EXACT has the functionality to automatically send patients SMS and emails when appointments have been booked, cancelled, completed and more, this is all configured inside EXACT.

Most of these options involve selecting an SMS or email template.

If you're interested in improving your patient communication to include SMS.

Find out more by speaking with our Best Practice Consultants.

Configuring your automatic messages

1. Go to configure - automatic appointment messages.
2. The Automatic Appointment Messages configuration setup window has several tabs along the top, with the following options:
   • Confirm and cancel, contains your confirmation and cancellation setup.
   • Reminders, provides you options for your pre-appointment reminders.
   • EasyPost Letter, configure your postal reminders with EasyPost.
   • Follow-ups, are post-appointment communications.
   • New patient, is for your welcome email communication.

Confirm and cancel

1. Your confirmation messages section includes,
   • Email template setup with a tick box to enable/disable along with the assigned template.
   • SMS template setup with a tick box to enable/disable along with the assigned template.
   • You can tick or remove the tick from the box to enable/disable the selected setting.
   • Selecting the template followed by the select a template option gives you access to all your existing templates for the selected communication method, selecting a new one will replace the currently assigned template.
2. Your cancellation messages section includes,
   • Email template setup with a tick box to enable/disable along with the assigned template.
   • SMS template setup with a tick box to enable/disable along with the assigned template.
   • You can tick or remove the tick from the box to enable/disable the selected setting.
   • Selecting the template followed by the select a template option gives you access to all your existing templates for the selected communication method, selecting a new one will replace the currently assigned template.
3. You can configure your sending prompts using the sending settings.
   • If you wish to send all configured confirmation/cancellation messages automatically, check the box to send messages automatically without prompting.
   • By default your system is set to prompt before sending, this means a pop-up will appear when booking/cancelling an appointment for your team to decide the message is required.
   • The option prompt before sending has an additional setting 'default SMS as ticked on prompt', this sets your practice default to tick SMS confirmation/cancellations as standard, allowing your team to decide if it is required or not.
4. Select OK to save your changes.

Reminders

Appointment reminders alert patients of their upcoming appointments closer to the time of their appointment, as per your configuration.

EasyPost Letter

Configure your postal reminders with EasyPost, you can select the templates to be used and set EXACT to send to a pre-determined list of patients using patient lists.

Follow-ups

This gives you the ability to contact patients after their appointment has been completed when requesting feedback, booking further appointments or simply thanking them.

New patient email

This is typically a welcome email, used as the initial email contact with a new patient. It can include useful information such as surgery hours, road map and available parking and will send at the point of saving a new patient record.

Select a template for automatically sending an email to each new patient.

Tips and Tricks

• Personal calendar or iCal appointment reminders are automatically added to all email appointment reminders, this will add an option to the recipient's reminder email where they can add it to their device's calendar within a couple of taps.