The Appointment Reminder Campaign allows practices to automatically send reminder messages to patients before their scheduled appointments. Reminders can be delivered through email, SMS, or both, helping reduce no-shows and improve appointment confirmation rates.

You can access the Appointment Reminder Campaign in one of two ways:

Once opened, the Appointment Reminder Campaign page contains the following sections:

The Reminder Timing section determines when appointment reminders may be sent.

Configure the daily sending window by selecting a start and end time. For example, reminders can be configured to send between 7:00 AM and 8:00 PM, preventing patients from receiving messages too early in the morning or late at night.

Note: Reminder Timing settings apply to SMS reminders and can affect whether same-day reminders are sent successfully.

Example: If a patient has a 10:00 AM appointment and a same-day reminder is configured to send 2 hours before the appointment, the reminder would normally be sent at 8:00 AM. If your sending window begins at 9:00 AM, the reminder will not be sent.

Click Save after making changes.

The Audience Filter section allows you to control which appointments and patients receive reminders.

Exclude by Appointment Notes: Exclude patients if the appointment notes contain specific words or phrases.

Examples:

Exclude by Chair: Exclude appointments scheduled in selected chairs from receiving reminders.

Exclude by Service Codes: Exclude appointments that contain specific service codes. This can be useful for internal appointments, consultations, or procedures that do not require automated reminders.

Exclude by Patient Tags: Exclude patients with specific tags assigned in their Patient Overview.

Normal Working Schedule: Enable Only send reminders to appointments within 1 hour for normal working schedule to prevent reminders from being sent for appointments scheduled outside your office's standard business hours. This setting is not available yet.

Click Save after making changes.

The Appointment Reminder section allows you to configure up to seven different reminder types.

Each reminder can be activated independently and configured with its own email and SMS templates.

Available reminder types include:

Use the Active toggle to enable or disable individual reminders. Inactive reminders will not be sent.

Each reminder includes:

Click Edit beneath the desired template to customize the message content.

The Save the Date reminder is typically used immediately after an appointment is scheduled.

Options include:

Choose how many days before the appointment the Save the Date reminder should be sent.

Note: Save the Date reminders can only be configured up to one day before the appointment.

Primary and Secondary Early Reminders allow practices to send reminders several days or weeks before the appointment.

Configure the number of days before the appointment when the reminder should be sent.

Primary and Secondary Day-Before Reminders are designed to notify patients shortly before their appointment.

Select the number of days before the appointment when the reminder should be delivered.

Primary and Secondary Same Day Reminders can be sent a specified number of hours before the appointment.

Configure the number of hours before the appointment when the reminder should be sent.

Note: Same-Day Reminders must be scheduled at least 2 hours before the appointment time.

Reset Templates: Select Reset Templates to restore all reminder templates to the system defaults.

Translate All Templates Using AI: Select Translate All Templates Using AI to automatically generate translated versions of reminder templates.

Click Save after making changes.

The Special Settings section provides additional options for customizing appointment reminders.

Enable this setting to display an appointment time earlier than the scheduled appointment for patients with specific tags.

Note: This only changes the time displayed in the reminder message and does not modify the actual appointment in your PMS.

Enable Insert the following verbiage for all patients who need to be pre-medicated to automatically include a reminder for patients requiring pre-medication.

Example: "Please remember to take your medication before your appointment."

Additional information can be found here.

Enable Family Messaging to send reminders to the responsible party or guarantor for family accounts.

Enable Send Confirmation Notification to automatically send a predefined SMS message when a patient confirms their appointment.

Available actions:

Note: Confirmation notification messages are system-generated and cannot be customized.

Enable Send Call Back Notification to automatically send a predefined SMS when a patient requests a callback in response to a reminder message.

Note: Callback notification messages are system-generated and cannot be customized.

Enable Include the day of the week in the appointment reminder to display the weekday alongside the appointment date and time.

Enable When a patient responds to an appointment reminder campaign message with C, 1, or 2, mark the message thread as unread to automatically flag the conversation for staff review.

If a patient has multiple appointments scheduled on the same day, choose how appointment times appear in reminder messages.

Include All Appointment Times: Displays every appointment scheduled for that day.

Include Only the First Appointment Time: Displays only the earliest appointment time scheduled that day.

Select Update Appointment Confirmation Keywords to customize the keywords patients can use to confirm appointments via SMS.

Click Save after making changes.

The Test Section allows you to validate reminder settings before relying on them for patient communications.

This can help verify:

The Appointment Reminder Campaign includes several tabs for monitoring reminder activity.

Messages Sent: Displays reminders that were successfully sent to patients.

Not Sent: Displays reminders that were not sent and may provide information about why the reminder was skipped.

Examples may include:

History: Displays historical activity and changes made to the Appointment Reminder Campaign.