SMS Appointment Reminders

Introduction

Impulse now includes functionality to send appointment reminders to your patients by SMS.

Practices are able to fully customize the SMS Message sent from Impulse.

SMS Messages are available as 1 way & 2 way SMS with all delivery confirmations and responses delivered and recorded into your appointment book.

Please ensure that you have a mobile number listed in patient details with the check box ticked.

From the Main Menu, select Wait/App | SMS Management

Once the MedComms box appears, select SMS tab

To send SMS Appointment reminders, click Create. This will load the Appointment SMS Manager window.

Take a minute or so to familiarize yourself with the look and feel of the Appointment SMS Manager screen. What you will see:

Low SMS Counter – this is customized by you to schedule an automatic email be sent when SMS credits fall below your nominated credit value
Available SMS Credits – displays remaining SMS credits available
Admin Email – this is the nominated email address for the practice for low balance notifications
Check for SMS response updates – allow you to customize how often you check for 2 way SMS responses, if applicable
Create SMS Tab – used to select the appointments to send the reminder to and the template to use
Unsent SMS Tab – lists all SMS appointment reminders which have not been sent
Standard SMS Text List Tab – allows creation of SMS appointment reminders templates with a range of available merge fields.

Before using SMS appointment reminders for the first time, you will need to setup your standard SMS appointment reminder template.

Select the Standard SMS Text List Tab
Select the + button to add a new template
Using the required merge fields, type your SMS appointment reminder message
Select to save the record
To save a SMS appointment reminder as the default, ensure that you click on the required message the click the Use “current” record as default Msg Text.

Select the Create SMS Tab
Select the date range of the appointment book for which you want to send SMS appointment reminders
To send for all locations, ensure that the ALL checkbox is ticked, otherwise select the required locations
To send for all providers, ensure that the ALL checkbox is ticked, otherwise select the required providers
Click on the Find Appts W/out SMS button
To select to send SMS appointment reminders to all patients, click on the Select All button, otherwise double click the checkbox next to the required appointments
Ensure that the correct SMS appointment reminder template is selected. If incorrect, click the Get SMS Text for new Msgs button and select the correct template
Click Create SMS’s button. The selected appointments will disappear from the list

Select the Unsent SMSs Tab
Confirm details are correct
To send SMS appointment reminder to all patients, click on the Select All button, otherwise double click the checkbox next to the required SMS
Click the Send Now button
All sent SMS appointment reminders will disappear from this list

If you click the “Get Updates” button, this will refresh your list with the latest status information for SMS patient appointment reminders from the server.

From the appointment book, you are able to easily view the status of the SMS appointment reminder by scrolling across the screen.

To access the appointment book

From the Main Screen, select Appointments button

From the Main Menu, select Wait/App | Appointment

From Patient Details, select System | Appointment

From Waiting Room, select Patient | Appointment