Assess Readiness
Time to Complete: 2 months (1 month to gather data; 1 month to analyze and decide)
Difficulty: Easy -- Needs buy-in from providers and staff
Outcome: Enough data to make a decision
Steps
Field the survey
- Download this survey (1-page PDF. About PDFs) or create your own.
- Ask adult patients in your practice to complete the survey during office visits.
Measure current call volume
Making email available to your patients can cut down on the time staff spend playing phone tag. Use this form to measure current call volume (1-page PDF. About PDFs).
Analyze the data and decide
These questions should guide your analysis of the data you've gathered and inform your decision:
- Is the number of patients who say they'd like to communicate with the practice via email compelling?
- How about the amount of time staff currently spend returning missed calls and placing unanswered calls?
- If enough of this staff time could be spent on more meaningful tasks, would setting up email with patients be worth your investment of time and money?
- Are you and your staff ready to undertake this project?
If the answers to these questions are "yes," then you're ready to start the process of setting up email with your patients. The first step is to create an email policy.
What You'll Need
- A survey (1-page PDF file; About PDFs) and call tracking log (1-page PDF file; About PDFs)
- Multiple paper copies of the survey
- Staff and time to analyze data (1 to 2 people; 4 to 8 hours)
- Decision-making authority
Examples
You can create your own paper-based survey, use an online tool such as www.surveymonkey.com. An online survey makes data collection easier, but you'll need to give patients the survey URL somehow. It may be easier to just download this survey (1-page PDF file; About Downloading Files).
As with the survey, you can create your own call tracking sheet, or download this Excel sheet (1-page PDF file; About PDFs).
As with the survey, you can create your own call tracking sheet, or download this Excel sheet (1-page PDF file; About PDFs).
Where to go for help
It is possible to get paid for communicating with patients via email, and the convenience factor, for providers, office staff and patients, is real and valuable. For more information about how to get paid for this service, read FPM's article "Online Communication With Patients: Making It Work".
For an in-depth look at how one practice conducted a readiness assessment, read FPM's article "Are Your Patients Ready for Electronic Communication?"
For an in-depth look at how one practice conducted a readiness assessment, read FPM's article "Are Your Patients Ready for Electronic Communication?"
Join a free collaborative online network committed to practice transformation. Learn more about Delta-Exchange.
This Patient-Centered Medical Home section of the AAFP web site was supported in part by a grant from Merck & Co.
This Patient-Centered Medical Home section of the AAFP web site was supported in part by a grant from Merck & Co.
