Crowfoot Village Family Practice – Streamlined Professionalism in Clinic Communications

Monthly Messages: 3,955

Total Patients Invited: 10,740

Patients Invited Monthly: 300

Major Use Case: Virtual front desk/patient management

Sherry Drewniak, Operations Coordinator and Privacy Officer at CVFP, knows that managing consistency in communications with patients is a challenge. Although CVFP has been “On the Brightsquid bandwagon way before COVID-19”, Ms Drewniak explained that the addition of Secure-Mail templates has empowered the large clinic to engage patients better than ever before. 

Keep patient communications quick, support streamlined appointments.

Crowfoot Village Family Practice uses Secure-Mail for clinic to patient communication. That means that staff manage all communications with patients to get information needed to conduct appointments effectively. Crowfoot even created a message template that teaches patients how to best send pictures to assist doctors with phone consults. 

PROCESS FLOW:

For greater efficiency, patients can’t message CVFP doctors directly. Ms. Drewniak explained that, “Messages come into the team inbox, if there’s a question for one of our doctors, the team puts it in the patient’s chart and the task goes to the doctor. The doc responds in the EMR, and the team sends the information back to the patient through Secure-Mail.”

Using this process, patients interact with the clinic to get answers from their doctor, and doctors keep their work focused in the EMR. 

Know your patients get the right message.

CVFP uses Secure-Mail templates to eliminate typos, grammar mistakes, and maintain professionalism in all communications with patients. For Sherry, it’s very important as, “Most of our messages get copied into the EMR, the patient’s legal document. We don’t want missing periods or typos in there. We strive for professionalism.”

Templates also ensure consistency in patient messaging so the same message is relayed to the patient, regardless of who is sending it. This helps CVFP maintain standardization in a clinic with over 40 staff sending messages. Using Secure-Mail to deliver instructions to patients is also safer than using the phone, as it eliminates the possibility of someone writing down information incorrectly.

Get more communications in one place.

“Secure-Mail works so well for everything,” she said, adding, “it saves a lot of time.”

Secure-Mail can do the job of your phone, fax, and mail. Ms. Drewniak said, “the benefits are huge.” CVFP uses Secure-Mail for sending lab reqs to eliminate unnecessary trips to the office, “It’s instant and we don’t have to spend resources putting it in the mail for them.” 

Delivering reqs in this way is also helpful for labs that are so inundated they have requested that clinics not send requisitions via fax.

Patients also receive instructions for appointments or procedures through Secure-Mail which has saved hours of time for the front desk staff that used to do much of it over the phone. Ms. Drewniak said that, “All we need to do is book the appointment and tell the patient to watch their inbox.”

Contact support@brightsquid.com to find out if your clinic is set up to message patients through templates.