Family Messaging allows a designated Guarantor, Responsible Party, or Head of Household to receive appointment reminder emails and SMS messages for family members on the same account.
This guide explains how to enable Family Messaging, how to configure the appropriate family member within your Practice Management System (PMS), and how messages are written back to your PMS.
To enable Family Messaging
Navigate to your Appointment Reminders Campaign.
Open Special Settings.
Select Enable Family Messaging.
Once enabled, a valid Guarantor or Responsible Party can receive appointment reminder emails and SMS messages for the family account.
Configuring Family Messaging in Your PMS
The person designated to receive family messages is determined by the family relationships configured within your PMS. Follow the instructions below for your system.
Eaglesoft
Open the patient's profile and select Edit Patient.
Choose the Responsible Party for each family member.
Enter the Responsible Party ID in the Resp. Party field.
Dentrix
Select the patient.
Go to Edit and select Set Head-of-House.
From the pop-up, select the appropriate Head of House from the listed family members.
Open Dental
Open the Family File.
Select the appropriate patient.
Choose Set Guarantor.
How Family Messages Write Back to Your PMS
Once Family Messaging is configured, it is important to understand how outgoing and incoming messages are recorded in your PMS.
Outgoing Messages: Appointment reminder messages are written back to the record of the person who received the message.
Incoming Messages: If an incoming phone number is associated with multiple patients, the message will not be written back to the PMS. Because the phone number belongs to multiple patient records, Practice by Numbers cannot determine which specific patient sent the message.
Customize Who Messages Write Back To
For families with three or more family members included in Family Messaging, you can select which individual should be used for message write-back.
To update this setting:
Navigate to Patient Overview > Details > Appointment Reminder Customization.
Locate the Family Messaging options.
Select the individual whose record should receive the message write-back.
This allows practices to better control where Family Messaging activity is recorded while continuing to send appointment reminders to the appropriate family contact.