VACCINE REMINDER SERVICE A GUIDE FOR SURGERIES Sign up to the free text and voicemail service to automatically remind patients eligible for flu vaccination to book their appointment. This guide shows how to join the service and register your patients it s simple and it s free! This surgery s vaccine reminder service is funded by Sanofi Pasteur as part of this surgery s purchase of Sanofi Pasteur s influenza vaccines.
A STEP-BY-STEP GUIDE TO THE FLU VACCINATION REMINDER SERVICE Page 3 Page 5 Introducing the flu vaccination reminder service Getting started signing up and logging on Page 8 Creating your campaign adding patients to your list and setting campaign parameters INTRODUCING THE FLU VACCINATION REMINDER SERVICE The Department of Health recommends annual flu vaccination for all those aged 65 and over, and for people under 65 years in at-risk groups. Page 14 The reminder process what your patients receive Page 16 Frequently asked questions The reminder service is a free, simple-to-use programme for your surgery. It lets you create a database of patients eligible to receive a flu vaccination. You decide who receives a reminder and when by creating your own campaign that automatically sends a voice or text message to encourage patients to make an appointment for a vaccination. You can register your practice, add eligible patients and manage a campaign by following the instructions contained in this guide. 2 3
INTRODUCING THE FLU VACCINATION REMINDER SERVICE 1 GETTING STARTED Getting the most from the service To help achieve the best results, a little forward planning will go a long way. Firstly, make sure your team is aware of the service, and when the reminder calls are going out. It is important that your receptionists know how to handle calls from patients who have received the reminders. It may be a good idea to assign a project leader to oversee the service and be responsible for keeping the patient list updated. Tell your patients about the service Use the posters and leaflets provided by Sanofi Pasteur to let your patients know about the service. These materials also advise them to speak to your reception if they have any questions or wish to opt out of the service. Identify patients eligible for a vaccination A flu vaccination is offered as part of the Department of Health s flu vaccination programme. This is to help protect those who are most at risk from flu and its complications. For information regarding the eligible patient groups, please refer to your Department of Health guidance. You can search your patient database and identify suitable patients who can be added to your reminder list. Sign up to the service To create your reminder service, go to: https://sanofi.x-onweb.com Enter your surgery post code and press When a valid post code is entered, a drop-down list will appear. Select your surgery name from the list. Confirm If an invalid post code is entered, an error message will appear. If the post code is correct, but an error message still appears, please contact the support desk by either email at sanofisupport@x-on.co.uk or by calling 0333 332 1499 between 9am and 5pm Monday to Friday. 4 5
Continue to enter your surgery telephone number, your name and your email address. You must enter a valid UK telephone number starting with 01, 02, 03, 07 or 08. The email address must also be valid, and unique across the entire X-on system. When all correct data has been entered and you have clicked Register a page will appear confirming your reminder service has been created and that login details will be emailed to your surgery. You will also receive a password for the login process in a separate email. You can change your password later. If either the phone number or email address is invalid, an error message will appear. Logging on Follow the login instructions provided in the email you received. A read-only screen displaying the details of your surgery will appear. These details can only be changed by an Administrator. 6 7
Click on the campaign dates entry field to bring up a calendar, allowing you to select the start and finish date for when your reminder campaign calls and texts will go out. 2 CREATING YOUR CAMPAIGN To start creating your own vaccination reminder campaign, select Edit campaign 8 9
A day selected for the campaign will show in dark blue, an unselected day appears light blue, and will not permit a campaign to run on this day. Uploading patient data To add patient details to your vaccination reminder campaign list, click on Upload patients. In the example above, the campaign would run on Monday, Wednesday and Friday mornings, but not on Tuesday, Thursday or Saturday. Campaigns are not permitted to run on Sundays. Use the drop-downs to select the start and end times of day that the campaign will run. Morning campaigns can run between 8:00 and 11:59am. Afternoon campaigns can run between 12:00 and 20:59pm. Select Contact method to choose Voice only or Voice & SMS. If you select Voice & SMS, mobile numbers will be sent an SMS message instead of a phone call. All landlines and other non-mobile numbers will always receive a phone call. Once you press the Save button, the changes will be saved, and your surgery will receive an email confirming the changes. Clicking on the Choose File button allows you to select a file to upload from your computer. 10 11
