NHC Manages Their 50 Locations Through One SMS Platform

Whether you live in New England, South Carolina, Missouri or Tennessee and places in between, the chances are pretty good that you’ve heard of NHC, National HealthCare Corporation. Their health care centers cater to seniors across 10 different states.

With around 75 facilities spread out over these different states, you wouldn’t know that the majority of internal communications all stem from one central location.

Sitting at the helm to oversee internal employee communications is Janet Broadrick. Thanks to her, employees spend more time providing top-tier care to residents and less time buried in emails.  

We connected with Janet to learn more about how texting helps her organize administrators through one single platform at over 75% of their locations.

If you’ve ever wondered how to manage communications with a distributed workforce, you’ll definitely want to stick around to hear what she has to say!

Typical Internal Communication Campaigns

When NHC first started with SimpleTexting two and a half years ago, they knew they needed a big solution. Their one request was a way to reach any of their centers at any given time. And with 90% of texts being read within three minutes of receipt, texting was a natural fit.

Fast forward to today and many of their health care centers now utilize texting regularly to share important updates, reminders, and notes with their hundreds of staff members.

The type of messages Janet and NHC administrators send out varies.

From a corporate end, Janet is able to send out text blasts to all of the NHC staff for company-wide updates. Most recently she used the platform to communicate important information about employee benefits enrollment to thousands of staff.

For center-specific communications, administrators have the freedom to text whatever is most pressing for their own employees. For centers near the coast, this could look like weather alerts and hurricane preparedness plans.

One center recently used the service to send reminders to staff who have yet to get a flu shot.

“I love being able to reach many of our partners in just a few simple steps,” says Janet, adding that she appreciates how each administrator is able to communicate site-specific information as well.

“We have some of our administrators who love it and use it often.”

Setting Up SMS Across Multiple Sites

Janet is able to onboard each new facility that wants to utilize the service with a few simple steps.

1. Janet creates a keyword that employees can text in to NHC’s number to sign up for messages specific to their facility
2. She sends the responsible administrator their unique login information
3. She follows up with a list of basic instructions on the platform as well as ways to encourage employees to subscribe to these new text updates

And just like, that a new facility is up and running!

Janet is tracking toward adding non-participants to the platform.

“A lot of the administrators at the facilities love using it,” notes Janet. “I believe if the ones who haven’t used it yet just gave it a try, they wouldn’t look back!”

Every few months Janet sends a reminder email to the text-less locations to let them know the service is still available to them. And bit by bit centers continue to turn to the text-side.

How NHC Encourages Their Employees To Subscribe To Text Alerts

Once a new center has their SimpleTexting login, they have the power to create their own campaigns sent to their specific location’s staff.

The first step, however, is to let employees know that they have the ability to subscribe to receive these messages as well as opt-out if they so desire.

Janet has experimented with a few different ways to share this information. She’s found the most success by including the location’s keyword and phone number in a note in with the employee paystubs.

How Easy Has Internal Communications Become?

We’re a bit biased when we say that SimpleTexting got its name because it’s truly so simple to use. So we’ll use Janet’s words instead!

“I think the best feature of the platform is just the ease of using it. The service is so self-explanatory I can’t think of anything else we would need it to do that it’s not already doing.”

And when you do the type of 24/7 direct-care work Janet and the rest of the NHC team does, a reliable way to share messages is invaluable.

Check out the NHC Care website to learn more about their centers and all of their locations. And be sure to sign up for a free trial if you want to give texting a try within your organization.

We promise communication has never been simpler!