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 reminders sends patients an email and SMS message about their appointment one week, two days, and two hours before they are scheduled to come in.

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

First, patients receive a message asking them to confirm or (if enabled) cancel their appointment.

Then, if Smart Form rules have been configured, patients are prompted to complete any required forms. If they confirm their appointment but do not complete their forms, subsequent reminders will only include the form reminder. If they confirm and complete forms, they will not receive any reminder unless the sequence is set to send to Confirmed and Unconfirmed patients (see instructions below).

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.

2. When editing the text of your reminders, be sure to leave in the APPOINTMENT_REGISTRATION (or INSERTCONFIRMAPPT) smart command if you want to allow patients to confirm their appointments from that 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.

6. Click Save and exit to save the changes.

7. Be sure to toggle on the reminders template.

‍

1. To add additional triggers to send more messages to the patient, click the plus icon in 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.