Accurx Appointment Reminders is part of Accurx Plus - a premium tier of Accurx Desktop. Learn more about Accurx Plus, including how to get access here.
Accurx Appointment Reminders allows you to set up automated messages to be sent to patients to remind them about their upcoming appointments. You can get an overview of how the product works here first if you'd like!
Accessing Appointment Reminders
Note: Only users who have admin access will be able to create and amend appointment reminders. Find out how to make other users admins here.
From your Accurx toolbar, click on your initials, select "Manage Organisation" scroll down to Appointment Reminders and click "New reminder" as shown below π
Setting up a new Reminder
You'll see a screen that allows you to choose which slot types you'd like to send automatic appointment reminders for, whether you'd like to adapt the reminder for telephone or face-to-face appointments and add your own messaging to the reminder if you'd like. As shown below π
1) Choose which slots your reminder should apply to
Click "Select your slot types" and you will see a dropdown of slot types. These are pulled directly from your appointment book. You can select as many slots as you'd like! π
β οΈ Note: make sure any slot types selected are for appointments that can always have a reminder message no matter where the slot is in the appointment book.
For SystmOne organisations with Shared Admin - if you can access the appointment books of other separate organisations and you don't want to set up appointment reminders for those organisations, you will need to ensure that you do not use the same slot types as those other organisations.
If the slot type you'd like is not appearing, make sure you have a patient booked into an appointment for that slot type in the next 7 days.β οΈ
2) Select whether the appointment reminder is for Telephone or Face-to-face appointments
Click your preferred reminder type.
βοΈ Telephone appointment reminders will include the date and a 2-hour time frame of the patient's appointment. π
(Note: the 2-hour time frame spans an hour before and an hour after the time in the appointment book. If the telephone appointment is set for 10 am, the patient will be given a window between 9 am and 11 am.)
π©Ί Face-to-Face appointment reminders will include the date and time of the patient's appointment and, if your organisation has more than one site, the location of the appointment. π
3) If appropriate, edit part of the text message that is sent to the patients
Part of the text is uneditable (the part in light grey) since this will automatically populate the date and time of the unique appointment for a patient.
You also won't be able to edit the instructions for how the patient can cancel. A unique link that a patient can use to cancel their appointment will be autogenerated here.
Where it says "Enter an additional optional message", you can add text if you'd like. For example, you could add in information about your arrival policy.
π‘ Tip: You can set up separate reminders for different slot types and add in custom messages here. For example, if you have a specific slot type for baby immunisations, you can set up a specific appointment reminder for this slot type and add in a message to remind them to bring their red book. You can set up as many specific reminder messages as you'd like! π‘
Remember that every patient who has an appointment of the selected slot type(s) will be sent the same message so do keep the content relatively generic.
4) Set the reminder live
Once you're ready to do, click "Set reminder live" and your reminder will start to send to patients who are booked into the slot types selected! π
Your reminder will run in the background and keep sending to all patients booked into the specific slot types until you delete the reminder.
Editing or Deleting the Reminder
If you'd like to stop a reminder from sending or edit the reminder, find the Reminder from your "Manage reminders" dashboard, and click "Edit" as shown below π
If you would like to delete the reminder, you can click "Delete".
When do appointment reminders send?
24 working hours before the patient's appointment (e.g. if the patient's appointment is on Tuesday at 10:30am, they will receive their appointment reminder on Monday at 10:30am.)
Please note: If a patient is booked into an appointment within 24 hours of the appointment time, a reminder will be sent to the patient if the reminder has already been set up in Accurx. We search the appointment book for newly booked appointments every 2 hoursπ
We also have a feature for appointment reminders to be sent 1 week before and/or 3 days before if the option is selected. This is unchecked at initial set-up and will need to be manually clicked to be instated. π We have to detect the appointment 3 days or 7 days respectively before the appointment start time, otherwise we won't schedule a message.
Can I test the system myself first?
Can I test the system myself first?
Yes! You can do so by creating a test slot in your appointment book and booking in a test patient that has your own mobile number registered. If you'd like to test the appointment reminder system in this way, do the following things:
Create a test patient with an NHS number and mobile number (ideally your mobile number). If you don't have a test patient with an NHS number, you can use this tool to generate one and add it to your test patient.
Create a test slot type that doesn't have other real patients booked into it
Add the test slot into your appointment book for tomorrow and book the test patient into it
Set up your test appointment reminder following the steps above.
You should receive your test appointment reminder text message around 24 hours before the test patient's appointment. It may take a bit of time for the system to pick up the appointment. Please allow at least 1/1.5 hours after setting up the appointment reminder to receive the test text if the appointment is sooner than 24 hours away.
How do we pull patient mobile numbers?
How do we pull patient mobile numbers?
We fetch the mobile number stored in the EPR (Electronic Patient Record - aka. EMIS, Systm1, Vision etc). If the EPR does not hold a mobile number for the patient, the appointment reminder will not be sent. We will also not reference any historical mobile number in our system.
For more information - please see our article here.
What happens if I update the slot type name or site location in the medical record?
What happens if I update the slot type name or site location in the medical record?
If you change the slot type name in the appointment book, you will need to make sure that you also update this in the appointment reminder settings. For example: if you changed the slot type name from 'Routine GP' to 'Routine GP - Face to Face'.
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The Accurx system won't pick up this change in slot type name automatically, you'll need to go into your Appointment Reminders locations and add the new slot type. If this isn't done, then we will continue to look for appointments in the old slot type and Appointment Reminders won't be sent.
The same logic applies to making updates to the site location names in the appointment book.
Note β οΈ It may take 24 hours for us to recognise the new slot type name and show it in the drop-down.
How do Appointment Reminders send via the NHS App?
How do Appointment Reminders send via the NHS App?
All appointment reminders will now go via the NHS app.
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ο»ΏThe fallback time for NHS app messages is 24 hours (or 3 hours for the 24-hour reminder message). If the patient does not read the message in their NHS app in this time frame, then an SMS message will be sent to the patient.
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βNote: an SMS will automatically be sent instead of going via the NHS app if the patient does not have the app downloaded or if they do not have notifications turned on.
Can appointment cancellations be auto-filed to patient records?
Can appointment cancellations be auto-filed to patient records?
No, we've had a lot of feedback from clinicians that they're struggling to find information that is clinically relevant when looking at a patient's medical record. You can see an audit trail of all sent reminders under your Initials >> Manage Organisation >> Appointment Reminders >> All Sent Reminders
If you still have any questions or concerns, feel free to chat with us using the green message bubble in the bottom right-hand corner of this page. π
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