In the last 10 years, Free and Charitable Clinics and Pharmacies have significantly expanded their use of Electronic Health Records (EHR) and increased the sophistication of data analyses they can readily perform. They have used these systems to monitor the health of their patient populations, increase quality of care, and gather data for grant reporting. But are there opportunities to use clinic and pharmacy data in other types of communications to increase awareness and support? Even if you don't have a dedicated data analyst or communications lead, five simple steps can open the doors for organizations of all sizes to leverage data to tell their story.

Start small and simply

High-level data that can be integrated into communications include these:

• Number of unique patients

• Number of visits by service area (primary care, dental, pharmacy, mental health, food pantry, etc.)

• Number of hours services were provided

• Number of volunteer hours

Bring free clinic data to your partners

It's important that your collaborators know the bigger picture of your clinic or pharmacy. Sharing key indicators with them can help them to seek funds for their services as well. For example,

• Each month, we screen 100 patients for food insecurity. We have found that 60 percent report having skipped a meal within the last 7 days due to low income. As a result, we refer an average of 60 patients per month to organizations like yours to address this need.

• Among the clinic population at Free Clinic, 60 percent of adults have high blood pressure and are encouraged to eat less salt. However, nearly all of these patients report low fruit and vegetable intake, in part due to cost and challenges finding fresh, high quality produce. We look to you to help address this gap in healthy food availability, which in turn helps us manage our patients' health conditions.

Work free clinic data into your social media communications

A post can be as simple as a picture of a visiting mammography van with some data describing the importance of this event:

• Rate of mammography screening in your community

• Number of hours services were available

• Number of mammograms completed

• Number of partners involved in executing the event

Tie your work with broader public health objectives identified in your state or local health department strategic plan. For example, "Rural County Health Department aims to increase mammography screening from 78 to 80 percent by 2026. To do our part, we collaborated with University to bring mammography screening to our clinic, getting 40 mammograms for uninsured women who otherwise would not have gotten screened."

Work free clinic data into your thank-you notes

Consider using any fresh data in letters or notes that go out to your donors or volunteers.

• Number of boxes of drugs/supplies sorted

• Number of new donors

• Number of returning donors

• Number of patients reached with new program

Put these numbers into context, even if you think they are small. For example, "Your donation of time means a lot to us and to our patients. By sorting 15 boxes of prescription drugs on Saturday, you help us to reach 40 patients with conditions like blood pressure, diabetes, and asthma this month. This, in turn, helps our state to reach its goal of controlling high blood pressure from 70% to 75% by 2026. Thank you."

Frame your free clinic fundraising with service numbers

A fundraising thermometer is a visual representation of your nonprofit campaign's progress. Showing the baseline, target, and progress toward the target can motivate donors to contribute to fill the gap. Usually, the numbers on the thermometer represent dollars. But what if they represented a health-related output? If you used "cost per patient," you could substitute the number of patients reached, number of hours or service, or similar measure that carries more meaning to the community than simply "dollars raised." To accomplish this, select your indicator carefully and make sure that it reflects a core service. Provide additional information about your calculations. "For every $50, we can provide a primary care appointment to a community member without insurance. Our goal is to raise enough funds to serve 2,000 patients."

Communicating your free clinic data gives you more oomph

Putting your numbers in front of multiple audiences helps to establish your credibility and authority as a community agency. When you blend your clinic or pharmacy numbers with state or local health department objectives, you help to define your organization's unique contributions to a broader effort and suggest ways that individual donations or volunteer hours make an impact beyond your clinic's walls.

What other ways have you used data to communicate about your organization? Let us know in the comments!