Home Forums Discussions Meaningful Use Email Blasts

How is everyone marketing with email blasts to patients. We are having to export to excel then copy into an email. This is very time consuming does anyone have a better method? Possible 3rd party that syncs with AC

There are a variety of tools that can automate the process, one that comes to mind is:

http://www.constantcontact.com/email-marketing/features/email-list

We tend to handle those sorts of things in-house, but we practice solutions, not medicine.

We use SQL Server Integration Services to pull patient emails and so forth out of demographics and then send out the email blasts. Fully automated.

JamesNT

mbfoot,

I think this is pertinent here, but my nurse just talked me into doing a practice broadcast regarding signing a revised privacy practice form at next office visit and that flu shots are available. I just sent over 650 plus secure messages sent out thru the Updox portal, and what is impressive is the number of people who are on line. Within 10 minutes over 50 plus have read and some are scheduling the flu shots already. WOW!!!

Addendum: Just got home after my kid's football practice and have had over 200 plus readings of the message. I have the portal set to private mode but for marketing, there is likely an avenue if one sets the public mode, but you may want to investigate with the Updox staff to see if this may work for you. I think it is about 4 hours since I sent the original practice broadcast with the click of one tab--modern technology

Jimmie,
This sounds great I will contact updox. With Updox are you limited to just a typed message or do you do a design with your logo etc like a typical newsletter type?

mbfoot,

I am not actively marketing, and am on the downhill side of my career and hope to have another 12-15 years. I do not have any experience with Indy's or JamesNT's recommendations.

I have an electronic home page that has my practice name, business hours, fax number, and a sign in tab. Also, there is a map on how to get to the office. In addition, several paragraphs describing how to utilize the portal. You can create whatever you want. The page has a basic format but very customizable.

I have a brief description of the HIPAA compliant secure portal, instructions on how to message the office or retrieve messages, and a brief description of the templates (forms). The templates consist of Demographics, Appointment request, Medication refill request, POLST form, Medicare annual wellness survey.

Also, instructions that the portal is to be used only for non-emergent messaging, and it may take 48-72 hours to respond to messages.

After signing in to the portal, then the patient has multiple options, filling out any of the forms, retrieving messages, lab results, xrays, office summaries, or just messaging us with concerns or requests.

The messaging or completed forms will then come into the Updox worksite, and viewable by me or my nurse. My nurse will then copy and paste or send to AC, which becomes part of the permanent record.

Hope this helps, but I think the folks at Updox will be able to elaborate better on the public/marketing aspect available.

Addendum to the addendum:

It has been 6 days since the original patient broadcast, and like anything there are always ups and downs.

Make sure that as patients leave your practice, one way or another, to deactivate their portal account as soon as they are gone, so if you do a patient wide broadcast, messages do not end up in unintended portals. Although, one guy informed us he had moved and thanked us for all the care.

This first time I checked the little box to be notified once the patient broadcast message was read. Next time I will not, otherwise one could get overwhelmed with reading and archiving the same thing over and over.

I am glad I did this, to give me a sense of what a great tool this can be, at least on two fronts. To announce a change in office procedure such as warning patients about a new form to fill out so they will know to come a bit earlier is quite helpful. Or to announce when the flu shot is in.

The other unintended positive, and this has more to do with the original marketing theme, is a reminder to patients, that the portal is an extension of the office. Quite a few comments on appreciation for the availability of the portal to get directly to my nurse, other than the traditional means. I was surprised, and thought the patient response would be a bit more negative, but thus far has a component of a "modern day house call".

I will likely hear about the negatives on my face to face so may give a followup later.....

Here is another method that we use to get out practice wide (or group specific) messages. We are not yet using a portal, so we do a phone message. My secretary keeps referring to it as our "Robocall", although I prefer "automated reminder" since we are not politicians.

Generate a report of patients in AC using whatever parameters you wish. Then, use the show fields function to leave only the phone numbers. Use the export function which sends it to an Excel spreadsheet.

We user a service called Call-Em-All. It is very reasonably priced, charges based on the length of your message and number of calls placed. Create an account and add funds to it. Then you can set up a broadcast, import your phone numbers from the spreadsheet, record a message, and set parameters for when it goes out. You can also set up text message notifications, although we have not used that. It takes less than 5 minutes to set up a broadcast. After the broasdcast, it generates a report as to how many live answers, messages, etc.

These messages have been well received by our patients, they like hearing my voice on the message. (Some of them try to talk to me until they realize it is a recording!). We can reach everyone, even our older patients who may not use Email. We have mainly used it for flu shot reminders.

We were introduced to this by our vaccine supplier, Sanofi. If you have an account with them, they offer a free trial of the service and discounted rates. You can find it on their VaccineShoppe website, they call it WellConnect.

DIalMyCalls is another very inexpensive way to send out calls. I even use it to tell patients I sent in their refills.

RE: Updox- would it not be possible to post the privacy form right on Updox and have them 'sign' that they have reviewed it. I'm not totally up to date on what constitutes an acceptable online signature but if they are in their own portal, seems like they could submit the form with their name and birthdate and a checkmark next to a box that indicates they are who they say they are....

Carla_FNP,

I think typing up and creating a form and putting it on the portal website with a place to sign would work nicely, and could easily be sent to the imported item section in AC, but like you mention, the online signature is the glitch. Anyone have any thoughts....?