Guide to Patient Appointment Reminders

Introduction 

Appointment reminders are crucial in healthcare as they significantly impact patient attendance, satisfaction, and overall healthcare outcomes. There are multiple ways to implement appointment reminders and multiple use cases of reminders as well. You can inform patients of their upcoming appointments by either calling them or sending a text or email. Reminders can be sent not just for upcoming appointments but also for insurance verifications, form requests, and payment reminders.

Automated appointment reminders have taken the healthcare industry by storm, as they require minimal human intervention, free up staff, increase efficiency, and reduce errors. We will be learning about all of this and more in this article.

Benefits of Patient Appointment Reminders 

Appointment reminders are the best way to remind patients of their upcoming appointments and ensure that they turn up for it. This method has been used in various forms, earlier postcards were sent as reminders, later on, they got replaced with phone calls and today the best method for sending appointment reminders is either email or text. What are some of the benefits of appointment reminders?

Reduced no-shows by 90%

The biggest advantage and motive of appointment reminders is reducing patient no-shows. Sending appointment reminders can reduce no-shows by up to 90%. The medium through which you send the appointment reminders can also significantly contribute to the reduction in no-show rates. For eg, patients are much more likely to read text appointment reminders within the first 3 minutes of their delivery, thus ensuring that they take some action related to the appointment, be it confirming, rescheduling, or canceling. 

Increases patient engagement 

When practices send appointment reminders to patients they are opening up a channel of communication. Whether it be email or text, both these mediums have the ability to allow patients to reply to the appointment reminder. This effectively helps improve patient engagement, as patients find you more accessible. 

Improves patient experience

Appointment reminders keep the patient at the forefront, reminding them to keep up their essential appointments and keep their health in check. Appointment reminders also allow patients an easy way to respond to the message and confirm or reschedule the appointment. This ease of communication and accessibility makes for an enhanced patient experience.

Components of a patient Appointment reminder text message

A typical appointment reminder has the following components: 

• Personalization – This is the beginning of the message where you address the patient by their name, for eg “ Hi Sarah” 
• Date and Time of Appointment – This is the part of the message where you mention the date and time of the upcoming appointment, for eg “ You have an upcoming appointment on 3 September at 11:30 am” 
• Location – This is the part of the message where you can add the directions to your practice if required, for eg “Here are the directions {{link}}”
• CTA – This part of the message requires the patient to take action with regard to the appointment, for eg “ reply with C to confirm the appointment, click here {{link}} to reschedule the appointment.” 

Why you should use text appointment reminders

The efficiency of appointment reminders can be increased by 3x just by using text messaging as the communication medium. This is because: 

Patients prefer texting

Around 85% of patients actually want to receive text messages from their healthcare providers, indicating a high preference for this method of communication. Apart from that, 79% of patients are more likely to engage with a healthcare provider who offers texting as a communication method. 

Texting is accessible to everyone

SMS is a method of communication that is accessible to everyone as it is not dependent on the Internet. Even if a patient does not have access to stable Wi-fi or Data they can still use SMS. Nearly 97% of US smartphone users use text messaging regularly. 

Texting has greater open rates as compared to other channels

 Text messaging has an open rate of a whopping 98%. To add to this crazy statistic, text messages are also read within 3 minutes of their delivery. Compare it with the 20% open rate of the Email and you will clearly see why text messaging is the best communication medium. 

Texting is easy to implement

Text messaging is something that has been available since the introduction of mobile phones. Its implementation is not difficult to understand and any person with a mobile phone knows how to use SMS. Aside from this, delivery of text messages for the healthcare industry can be easily achieved with the help of a text messaging software. These softwares are usually HIPAA compliant, making the implementation of text messaging on the healthcare level much easier.

Immediate and high-delivery

Text messaging is a great way to send immediate messages as the service itself is immediate. When a text message is received it immediately triggers a text notification prompting the receiver to check the message ASAP. 

The cellular infrastructure in the US is quite widespread and spans from cities to rural areas, ensuring the reliable delivery of messages.

Why you should automate patient appointment reminders

We just learned that the combination of appointment reminders along with text messaging can prove highly effective. What if we introduce another variable that will help scale the efficiency of appointment reminders? This method is nothing but automation. Nowadays automation has become an inescapable part of business operations, and implementing it can prove beneficial for healthcare organizations as well. Here’s how: 

Reduced administrative burden 

Automated text messages free up the staff to focus on other important tasks. They no longer need to craft messages daily and send them manually. Automated text messages are sent through an integration of texting software with a practice’s EHR/PMS. The integration allows for the sending of automated text messages which does not require staff intervention. 

Reduces errors and improves accuracy 

Automation utilizes already saved data about the patient and adds the information automatically to a drafted appointment reminder text. This helps to reduce errors and improve accuracy. Any change updated on the EHR will be reflected in the text messaging software as well, leaving no scope for inaccuracy. 

Improves efficiency

Automated appointment reminders can be sent in large numbers as there is no need for a person to sit and send each appointment reminder individually. An appointment reminder software can send reminders according to the number of appointments scheduled on a particular day and send all of them personalized text messages. 

