One thread per person
The inbox groups by patient or lead, not by channel. Pick a person and their calls, texts, emails, portal messages, and website chats sit side by side as tabs — with the most recent one on top, whichever way they reached you.
Omnichannel
Every patient conversation — calls, texts, email, and chat — in one HIPAA-compliant inbox
Ona Omnichannel is the unified patient communication inbox in Ona's practice management platform. Phone calls, SMS, email, secure in-app messaging, and website chat land in one conversation per patient or lead, opened from the chart and answered by the team from the same app — with an internal layer of notes and @mentions the patient never sees, and every message and call encrypted, role-scoped, and logged.
- Phone calls
- SMS
- In-app chat
- Website chat
- AI receptionist
- Internal notes
- @Mentions
- HIPAA compliant
Ona Omnichannel is the unified patient communication inbox built into Ona, the AI-native, all-in-one practice management platform. Every way a patient or prospective patient reaches your practice — a phone call, a text, an email, a message from the portal, a chat started on your website — lands in one conversation per person, opened from their chart and answered by your team from the same app. No shared inbox to reconcile, no personal phones, no call log living somewhere else.
The same thread carries a quieter, team-only layer: switch a message to Internal and it never leaves the building, @mention a colleague and they're paged, turn a message into a Note and it stays pinned to the patient. Ona Omnichannel is for any practice that wants compliant patient communication without a phone system, a texting tool, and a messaging app that all disagree about what was said — primary care, behavioral health, physical therapy, women's health, nutrition, integrative and functional medicine, naturopathic doctors, and medspa teams, from a solo clinic to a multi-site group.
01 · The problem
Five inboxes is how a message gets lost.
A patient calls the front desk, texts the nurse's cell, emails billing, and messages through the portal — about the same thing.
Most clinics run patient communication across a phone system, a texting app, a shared email login, a portal nobody checks, and whoever's personal phone the patient happened to get. Each one holds part of the story. Nobody holds all of it, and the person covering tomorrow holds none of it.
Omnichannel means one thread per person, whatever channel they used, sitting on their chart. Ona's version is the one your compliance officer can live with and your front desk will actually adopt: every channel in the same window, the same composer, the same permissions — and a conversation that reads in order even when it hopped from a missed call to a text to an email.
02 · Why Ona
Every channel your practice uses, in one inbox.
Phone calls, in the browser
Call a patient from their thread without leaving Ona, or have Ona ring your mobile first and connect the patient. Inbound calls ring your team's browsers; every call becomes a card in the conversation with a recording and a transcript.
Two-way SMS
A dedicated local number for your practice, registered with the carriers so texts actually arrive. Replies come straight back into the thread; reminders, confirmations, and follow-ups all travel over the same number.
Email that stays on the chart
A practice email address that delivers into the inbox instead of a shared login. Subjects, replies, and attachments live with the patient, so “who answered that email?” has an answer.
Secure in-app messaging
Patients message their care team from the portal — one plain thread, no channel tabs, no internal tooling. On your side it's just another tab on the same person.
Website chat that creates leads
One line of code puts a chat button on your own website. A visitor leaves their name and starts talking; your team answers from the same inbox, and the visitor is already a lead in your CRM.
AI receptionist as the safety net
Nobody free to answer? After your ring window the AI receptionist picks up, books or takes a message, and the call lands in the thread with its transcript — flagged so the team knows to review it.
A team layer under every thread
Flip the composer to Internal and the box turns amber: what you type never reaches the patient, on any channel. @Mention a colleague, or start a Note that stays pinned to the chart and can be resolved when it's done.
Groups and access control
Open threads are visible to the whole team by default; restrict a sensitive one to named members. Spin up a group for a complex case, and include the patient when they should be in the room.
HIPAA compliant
Messages, recordings, and transcripts are encrypted in transit and at rest, scoped by role, and stored with author and timestamp. A BAA is in place with every Ona workspace. Patients only ever see their own thread.
03 · How it works
One conversation, however it started.
A thread follows the person, not the channel — so the story stays in order.
Provision your channels once
Settings → Omnichannel gives your practice a local phone number (SMS and calls), a dedicated email address, browser calling, and the website widget. Turn on what you use; the inbox adapts.Conversations arrive under the person
An inbound text, email, call, portal message, or website chat is matched to the patient or lead by number and address. New callers and visitors become leads automatically, so nobody re-keys a phone number.Reply on whichever channel fits
Every channel is a tab on the same person, with the same composer. A quick confirmation goes by text, a document by email, a nuanced answer by phone — and the history of all three is one scroll away.Keep the team in the loop, privately
Switch to Internal to leave context the patient never sees, @mention whoever needs to act, or start a Note that stays pinned to the chart until someone resolves it.Close it, and find it later
Close a conversation when it's done and reopen it when the patient comes back. The thread is always one click from the chart, from the Contacts list, or from the floating messenger anywhere in Ona.
04 · Phone calls
The phone, finally on the chart.
Calls were the one channel that never left a trail. Now they're a card in the thread like everything else.
