Practice managers are being reminded to make it easy for patients to recognise genuine NHS communications, in new guidance from NHS England on patient messaging.
The guidance, which was sent out in last week’s Primary Care Bulletin, includes best-practice tips to improve trust and engagement plus a content guide for writing and sending messages via the NHS App, texts, email and letters (see also box below).
In the guidance, NHS England warned that one disadvantage of texts compared with NHS App messaging is patient distrust due to concerns about phishing. It said patients were more likely to read and engage with a message when they were confident it was genuinely from the NHS.
The guidance highlighted the importance of making the GP practice clearly identifiable, particularly because the SenderID is often the first thing patients see in a notification alert.
It said: ‘If you choose a recognisable SenderID, they can quickly tell who the message is from and are more likely to open and read it.’
It also advised practices to reference something familiar to the patient, such as an appointment or test, to build trust.
The guidance also flagged text cost implications. It said that each text costs 2.33pence (plus VAT) to send and that messages longer than 160 characters (including spaces) were charged as more than one message.
It added that the use of certain signs and symbols, as well as accents and accented letters, can increase the cost of sending text messages.
NHS England also encouraged practices ‘to always consider accessibility and inclusion when communicating with patients’.
It said: ‘Digital-first does not mean digital-only’, highlighting that patients without the NHS App or an email address can still receive messages by text or letter.
The guidance sets out how to best contact patients, the benefits of digital-first messaging, and how to start using NHS Notify – the national NHS messaging service.
Tips for SMS / text messaging
What to do:
- include the name of your practice and use a recognisable SenderID
- reference an event they may be familiar with such as an appointment or test
- be aware that using any of the following signs and symbols can increase the cost because they count as two characters each: []{}^|~€
- use paragraph or line breaks to make text messages easier to read
- ensure any links go to trusted sites such as NHS.UK or GOV.UK and are human readable, for example, http://www.nhs.uk/tests-and-treatments
- make sure link formats are consistent across all messaging channels so people can check them independently.
What not to do:
- do not include spelling mistakes, grammatical errors, inaccuracies or poor formatting
- do not use abbreviations or acronyms the patient may not be familiar with
- do not contain any personal information such as the patient’s name or NHS number
- do not use unsupported formatting in texts, eg bullet points, numbered lists, bold text or headings.
Source: NHS England
