This article will run through the most impactful ways to reduce your fragment usage when sending messages to patients via the Accurx Toolbar. For more context on SMS costs and fragments, take a look at this article!
Review your most commonly used templates
Templates are a great way to ensure a consistent message is delivered to patients in the most fragment-efficient way. Reviewing your most used templates with fragment boundaries in mind can have a significant long-term impact on fragment reduction!
If you are sending a lot of messages without a template, take a look at whether a template could be created so that these messages can be as fragment and time-efficient as possible.
Sending your messages as emails 📩
Sending emails to patients is completely free of charge and the character limit is much higher, too! Other features (e.g. patient response, Questionnaires) work in the same way in emails as SMS messages in Accurx.
We have also found that emails can often be a preferred method of communication for patients, and they are particularly useful when you are sending documents that may need to be printed or forwarded to someone else, such as Sick Notes 🖨️
Emails are super handy when sending non-urgent information to a patient, so mentioning during a consultation that you will send some more information over via email can be a great way to ensure your message is received.
Shortening your web links 🔗
Links can sometimes take up hundreds of characters in your messages! Shortening these could easily take you down a couple of fragments. There are several online tools that can help with this, e.g. Bit.ly.
This can be especially useful if you are sending out NHS advice links and articles. Take a look at your templates, and see if you've got any very long links in there.
An example of this we have seen in GP surgeries is links for translated leaflets in templates. These links can be over 140 characters long, which is nearly a fragment in itself!
If you still have any questions or concerns, feel free to chat with us using the green message bubble in the bottom right-hand corner of this page.