Open a patient's Calls tab and dial from the browser, or have Ona call your mobile first and bridge the patient in — your practice number is the caller ID either way. Inbound calls ring the browsers of whoever you've chosen to answer: the whole team, the front desk, or a named on-call group. Pick up from the call bar at the bottom of the screen, keep navigating while you talk, and jump to the patient's page from the same bar.
Every call — answered, missed, or handled by the AI receptionist — is written into the conversation as it happens: ringing, in progress, then the outcome with duration, a recording you can play back, and a searchable transcript. Missed and AI-answered calls mark the thread unread and raise a notification for the answering group, so the callback happens.
05 · Team layer
Not every message belongs to the patient.
Some belong to whoever's covering next — and they belong on the same thread, not in another app.
Switch a message to Internal
One toggle, on every thread. The amber banner is the safety cue: visible to your team only, never sent to the patient, whichever channel the conversation is on.@Mention whoever needs to see it
Type @ to pull a teammate in. They're notified immediately, and the mention lives in their Mentions tab until they resolve it. Tagging someone who isn't on a restricted thread asks before it grants them access.Or start a Note instead
Tap Start a note before you send, and that same message becomes a new, patient-scoped Note titled from what you wrote. A link back to it stays in the conversation, so nothing gets orphaned.Rename, resolve, reopen
Notes get retitled and marked resolved from the same header menu used to close a conversation. An unresolved count sits on the patient's Notes tab, so open items don't quietly age out of sight.
06 · Patient side
Patients don't see any of the plumbing.
Texts and emails come back the normal way, to the number or address you wrote from. In the portal, a patient sees one plain thread with their care team — no channel tabs, no mentions, no internal notes — and any group they've been added to. Your practice looks like one organized front desk, because it is one.
“The thing I love most is the quietest one — my team stopped texting me after hours, and patients stopped texting my personal cell. Calls, texts, the portal — it all lives in Ona now, on the chart, with notification rules my team actually respects.”
07 · In practice
One inbox, shaped to your clinic.
Front desk
Answer the phone and the texts from one screen.
Inbound calls ring the front-desk browsers; a missed one lands as a card with a notification and becomes a text back in two clicks — same thread, same person.
Clinician + MA pairs
Context between visits, without the personal phone.
The MA texts the reminder, the patient emails a photo, the clinician leaves an Internal note for Thursday. One thread, three channels, zero screenshots forwarded from a cell.
Growing practices
Every website visitor becomes a lead you can talk to.
The widget captures the name, the AI receptionist captures the caller, and both land in Leads with a conversation already open. Follow up by text or email from the same row.
Multi-location groups
One inbox per person, whichever site they called.
Choose who answers inbound calls — everyone, the front desk role, or a named group — and let the thread follow the patient regardless of which location they belong to.
Behavioral health
Structured check-ins between sessions.
Patients reach out between sessions in a scoped, reviewable thread that lives with the chart, not a personal inbox. Sensitive conversations can be restricted to named members.
Concierge & membership
Direct access without personal-phone burnout.
Members get a dedicated thread with their care team and a number that's the practice's, not yours. Calls are recorded and transcribed, so “what did we agree?” has an answer.
FAQ
Common questions.
What does omnichannel mean in Ona?
One conversation per patient or lead, whatever channel they used. Phone calls, SMS, email, in-app portal messages, and website chats each appear as a tab on the same person, in one inbox, opened from the chart — so your team reads the whole story in order and replies on whichever channel fits.
Is Ona Omnichannel HIPAA-compliant?
Yes. Messages, call recordings, and transcripts are encrypted in transit and at rest, role-scoped to your workspace, and stored with author and timestamp. A BAA is in place with every Ona workspace, and patients only ever see their own thread.
Can we make and receive phone calls in Ona?
Yes. Call from the browser or have Ona ring your mobile first and connect the patient, presenting your practice number as caller ID. Inbound calls ring your team's browsers, with the AI receptionist as fallback. Every call becomes a card in the thread with a recording and transcript.
Do we need a new phone number?
Ona provisions a local number for your practice, used for both SMS and calls, and registers it with the carriers for you. Most practices publish it or forward their existing line to it.
Where do patients reply from?
Texts and emails reply the normal way, to the number or address you messaged from. For in-app messaging, patients use Chats in the Ona patient portal from any modern browser — one plain thread with their care team.
Can my team leave notes on a conversation the patient can't see?
Yes. Switch the composer to Internal and the message stays with your team on any channel. You can @mention a colleague, or turn the message into a Note pinned to the patient that can be renamed, resolved, and reopened.
Who can see a conversation?
By default every active member of your practice; restrict a thread to named members when it's sensitive, and admins retain access. @Mentioning someone who isn't on a restricted thread asks before it adds them. Patients see only their own thread and any group they've been added to.
Does Ona detect emergencies automatically?
No. We don't try to detect crises from message content — that's a promise we're not ready to make. Patient threads can carry standing guidance (“call 911 for emergencies”) and your care protocols handle the rest.
Ready when you are
One inbox for the whole practice.
Book a fifteen-minute walkthrough — bring a real patient's history and we'll show the call, the text, and the email in one thread.