Patient did not receive SMS reminder

Problem

A patient has notified you that they did not receive their SMS appointment reminder.

You can see messages that did not send based on an indication in the appointment book or in the SMS history. 

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 their Patient Details
• The patient's appointment was booked inside of the three day reminder cut-off period
• Your practice does not have enough SMS credits to send the message
• There was a problem with the patient's mobile phone service provider

Solution

Check Patient Details

Check the following in Patient Details window:

• Open the patient's file and confirm their mobile number is entered correctly.
• Invalid characters may be present in the patient's mobile number, are often cannot be seen. This often occurs if the mobile number was copied and pasted from another source.
• You may wish to remove the phone number completely and manually re-enter this detail. Click into the field, and then press ctrl/cmd+A on your keyboard. This will highlight the contents of the field, including hidden characters, and you can press backspace or delete on your keyboard the clear the contents. The mobile number can now be entered manually.
• Confirm that the "Do not SMS" checkbox is not ticked.
  • If this option is ticked, automated SMS appointment reminders will not be able to send.
  • Ad hoc messages cannot be typed when this option is ticked, preventing users from trying to send a message.

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 appointment creation date

Next, check the details of the patient's appointment to confirm it was not booked within the three-day period since the automated messages were sent out.

1. Open the Appointment Book.
2. Click on the patient's appointment. 
3. Check the details at the bottom.
   
4. Compare the created date to the date of the patient's appointment.

If the appointment was created less than three days before the appointment date, then the patient will not have received an automated reminder message about the appointment. This is because Gentu sends appointment reminders three business days before the patient's appointment. 

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

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 you have no SMS credits remaining, the appointment reminder will not have sent.

Also, if you have more appointments than available SMS credits, no reminder messages will be sent.

• For instance, if you have 30 appointments booked in on a certain day but only 25 credits remaining, none of those 30 patients will receive a reminder.

You can check your current SMS credit balance in your Settings by selecting 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.