How websites and newsletters can be the ‘unsung heroes’ of your practice

At Ontario MD’s Digital Health Conference 2024 held in Toronto last weekend, much of the buzz was about new artificial intelligence tools, from scribes to automated task management. But healthcare manager Chris LeBouthillier also spoke about how even some of the most basic patient-facing digital tools, such as websites and newsletters, can go a long way in improving the experience for patients.“Websites, newsletters, mass messaging, like I said, those are some unsung heroes within our clinic,” he said at his “Modernizing Clinic Workflow” talk last Friday.LeBouthillier, who is the executive director of the West Carleton Family Health Team in Ottawa, says clinic websites are a useful but often underutilized tool, as it’s frequently the first place a patient goes to in order to look up the clinic’s contact information. At the top of the West Carleton’s homepage is a link to a page that helps patents determine if they should make an appointment or are better off staying at home.“The idea is of providing patients some direction of self-directed care, so they can determine whether they actually need to call us to have a visit to be seen,” he said.In addition, LeBouthillier’s clinic will also have guidelines and other patient education resources on the website, along with a list of policies and services, and instructions on how to navigate the patient health portal.“That's developed by one of our staff members. She spends quarterly a few hours putting it together based on topics that either patients have asked for or that our providers have asked to be included to really encourage patients to take initiative within with their own healthcare,” he said.Another tool that helps LeBouthillier’s clinic triage patients more efficiently is allowing patients to book online. “Our clinic cannot even remotely keep up with the phone calls that we get. We are not deep into online appointment booking as we want to be, because we really feel it's important to triage our calls to avoid patient visits. But we've been slowly expanding our online appointment booking offering, acknowledging that that's really what patients want,” he explained.Currently, West Carleton only accepts online bookings for a limited number of ailments and service—such as pap tests, allergy shots or Vitamin B12 injections—while other appointment types must be booked over the phone. If a patient abuses the online booking portal and uses it to book for an issue outside of the list, the clinic has the ability to rescind the patent’s online booking privileges.In addition, the system can limit what types of services a patient can book for (only patients eligible for a pap test can book a pap test, for example). Before the appointment, the clinic can send out reminder emails as well as the pre-visit questionnaires and consent forms that the patient can digitally sign. These forms also automatically get added into the patient's charts once they're filled out and signed.“(The patients) review the questionnaire or the consent form . . . and then they can sign it off digitally,” said LeBouthillier. “We've added that for all of our procedures in the clinic. It just made things so much more efficient than reviewing it in office, us getting them to sign it, and scanning that into their chart.”

How websites and newsletters can be the ‘unsung heroes’ of your practice

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