In this article, we specifically discuss sending a mass notice to many or all patients in a medical practice. Cortico also offers several other options for medical practices to communicate with patients in automated, batch, or personalized/transactional emails.

Mass Emailing Patients

A practice may wish to email all their patients regarding:

  1. A new clinic location or service
  2. Announcements about new/retiring doctors
  3. Other major changes
  4. Mass email is also a great way to make patients aware you now offer online booking

Cortico Mass Email Concierge

The Cortico team can take care of all the steps below except for #6 below (you'll have to mostly write your own message to patients). For this, we charge $200 per use. This covers the cost of our time completing the steps below. You can also do this yourself, using MailChimp. It's usually cheaper to use Cortico if you only send a few emails per year. If you send one a month or more, setting it up yourself will be cheaper. Contact us at help@cortico.ca and specify the message you want to send and which patients to send to if you wish to have our assistance.

The steps

To send an email to many patients, you need to consider the following.

  1. Exporting the list of patients to email
  2. Composing the message
  3. Consider patient privacy
  4. Choose a mass email platform
  5. Consider deliverability
  6. Measure results

Exporting the list of patients to email

You need to export a CSV file with patient email addresses and any other information you wish to include in the email (such as patient's name, optional). In Oscar based EMRs, you can use the Report pages or RBT (Report by Template) to search specific demographics who need the message. You will need to chose a report that includes patient emails in the output. We can assist configuring Oscar to output the right email list , or exporting from other EMRs, or you can ask your vendor. Do not export fields you will not use.

If you do not have an RBT template in your Oscar, you can use this one:

<report title="JustPractice: Patients by Provider and Status" description="List of patients by provider and status" active="1">
<query>

SELECT CONCAT("<a target=new href=../../demographic/demographiccontrol.jsp?demographic_no=", demographic_no, "&displaymode=edit&dboperation=search_detail/>", demographic_no, "<a/>") AS 'DEMO_NO',
 last_name, first_name, email, patient_status from demographic
ORDER BY last_name, first_name ASC
</query>


</report>

Composing the message

Your practice should come up with the message patients will receive. Tips for this:

  1. Keep it short and simple
  2. Include a "Call to Action". If you want patients to take action, always include a link such as "Click Here to Book Online" to increase the rate of compliance.

If Cortico will send the message to your patients, send it to help@cortico.ca .

Consider patient privacy

To protect patient privacy, do the following:

  1. Destroy the list of patients after you send the email.
  2. Do not send medical or personal health information (specific medical details) via email.
  3. Avoid exporting or sending any details that aren't necessary.
  4. We recommend deleting the contacts fromt he email platform, after the message is sent.

Here is a summary of Cortico's patient privacy and security work.

Choose a mass email platform

If you're not using Cortico, you can consider MailChimp or other tools to send the mass email yourself.

Consider deliverability

When you email many people, there are a number of steps to take in order to ensure the message is not marked as spam. The easiest way is to send a test email to https://www.mail-tester.com/

This platform will tell you if there are any deliverability issues that will prevent patients getting your message.

Measure results

After the message is sent, most email platforms including Cortico's will provide a summary of how many emails are received and opened. It's normal to have messages that don't make it through since emails may become out of date. One of the best ways to ensure patient contact info stays updated is to use online booking, so patients can self-manage their contact details when they book online.

Here is an example report. A list of patients who did not open the email is available as well if needed.