How do I automate healthcare appointment reminders?

Ask a question
,
1

With ActiveCampaign, you can use the Healthcare: Appointment Reminder and Post-Appointment Feedback automation recipe available in our Marketplace to send automated appointment reminders to patients and gather valuable post-appointment feedback.

Take note

  • You need to have a date-based custom field that captures your contacts’ upcoming appointments for the automation to reference
  • This automation uses a “Send SMS” action. To use SMS:
    • ActiveCampaign accounts purchased or upgraded on or after January 3, 2023 must purchase the SMS Add-on to use SMS
    • ActiveCampaign accounts purchased or upgraded before January 3, 2023:
      • Plus and Professional plans receive 25 free SMS credits per month
      • Enterprise plans receive 1,000 free SMS credits per month
  • There are several different automated reminder workflows you can set up in your ActiveCampaign account. This article only covers one example. To view more reminder automation recipes, visit the ActiveCampaign Marketplace

How the Appointment Reminder automation recipe works

With this recipe, a contact will enter your automation three days before their appointment date and will receive the following:

  • Email reminder as soon as they enter the automation (three days before their appointment)
  • Email reminder two days before their appointment
  • SMS reminder one day before their appointment

The contact will then pause in a wait action for one day, and then they will receive a post-appointment feedback form via email.

Once you import the automation into your account, you need to:

  • Follow the Import Wizard prompts to configure your automation
  • Create the emails that will go out in each “Send email” action
  • Configure the SMS message and register for A2P 10DLC if you are sending SMS messages to contacts in the United States
  • Create and include a survey link in your post-appointment email

Note that you can modify this automation as much as you need to for your business and workflow. For example, you can start the automation for contacts five days before their appointment, remove any action you don’t need, or add more actions as you see fit.

Add the automation recipe to your account

  1. Go to the Healthcare: Appointment Reminder and Post-Appointment Feedback recipe page.
  2. Click the “Import recipe” button.
  3. A modal window will appear. Click “Go to your automations.”
  4. If you are not logged into your account, we’ll direct you to your account’s login page. Enter your account credentials and click “Login.”
  5. We will direct you to the automations section in your ActiveCampaign account. The “Create an Automation” modal will appear. Use the “Search Recipes” field to locate the recipe you imported into your account.
  6. Click the recipe in the modal, then click the “Continue” button.
  7. You will be redirected to the automation builder. Click the “Get Started” button on the right panel.
  8. Follow the import wizard prompts and click “Next.”
  9. Create emails for each “Send Email” action. Don’t forget to include your survey in the final “Post-Appointment Feedback Form” email.
  10. Create an SMS message for the “Send SMS” action.
  11. Make your automation “Active” so contacts can enter it.