Tech tools to reach your audience

As we go through our workday in general practice, there seems to be a never-ending chorus of requests to communicate.

Of course, our jobs involve intense communication with our patients, with research showing that the doctor– patient interaction in general practice is one of the most information-rich areas of communication.

After a session of consulting, I usually like to have some silence and a chance to reflect rather than more conversation! Unfortunately, this isn’t always possible, as we have other roles to fulfil outside the consulting room.

This column is about how your practice communicates with your practice population.

50 per cent of our registered population uses the portal, so it gets reasonably good uptake

Many years ago, our practice team at Island Bay Medical Centre tried to organise a regular leaflet to be mailed out to our enrolled patients.

This never really worked, both in terms of the time taken to come up with the content and, of course, the cost of printing and posting.

We always had good intentions but never really followed through as regularly as we had hoped.

The internet made this a lot easier. To be honest, though, we didn’t really do a lot of patient group communications until the pandemic struck.

Once we got used to running regular updates about COVID-19, it became business as usual for the practice. It doesn’t take long, and patients seem to appreciate it.

We use three main tools, usually in combination:

• texting linked to queries in the practice management system
• website, and
• patient portal.

Which tools we use depends on what kind of message we want to get out.

If it’s for a specific population related to their condition or age, then we will tend to do a database query and send out a text to the patients identified. Often the text will link through to a page we have put on our website.

For example, we have recently had three partners retire. We sent a text out to all their patients inviting them along to a farewell gathering, with a link in the text message to a specific page on our website regarding the venue and programme. We had a couple of hundred responses.

For COVID-positive patients, we would send a text that linked to our site. Our page could be edited frequently as the illustration shows.

For broader messages that we want to go to the whole population, we send a group message out on our patient Tech tools to reach your audience portal. That would generally have the information we want to convey, but also a link once again to a page on our website.

Of course, this doesn’t reach everyone, but about 50 per cent of our registered population uses the portal, so it gets reasonably good uptake.

Our base package from the PHO provides times, fees, services, and so on. We can adjust those.

Below is a list of our current extra pages on our website, ibmc.co.nz

• Resources
• Covid Positive? What to do
• Covid Antiviral Medications
• Practice Plus Afterhours Video Service
• Spring Changes. Below is a list of some of the pages we have retired:
• Covid in Orange Traffic Light
• Covid Vaccination •Covid Vaccinations Given
• Dr Werry’s Retirement •Influenza Vaccination
• Pounamu Gifting and Retirements
• Winter Update 2022.

Many of you will already be running great websites and may be using social media to the full. However, I know many practices just see it as too hard.

It’s a case of getting access to your website content, using texting to alert patients about content, and good use of the patient portal as well.

We don’t have the greatest website by any means, but we just want a place where we can put a message that we want to get out there without taking time and hassle.

The tools built into Facebook will simplify the process outlined above.

Your business’ Facebook followers have already chosen to follow you so any updates you send will automatically notify them.

Our practice considered using Facebook a number of years ago but decided against it as we thought we would have more control over our website, but perhaps it is time to revisit this.

I have noted some really good use of Facebook by various practices. If you are using Facebook and want to share your experiences, please do so in the Comment box under the online version of this article.

Richard Medlicott is a specialist GP based in Wellington