A text messaging trial in family planning clinics

The New Zealand Family Planning Association (Family Planning) is a national not-for-profit organization providing sexual and reproductive primary care health services as well as health promotion, professional training and advocacy on issues of sexual and reproductive health. By 2006 Family Planning had become acutely aware of the increasing amount of staff time being used to make phone calls to clients, particularly about appointment reminders and laboratory results, and the associated escalation in telephone costs. Much of the increased cost related to the trend for the clients, who are predominantly under 25 year of age, to have only a mobile phone as their phone contact. This paper describes a project to identify and implement an alternative means of communication with these clients, with the outcome being the introduction of a text messaging program (txt2remind) integrated with the Practice Management System (Medtech 32) into clinics by June 2008.