1.3 Procedure-Based Communication Plans

The main role of the PEP Health solution is to provide clinical and administration staff with the ability to deliver personalised communications to patients that align with their individual patient journey.

Clinically aligned communications

Optimal Care Plans, or Clinical Pathways, are typically used by clinical staff to provide supported, quality health care for patients undergoing treatment for specific conditions.

Care Plan examples:

• Optimal Care Pathway for people with Colorectal Cancer

• High Value Care Pathway for Groin Hernia

While such plans are primarily concerned with ensuring clinical staff provide the right care at the right time, they also often contain suggestions about how and what should be communicated with patients about their journey.

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Typically the communication suggestions are aligned with various stages of the patient journey and instruct the clinician on what topics need to be communicated with the patient to ensure they are fully informed about their journey. It is then the responsibility of the health organisation and clinical staff to ensure the communication occurs.

Extracting the patient communication details from care plans

Care Plans are a good starting point for designing patient facing communications. These plans include a series of general stages that align with a patient’s typical health journey.

In the Colorectal Cancer example noted above, the plan outlines 7 clear steps or stages of the journey:

1. Prevention and early detection

2. Presentation, initial investigations and referral

3. Diagnosis, staging and treatment planning

4. Treatment

5. Care after initial treatment and recovery

6. Managing recurrent, residual or metastatic disease

7. End-of-life care

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For each of the stages, the Optimal Care Plan includes (1) patient symptoms, (2) proposed clinical investigations and (3) suggested patient communications. The suggested communications detailed here can be used to establish a patient facing communications plan.

Establishing different communication types

Generally, this information includes the timing of the communication and may also include a suggestion of the type of communications (phone call, message, document, video etc) that would be appropriate.

In addition to suggested communications collateral contained in Care Plans, many health organisations, clinicians and patient support groups (e.g Cancer Council) have existing fact sheets and leaflets they regularly provide the patient.

Both the care plan and existing collateral can be included in the communication plan.

Creating a procedure-based communications plan

The communications plan is designed to provide an overview of how the patient is communicated with during their health journey. The plan should indicate what communications should be delivered, to who, and when.

A simple spreadsheet, example below, can be used to organise content and to illustrate when it should be delivered to the patient.

In addition to stage-based positioning of content, it is also important to document any timing relating to delivery of the communications. Timing can be based on

• Entering a stage

• Time after entering a stage

• Timing triggered via an Index Event (e.g admission date, surgery date)

• Time after an Index Event

Establishing a clear communication plan is critical to ensure the ability to accurately create a procedure pathway in the PEP Health solution.