Golden Gate Pharmacy, based in San Francisco, is dedicated to providing the best healthcare for their unique community. The pharmacy has been serving a mostly Chinese-speaking patient base for over 20 years with a range of specialty services and prescription delivery. Looking for innovative communication solutions, they partnered with Digital Pharmacist in December 2019 to offer multilingual secure 2-way messaging.
According to manager Owen Liu, 80% of Golden Gate Pharmacy’s patient base speaks Chinese and 20% don’t speak any English. The pharmacy wanted a solution that could serve both English-speaking and non-English-speaking populations.
A Digital Pharmacist healthsite and mobile app client since 2018, Golden Gate Pharmacy decided to add on Digital Pharmacist’s secure messaging product and adapt the solution for their needs. Specifically, they wanted to add a Chinese translation of each text notification. Just 8 months later, they’ve been able to send and receive thousands of messages in multiple languages.
In 2020, Golden Gate Pharmacy has seen:
33%
time saved daily, on average
420%
more patient messages sent in Q2
3,253
Chinese/English messages sent & received
60%
messaging adoption rate by English & non-English-speaking patients
“We are using messaging mainly to let patients know to come pick up their medications,” Liu said. “Before we were calling patients which took up a lot of time.”
“We are using messaging mainly to let patients know to come pick up their medications,” Liu said. “Before we were calling patients which took up a lot of time.” He estimated that pickup reminder calls could take 30-40 minutes a day to complete. Now they save at least 10-15 minutes daily by messaging patients instead. “Most of our patients are delighted with messaging.”
According to Liu, they also use secure 2-way messaging to communicate with a care home they work with, a convenient solution for both of them. “They like being able to text us about patient care a lot better than having a phone call,” he said.
Many pharmacies still struggle to find user-friendly patient communication tools that keep private information secure. According to a recent survey by the Institute for Safe Medication Practices (ISMP), less than half (48%) of providers use device encryption for texted orders and 69% of facilities allow standard cell phone use, despite clear HIPAA violations.
Digital Pharmacist is proud to offer safe digital solutions that can be adapted for our clients’ needs. Our secure 2-way messaging solution is fully HIPAA-compliant, offering multi-device and language support to nearly 800 pharmacies nationwide.
To learn more about how our secure 2-way messaging can make serving your patient base easier and simpler, get in touch with us today.
