Introduction
Cohorts and Campaigns allow you to configure outbound campaigns and pathways to target cohorts of patients to request that they complete a specified action. For example, you might wish to invite a group of eligible patients to complete a health check form, provide an up-to-date BP recording, or simply sign post them to some specific materials online.
✔ Targeted QOF data capture, health checks, and hypertension recalls
✔ Prompting transactional tasks, onboarding patients to digital first pathways
Using these processes we can capture key information for patients and via writeback, we can record relevant SNOMED coded data into the patient's record to accurately reflect the activity!
Note: Please contact the Evergreen Life support team to enable the cohorts and campaigns option, if you don't already have it available in your practice portal (Reach out to us via the 'Help' button, by emailing your account manager, or our support team at askmyGP@evergreen-life.co.uk).
The video below shows how this functionality looks and works, and you can use the video, or our walk through steps that follow, to help you start using this feature in your practice!
Overview
To send a campaign to your patients, there are a few key steps to take:
- Configure the 'Custom action' that you will be requesting your patient complete, this could be a form that you need them to fill in, or simply a URL that you wish them to follow and view
- Identify the 'Cohort' you wish to target from within your clinical record system, export this to a CSV and then upload into askmyGP
- Create the 'Campaign' you wish to send to your patients - select the cohort, custom action and messaging you wish for the patient to receive, as well as schedule when the campaign will initiate, or manually 'Start campaign'
- 'Monitor' and issue 'Reminders' to any patients who have not yet completed their campaign. 'Stop campaign' when you're ready for the campaign to end.
The sections below will talk you through these steps in more detail.
Step 1 - Custom action configuration
We have a comprehensive guide HERE which explains the custom action button screen and what the different options mean.
For campaigns, you should ensure you have set the option 'Action is user selectable’ to 'OFF' if you only want the action to be usable by patients whom you are specifically inviting via your campaign.
You should select whether your custom action is a 'Form' or a 'URL' - you would use a form if you require the patient to respond to the campaign and a URL if you simply wish to signpost them to a webpage.
When configuring a 'Form' custom action, ensure you create and apply a tag beforehand, if you wish to auto-tag the request it will generate. You should also use the 'Automatically assign requests to' option if you wish for all requests generated via the campaign to be automatically assigned to a nominated user/group.
You can also add a custom 'Submission message' to provide patients with any relevant details you wish for them to see, once they have submitted their form
Step 2 - Cohort configuration
To begin creating a cohort, click the '+' button
Now, give the cohort a name and either click the upload box, or drag and drop your CSV to upload your cohort:
IMPORTANT NOTE: The field names and content within your CSV must be formatted correctly for it to be successfully uploaded to askmyGP. To assist with this, please click the icon below to download an example CSV with the correct field names and formatting already in place:
You can target both existing users of askmyGP, and patients who have yet to sign up and use the service. For the latter, an account will be automatically created for them using the details held in the cohort CSV.
On this screen, you can also select the 'Test' option after uploading your cohort and the system will highlight any bad data, or issues with formatting for you to correct. If there are any issues identified, you can re-upload the CSV after making the necessary changes:
Once you're happy, you can select the 'Create' button at the bottom of the screen to create your cohort, the system will update to inform you that your Cohort has been created and that the cohort upload will run in the background. You will be notified by email once it's uploaded, and ready for you to use in a campaign.
Once the cohort has successfully uploaded, you can go back into the 'Cohorts' screen at any time to review the cohort, you will see a summary of how many users it contains:
You can select 'Download CSV' to review the users successfully loaded into the cohort if needed
Step 3 - Campaign configuration
Once the cohort has been created and uploaded, you can start creating the campaign that you will be using to target those patients.
To begin creating a campaign, click the '+' button
Now give the campaign a 'Name', and set the 'Start Date' and 'End Date' to reflect when the campaign should start and end (note you can also manually start and end a campaign at any time).
Next, select the 'Cohort' you wish to target and then choose the 'Custom Action' that you will be asking the patient to complete:
Now, you need to populate the 'Invite Title', 'Invite message' and 'Invite call to action', these three elements will form the content and design of the email message that the patient will receive, inviting them to complete the action required of them.
Note: the invite message is limited to 2028 characters.
TOP TIP 1 You can use {{name}} in the 'Invite message' to mail merge the patient's name and make your email feel a little more personalised!
TOP TIP 2 Formatting is limited to plain text, however you can use bullet points • paragraphs, and even emojis to help break up the text a little:
(To insert an emoji, hold the windows key on your keyboard and then tap the full stop key to bring up the emoji selector)
You can test how the campaign email will look for your patients by selecting 'Send invite to yourself' to receive a copy of the email
(Don't worry, this doesn't trigger the campaign just yet!)
There are similar fields to be populated for 'Reminder' emails which can be triggered at any time once the campaign has started, to remind patients who have yet to complete the required action:
Once again, you can preview how this will look for patients by selecting 'Send reminder to yourself'.
Once you're happy with your campaign, select 'Create'
Starting the campaign - When you're ready to start your campaign, you can select the 'Start campaign' button (covered in the section below) to start it manually. Alternatively, if you scheduled a start date for the campaign, you can simply wait for the system to start the campaign automatically for you at the date and time specified.
Step 4 - Monitoring, Reminders and ending a campaign
At any time, you can review a campaign's progress by navigating to the 'Campaigns' screen and selecting the campaign you wish to review.
From here you will be able to see Statistics relating to the number of 'Total users' in the campaign, the number of 'Invites sent', how many campaigns have been 'Completed' by patients and the number of 'Reminders sent' to patients.
The coloured buttons at the bottom of the screen allow you to:
- Start campaign - Manually initiate a campaign that has no scheduled start time, or start a scheduled campaign earlier than scheduled
- Stop campaign - Manually end a campaign that has no scheduled end time, or end a scheduled campaign earlier than scheduled
- Reset campaign - Reset the statistics for this campaign
- Send reminder - Send the 'Reminder message' that you configured previously, to issue a reminder email to any patients in the cohort who have not yet completed the requested action
Note: when a campaign is scheduled to 'Start' (or is manually started), it will be added to a queue which runs in the background, so there may be a small delay in you initiating the campaign, and the 'Invite sent' value starting to increment.
Ending a campaign - If you wish to end a campaign earlier than scheduled to prevent any further invitations being sent out to patients, you can use the 'Stop campaign' button, alternatively it will automatically end on the specified 'End Date'