The media is probably the most effective way to spread your campaign messages. It’s likely that your organisation already uses the local media to share news with your patients and the local community. Take advantage of these relationships to communicate about this exciting new service. Your reach can be scaled drastically by taking advantage of this approach.
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Here’s a sample press release designed for the launch stage to help you get started:
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PRESS RELEASE
[XX XMONTHX 202X]
A new way for patients to manage their health comes to [region]
More than [population size] citizens across [region] will be given greater control of their health and care information, thanks to a new digital-first service launched by [organisation/ partnership].
The trust, which operates [name of hospital sites], has introduced a new patient-powered digital service - Patients Know Best (PKB). Designed to improve patient experience, it offers online access to personal health records to revolutionise way patients access and use NHS services. It’s a bit like online banking, but instead, you use it to manage your health, regardless of which hospital holds your information.
With access to appointment letters, test results, care plans, information about allergies, medication lists, and discharge summaries, from your laptop, tablet or smartphone, patients currently receiving care and treatment at [name of trust] will be among the first to benefit. The service also provides tools to help patients understand and monitor health conditions or securely share messages with their healthcare teams, from the comfort of their own homes.
The service integrates patient data from existing IT systems - from local hospitals, GP surgeries, social care, and mental health services, to create one complete, ‘live’ health record. Most impressively, this gives patients the power to share all or specific parts of their record with anyone involved in their care whenever needed. Carers, family members, or health and care professionals across the country, or even overseas, could access this information - paving the way for truly personalised and borderless care.
This is also good news for health and care teams. A more accurate, complete and ‘live’ patient health record improves clinical decision-making and access to more personalised care, even in emergencies. A shared record also means patients will no longer need to duplicate tests for different providers.
It seems everyone really does benefit when ‘patients know best’. [Add quote from your CEO/ CIO/ CCIO. You can also email press@patientsknowbest.com if you would like to add a quote from PKB]
To launch the service, a number of clinical specialties have been identified to go live’ from [expected date] at [name of trust], with a [trust-wide/ regional] roll-out to follow.
Patients undergoing care or treatment at the trust can expect to receive a invitation to register during [month]. This will allow the trust to share information with their patients over time, helping to create the most holistic patient health record ever.
To find out how to access your health record, visit the trust’s website at [link to trust’s public webpage about PKB].
[ENDS]
Notes to editors
This service supports the NHS Long Term Plan to enable digital access to NHS services, and helping patients and their carers to manage their health. This not only benefits patients; reducing the amount of clinical correspondence posted out can save the NHS millions of pounds every year. In 2019, missed GP appointments alone, cost the NHS £216 million pounds. Digital correspondence has the potential to cut down missed appointments and significantly reduce postage costs.
About Patients Know Best
Patients Know Best (PKB) is the UK’s largest patient portal and the world’s first patient-controlled health records system which is now integrated with the NHS App.
PKB is a social enterprise and a certified B Corporation, founded with the social mission to empower patients with access to their medical records.
The platform is a multi-award winning system to help patients better manage their health and social care.
With access to open APIs and fully operating within the HSCN network according to FHIR and HL7v2 standards, PKB is easy to implement and sustain at scale.
Available on any internet-enabled tablet, smartphone or computer, PKB can be used by patients and clinicians anywhere in the world.
PKB is now used across multiple healthcare organisations across a number of countries and is available in 22 different languages.
To find out more, visithttp://www.patientsknowbest.com or follow us on Twitter @patientsco.
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Find your story
Everyone relates to personal stories and case studies, and examples of positive outcomes and experiences can really help to bring these to life. If you keep your ear to the ground, you’ll soon find the good news stories to tie your campaign messaging to. This could be the clinician who has transformed their service with PKB, or the patient who has less attendances now that the lines of communication between them and their healthcare team are open with PKB, or the patient whose life has been saved because they were able to share their health record during an emergency. It’s these stories that are most interesting to journalists - and it will mean that there’s more chance your news will be shared.
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