The reminder template reduces phone calls by automating appointment confirmations and cancelations. It automatically sends necessary forms to your patients, lowering your no-show rate and speeding up patient intake, while providing vital information to patients about their care.

1. Be sensitive to patients' preferences. Many patients do not appreciate receiving too many reminders. Avoid over-messaging your patients.

2. Consider whether your population prefers SMS messages or emails, and choose one or the other for one or more of the sequences.

3. Include your cancellation policy in email reminders. Call attention to it by using bold, bright text.

4. Keep your message concise. Patients will not read long messages, especially in a text.

5. Allow patients to cancel and reschedule right from the reminder to streamline the experience for you and them.

By default, NexHealth sends reminders to patients via email and SMS message about their appointment one week, one day, and two hours before they are scheduled to come in. This cadence can be easily modified by adjusting the gray Next action tile if desired.

Reminders contain the APPOINTMENT_REGISTRATION Smart Command, which determines the content of the reminder message patients receive.

When patients receive their reminder message, it asks them to confirm or cancel (if enabled) their appointment, and complete any forms that have been configured using Smart form automation.

Text reminders ask patients to respond "Y" to confirm or "N" to cancel their appointments (if patient cancelation is enabled) and also inform them that they will receive a link to their forms once they confirm the appointment. If cancelation is not enabled, the text will ask them to respond "C" to confirm. NexHealth will also automatically confirm any response that is three words or fewer and contains any the following: confirm, C, Y, yes, K, kk, ok, okay, si, confirmado, or see you soon.

SMS with patient cancelation ON:

Email reminders prompt patients to confirm their appointments, and include a note with a link to complete forms. Once they confirm, they are prompted with a link to complete their forms.

If patients confirm their appointments but do not complete their forms, subsequent reminders will only include the form completion reminder. If they confirm and complete forms, they will not receive additional reminders unless the sequence is set to send to Confirmed and Unconfirmed patients (see instructions below).

*Note: The form link will not show in the preview of the reminder because it is not connected to an actual appointment. Reminders sent to patients will, however.

Access reminders from the Templates or Reminders tab.

1. Navigate to NexHealth Home

2. Select Templates or Reminders.

3. Click Reminders. This will open your reminders sequence. Here, you will see gray tiles indicating when the messages are sent, with purple message tiles beneath to denote the messages.

NexHealth templates are fully customizable in your editor.

1. To edit the messages, hover over the right corner of the message tile and click on the pencil on any of the message tiles to edit the copy. Click on the trash can to remove the message tile. It is possible to send only an email, only a text message, or both.

2. When editing the text of your reminders, be sure to leave the APPOINTMENT_REGISTRATION (or INSERTCONFIRMAPPT) smart command intact to allow patients to confirm their appointments from the message. If you have Smart Form Automation configured, the appropriate forms will automatically be sent to the patient.

3. Optionally, you can add forms to a message by going to Forms under Smart Commands and selecting any you wish to include. (*Note: with smart form rules, this is probably not necessary).

4. Click Preview to review the message from the patient's perspective.

5. You can also configure your reminders in other languages. See the instructions to communicate with patients in their preferred languages.

**Note: SMS messages are limited to 425 characters. Emojis and some special characters count as two characters, so the character limit is less when those are used.

6. Click on the trash can icon if you want to delete an email or SMS message from the sequence.

7. Click Save and exit to save the changes.

8. Be sure to toggle on the reminders template to activate. Reminders will begin going out immediately. If you want to stop all reminders from being sent to any patients, toggle off the reminder template.

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1. To add additional triggers to send more messages to the patient:

2. Navigate to the Reminders template and open the template.

3. Click the plus icon at the bottom of the sequence.

2. Select Add new action and enter when you would like the message to send. (ex: Send messages before 1 day--this will send a reminder to patients the day before their appointment).

You can set up different messaging for patients based on their confirmation status (ex: only send day-of reminders to patients who have confirmed or add a disclaimer about your no-show policy for patients who have not confirmed.)

1. Select +Add additional sequence.

2. Select your desired sequence:

*NOTE: With the APPOINTMENT_REGISTRATION smart command, if you want patients who have already confirmed their appointments to receive a reminder, you will need to set the action to Send if confirmed or unconfirmed.

3. If you wish to have separate messages based on confirmation status (for example, reminding unconfirmed practices of your cancellation policy), you will see a fork in the sequence, as seen below. You can then edit the messages independently.

Reminders are sent within the designated sending hours for your practice, from 6 AM to 10 PM by default. Reminders that would be sent outside of those sending hours are NOT sent. For example, a 7 AM appointment would be expected to get a 2-hour reminder at 5 AM, but that is outside of sending hours, so that reminder is not sent.

To change the default sending times for your Reminders, go to Settings --> Template configurations to adjust the time that templates will send.

You can configure your reminders to allow patients to cancel their appointments directly from their reminder message. Patients click to cancel (via email) or respond N (via text), and are offered the opportunity to reschedule. When a patient cancels an appointment, NexHealth removes the appointment from your schedule and notifies you via the Activity tab and email.

Email sequence

1. Reminder - option to cancel is enabled:

2. Patient clicks Cancel appointment and is asked again to Confirm or Cancel:

3. Clicking cancel again provides a link to reschedule:

Text sequence

1. Reminder with cancelation enabled:

2. Response to N to cancel with link to reschedule:

To configure your reminders to allow patients to cancel their appointments:

1. Create an Appointment type for each appointment you would like patients to be able to cancel. Be sure to toggle on the Allow patient to cancel toggle.

2. Build EHR Mapping for each appointment type. Be sure to Save and remap when finished.

Reminders (and other automated NexHealth communications) are only sent during the configured sending hours. By default, this is between the hours of 6 AM and 10 AM local time.

Sending hours can be modified if desired:

1. Navigate to the gear icon and choose Settings.

2. Select Template configurations (in the General menu) on the left side.

3. Adjust the start and/or end times.

4. Click Save.

Reminders do not send outside of the set hours - reminders that would have been sent during those hours do not queue until a suitable time, they just do not go out.