Mobile and email contact lists

Mobile and email contact lists

This article describes how searches and reports for mobile numbers and email addresses can be used.
These will form part of a future release of the 020 Practice Administration folder. If you are interested in using these searches (if only to identify communication dissent), please submit a ticket at the top of this page.


Dissent

Whilst dissent is not built into PA-401/PA-411 as an exclusion, and only as a viewable field in PA-402 and PA-412, PA-403 and PA-413 searches and reports list all patients who have some form of dissent recorded. The reason patients have not been automatically excluded from the main search is that there are different types of dissent relating to the purpose for which you plan to communicate. These fall into 4 categories:
  1. Generic dissent (declined consent) - where the term describes an opt out of any form of messaging. This means a mobile number has only been provided for the purposes of telephone calls.
  2. Dissent about clinical communication - no messages specifically relating to patient care, which might include invitations to flu clinics
  3. Dissent about non-clinical communication - no mailshot messages about closures for staff training and similar general events.
  4. Dissent about receiving test results - no results on text (or email).
The latter 3 categories are for specific purposes, meaning the patient may have only opted out of clinical and non-clinical communication but is happy to receive text message results. The information provided in these reports is for guidance, and it is for the Practice to decide whether a specific dissent applies.
Remember there are corresponding consent codes to record a conscious decision.
The search PA-401/PA-411 and report PA-402/PA-412 can be copied and added to searches for smaller cohorts to generate a specific list of contact numbers. Practices may wish to incorporate into their own version of PA-401 the entire PA-403 or a specific rule within to automatically remove patients who have declined consent for the use of their mobile number.


Mobile number

PA-401 identifies all patients with a mobile number stored in the mobile telephone number field of the Registration module. It will pick up any numbers beginning 07. This means that foreign mobile numbers will not be included.
Mobile numbers are 11 digits in length (including the leading zero), but the search is unable to identify numbers which are too long or too short. This is a manual exercise which can be done in Excel prior to using the mailing list.
EMIS appears to automatically convert numbers entered as "+44 7" or "00447" into 07.

Most text messaging providers already have a functionality to identify patients from a search or report, as well as distinguish where consent has not been granted for use of the number for broad or specific purposes. Custom built reports for AccuRx, MJOG etc which can be copied and attached to any relevant search are also provided in this folder.

Precautions

Practices should carefully consider that the mobile number may be out of date, or that it is being shared within a household between parents and children or couples. The content of messages should be carefully worded to ensure that confidentiality is not broken.
To identify which patient records share a mobile number, the following formula can be added to the report output in Excel.
  1. View Results of the report, then press Export. Export as CSV
  2. Save the file to an easy-to-find location
  3. Open the file in Excel
  4. Scroll to the bottom of the list and make a note of the last numbered row. HINT: select cell A1, then press Ctrl + down arrow which should drop to the bottom. If there is a blank row (eg: multiple dissent codes recorded) you may need to press the down arrow more than once.
  5. Click on column E (above Mobile Telephone), then press Ctrl + H (Replace). In Find what, press the space bar, leaving the Replace with box empty. Press Replace All. This step is to change all numbers to 10 digit strings starting with 7. Where staff entered a number with a space, the report preserved the space.

  6. In cell I1, type the word 'Count'
  7. In cell I2, type the below formula, replacing 12345 with the number noted from step 4. It is important to ensure the $ signs are included.
    =countif(E$2:E$12345,E2) 
  8. Double click on the little square in the lower right corner of the cell to copy the formula down to the bottom.
  9. Use the sort option on the ribbon at the top to sort Z-A (Largest to smallest) to those patients sharing numbers appear at the top. Consider using a Custom Sort to first sort by the Count column, and then by the Mobile Telephone column.

    You may wish to add a 3rd level using Date of Birth to help sort parents before children.

Email address

PA-411 identifies all patients with an email address stored in the email address field of the Registration module. It will pick up any entries containing an @ symbol.
Using an email mailing list is likely to be a lot less common than text messaging and carries as many, if not more, data confidentiality risks. Apps and companies do exist which can run bulk campaigns, but these may not be able to utilise the validity of an NHS.net email address.

Precautions

When sending emails in batches - even using BCC - be aware that email servers may interpret these messages as spam.
  1. Don't carry out an exercise alone. Have a colleague act as a second pair of eyes to ensure (patient) recipients only go into the BCC field.
  2. Many email servers The NHS mail servers have limits imposed to control bulk and spam messaging which mean that you may have to send in batches. This applies both to the number of recipients in a single email AND the number of email messages you need - do not press Send on all messages quickly one after the other.
  3. Some email servers may block messages if recipients have only been added to the BCC line - consider adding another email address belonging to your organisation into the To field. 
  4. Some domains may be blacklisted by the servers, preventing communication.

The search is unable to verify whether an email address is correct, but as a data accuracy exercise it should be possible to identify email addresses where the domain is clearly wrong with some of the examples below:
  1. Domains that don't exist such as @gmail.co.uk (but @googlemail.co.uk does exist)
  2. Domains spelt incorrectly such as @homtail.com or @hotmal.com
  3. Incomplete or misspelled top level domains eg: .co.u  or .comm
It is possible using Excel to break up email addresses (Text to columns) into various components. Using a delimited separator of '@' is a good start, then sort and scroll to pick out some mistakes. Go further and separate by '.' to look at each small part and again it should be possible to identify some of the obvious mistakes. This is not an exact science, and does not account for some of the possible mistakes made in the first part of an email address. Use any mistakes found to highlight the importance of accuracy to staff; illegible details submitted by patients should not be entered until the correct information has been clarified by the patient.
Each entry you can correct increases the number of patients who can receive a communication.

Once entries have been corrected in EMIS, remember to re-run the search and extract the list again. 

Most text messaging providers already have a functionality to identify patients from a search or report, as well as distinguish where consent has not been granted for use of the number for broad or specific purposes.

The search PA-411 and report PA-412 can be copied and added to searches for smaller cohorts to generate a specific list of email addresses. Practices may wish to incorporate into their own version of PA-411 the entire PA-413 or a specific rule within to automatically remove patients who have declined consent for the use of their email address.

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