We're in an unpredictable place right now all over the world. Information that is accurate today may change by tomorrow. Here are some ways you can update your communications to get the right information to your patients.

There are a number of ways you can quickly and easily communicate information to your patients en masse, ensuring that everyone gets the latest information regarding your clinic and their appointments.

If you allow your patients to book themselves in online, then you can make sure they have the information they need before booking. This may just include links or the general info you see on GP doors. There are two spaces available for this general info, which are editable in your online bookings settings. You'll see:

Important notices: If you need to keep your patients in the loop about changes to your clinic, you can add a notice to the top of your bookings page. 

Time selection info: This will appear just below the choices for dates and times. This would be a good place for extended general info. Learn how to set it up here.

Terms of use: If you add terms of use, your patients will need to agree to these when booking an appointment online. That makes this field a great place to hold virus-related info that your patient must read and agree to before making the booking (e.g. "I acknowledge that I will cancel my booking if I become ill with a fever, cough and/or breathing problems.") This article will guide you through adding terms of use to your online bookings.

Confirmation emails are sent out at the time of booking. If you don't have them set up at the moment, then head over here to learn how to get started with them.

Importantly, you're in full control of the information sent with the email. Within your appointment reminder settings, you can edit your confirmation templates and you can change what you need. For example, you could link to your government's health information page, or whatever resources you have gathered yourself!

These are, perhaps, more important to change than your long-term confirmation emails. These messages are about appointments happening within the next 1-5 days, and you also control exactly what those messages state. A quick statement about rescheduling if ill would be perfect for this reminder. You can utilise SMS reminders, email reminders, or both.

Within Cliniko, we allow you to send out a generic SMS to all people within your account (normal SMS charges apply). This is handy for communicating changed opening/closing times or a message regarding the temporary shuttering of your clinic. You can access this area from the Communications tab—this guide walks you through setting it up.

You can send a bulk email through Cliniko directly, you can download a spreadsheet of all patients' email addresses by exporting your patient list (which you can then manually import that info into any mailing program you want to use and then go from there).

With Mailchimp, if integrating for the first time, we would recommend having "double opt in" turned off in your Audience. If you have that turned on, then Mailchimp will send out an "invite" to be added to your Audience, and you would be prevented from sending to them until they accept that invite (which may be never!). While this is an important option for marketing emails, it's not too useful when needing to send out time-sensitive medical info!

If you want to follow up with your patients after their appointments—to see if they'd like to return or to check on how they're feeling—you can use many of the methods mentioned above. For example, you can send a bulk SMS based on when patients were most recently in. There are a couple of other methods that might also prove handy.

The recalls function allows you to group patients together based on *when* you want to reach out to them, and *what* you want to reach out to them about. You may wish to follow up with people who came in over the last week, or perhaps the last few weeks, to see how they're doing and make sure they're feeling okay. You would first need to create a recall type for this purpose, assign it to the relevant patients, and, when you're ready, run a recall report to get a list of who to contact.

The letters function in Cliniko is very similar to sending a regular email—you just do it from Cliniko directly (and there's not an option to send letters in bulk). Letters are a great way to send a one-off communication to a patient, their referring GP, or any other third party who might need to be clued in on something about the patient or their appointment. You can create letter templates for virtually any purpose, write them, and then send them to your chosen recipient.

Hopefully the methods mentioned above will be helpful to you when it comes to communicating with your patients during this uncertain time—both before and after their appointments. And as usual, if you have any questions for us, just give our support team a shout. 🙂