Frequently Asked Questions about Relevant Outreach
How many messages can I send per month/year?
Relevant Outreach does not cap the number of messages that can be sent to patients over time, and users aren’t charged on a per-message basis. However, some technical limitations apply on a daily basis. First, a single campaign cannot send more than 10,000 messages per day. Second, we do not advise trying to send more than 43,200 messages in a single day because some messages may fail to queue and never be sent. If these technical limits are a problem, please reach out to support@relevant.healthcare to discuss potential solutions.
Evidence also suggests that patients are more likely to opt out if they receive multiple automated text messages within a short timeframe, so we recommend using Outreach judiciously.
Is Relevant Outreach HIPAA-compliant?
Relevant has a Business Associate Agreement with Twilio, our SMS/communications platform, that allows Relevant to transmit PHI over SMS on behalf of health centers. When using Relevant Outreach, each health center should also consult its own policies and procedures with regard to what information can be shared via SMS.
I clicked “Start” on a campaign, but no outbound messages were created. What’s going on?
Relevant Outreach sends messages at 9AM PT/12PM ET. If you started a campaign after that time, you will need to wait until the next morning (on a day that the campaign is scheduled to send) to start sending messages. Read more about sending messages.
I don’t see Outreach Campaigns in Relevant. What’s going on?
Relevant Outreach is an add-on module; please reach out to support@relevant.healthcare to learn more.
If you have already added Outreach to your Relevant configuration but you still cannot see Outreach Campaigns, you may not have the appropriate permissions. Reach out to the Relevant lead at your health center and request the “Manage Outreach” ability.
I need to conduct an outreach campaign around a very specific and incredibly complicated topic! How do I do it?
While Relevant Outreach has many pre-built filters to help you customize your outreach audience, any care gap, population, or quality measure can be associated with outreach audiences. Please reach out to support@relevant.healthcare if you need help with configuration.
How can I tell if patients are responding and what they’re saying?
You can use the “[Outreach] Patient replies to campaign step X” report in the library to get a list of patient responses for a specific campaign step. The campaign_step_id can be found in the upper right corner of the Campaign Step.
Are there reserved keywords for responses?
Yes, there are reserved keywords for responses in compliance with the Telephone Consumer Protection Act.
- To opt-out of all Relevant campaigns, patients can use the following keywords: cancel, end, quit, stop, stopall, unsubscribe, or alto.
- To opt-in to Relevant campaigns, patients can use the following keywords: start, unstop, or comenzar.
- To receive the list of opt-out/opt-in keywords, patients can use the following keywords: help, info, or ayuda.
What if a patient texts an invalid response?
Relevant will validate and accept variations of responses. For example, Relevant will translate Y, ye, or YES to a yes response. If a patient responds with something Relevant cannot interpret, Relevant will re-send the original campaign message once. If the patient still sends an invalid response, then Relevant will send the following message:
Sorry, we couldn’t understand your response. Please call your health center if you have any questions.
What if a patient texts the number unprompted?
If a patient texts a campaign that does not expect responses or, for some reason, texts the number out of the blue, Relevant will send the following message:
This number is not monitored. Please call your health center directly. Thank you!
What if a patient calls the outreach number?
If patients call your outreach number, they will hear an automated voice message directing them to call their health center. If you would like to customize this message, or forward it to another phone number, please contact support@relevant.healthcare.
How can I tell which patients have opted out of my outreach messages?
The short answer: to see a list of patients who have received an “opted out” error code on the most recent message we attempted to send them, use the report “Patients Opted Out of Relevant Outreach Text Messages”, which is available in the Report Library.
A longer answer: patient opt-out status is tracked by Relevant’s text messaging provider, Twilio. It is not currently possible within the Relevant Outreach module to directly access a list of patients who have opted out. We can get close, however, since Twilio declines to send messages to patients who have opted out, and responds with an “opted out” error code (21610). When we attempt to send messages to patients who have opted out, we get back this error code on every subsequent attempt (unless and until the patient chooses to opt back in). The Library report described above makes use of this fact.
If you re-obtain consent from a patient, you can ask them to resubscribe by sending a text message containing the keywords START, UNSTOP, or COMENZAR to your outreach number.
Some of my messages are failing. What do these error codes mean?
There are many delivery errors that can occur when bulk-sending SMS messages. You can browse the full list here. The most common reasons for delivery failures include phones that landlines or otherwise not able to receive SMS, are switched off, or are out of service.
Why can’t I update campaign steps after my campaign is live?
Once a campaign is live or has sent any messages, changing the structure of the conversation is blocked. The campaign structure cannot be changed as it would break on-going conversations and make it challenging to interpret patient responses.
You can still update message templates, but make sure not to change the meaning of any questions - patients may have already received your previous message, and they will be responding to that. This would lead to confusion and misleading responses from patients.
Can I send patient satisfaction surveys or appointment reminders?
Yes, health centers have successfully used Relevant Outreach for both of these things.
We don’t currently support patients responding to surveys via text (that’s coming soon!). In the meantime, a link to a web-based patient survey can be included in any message. Automated, ongoing appointment reminders can be configured using the “upcoming appointments” filter. For help configuring specific use cases, please reach out to support@relevant.healthcare.
Some patients get a different ID each time the data pipeline runs. Is this a concern when using Relevant Outreach?
Yes. To keep track of which text messages have been sent to a given patient, Relevant needs a stable identifier for each patient. When pulling data from your EHR, a typical data pipeline configuration will provide this: the same value in patients.id will be assigned to the same patient every time the pipeline runs. Often, this ID will be the same as what’s used as a unique identifier for the patient in the EHR.
When adding patients from other sources (such as an enrollment roster from a payer), some pipeline configurations will result in a given patient’s ID changing— perhaps when a patient gets a record in the EHR, or perhaps each time the data pipeline runs. We mitigate the impact of this by storing the patient’s name and phone number directly on the outreach_outbound_messages table; this ensures that the history of sent messages will display accurate data even if patient IDs change. However, some features of Relevant Outreach may not work reliably with unstable patient IDs. A patient with an unstable ID may receive more or fewer messages than intended from a campaign, or no messages at all. To reduce the impact of this limitation, we recommend eliminating or minimizing the use of unstable patient IDs.
What does the archive button do?
When you click the “archive” button for a campaign, the campaign will not show in the Outreach UI, but it will still be available in reports, indicated by the archived_at column. Archiving a campaign is a one-way action, designed to help you manage your campaigns.
I’d like to see a new feature in Relevant Outreach.
Please send your thoughts to feedback@relevant.healthcare, or talk with your Relevant lead, if you have ideas about how we can better support your patient outreach goals.