Hi all, we are looking at emailing our OPC information and clinic appointments. Apart from snail mailing the poorly worded documents we use already we also text reminders. As a result of the SmartHealth work we fortunately have a lot of email addresses. We are now looking at the privacy and consent issues around emailing for a purpose outside of telehealth . Who has experience with emailing with patients and any tips/tricks please.
We collect email addresses via our patient registration form (where we collect all the demographic details). A note on the form states: “Patient email address for the receipt of clinical correspondence: Please provide your email address ONLY if you are happy for us to send your clinical correspondence vai email instead of NZ Post. We may also invite you to give us feedback about your care. Advise us in writing immediately if your contact information changes. Note: information may be less secure when sent via email.”
We send OPC clinic and appointment letters, clinic outcome letters and electronic discharge summaries via email. As a patient I find this much more convenient. There are also text reminders for appointments.
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Hi Ruth
We email. We have a validation system that checks it is the right email address initially. I can put you on touch with the person who set it up if you like
Robyn
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Hi Ruth,
Waitemata, Counties and Auckland DHBs use a cloud based service that provisions a consent process for using email. More than happy
to discuss in detail.
Cheers
Stuart
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Thanks you all, yes please I’d love more detail. Will revert to email to follow up. As we already have a lot of email addresses we are looking at validating in person on clinic arrival which is likely to be the more pragmatic for now but looking for a better solution early.
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Thanks @Ruth_Large for bringing up this really important topic.
I would think some form of validation is essential so I’m interested to hear from those who already do this more details of how it practically works.
We are not widely using emails in public but in other settings I’ve seen it’s all too easy to get the wrong email address if relying on patient’s hand written email address being manually entered from a form.
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Hi All
NMH has commenced a pilot with some of our clinics for this it involves sending an email asking for confirmation on details to the patient prior to sending official documents. @Ruth_Large I will send you the templates. I have recently used it for connectivity testing I am doing and it works well.
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Hi Ruth,
I would suggest you talk to Waitemata as they have recently completed a mail house project to utilise email addresses. CMH are in the process of doing this
now.
Cheers jenny
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Ruth, it would be really helpful if we could share as much info about potential solutions to the email and consent thing with all of CiLN; this is a problem I’m pretty sure that we all have!
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I think this would be a great topic for our upcoming CILN meeting
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I agree Ruth. A very important discussion. How will we include representative recipients of such comms in this discussion?
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It would certainly be excellent to include some community representatives. @graeme.norton is the chair of the Health Consumer Councils of NZ and may be able to guide us.
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Graeme has got back to me and said that he can find us some suitable people in Wellington. I’ll put him in touch with @Ruth_Large and @searnshaw who are co-ordinating the meeting.
Thanks for the update, good to know this is underway, please keep us informed of what progress is made.
I personally feel we should aim for broad, ongoing consumer engagement on a broad range of topics (eg. communication approaches, system design/implementation, data access/use/research…etc) to determine peoples expectations of the healthcare system as a whole. I don’t think consumer engagement should ever stop, it should be a part of the business as usual when improving healthcare services.
One good example of (reasonably) broad consumer engagement is the Great North Care Record public engagement report. This was specifically focused on consumer data, not communication preferences. Worth a read.
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Thanks @michael.hosking
I would like us to include community health council members with an IT interest on Discourse. At SDHB we have Community Health Council members on many of our hospital committess, espeically the ones planning the New Dunedin Hospital. It would be great to hear their voices on the Discourse network as well.
@NathanK what category should they join up under if we get them to join Discourse, as they are neither Clinicians not technical IT people or managers. Do we need a new category for them? I have some from my region I could ask to join if we have the appropriate category.
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Tricky. We use a lot of jargon, and aren’t very ‘consumer friendly’. Happy to make them a group (say @nz-consumer), and have them engage in #nz-forum. But I suspect that what will make or break their engagement is how well we cater to their needs. That will take quite a bit of work unless we strike it lucky and find a consumer who is fluent with social media who then runs with it.
An alternative solution is to have a public category where we can ask the masses to contribute to things. It would have its own challenges, but would certainly get us widespread consumer input.
I think we should do more research to see if it is something that consumers believe would be a valuable mechanism for people to communicate with our network.
Being an advocate for accessibility and inclusion, I think Discourse requires a reasonably high level of digital capabilities/skills. People with disabilities, people living remotely with limited internet connectivity, along many other isolating challenges may find it difficult to engage meaningfully on this platform.
I would suggest, as part of the next CiLN meeting, we ask if consumers would be willing to discuss this topic (with people like @graeme.norton and other diverse consumer groups (eg. a colleague of mine at Access Advisors have a diverse group)) to better understand their expectations before we suggest any solutions. It could be the basis of a funded research program to understand how consumers want to engage with system-wide improvement initiatives, in particular public digital services.
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Hi. Understood and supported. What NZ needs is a resource akin to
www.chf.org.au which enables its health system to readily
access consumer voice into these conversations. I am working on it! J
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Hi all - I’ve just recently joined the forum and while poking around I came across this thread. Interested in the emphasis on email to communicate digitally with patients. I’ve been working in the UK for the last 6 years, where patients are wanting to engage digitally, it’s been my experience that mobile has been the preferred mechanism for communication.
I’ve also seen that most NHS Trusts have a higher % of mobile details captured in PAS compared to email. As Nathan mentioned, acknowledging the different cohorts and creating environments which support their preferences is really important. As a result, the use of a platform which can support both communication channels and gives patients a choice seems ideal.
We’ve also seen great workflows between digital and print solutions which, again allow the patient to choose their preferred format and also have a fall-back option to print if the digital letter is not read within a defined time period.
Is there a reason for the emphasis on email in this discussion?
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I’m pretty sure that is the same with us. My impression (also from running this forum) is that mobile numbers are more ‘static’ - people retain them longer, but are somewhat transient with email addresses (at least their work ones).
Email allows more complex messages, but really it isn’t a great way to communicate with patients either as messages are all too easily ignored. Texting has its limitations (well and truly) and is actually quite expensive. A proper patient engagement system is ideal but they are in their infancy - and buy-in remains a challenge. A multi-pronged strategy which accepts the messy reality of our digital lives is the only thing that will work.
Smart - very smart. I take it they send a link and record if it has been visited; read receipts are impossible with email or txt, but oh-so powerful in more advanced platforms.