Personalization options

Since appointment reminder software syncs with EHR/PMS they can read essential patient data into their system and create a personalized text message for each patient. For eg, an appointment reminder text with personalization tokens would look something like this: 

“ hi {{firstname}}, you have an appointment scheduled on {{date}} at {{time}}.”

Send patient reminders according to patient type 

Automation also allows to further personalize appointment reminders by creating messages by appointment type. If you have saved information about appointment type on your EHR, it can easily be reflected in the appointment reminder software as well. Even if the EHR does not have the information, you can create segregation based on the appointment type in the appointment reminder software itself. The messages according to appointment types could be: 

New patient vs recurring patient 

New patient: “ Hi {{firstname}}, you have an upcoming appointment on {{date}} at {{time}}. Please fill these intake forms before the appointment {{link}}.” 

Recurring patient: “Hi {{patientname}}, this is a friendly reminder of your upcoming appointment on {{date}} at {{time}}. Please reply YES to confirm or NO if you need

Regular check-ups vs treatment 

Regular: “Hi {{patientname}}, just a reminder that your regular check-up is scheduled for {{date}} at {{time}}. Please reply YES to confirm or NO if you need to reschedule. We look forward to seeing you! “

Treatment: “Hi {{patientname}}, this is a reminder that your treatment is on {{date}} at {{time}}. Please reply YES to confirm or contact us if you need to change your appointment. We’re here to support your ongoing care. “

Other use cases of patient reminders 

Reminders do not particularly need to be restricted to appointments, you can also use text reminders for the following use cases: 

Upcoming appointment 

The most obvious and important use of reminders as we discussed above is appointment reminders. Automated text appointment reminders can significantly help reduce patient no-shows and should not be avoided at any cost. 

Payment Reminders 

Automated text messages can also be used to send payment reminders. Effective payment reminders can help reduce overdue accounts, improve cash flow, and enhance patient satisfaction. 

Insurance verification

Automated text messages can also be used to send reminders about insurance verification. You can send these reminders before the patient’s appointment so that when they visit the clinic/practice/hospital for their appointment they have already verified their information, and do not need to spend extra time waiting for the same on the day of the appointment.  

Form requests 

You can utilize automated text reminders to send form requests to patients. Form requests require patients to submit necessary intake forms before their appointment. By sending form requests, the healthcare organization is allowing the patient to fill essential intake forms in the comfort of their homes before their visit on the day of their appointment. When they submit forms prior to their appointment, they do not need to wait 

Get started with automated patient appointment reminders through appointment software 

The implementation of all the above-mentioned methods needs the help of a patient appointment reminder software. A patient appointment reminder software will be able to integrate with your organization’s EHR or PMS. Through the integration of the software with the EHR, automated appointment reminders can be implemented. 

Once you have finalized a patient appointment reminder software for your organization, you can ask their team to turn on its integration with your office’s required EHR, or in some cases, you may be able to do it yourself. Once the integration is up and running you will be able to check out automated campaigns and turn on one that suits you best. You will also be able to create manual campaigns if you wish to do so. 

Some appointment reminder softwares also comes with form request features that can be utilized to send patients essential forms that need to be filled out before the day of the appointment. All these features can highly help you smooth your communication with patients and actually help improve patient engagement. Let’s have a look at how you can send automated appointment reminders through Emitrr. 

How to send automated appointment reminders through Emitrr? 

Here are the steps you can follow to send automated appointment reminders through Emitrr: 

EHR and Calendar integrations

EHR integration allows the appointment reminder software to derive essential information. Any appointment marked in your PMS or EHR will be synced with the reminder software to automatically send appointment reminders. Similarly, if you use a third-party calendar instead, there are integrations with these calendars that will allow it to sync and send automatic appointment reminders.

Once you are integrated with your integrated EHR or Calendar you can simply turn on Automated campaigns and start sending reminders. You can create a new automated campaign or select from the ones already available in Emitrr and toggle the “status” on. 

Create your own campaign

If you do not wish to use the existing appointment reminder automations you can simply select “Create automated campaign” on the top right.
You can draft the message and add message personalizations by using properties. 

Set up Cadence for the Reminders
You can also decide the cadence of the appointment reminders by selecting exactly when you need the appointment reminders delivered. Select “immediately” if you wish to send the reminder as soon as an appointment is booked. Select “Send After” to schedule the message for a later time. You can add as many “Steps” as you like by selecting “add follow up message”.

Access a list of templates and create new ones

You can also utilize the list of available templates for quick message drafting, or create a new one suited for your organization by selecting “template” just below the text editor box.

Assign Replies to Team Members

You can make conversation management easy by assigning replies to a team or a team member. This will help increase efficiency and effective communication.



Select Contact List

In the next step select the list of contacts that you wish to send the appointment reminders to.



Use Schedule based Texting

Schedule based texting is a feature that allows one to send texts immediately based on their schedule. Suppose you have appointments scheduled for the following day, but your practice needs to be shut down due to some emergency. You can use the schedule-based texting feature to filter all contacts due for appointment on the day and schedule messages to be sent informing of the emergency. Similarly, if a certain provider is not available for the day you can filter out his/her patients and inform them of the unavailability.

2-Way texting

 2-way texting enables patients to respond to reminder messages. This way businesses can receive confirmation, cancellation or rescheduling messages. 

Patient appointment reminders FAQs