"Receiving multiple duplicate SMS messages"

I wanted to share this story as I really hope that highlighting this issue may help solve a problem and hopefully cut costs for my GP practice/s. 

This morning I have received a text from my two GP practices that are collaboratively run. these are the Stag Medical Centre and Rose Court Surgery in Wickersley, Rotherham.

No complaints about the practices themselves, rather, their seems to be a problem with their SMS communication system. 

Firstly, I just want t say it's great that more services are utilising SMS messaging, it saves them from the cost and admin cost of sending out postal letters, and is super efficient and accessible when working well. Plus, during the pandemic, it definitely seems like the safe and speedier option to get important info out fast, so it's great to see this happening.

On April 14th, a message was sent to patients encouraging us to sign up to the electronic prescription service.

I received this SMS message at 9:38am, 9:39am and 9:41am. I assumed there was a problem and perhaps someone had accidentally clicked 'send' twice, but when the third text arrived I thought surely that can't happen three times. When just 2 texts had arrived I wondered if it was my fault and maybe I'd accidentally given them my details twice? But that doesn't really make sense either. Perhaps the system has duplicates and they weren't sent three times, but some people's numbers were in the system multiple times? I'm not sure. Either way, I thought oh gosh I hope that hasn't cost them triple the amount of money it needed to. Plus, and I know this sounds really petty in the scheme of things, but it was slightly annoying receiving three of the same message while trying to work. 

I considered sharing feedback at the time, but there's no obvious way to do so and I assumed they would be very aware of this mistake and would have fixed it. When I received a new message about signing up to the health app on April 15th, and only received it once, I thought, great! They've fixed the issue, no need to feedback.

But then today (12/06/20) I've been sent the same message 4 times. It's about wearing a mask when attending the surgery, obviously very important info to send out but it would seem the problem hasn't been fixed. I received this same message at 8:48, 9:26, 9:53 and 10:19am. Again, really quite annoying. Plus, if I wasn't working I think I'd be annoyed if this work me up, it's quite early in the morning to send a message to people who may still be sleeping.

Anyway, I just wanted to feedback because there's clearly an issue here that may be costing our already underfunded and much needed GP practices up to 4 times more money than necessary and I'm hoping there is a quick fix! Fingers crossed this helps in some way. And again, I just wanted to say I think it's great that the practices are sending out messages in this way at a time when physical contact  must be kept to a minimum, it's a great way to communicate effectively and efficiently. 

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