spruce account, however sometimes you will need to manually link your patients due to the reasons mentioned above, and this is covered below.
To start, please make sure your integration has been activated and configured.
Note: Linking happens at the contact level, so you will only need to link each patient contact once, instead of per conversation. Linking can only be done on the web version of Spruce.
To link a patient to Hint:
Select the patient's contact in Spruce to open the contact card.
You can click on their contact either from the Contacts tab or within a conversation.
Scroll down to 'Integrations' and select 'Link Contact to EHR'.
Select Hint from the drop down menu.
Search for the patient by the name or ID number used for that patient in Hint. This search must have the full first or last name in order to pull up the patient. It is not case sensitive.
Once the correct chart appears, select it and verify that the information from Hint matches the information you have in Spruce.
Select Establish Link to connect the Hint account with the Spruce contact.
To remove a patient's Hint<>Spruce link:
Select the patient's contact in Spruce to open the contact card.
Scroll down to 'Integrations'
Hover your cursor over the integration you want to unlink, then select 'Remove Link' while your cursor is hovered over,
If you are still having trouble syncing your patients, please email us at support@hint.com and we'll be happy to look into it!