Family Message Early Reminder

Summary

A Family Message Early Reminder is a notification only of upcoming appointments for multiple patients with appointments on the same day.  It is not a request for confirmation of the appointments.  Go to Settings>Family Message Settings>Early Reiminders.

The default reminder delivery date is set at 2 or 3 weeks before the appointment (depending on the type of practice) as patient appointments are often are scheduled well in advance of the appointment date.  

 For example, many dentists will schedule a return hygiene appointment up to 6 months in advance.  

The Family Message Early Reminder allows the guarantor of multiple patients with appointments on the same day to check their calendar for conflicts and comfortably reschedule if needed.  Finding that your patients need to reschedule their appointments a day or 2 before their appointment day can oftentimes create schedule vacancies and loss of revenue.  

Multiple Family Early Reminder notifications may be set up by the practice.  Some practices have found that creating a reminder for the day before the appointment in addition to the reminder a few weeks before helps to cut down on no-shows.  Others feel a day before reminder is unnecessary.  Each practice knows their patients best and balance the need to remind patients of upcoming appointments and overwhelming them with messaging. 

Enable an Early Reminder notification

1. Message delivery method: Choose any combination of Email, SMS, or Voice by toggling the buttons to the ON (green) position.Delivery Method Toggles

2. Enable: Turn on the notification by toggling the button ON (green).Enabled Toggle

3. Send out/Send at: Select how soon before the appointment date to send the reminder and the time of day to send.  Your selection here is applied to the voice reminder for this notification.  Send out/Send at

4. Voice Reminders: A reminder for an upcoming appointment can be made to the patient’s home phone.  To enable an automated voice call:

• Call at: Set the time of day to make the call

• Speaker: Select the voice to use.  Alice and Conchita allows a Spanish notification

• Language: English is always default. You may choose Spanish, Mexico for a voice message in Spanish if Alice is chosen as Speaker. Choosing Spanish, Spain enables Conchita.

• Call when: Choose what contact information (or lack of) triggers a call

• Option to call Office: Will the patient be able to press a button to call the office telephone

• Office Number: Displays what phone number the patient will reach when Option to call Office is enabled   Voice Call Settings

5. Advanced Settings: A practice may decide to send a voice call Reminder on a day other than scheduled.  The left column shows the day the reminder is scheduled to be sent, the right column is the day you prefer the reminder to be sent.  In the example below, the voice messages scheduled to be sent on Saturday and Sunday will be sent on the Friday before.    

                           Voice Advanced Settings                     
6. Templates: 

Each notification will preload with a default template when the message delivery method is turned on. Email and Voice templates will have 2 options.  Template names with 1 will include the names of all patients scheduled that day and the earliest appointment time only. Template names with 2 will include every patient with an appointment that day and include the appointment time for each individual patient.  

• To view the current enabled template, click the template tab in the notification for enabled delivery method.  To change or edit the current template, click Edit Template. 

View Template

To change templates, choose a different template from the drop down menu in the Message Template screen.  When done, click SAVE & CLOSE Select Template