Reminders

NeatPractice sends appointment reminders by email and text, and a daily email to providers about their due items. What goes out, to whom and when comes from your communication settings: the rules, the templates, the quiet hours and the response policies.

Text messages are an add-on#

Texting patients needs the Text messages add-on, which an owner adds from Setup > Clinic > Subscription. Without it, every patient message goes by email:

• Text reminder rules stay saved but send nothing; your email rules keep working. Add an email rule if you only had text rules.
• A text that was already queued when the add-on ended shows in the log as Suppressed with the reason Text messages add-on not active.
• Patients can no longer confirm or cancel by texting back; the link in the email still works. STOP and START are still recorded on the chart, but NeatPractice sends no reply.
• Secure email codes go by email only.

Nothing is deleted: past texts and their answers stay in the log and the export.

When reminders go out#

NeatPractice checks every few minutes for reminders that have come due. A reminder is due once its rule's lead time before the appointment has arrived, for example 24 hours before. Each reminder is written at the moment it is sent, so it always shows the current date, time and location, in the time zone of the appointment's location.

Before a reminder goes out, NeatPractice checks again that:

• The appointment still stands: a cancelled, rescheduled or voided appointment gets no reminder.
• A contact is still on the chart and still marked as a reminder recipient, and a provider is still on the appointment. Otherwise the reminder is suppressed as No longer a recipient, and a reminder that already went out to that contact no longer accepts answers.
• The patient or contact still has an email address or a text-capable phone number on their chart.
• The person may be written to: texts need recorded consent, and an opt-out stops that channel.
• It is outside your quiet hours. A reminder that falls inside them waits for the window to end, unless that would be after the appointment starts.

A reminder that cannot go out stays in the log as Suppressed with the reason. If a sending attempt fails for a temporary reason, NeatPractice tries again up to three more times before marking it Failed.

How patients respond#

When a rule allows responses, the reminder carries a personal link. It opens a page that shows only your practice name, the location and the appointment date and time, with buttons to Confirm, Cancel or Request Another Time. Patients can also text back C to confirm or X to cancel. Reloading the page in the same browser tab keeps it open, and if the page cannot reach NeatPractice for a moment it offers Try Again instead of calling the link invalid.

The page and the text replies use the language the reminder went out in. When Spanish is turned on, patients can also text CONFIRMAR or SI to confirm and CANCELAR to cancel. See Message languages.

• Confirm marks the patient confirmed on the schedule.
• Cancel cancels the appointment (or, in a group, takes that patient off it), with the reason "by patient".
• Request Another Time changes nothing on the schedule. The reminder shows up under Needs follow-up in the log until someone books a new time and marks it handled.

Each link works once. Cancelling or asking for another time is allowed only until your response policy cutoff, for example 24 hours before the appointment; after that the page asks the patient to call. Staff who turned on response emails hear about each answer, without any patient details in the email.

The reminder log#

Open Reminder log in the Schedule panel of the main menu. Each row is one reminder to one person: when it was created, the recipient and their address, the patient, the appointment, the provider, the channel, the status and any response. A notice sent when staff booked, moved or cancelled an appointment with Notify patient on shows Booked notice, Moved notice or Cancellation notice under its appointment time. The location picker at the top of the menu narrows the log to one location, and the Providers tab to some providers. Click a reminder's created time to see the message.

Click Filter to show only some providers, a channel, statuses or responses. Use the rest of the toolbar to change the dates or search by patient, recipient, phone or email. Turn on Needs follow-up to see requests for another time that nobody has handled yet.

From a row's menu:

• View Message shows the reminder exactly as it went out, with its delivery and response details and the language it was sent in. A Spanish-speaking patient whose template has no Spanish text shows Sent in English.
• Mark Handled closes a request for another time once you have booked the new appointment. Reopen Follow-up puts it back.
• Resend queues the reminder again as a new message. It is checked again for consent and quiet hours and goes out within a few minutes.

To resend several at once, select their rows and click Resend in the bar that appears. Reminders for appointments that have already started are skipped.

Click Export CSV to download the reminders that match your search and filters. Every export is recorded in the access log.

On the appointment#

Open an appointment to see its Reminders section below History: every reminder and notice sent about that appointment, newest first, with the recipient, the channel, the status (and why a message was held back) and the patient's answer. It answers "did the family get the reminder?" without leaving the appointment. You see it when you can open the reminder log.

Your dashboard#

Providers can keep a Reminder activity widget on their dashboard: each reminder sent for their appointments over the next two days and how the patient answered. Click Reminder Log on the widget for the full list.

Text usage#

Every text counts toward your clinic's text usage, measured in segments. Replies NeatPractice sends back, such as the answer to HELP or a confirmation of a C, count too. Email is not metered.