Clay County "First in Florida" Text for Health Notification program

About the Program

Category: Health (Best in Category)

Year: 2012

In today’s fast paced world of cell phones and the internet, health professionals are beginning to find that it is increasingly difficult to communicate with their patients using traditional methods such as the mail or through a land-line telephone. In fact, according to Pew Internet and American Life Project statistics, more than half of teenagers use text messaging as their primary method of communication. This reality makes it difficult for sexually transmitted disease clinics in Clay County to deliver a diagnosis to individuals aged 15-24. In response, the county initiated its “Text for Health Notification Program”. The campaign is spearheaded by the Clay County Health Department’s Epidemiology Program, which claims that over 70% of patients aged 15-24 have chosen to receive their diagnosis via a text message. The patients schedule their appointment through regular conventional methods, but the only difference is that they can receive their diagnosis within a brief thirty from their appointment if they opt for a text message. Comparably, conventional methods of delivering a diagnosis typically take up to a whole week for a letter to come in the mail or for a patient to receive a phone call. Moreover, a diagnosis through the mail may never be read, whereas text messages are nearly always read. Patients were interviewed as to their willingness to receive notifications in the form of text messages through their cell phones and responded favorably. The plan, policy, procedures and forms were reviewed and approved according to legal requirements, HIPPA protections, and technical standards. Being one of the first counties in the United States to adopt this program, it has proven to be very successful and easily replicated. The FL DOH Bureau of STD plans to implement the program statewide, estimating a potential savings of $3.28M for the state. To that end, the Bureau is looking to automating the text messaging process into PRISM, which is the statewide STD online reporting data base serving public and private practitioners. After the program was introduced, five other county health departments in Florida adopted the program. For a county that already has text messaging capabilities, there is no capital cost to introduce the program. In fact, the program does not incur any additional costs. Rather, money is saved as the program also reduced the average time between notifications to treatment from six days to four hours, causing staff expenditures to be reduced $115.50 per client, or $6,150 annually.