Stumbled upon this: I know many people are having trouble understanding how Twitter could be relevant to a medical practice. Here’s a list that might help. <u>I might use for instant communication, not Twitter</u> 4. Tweet patients to remind them of appointment. 6. Tweet patients that medical report is available. 7. Tweet patients to call to make next appointment for vaccine or treatment series. 11. Tweet patient that medical records are ready to be picked up or have been sent. 13. Tweet patients to take meds (especially meds that change: z-pack, coumadin.) 15. Tweet lab tech (or nurse) to go to exam room # for lab work or whatever. 17. Send notice to patients when new info is on website. 20. Announce new services, physicians, locations. 21. Let patients know when flu shots are available. 29. Tweet patients about drug recall. <u>I don't think I would use</u>. 1. Tweet patients when doctor is running late. 2. Tweet doctor when patient is running late. 3. Tweet staff to remind them of staff meeting Monday morning. 5. Tweet when physician is giving a talk somewhere. 8. Tweet patient to complete patient questionnaire so payer will process claim. 9. Tweet patients to remind about NPO, golitely, drink water before test. 10. Tweet staff to remind of lunch event at work (forget the brown bag or remember your potluck offering.) 12. Tweet patients that auto payment will be drafted tomorrow. 14. Tweet staff to turn payroll in, managers to look over payroll. 16. Tweet x-ray tech to go to exam room # to escort patient to x-ray. 18. Tweet patient that earlier appointment is available when patient no-shows. 19. Order lunch for physicians. 22. Remind patients about drugs (interactions, refills, take meds.) 23. Remind patients to take blood sugar, blood pressure. 24. Alert patient ride that patient is ready for pickup. 25. Alert referring physician that new test reports are available for them via the web. 26. Tweet staff to give them inclement weather update. 27. Tweet patients to remind them of support-group meetings. 28. Tweet patient that last payment in payment plan is less or more due to EOB notice.
Background: I use my cellphone plenty, but have never sent a text message yet. Some things on this list seem over the top to me, and others truly handy. We had record snowfall in Spokane last year, and our center manager used texting to keep us all apprised of clinic events. Majorly handy. Center manager uses texting to remind me of clinic meetings because I'm horrible at *remembering* them..that works too.
[quote user="Graham"][]tweeting is not texting[/quote] Well, it seems to me that the functional difference between twitter, SMS, and other me-too or competing services is much the same, just with nuances. Internet/cellphone-to-cellphone/Internet however you do it.
So, Synapse should have a "Post to twitter" function? Interesting .... [H] Then the Urgent Care facility can let people know how long their wait time is going to be ...
[quote user="Graham"] So, Synapse should have a "Post to twitter" function? Interesting .... [H] Then the Urgent Care facility can let people know how long their wait time is going to be ... [/quote] Actually, that's a pretty cool idea. Could maybe just some standard blurb...."We're catching up now, your expected wait time is about (receptionist types in here) 15 min. Please return to the clinic now" Could maybe use a Chickenfoot script to do it or something?
Let's say your Urgent Care had a twitter account. Then I think all the patients who want to receive twitter messages have to follow your account so that you can post to their twitter account. Then to send them a twitter message, you would do that within Synapse. But better I think is to just assign a patient a visit ID .. and then just post to your own twitter account which visit ID is currently being seen, and an estimate of how long that will take ... So, all the patients just follow your twitter account to see when they should come back ... and they can use their cellphones to do this too.
I've never Twittered or Facebooked before. I was planning on running a PHPlist email list for my flu shots for next year, and patients could sign up for "General Office News" as well. I think lots of my patients have email, but less would have Twitter accounts. I think email is probably better for me than Twitter. I'm sure the Younger patients would like me to have twitter.
Ok, y'all are going to have to educate me a bit, but it strikes me that you can decide with the patient which form of cellphone electronic messaging is OK with them each time they come in. At uc, we verify insurance and ask for updated demographics as well as history updates everytime they come in, so doesn't strike me like a problem. I think most cellphones allow SMS from a computer to the users cellphone if you use their web interface, and can verify if they want to be a "follower" of your practice twitter account. Probably could use your Synapse waiting room kiosk to sign them up [].
Actually having one's own IRC server to run communications between staff and offices might be a good idea. Just need to setup some bots to monitor the channels so that you can fetch messages that occurred while you were offline.
http://philbaumann.com/2009/01/16/140-health-care-uses-for-twitter/ Pretty Interesting List of Twitter uses in HealthCare.
http://www.emrandhipaa.com/emr-and-hipaa/2009/06/15/text-messages-from-an-emr/ - Graham are you using Text Messages ?
