SMS Replies gives your patients the functionality to reply to an SMS message sent from the practice. It's important to monitor these replies and action them as required.

Find out more by speaking with our Best Practice Consultants.

• Viewing SMS replies
• SMS replies not matching

Viewing SMS replies

Navigate to Administration - SMS Replies.
or click the workspace icon

This will bring up the List SMS Replies screen.

By default, it will only show incomplete replies. As you action replies you can tick them off the list by clicking on the checkbox on the left-hand side. By ticking Show Completed in the bottom left it will show all SMS replies ever received.

The date and time of the reply will be displayed and also show it has been attached to a patient file. EXACT will do this automatically if the number matches a unique mobile in your database (If 2 patients share the same mobile number it will be unable to match).

If an SMS reply has not been matched to a patient you can use the Match Reply button in the bottom left to do this. Highlight the patient the SMS belongs to and click continue. Once matched the reply will appear in the patients Contacts tab.

On your list of replies, It will display whether the patient is on the Short Notice List and whether it was a reply to an appointment reminder, showing the details of that appointment.

There are options to confirm or cancel the appointment based on their response by highlighting the appointment and clicking Cancel/Confirm Appt. You can set up keywords to do this automatically for you Configuring Automatic Appointment Reminder SMS Replies.

To monitor SMS replies you can also use the workspace icon which will show users how many outstanding SMS replies there are to action. To find out more information about setting up workspaces you can view Configuring User Workspace.

You can also add a tab to the appointment book. This will work the same as the SMS replies screen shown above but it will be accessible from within the appointment book avoiding your Reception team having to navigate away from the Appointment Book.

For more information on setting up Appointment Book tabs, you can view Adding Activity Tabs to the Appointment Book.

SMS replies not matching

If specific criteria for matching an SMS to a patient is not met, the SMS will not be matched to a patient and subsequently will not be added to a patients contacts tab.

The most common reasons for an SMS not being matched, include, the mobile number being added to multiple patient files, for example in a family or if there is uncertainty over the information being applicable to the patient. The purpose of this is to remove any GDPR or data breaches.

At the first point, this should be checked to ensure the SMS/mobile number is present solely on the correct patient. To do this,

1. Navigate to Patients, then select the search button (magnifying glass).
2. Type or copy/paste the number into the Filter box.
3. This will display all patients with the number saved to their patient file.
4. Edit these as required.

If a phone number is linked to a family, the message will not be able to be matched as the information could be for any one member of the family and/or there may be split parental/guardian responsibilities requiring discretion.