PC1006: Texting in Tennessee: Rapid Actionable SMS for Practice Management

Purpose/Objectives: Our practice has struggled with getting important data to leadership in a timely, systematic way. In particular, we needed to know at the beginning of the day how many open appointment slots remain (and how many appointments are already booked for tomorrow) so we could activate surge changes in our schedule if necessary. We also needed to know what the current COVID community transmission level is our county so we can dynamically adjust our COVID OSHA plan: should we wear masks outside of patient care areas, or not, today?

Design/Methods: We developed two texting apps using Python and Twilio that conveys key information to practice leaders at preset times.
The "slots app" runs a prescheduled EMR report to look at the open appointment slots on the schedule, then digests the report to compute how many open 10-minute time slots remain today (and in the evening, for the next day). The "CDC app" gets the daily COVID report for Cumberland County, Tennessee and Rhea County, Tennessee (two locations of our practice) and texts the daily morning community transmission report status: low, moderate, substantial, or high/

Results: Our partners and practice administrator now receives "slots app" text messages at 7:15 , 8:15, and 9:15 AM each morning, and again at 4:30 PM in the afternoon. This allows us to stay on top of how many patients are booked and whether a provider who would typically have an administrative half day needs to be activated to see patients. One of our partner and our practice administrator also receive "CDC app" text messages at 7 AM each morning so we can post the "out of patient care areas" required PPE for the day, if any, first thing. Both apps reduce the manual counting and checking and allow us to spend our administrative time in executing a plan, not in data gathering.

Conclusion/Discussion: Texting the same information to practice leaders every morning lets us have the information "pushed" to all practice stakeholders in a timely, consistent way.