Question
A patient did not receive an appointment reminder. How can I find out why it didn't send?
Solution
You can see why an appointment reminder did not send to the patient in your HotDoc Dashboard.
Below is a table that describes each of the reasons that may appear in the Unsent Reminders tab in your Dashboard.
How to view reminders that could not send
If an appointment reminder wasn't sent to a patient, you can see the reason why in your Dashboard by following the steps below.
- Navigate to Reminders > Unsent Reminders to see a list of your recent unsent SMS reminders:
- You can also apply filters to the list to help find the right Reminder:
- Here you will see the appointment details, when the Reminder would have sent and the reason it did not send. In the example below, you can see that the patient's appointment did not send because it was outside of the practitioner's session time:
Reasons why an appointment reminder did not send:
HotDoc Reminders has specific settings which tell us who to send an appointment reminder to. Appointment reminders will not be sent for any of the following reasons:
|
Already sent |
If the patient has more than one appointment on the same day, we will send only ONE reminder, for the EARLIEST appointment. |
|
Inactive |
This patient has been marked as INACTIVE in your patient management system. |
|
Opted out |
The patient has requested NOT to be contacted through SMS. |
|
Appointment cancelled |
We sync all appointments for the next 3 months from your practice system. This will appear if the appointment was cancelled before an appointment reminder was sent, but after we had synced. |
|
Invalid mobile |
This will appear if the patient’s phone number on file is NOT a valid mobile number. |
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Outside session |
If appointments are booked outside of the practitioner’s normal session times, we will NOT send Reminders for those appointments. In these cases, it's worthwhile checking your Doctor's sessions in the clinical software. |
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Deceased |
The patient has been marked Deceased in your practice management system. |
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Above max age |
In Reminders > Settings, you have the option to Disable SMART Reminders for patients aged [x] and above. HotDoc keeps this turned OFF by default. You can adjust this setting to suit your patient demographic. |
|
Patient underage |
This will occur is the patient is younger than the minimum age limit range. By default HotDoc does NOT set a minimum age limit. Contact your Customer Success Manager if you’d like to discuss this feature. |
|
Has earlier Reminder |
If the patient has more than one appointment on the same day, we will send only ONE reminder, for the EARLIEST appointment. |
|
No response dependent copy |
Patient has received an earlier reminder and you have chosen not to send another SMS to them based on their response/lack of response. |
|
Don't send again for in days |
Patient has previously received a reminder of this type within a custom set time period so will not send again this time round. |
|
Don't send appointment type |
This type of reminder isn't configured to send for this appointment type. |