How can I export patient data (patients with emails ) for marketing purposes? (KB)

March 26th, 2020

While you can not do an actual email blast from Sammy we have provided instructions below on how to generate a list of patients that have email addresses so you setup your own email distribution or to provide list to an vendor.

  • Under Reports access the Patient Recalls Report
  • Check off the box for All # Patients in the Recall Criteria section
  • In that same section, be sure All Doctors is showing and if not, uncheck the box showing Select Doctor to set it to All Doctors
  • If you do not want to email patients residing in a facility, be sure that the box for Include Facility Patients is unchecked
  • Check off the box for Telephone Report in the Type of Recall section
  • Check off the box for Print to A File. The print to file option will create a CSV file that can be read and edited in Microsoft Excel or Open Office Calc. There you will be able to remove all information except the column with the email addresses.

         

  • Click Next and then a screen will populate asking how you want the results sorted. Check the bottom option for Patients with Email Addresses Only and click OK
  • Click Start the Report
  • An exception report may populate for patients who have a setting on their chart to not be included in patient recalls and the available options are Go Back or Print. Go Back will bring you to your search results. You may print it first if you would like and then click Go Back. 
  • Click Finalize/Make File. A pop-up will appear asking if the list will be used to communicate with patients, say Yes. 
  • A pop-up will appear stating how many patients are in your file and where it is located, which is in the company dataset in Sammy and is called RReport. There may be a number of patients removed from the report if their mail preference option is set to No on their patient chart, if so, the number of patients removed will be listed. 
  • Locate the file in your Sammy dataset and open it using Microsoft Excel or Open Office Calc.
    • For SammyCloud users this file will be transferred to the user's local desktop folder labeled "SammyExport"
    • For SammyEHR and SammyUSA users working on a local server this will likely be located in your S drive and then your dataset folder. The dataset is normally named after your practice name or provider name and then your state, for example, S:\SammyNY.
  • To begin, click on the top left corner of the report on the right pointing arrow (

    ) and this will highlight the entire document.
  • Place your cursor on the vertical line separating columns A & B and double click it, this will automatically adjust the width of the columns so they are readable and sized appropriately. 
  • The email address column you need is column J, all others can be deleted. To do so, click on the A for column A to highlight it and hold down the Ctrl button on your keyboard and then click the letter for all columns except J. 
  • Right click your mouse and choose Delete from the menu options and all of those columns will be removed. With this file you can email recipients yourself using the practice email OR contact a vendor like Constant Contact who for nominal fee can can upload your file and create a professional-looking email blast.

  • If you are emailing them yourself, we recommend that you cut or copy 20 email addresses at a time and paste them into the BCC (Blind Carbon Copy) field on your outgoing email so as not to share their emails with other patients. If you try to send the email to too many patients at once it will likely fail because it will be deemed as spamming from the email carrier.
  • Using BCC will not allow for the unintentional reply all emails (in most circumstances).