Patient did not receive SMS reminder

Problem

• A patient has notified you that they did not receive their SMS appointment reminder, or
• The appointment book or SMS history indicates that an SMS message did not send. 

Cause

There are a number of potential causes, including:

• The patient's mobile number was not entered correctly
• The patient has Do not SMS ticked in Patient Details
• Your practice does not have enough SMS credits to send the message
• There was a problem with the patient's mobile phone service provider
• The patient's appointment was moved from another date and its status was not changed to 'None'

Solution

Check Patient Details

Check the following in Patient Details window:

• Open the patient's file and confirm their mobile number is entered correctly.
• If their phone number was copied & pasted into Gentu from elsewhere, it may contain hidden invalid characters.
• Remove the phone number and manually type it back in.
  • Click into the field, and then press CTRL+A or CMD+A on your keyboard. This will highlight the contents of the field, including hidden characters. Backspace or Delete the contents, then type the mobile number back in and Save.
• Confirm that the "Do not SMS" checkbox is not ticked.
  • If this checkbox is ticked, automated SMS appointment reminders will not be able to send.

If the patient's mobile number was not entered correctly, or they were marked as Do not SMS, they would not have received an appointment reminder message.

Check the SMS Report

Next, you can check the SMS Report to determine whether the message was sent or not. This is only available if you have Send SMS Appointment Reminders enabled in your Settings. 

1. Open the Appointment Book. 
2. On the left hand side, select Print > SMS Report.
   
   
3. Enter the date of the patient's appointment when prompted.
   
4. The SMS Report will load.

Check the SMS Report for the patient's name. This will tell you if the message was sent or not.

If the message was an automated SMS appointment reminder, you may also be able to check the appointment in the Appointment Book. Messages sent after September 2019 will display information regarding the message.

• Messages that were sent but have not received a reply will display Awaiting Reply
• Messages that were sent and have received a reply will display the most recent response
• Messages that were not able to send will display Message Not Sent in red text.
  • Open the patient's SMS history to view further details about the Message Not Sent error.

If the patient did not receive their message, but the SMS Report says that it was sent, this could indicate an issue with the patient's mobile phone service provider. 

Check your remaining SMS credits

If Gentu was unable to send a message due to insufficient credits, the patient's appointment will indicate this with the text Insufficient SMS credits.

You can check your current SMS credit balance in Settings > SMS Credits. Your current credit balance is listed here.

To purchase additional SMS credits, please contact our Accounts Team on 1300 89 362 (option 3).

Alternatively, you can email accounts@geniesolutions.com.au to purchase additional credits. If emailing, please include your GTU number in the subject line. 

Other

If you have checked all of the above and still cannot determine why the message was not sent, please contact Gentu Support and we would be happy to assist.