Patient Lists can find patients matching specific criteria, you can then send communications to those patients in bulk by text message, letters, emails, or exporting the search results.

Sending Texts to Patients from a Patient List

⚠️Note: To comply with GDPR, marketing-type communications should only be sent to patients who have explicitly opted to receive those communications. You should not send to patients who have explicitly opted out or made no choice.

💡Tip: If you are sending a large volume of SMS using patient lists, this could delay any regular email and SMS communications from sending. This is due to EXACT sending these types of communications in a first come-first served basis.

⚠️Note: Your SMS settings should be configured with limitations to stagger sending, if you unsure please check this prior to sending bulk communications to prevent any sending failures.

1. Go to Administration - Patient Lists - View Saved Lists.
   • Select the list you wish to view, then open the list or double-click the list.
   • Alternatively, create your new list, then have the search results open on screen before proceeding.
2. Click the SMS option at the bottom of the Patient List to open the SMS sending options.
   • After clicking this option, you can send to many patients or only the selected patient.
     💡Tip: Hover over the buttons to view the descriptions of each and select the one with the tooltip: SMS the selected person.
3. The Contact by SMS prompt will now open.
   
   • Select if you are sending single (one patient) or multiple (all patients on the list).
   • Selecting Group by family will send a single letter to the head of a family instead of each family member.
   • Selecting Tick as complete when message sent will help you identify which patients have been successfully communicated to, and which require attention or further communication.
   • Select OK once you have selected all required options.
4. You will now be presented with the Contact Patients prompt.
   • You can now select several settings as to who you wish to communicate with.
   • Select OK when ready to proceed.
5. You will now be presented with the Stagger SMS prompt to set your staggering options.
   • Select OK to proceed.
6. The SMS Details prompt will open for you to select several details for the SMS template, including the template itself, and select OK when ready to proceed.
   
   • The subject will be visible in the patient's contacts tab.
   • Click OK when ready.
7. The Create SMS prompt will open.
8. If you selected an SMS template, this will be displayed on screen; otherwise, your SMS draft will be blank, ready for you to create your message.
   • You can edit the message as required, keep note of the character count to know how long the message is and its cost to your practice.
   • The count excludes any merge fields, so you will have to estimate how long each merge field is likely to be, based on what it represents.
9. Once you have created your SMS, click OK. EXACT will now create individual SMS for all recipients, adding them to your outbox, ready to be sent to your patients.
10. Click the OK button; the Create SMS window will now display, as for the single SMS option.

Additional Information

• If your selection criteria produce no patients as a result, a warning of “There are no patients that match the selected criteria” will display. Select OK.

  You will then be presented with the Document Details window, if you are creating letters / emails / SMS messages, or the Label Details window for mailing labels.

  Rather than print all letters at once, break them into batches using the "From Patient" and "To Patient" fields. For example, select patients from A-F, then G-M, N-R, and S-Z.
  
  

• The patient list entries will be updated with the appropriate SMS status icon in the type column.
  For an SMS message, one of the following icons may appear, depending on the status:
  • SMS appointment reminder sent to the recipient (delivered).
  • SMS message received by the gateway (sent, but not yet delivered).
  • SMS delivery failed (where SOE is the SMS provider; password is wrong, insufficient credit, etc.).
  • Reply received (for SMS reminder sent to patient).
  • SMS status is not available.
  • SMS failed or not sent to the gateway.
  • A tooltip displays when you hover your mouse cursor over each of the icons.
    
    
• The SMS messages will also appear in the email outbox until they are sent, when they will be removed and will appear in the sent tab.
  • Each one will have the appropriate icon in the status column.
    Only email replies will appear in the Email Inbox.
  • If staggered recall settings are in effect, the column marked with a clock icon will have a corresponding icon for any items in the Outbox that are subject to the settings.
    
  • If you hover your mouse cursor over the icon, a tooltip will tell you when the SMS is due to be sent, as in this example.