Best Practice/Pracsoft/Zedmed/Optomate

1. The Patient Journey

Before setting up HotDoc to send appointment reminders, we recommend reviewing the journey from a patient point of view. This helps you understand what patients can expect, so you're prepared to answer any enquiries and can educate your staff accordingly.

How reminders are delivered

HotDoc will try to contact each patient via the following channels in order, based on their eligibility and available contact details:

1. Push notification sent to the HotDoc app – if the patient does not confirm or cancel, we'll send an SMS 2 hours later
2. Email sent to the email address in the patient's file – if we're unable to send a push notification, and if the patient does not confirm or cancel, we'll send an SMS 2 hours later
3. SMS sent to the mobile number in the patient's file – if we cannot contact the patient via push notification or email

• For email appointment reminders, the subject line will include the name of your practice and be sent from noreply@hotdoc.com.au
• For SMS, we send this from a dedicated number.
• There may also be times when a patient attempts to cancel an appointment, but we are unable to due to some settings. See Why is a patient unable to cancel their appointment? to learn more.
• If a patient has attempted to cancel an appointment that is unable to be removed, we will send an SMS reply to the patient advising them to contact the practice. Learn more by reading What do patients see when they cancel via SMS appointment reminder?

We recommend you share the above information (and linked resources) with your wider team so everyone is informed and ready to assist with any questions you may receive from your patients.

2. Appointment sync

When looking at your appointment book, HotDoc applies the following rules:

• We will only send appointment reminders to patients with an appointment inside an active practitioner's session. If a practitioner is not active your PMS, no reminders will be sent for appointments in their sessions.
• If a patient has a tandem appointment, we will only send a reminder for the first appointment time. Their confirmation or cancellation will apply to both appointments if they are scheduled within 2 hours of each other.
• If a patient has already received a reminder that day, we will not send another reminder to that patient on the same day. The exception is if a guardian's mobile number is associated with their dependant and they both have appointments on the same day.

These rules work to prevent patients from receiving too many messages, which may be confusing or frustrating for them.

3. Reminders Settings

Head to Reminders > Settings in your HotDoc Dashboard to review how and when reminders will send. In particular, check the reminder timing and confirm you're happy with the default send window before activating.

• Send settings: Allows you to turn reminders on or off, manage how, when, and to who they send and include a custom message to communicate added information.
  
  

4. Practitioner Settings

Review your Practitioner Settings to confirm which practitioners, nurses and appointment books will have reminders enabled. Make sure this matches your expectations before activating – any practitioners left enabled will have reminders send for their appointments.

• Practitioner Settings: Manage the practitioners, nurses and appointment books that you would like to send appointment reminders for.
  
  

5. Reminder Templates

By default, your Dashboard will have access to our Standard suite of templates. This includes Regular, Immediate and Early reminders which you can customise and edit from the Reminders > Templates section.

Standard Reminders

Standard reminders consist of Regular and Immediate Reminders.

• A Regular Reminder is sent to the patient 24 hours in advance of their appointment date/time.
• An Immediate Reminder is sent to patients who've made an appointment within 24 hours, but no less than two hours of their appointment time. The appointment reminder is sent within 5–15 minutes of the appointment being confirmed.
• We provide a recommended default message for both Email and SMS reminders, however you can customise these messages within the character limit. For Email Reminders this is 1280 characters, and SMS is 160 characters.
• Here you can also customise which appointment types it will and won't send for, as well as some cancellation settings.

Example regular reminders

Example immediate reminders, further down the page

Early Reminders (Optional)

• By default, an Early Reminder will send an appointment reminder 7 days in advance of the patient's appointment time. This is handy if your patients often book appointments far in advance, or if you want to confirm a patient's attendance earlier than 24 hours.
• To enable early reminders, toggle to ON:
  
  

6. Activating Reminders

You've reviewed your settings and templates – now it's time to switch Reminders on. If you're switching from another provider, turn off your previous reminder system first.

1. Navigate to Dashboard > Reminders > Settings.
2. Find the Activate Reminders section. Select On then press Save at the bottom of the page. This will activate the Regular and Immediate templates.
   
   
3. If you set up Early Reminders in section 5, confirm the template is toggled to ON under Reminders > Templates > Early Reminders:
   
   

7. Managing Reminders

Once Reminders are active, they'll run automatically. You can monitor which reminders are upcoming, have been sent, or did not send in the Future Reminders, History and Unsent Reminders sections of the Dashboard.

Future Reminders	History	Unsent Reminders

Useful resources for managing Reminders day to day:

• Why didn't a patient receive their appointment reminder?
• How do I know if an appointment has been confirmed?
• How to action SMS reminder responses in your Sidebar
• How to view upcoming Reminders

8. Telehealth Reminders

If your practice has set up and linked your HotDoc Telehealth appointment type to the Telehealth appointment type in your clinical software, we will automatically send an appointment reminder for any Telehealth appointment type booked (both via HotDoc or with Reception).