The list of patients should be created in a spreadsheet such as Microsoft Excel and must contain the following headings: Telephone Number Patient ID (a number generated by your surgery to help identify patients it should be between 0 and 10 characters) The Patient ID is optional and can be left blank, but the telephone number is essential. Any duplicate phone numbers within an upload will be ignored, and only added once. A patient upload template is available to download by selecting Click here If there are any errors whilst uploading, the existing data will not be changed. A table such as the one below will show each row and its status. Excel sometimes omits leading zeros on numbers. The system will automatically add a leading 0 to any uploaded numbers if they are missing. A successful upload shows either as a green or yellow box. A yellow box indicates that there were issues in the uploaded data, but these are minor and can be ignored, for example, duplicate or empty rows. Select the file and press Upload to process the file. When patients are uploaded, all previous patient data will be overwritten. Details about opted out patients will not be kept, and they will not be contacted again. You will receive notification by email if your upload was successful or not. Removing a patient from the calling list If a patient has requested to be removed from the calling list, edit your spreadsheet file so that the patient s details are deleted. Save the file and upload it as above. Uploading your new file will overwrite the old list and delete the details of patients who you do not wish to contact. 12 13
3 THE REMINDER PROCESS Once successfully called, a patient is marked as completed and will not be called again for that campaign Calls are considered successful if they go to voicemail. Calls are considered to have gone to voicemail if there was no response within two repeats of the message Calls are marked failed if there is no answer, or the phone line is busy. Failed calls will be retried once on the next scheduled day Patients can opt out of further calls by pressing 2 when prompted within the call. Once unsubscribed, the patient will not be called again Telephone calls The message patients receive is as follows: Hello. This is your GP surgery calling. We ve identified that a member of your household may be eligible to receive a free seasonal flu vaccination. Please call us on <your surgery telephone number> to book an appointment. This surgery s vaccine reminder service is funded by Sanofi Pasteur as part of this surgery s purchase of Sanofi Pasteur s influenza vaccines. If you no longer wish to receive reminder calls please press 2 now. If you are listening to this message on your voicemail, the press 2 function will not work, so please contact your GP surgery. Text messages The text message patients receive is as follows: This is your GP surgery. You or a member of your household may be eligible to receive a free seasonal flu vaccination. Please call <TELEPHONE NO> to make an appointment. This surgery s vaccine reminder service is funded by Sanofi Pasteur as part of this surgery s purchase of Sanofi Pasteur s influenza vaccines. To stop reply with OPTOUT Once the text has been successfully sent, a patient is marked as completed and will not be texted again for that campaign Texts are considered successful if they are delivered Texts are marked failed if delivery fails. Failed texts will be retried once on the next scheduled day Patients can opt out of further texts by replying OPTOUT. Once unsubscribed, the patient will not be contacted again 14 15
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS Who is X-on? The service is supplied by X-on, an NHS-accredited outbound calling operator. They are ISO 9001 and ISO 27001 certified (Information Security Management System). How is the patient data protected? The only information uploaded to X-on is a patient telephone number and an optional unique patient identity code, which can be generated by your surgery to identify patients should you wish to do so. This code is not recognisable by anyone outside of your surgery system and is therefore secure. The data is uploaded via a secure site link so all data is anonymous prior to leaving your surgery. Once uploaded, only X-on have access to the data via their secure website it cannot be seen by any other party, including Sanofi Pasteur. How do patients opt out? Patients can opt out of the service by telling a member of your reception staff. The patient can then be removed from the calling list (see previous instructions). Patients may do this in response to the surgery posters and leaflets, or after receiving a reminder call. It is the responsibility of the surgery to ensure patients are removed from the calling list. X-on and Sanofi Pasteur can take no responsibility for patients who are called in error once they have asked not to receive a call. How many times are patients called? Patients receive a maximum of two calls if the first call is successful they will not be called again. If the first call is not successful they will be called again on the next available date as chosen by the surgery. Do the patients pay to receive the reminder call? No. It s completely free for patients to receive the telephone reminder call. They will be charged at their normal rate when they call the surgery to book their flu vaccination. Can we use this service to call patients about anything else? No. This service is only to remind eligible patients to book their flu vaccination. 16 17
NOTES DON T FORGET YOUR REMINDER SERVICE DETAILS Username: Password: 18 19
SAGB.IFLU.17.07.0891a 09/17