• A patient replied to their SMS but no action was taken in EXACT
• Why is there no Fill Gap icon in the Appointment Book gaps?
• Why Does the patient Gap Appointment not appear in the Short Notice list?

A patient replied to their SMS but no action was taken in EXACT

Patients must reply to a Short Notice SMS on the same day to receive a response (confirmation, gap gone or have any movement over the original appointment). Check the sent and received date of both SMS messages to confirm if this is the issue in your instance.

Why is there no Fill Gap icon in the Appointment Book gaps?

The issue: When you open the Appointment Book it has no Fill Gap icon (jigsaw icon) in the obviously available gaps:

The reason: EXACT is configured to not offer gaps within a period (2 hours) of the current time, because it is unlikely that patients will be available at such short notice.

When you open the Appointment Book, it is by default at the current time, so there are no patient gaps available for another 2 hours, and hence you cannot access any tooltip suggestions.

To check, go ahead more than two hours and you should see Fill Gap icons in the gaps.

The workaround: If you want to offer gaps within two hours of present, you can still manually contact patients from the Short Notice List:

Why Does the patient Gap Appointment not appear in the Short Notice list?

The issue: A patient appointment that should be in the Short Notice List is not there.

There are four possible reasons for this.

• Possible reason 1: the patient has already been contacted for a gap
• Possible reason 2: the patient has already been contacted n times in 3 days, so the appointment is temporarily removed
• Possible reason 3: the patient is a FTA that was auto-added and has now been auto-removed
• Possible reason 4: this gap appointment is also a booked appointment that is imminent

Possible reason 1: the patient has already been contacted for a gap:

The patient has already been contacted for a Gap, and has been removed from the Short Notice List for the day. This is a deliberate strategy to

• Prevent patients being flooded with SMS notices.

• Avoid the scenario of trying to match a single incoming SMS confirmation after multiple outgoing SMS notices.

To confirm that this is the reason, check if the patient has been contacted by looking at the Email > Outbox / Sent tabs or the Patient File > Contacts tab.

Possible reason 2: the patient has already been contacted n times in 3 days, so the appointment is temporarily removed

This is a configurable field, to prevent patients being flooded with SMS notices.

Possible reason 3: the patient is a FTA that was auto-added and has now been auto-removed

EXACT can be configured to automatically add Failed To Arrive (FTA) appointments to the Short Notices List:

It is also configured to remove these appointments within a period if the patient does not respond to gap notifications:

Possible reason 4: this gap appointment is also a booked appointment that is imminent

In EXACT you can book an appointment and also add it to the Short Notice List. In other words, if you cannot find a gap for the patient in the period before the booking, the patient reverts to the booked appointment.

However, once the booked appointment becomes imminent, there is no point trying to find a gap, so the appointment is removed from the Short Notice List. This is a configurable period: