If someone set SaRA up around you, here is the whole of your part.
In a lot of practices, SaRA gets configured by an owner or an admin and the clinicians are never told what is actually expected of them. People then assume it is another inbox to keep on top of. It is not. For a treating provider, the required behavior is roughly three minutes per patient per month — and most of that is already happening inside visits you are having anyway.
What is already running without you
Your patients get a short check-in text each weekday. You do not send it.
Their replies land on your patient list. You do not have to fetch them.
The time you spend reading those replies is timed automatically. There is no stopwatch to start and nothing to remember.
You do not need to reply to every message. Nobody expects that, and setting that expectation with patients is explicitly discouraged.
What is actually yours
Glance at the list. A patient who has gone quiet, or who reported something worth a second look, stands out. A minute most days covers it.
Talk about it once a month. Bring up what a patient has been reporting during a visit you already have with them — "you mentioned the stairs were rough on Tuesday, tell me about that." That conversation is the one piece the software cannot do for you, and it is what the treatment-management codes require.
Log that conversation. Close the chart, click Edit in the toast, add the in-person interaction. Fifteen seconds. You can finish the notes later.
That is the whole requirement. One synchronous conversation per calendar month per patient, logged. Everything else either runs on its own or is captured for you.
Why it is worth the three minutes
The clinical case is simpler than the billing one. You get a week's worth of information about how someone actually did between visits, instead of asking "how have things been?" and getting "fine." Providers using it well describe catching falls, swelling, shortness of breath, medication problems and exercise confusion before the next appointment rather than at it.
Patients notice, too — but only if you show them you read it. The most common patient complaint about between-visit messaging is that their provider never mentions it. Opening the chat in front of them at the start of a visit fixes that in about ten seconds.
Where to go next
The two habits that make this work, step by step: Using SaRA in the visit.
What your patient list is telling you: Reading your patient list.
Everything a provider needs in five steps: SaRA for providers: your quickstart.