This article will review several steps you should take to professionalize your Spruce set up in order to ensure the best experience for your patients and providers. This is a great checklist to go over, whether you're using Spruce for the first time or reviewing your account to ensure your setup is correct after using Spruce for years!
Use a Business Email
The best practice is to use your business email address as your user login and to ensure that all teammates do this as well. This makes it possible to remove access to company email, and therefore Spruce, if someone leaves your organization. It also helps Spruce to identify users when you reach out to us by email. You can set up a business email using many email providers. Your email used to log in is never patient-facing and is used for password reset purposes, should you need it. To change the email address linked to your user account, please message Team Spruce Support in the app.
Review User List
It's important to review who is listed as a user on your account and which of those users have admin privileges. Admins have extensive privileges on Spruce, so it's important that you consciously decide who on your team should be able to access these functions. For security reasons, please ensure that all users are still active members of your organization. You can deactivate a user by going to Settings>Teammates and selecting a specific user, and then selecting "deactivate." You will also see an option to "promote to admin" or "demote."
Subscribe to the Spruce Backup System
Our backup system allows your organization to access messages in case of a system-wide failure. Although events of this kind are unlikely, we recommend that you enable this setting to ensure that there will be no disruption to your clinical care should such an event occur. To opt-in to receive email and SMS notifications in the event of a system outage, navigate to your Spruce settings, then select "Backup System", then "Set Up Backup System Notifications". From there, you can select notification type (only email or email and SMS) and enter the email addresses and/or phone numbers of those who should receive the notifications.
Subscribe to the Spruce Status Page
Spruce tracks the status of any system-wide event on our status page. You can subscribe to this page to be made aware of any technical problem that might be impacting your practice and receive real-time updates as our team works to solve the issue.
Update Your Spruce Profile
The Spruce Profile Page is patient-facing and is a great place for your organization to highlight the services you offer, link to your website, and display your location and other details about your practice. You can share your Spruce Profile with patients in multiple ways. Navigate to Settings and then to "Share Clinic." There, you'll see your Spruce Link and your QR code. You can copy and paste either of these and share them with patients any way you'd like.
Use a Unique and Secure Password
The security of your clinical communication is our highest priority. To be sure that your account is safe, we recommend that you and all users in your organization utilize unique passwords, ideally, complex passwords stored within a password manager. Spruce logins should not be shared between multiple staff members. Login-sharing invalidates your audit log and can create legal complications in the case of a HIPAA breach. In an effort to strengthen security, Spruce limits the number of devices that can be used simultaneously with one login. Devices will automatically be logged out when this limit is exceeded.
Custom Caller ID
Unfortunately, we don't control how the receiving phone carrier looks up your Caller ID. We can request an update from our carrier, but it is not possible for us to guarantee that a desired Caller ID will display correctly every time for everyone. The Caller ID isn't something we send from Spruce; it's something that the receiving phone carrier looks up from a database when a call comes in. If they use a database that's not up to date, the ID can display incorrectly. Or if they don't make any lookup attempt, a Caller ID won't display at all.
When we request a custom Caller ID, we consider this a best-effort scenario, in which we can request our carrier to update the Caller ID for a Spruce phone number. You can reach out in your Spruce Support Thread to request a custom Caller ID. Please note that there is a 15-character limit for Caller ID display.
Register Your Spruce Number
If you have not yet registered your number, you will see a prominent banner in your Spruce account indicating that this is required. You can read more about this requirement and the process of registering your number for business use in this article.