HotDoc Reminders is an automatic SMS messaging system which sends a reminder to your patients ahead of their appointment. Using HotDoc Reminders can:
- Significantly reduce your do not attend rates
- Save your reception team time and effort by removing the need to manually call each patient
- See real time confirmations and cancellations in your appointment book
- Remind patients for free if using HotDoc Push Notifications
- Deliver targeted information such as the HotDoc digital new patient form, or Inform promotions to advertise clinic services.
This guide covers the essentials of setting up and using HotDoc Reminders. If you are new to Reminders or setting up for the first time, you will be required to complete all sections below.
Once set up, you will be able to send automatic SMS messages to all your patients in your appointment book, regardless of whether or not they originally made the booking via HotDoc.
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In this article |
1. The Patient Journey
| Before setting up HotDoc to send appointment reminders, we recommend that you first review the journey from a patient point of view. See What do patients see when they receive a Reminder? |
While SMS reminders for appointments have been around for a while, you may still find that some patients may not be used to receiving messages from their health provider. Reviewing the patient journey will allow you to be in control if you receive any enquiries as you will always know what to expect. A strong sense of the patient journey will also enable you to educate your staff and patients, as well as preempt any concerns or queries the patient may have.
HotDoc sends SMS Reminders from a dedicated number and appears as an SMS like the image below:
- If the patient uses our HotDoc app, they may also receive a Push Notification on their mobile device. To learn more about this, see What are Push Notifications?
- If the patient does not have a smart phone to click the link, they may also reply with a Yes or No response via SMS.
- 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 also send an SMS reply to the patient to advise them to contact the clinic. Learn more by reading the information in Smart Cancellation Replies.
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
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HotDoc Reminders works by syncing the appointments and the associated patient records sitting within your appointment book. We then look at the mobile number in the patient record and send the SMS to that number. |
Now that you know how your patients will receive their appointment reminder, let's learn how appointments are synced and isolated for Reminder sending.
When looking at your appointment book, HotDoc will take the following rules into consideration:
- By default, we will only send SMS Reminders to patients with an appointment inside an active practitioner's session.
- If a patient has a tandem appointment, we will only send an SMS for the first appointment time.
- If a patient has a tandem appointment, their confirmation or cancellation will apply to both appointments if scheduled within a set time period (2 hours by default)
- If a patient has already received an appointment reminder that day, we will not send another SMS to that patient on the same day. The exception to this rule 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 a patient from receiving too many messages which may be confusing or frustrating for them.
3. Reminders settings
Now that we're across how HotDoc syncs appointments for SMS sending, we can start to review the Reminder settings associated with your HotDoc account.
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It's important to review the default Reminders settings to ensure you're happy with who HotDoc sends Reminders for as well as when we send the SMS. |
To access your Reminders Settings, log into your HotDoc Dashboard and navigate to Reminders > Settings:
Please review the following settings:
- At the top of the page, you will see the Activate Reminders section. It is best to leave this switched 'Off' until you are ready to start sending out Reminders. You can also use this to suspend Reminders if you are experiencing any troubles that might require you to manually confirm appointments instead:
- The next setting allows you to enable or disable Push Notifications ( See What are Push Notifications? for more information) . Check the box if you'd prefer to send free Push Notifications first instead of an SMS:
- You can then decide whether you would like to send your Sunday or Monday appointment reminders on the Friday, before the weekend. This feature is especially handy for clinics who like to confirm Monday appointments ahead of schedule, if they are not open on a Saturday or Sunday. To switch this on, check the feature box in Send Reminders on Friday:
- Lastly, in the Who should get reminders? section, you can set a maximum age for patients receiving Reminder messages. You can also choose to respect a patient's SMS consent status in your clinical software:
If you're using Best Practice SP1 or above, see Best Practice Premier Indigo SP1/Jade FAQs for more information about how we manage consent.
4. Selecting your appointment books and doctors
| HotDoc allows you to select specific Doctors from your appointment books to send Reminders for. This allows you to control who HotDoc contacts based upon your practitioner preferences. |
With your settings reviewed, the next step is to choose the appointment books and doctors for whom Reminders will be sent.
You may find that all practitioners at your practice would like SMS Reminders. However, in some cases, you may have some practitioners who would prefer to not send SMS messages to their patients.
To select your doctors and appointment books, follow the steps below:
- In Reminders > Settings, scroll down to the section titled Select your doctors:
- Tick the checkbox next to the doctors you would like Reminders to be sent for then select the green Save button.
- You can also change how a doctor's name will appear in the message that the patient receives by clicking the pencil icon next to each name and then entering a new Display name and clicking Save:
5. Reminder types and copy
| HotDoc gives you the freedom to choose how far in advance you would like a patient to be sent a SMS Reminder. This is done via the four Reminder types: Regular, Immediate, Early and Custom. |
Following on from selecting your appointments and doctors in the settings page, we suggest that you review the types of Reminders that you may want to send out. The "Standard" setup is to send both Regular and Immediate Reminders:
- Regular Reminders
A Regular Reminder is sent to the patient 24 hours in advance of their appointment date.We provide a recommended default message but you can adjust the copy of the SMS by typing within the SMS Message box:
- Immediate Reminders
An Immediate Reminder is sent to patients who have made an appointment within 24 hours, but no less than two hours of their appointment time. The SMS is sent within 10-15 minutes as soon the appointment is made. We provide a recommended default message but you can adjust the copy of the SMS by typing within the SMS Message box:
While we recommend that you keep to the default copy, you can adjust the copy as you see fit. We do suggest you keep to the following rules:
- The message must contain the placeholders for {{time}} and {{link}}. These are highlighted in green in the message. You may remove or replace the other placeholders by selecting the Insert Placeholder option.
- Your message must be below 160 characters to keep within fair SMS usage.
While the "Standard" Reminder setup is sufficient for most clinics, we do have other types which are used by some clinics in addition to this:
- Early Reminders
By default, an Early Reminder will send an SMS message 7 days in advance of the patient's appointment time. This type of Reminder is handy for clinics who tend to book appointments quite far in advance, or who want to confirm a patient's attendance earlier than 24 hours. To turn this on, select the On button:
- Custom Reminders
Unlike the other types, Custom Reminders cannot be created in the Dashboard. They exist for specific cases where you may have another team of practitioners, such as Allied Health, that require separate send times or different copy. If you have a Custom Reminder setup, you will see it below the Early Reminder section:
6. Activating and managing Reminders
Congratulations, you've completed all the steps for the setup of HotDoc Reminders! All that's left now is for your clinic to turn it switch it on if it's not already active.
If you are switching from another provider, we suggest turning off your previous reminder system before following the steps below:
- Navigate to Dashboard > Reminders > Settings.
- On the page, find the Activate Reminders section. If you are happy with your set-up and are ready for Reminders to begin sending to patients, switch to On and select the Save button at the bottom of the page (you may need to scroll to complete this step):
From here, the ongoing management of your SMS messages should be relatively automatic. We recommend the following resources to assist with learning how to view and manage HotDoc Reminders moving forward:
How to view upcoming Reminders
How do I know if an appointment has been confirmed?
Go ahead and check out our HotDoc Reminders Support centre for further resources and to search for frequently asked questions.