Scheduler: Manage Appointment Communications

Scheduler allows you to communicate with your patients about their upcoming appointments and group sessions. These communications are highly configurable and allow you to choose what types of communication you want to send, the frequency of those communications, and how they are delivered (email or text). 

Example Communication Scenarios

A common automated communication schedule could look like:

1. A message is sent to the patient when they are scheduled for an appointment or group session. 
2. A second message is sent to remind the patient of their upcoming visit 7 days before their appointment time.
3. A third message is sent to remind the patient of their upcoming visit on the day before their appointment. 

Facilities can also choose to only send a single message at the time when the patient is scheduled for a visit, or only choose to send a reminder of their upcoming visit 3 days before their appointment. 

Alternatively, facilities can disable all automated communication and simply manually send the desired communication directly from the patient's appointment or group session card.

The notable exception here is for telehealth visits (appointments or group sessions). Telehealth communication cannot be disabled as this is the only way to ensure the patient receives the correct link to join their session.  

Automated Reminders

By default, every instance is configured with the following messages enabled for each location. You can choose to leave the messages as is, or modify and/or disable them. You can also create custom messages. Click here for instructions. 

Appointment Cancelled	This message is sent when the status of the appointment or group session is changed to Cancel.
Appointment Confirmation	This message is sent when the status of the appointment or group session status is changed to Confirm.
Appointment Reminder	This message is sent 28 days before the visit, 21 days before the visit, 14 days before the visit, 7 days before the visit, and 1 hour before the visit.  The maximum number of reminders the patient will receive is 5, if the visit was scheduled more than 30 days out. If the patient visit was scheduled 6 days in the future, the patient would only receive the 1 hour before reminder.
Appointment Scheduled	This message is sent to the patient when the status of the appointment or group session is changed to Scheduled or Rescheduled. Additionally, if the appointment details change (e.g., appointment type, room, provider, or location), the patient will receive a message indicating the new visit details.
Default [Telehealth]	This message is sent to the patient when the status of the telehealth appointment or telehealth group session is changed to Scheduled or Rescheduled. This message cannot be deleted or disabled to ensure the patient receives the proper links to join their session.

Manual Reminder Process

You can disable all automated reminders (aside from the default) in the Appointment Communication section of the Scheduler Settings and send manual appointment reminder messages on an as-needed basis. 

Sending Manual Communication

1. To send a manual message to the patient, navigate to the Scheduler and locate their appointment or group session. Click to open.
   
2. Click on the View icon.
3. Open the Communication tab.
4. Click Send.
5. Select the Default from the Template drop-down and click Send.
6. Upon refreshing the page, you'll see all communications sent to that patient and their statuses.
7. There are nine statuses in total:
   1. Pending/Sent: The message has been sent to the service
   2. Delivered: The message has been delivered
   3. Complaint/Bounced: The message has been sent, but has generated a complaint or has been bounced
   4. Error: The message is not sent to the service or there is no communication configuration present. Hover over the error to view the error.
   5. Failed: The message is sent to the service but failed
   6. Acknowledged/Queued: The message is queued to be sent to SNS for delivery
8. Click on the name of the communication to preview the message.
9. In the message preview window, you'll have the option to copy the message (so you can paste the text elsewhere) or resend it.