Send Bp Comms appointment reminders

If you have upgraded to Indigo Service Pack 1, sending appointment reminders by SMS is mostly unchanged from previous versions. However, you can now filter by practice location when generating a list of reminders to send, or when setting up an appointment reminder schedule. See Set up an appointment reminder schedule for more information.

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Before patients can receive appointment reminders:

  • The practice must enable appointment reminders in Setup > Configuration > Bp Comms
  • The patient must consent to receive appointment reminders and enrol in SMS in demographics > Bp Comms Consent.

If a patient consented to receive appointment reminders by SMS before you upgraded to Indigo SP1, consent is carried through the upgrade. You will have to update consent to allow a patient to receive any other Bp Comms message types, however.

How do I check for replies?

You can check for replies to appointment reminders in two ways:

Send SMS reminders in bulk

  1. From the appointment book, select Utilities > Send Appointment Reminders. The Appointment Reminders screen will appear.

    2. Appointment Reminders from Appointment Book

  2. Complete the fields on the left hand side to generate a list of applicable appointments:

    3. Field

    Description

    By date span

    Select a default period to search for appointments.

    By date range

    Specify a date range to search for appointments.

    Search appointments by time between

    Select only appointments between the specified times.

    Exclude appointments that already have a reminder sent

    Do not select appointments that have been included in previous appointment reminder sendouts.

    Excluding appointments made within the last n days

    Do not select appointments if booked in the prior specified number of days.

    Include doctors' appointments

    Select appointments with the specified doctors.

    Include appointment types

    Select appointments of the specified types.

    Include locations

    Select appointments at the specified locations.

    Appointments that meet the criteria will appear on the right hand side of the screen.

  3. Select a Template appropriate for this batch of appointment reminders.

    4. Select Appointment Reminder template

  4. The Edit button will be disabled if your administrator has disabled the ability to edit SMS messages before sending>.
  5. In the Select which appointments to send reminders for list, untick any appointments you do not want included in the reminder sendout.
  6. Click Send all n Reminders at the bottom right. If there are no duplicate reminders, the messages will be sent. Appointments will be updated with a green tick in the list if a reminder was sent.

    7. Send Appointment Reminders

Bp Premier will:

  • Queue appointment reminders for sending.
  • Deduct message credits from your Bp Comms credit.
  • Create a contact note of type 'appointment' against each patient with an appointment.

Duplicate Reminders

Where a patient has multiple appointments in the selected range or there are multiple patients who have the same mobile phone number, a Duplicate Appointment Reminders screen will appear. This screen shows each appointment that would generate a duplicate message.

Duplicate appointment reminders

Untick the appointments that you don't want messages sent for and click the Send Reminders button.

Send a single appointment reminder

To send a patient a single Bp Comms reminder, the patient must have an appointment in the appointment book.

  1. Open the appointment book. Select the patient's appointment and click Utilities > Send message from the menu. The Send Message screen will appear.

    2. Send single SMS

  2. Select a Template other than the default if you need to. The message box will be populated with the selected template and field information. You can edit the message if required.
  3. Click Send.