South West London Health & Care Partnership
Reducing the burden on NHS services and supporting patients with long-term conditions during Covid-19The South West London (SWL) Health Partnership wanted to support their 54,000 patients with long-term conditions (LTC), many who were shielding during Covid. They wanted patients to be able to find the most relevant information for their condition fast, to encourage health-supporting behaviours, and to reassure them that support was there if they needed it. They also wanted to test what would work best for this new communication channel.
Key goals
- Help keep LTC patients safe from Covid-19
- Support the health and wellbeing of LTC patients healthy while shielding
- Reduce the burden on NHS resources
- Reduce deaths from Covid-19
Outcomes at a glance
- 45% click-through rate achieved
- Generated 90% of website traffic for the month it was sent
- 86% patient approval rating
- 59% more cost effective than letters sent by mail
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“This project creates not only an opportunity for us to support people now, but to develop the kind of approach to health care delivery that will become the new normal, in a post COVID world”.
How it worked
To achieve their goal the SWL Health & Care Partnership created a series of online toolkits to support patients with diabetes, respiratory conditions and cardiovascular disease. The challenge was then to encourage people to access these resources and providing information on what they should do if they did contract Covid.
Once the personalised video was agreed as the method to make people aware of the resources and extend support, it took just 14 days to develop the content and have it ready to share via a link in an SMS. We created two cohorts to test the impact of sending a single SMS with a link to the video versus sending a priming SMS to tell recipients that a link to a personalised video would be sent to them shortly.
The results
- The campaign proved to what extent the SMS/personalised health video combination can drive behaviour:
- For the cohort where two SMS were sent, the click-through rate was 45%. (The industry standard is 19%.)
- Around 50% of those who watched the video accessed the SWL toolkits.
- This is an effective channel to get information out fast:
- 46% of clicks on the SMS were within 60 minutes of it being sent.
- And it has high engagement: 78% of patients watched at least 70% or more of the video.
- See the NHS SW London Long Term Condition Project Report
“I thought it was very good to receive a text – I’m on my own so it shows a level of care – thank you”
“It was very reassuring for me to receive some contact from the NHS. As a person who suffers from depression, I felt it made a difference to me and the way I’m feeling. Thank you.”
“I found the information very useful, brief but well-presented visually and audibly”
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Working with us
Citizen Communications are pioneers in personalised health video communication. We’re specialists in communicating health information in a way that creates emotional connection, promotes action and encourages lifestyle changes.
We’ll work with you to develop and integrate personalised video to support your populations, enabling you to shift to digital communications without losing the human touch.
