Clinic Broadcast
Clinic Broadcasts is an Ocean Labs project focused on clinic-to-patient broadcast messaging. It enables clinics to send targeted email and SMS announcements to their patients — or defined patient cohorts — without relying on Ocean’s core transactional messaging infrastructure. Clinics can build cohorts from EMR exports or CSV uploads, draft messages using a template builder, and send at scale with proper unsubscribe handling.
The underlying problem Clinic Broadcasts addresses is persistent and well-documented: clinics regularly need to communicate with large groups of patients — for cancellations, seasonal campaigns, maternity leave notices, or operational updates — and Ocean has never had a strong native answer for this.
The existing workaround through Ocean Cohorts is awkward, CSV-dependent, and critically, does not manage unsubscribe behaviour in a way that protects deliverability or patient privacy. That gap leaves clinics frustrated, and puts pressure on support teams to field requests they can’t fully resolve.
The result is a purpose-built broadcast layer that keeps high-volume outreach separate from clinically critical communications — protecting Ocean’s deliverability reputation while finally giving clinics the operational messaging tool they’ve long been asking for.
Sample Use Cases
Clinic Operational Notices
- Schedule Changes: Notify all active patients when a provider is going on leave or a clinic is closing temporarily.
- Cohort Targeting: Segment the message to only patients seen in the last 12 months to keep outreach relevant.
- Unsubscribe Handling: Automatically honour opt-outs so future messages respect patient preferences.
Example Use Case: A family medicine clinic sends a broadcast to all rostered patients notifying them that their physician is going on maternity leave and introducing the locum covering their care.
Preventive Care & Seasonal Campaigns
- Cohort-Based Outreach: Target patients by age group or chronic condition to send relevant health reminders (e.g., flu shots, cancer screening).
- Template Messaging: Use pre-built message templates to ensure consistent, clinic-approved language across all sends.
- Multi-Channel Delivery: Reach patients via email or SMS depending on their contact preferences on file.
Example Use Case: A walk-in clinic sends an SMS broadcast to patients over 65 reminding them to book their annual flu vaccination, linking directly to the clinic’s Ocean booking page.
Urgent Clinic-Wide Alerts
- Rapid Broadcast: Push time-sensitive notices — such as a sudden closure or an urgent public health advisory — to a large patient list quickly.
- Delivery Separation: Keep urgent operational messages routed through the broadcast layer, away from transactional eReferral and eConsult traffic, protecting overall deliverability.
- Audit Trail: Maintain a record of who was messaged, when, and with what content for accountability purposes.
Example Use Case: A community health centre broadcasts a same-day closure notice to all patients with upcoming appointments after an unexpected facility issue, reducing no-shows and unnecessary travel.
Interested in testing Clinic Broadcast? Contact Ocean Labs for next steps
