Appointment reminders

Clinicify sends each patient one reminder about a day before their appointment. It goes out automatically, so your team doesn’t need to do anything.

When reminders are sent

Clinicify checks for upcoming appointments every 30 minutes. An appointment gets a reminder when it’s roughly 22 to 26 hours away, so most patients hear from you the day before, at around the time of day they’re booked in.

Each appointment gets one reminder only. Clinicify doesn’t send a second reminder on the day.

Which appointments get one

An appointment gets a reminder when:

• Its status is Confirmed. Pending and cancelled appointments don’t get one, including a booking waiting for its booking fee to be paid.
• It’s booked at least a day ahead. An appointment booked for later the same day, or less than about 22 hours ahead, won’t get a reminder, because the booking confirmation went out so recently.

What the reminder says

The email subject reads “Tomorrow at” followed by the time and your clinic’s name. The email reminds the patient of the date and time and asks them to tell you as soon as possible if they can’t make it, so you can offer the slot to someone else. If you’ve added a phone number to your clinic details, it’s included.

Under the date and time, the email lists the same details as the booking confirmation:

• With: the practitioner’s name.
• Appointment: the appointment type. Types set to Hide from patient treatment history aren’t named, as they don’t get a confirmation either.
• Where: your clinic’s address for an in-person appointment, a video consultation or a phone call.

The email also includes:

• A View or cancel this appointment button that opens their bookings in your portal.
• A line saying how many forms they still have to complete for that appointment, with a Complete your forms button, if any are outstanding.

For a video appointment, the main button is Join video consultation, which opens the join link, and View or cancel this appointment sits beneath it. If the link isn’t ready yet, the email says the join link will follow by email. For a phone appointment, it tells the patient you’ll call them on the number you hold.

The text version is short: your clinic’s name and “reminder, your appointment is tomorrow at” followed by the time.

Dates and times in the email and text use the Timezone set in your clinic details. See Update your clinic details.

Email, text or both

Reminders follow two settings, and a channel is only used if both allow it:

• Your clinic’s default. The owner can turn the email or text reminder on or off in the 24-hour reminder row under Clinic settings > Patient notifications. Both are on to start with. See Choose which messages patients receive.
• The patient’s preference. Each patient has Email notifications and SMS notifications settings on their record, which they can also change in the portal.

Good to know

• If a patient cancels in the portal after their reminder arrives, they get a separate cancellation message.
• Moving an appointment means cancelling it and booking again. The new appointment gets its own confirmation and reminder.
• Archived patients don’t get reminders, even if they still have a confirmed appointment.
• Reminders don’t contain clinical detail such as notes, results or form titles.