Articles on: Patient Communication

Can I send different communications out for different appointments?

When sending automatic confirmations and reminders to your patients, you might want to send different information out depending on which appointment type a patient is booked in for.

This can be handled for you within WriteUpp by creating custom communication templates containing the information you would like to send, then linking your confirmations and reminders to the specific appointment type.

The following Trigger events can be linked to a specific appointment type:
Booking - Single
Booking - Recurring
Booking - Online
Reminder
Video booking - Single
Video booking - Recurring
Video booking - Online booking
Video reminder

When setting up a communication for any of these events, you'll see an optional 'If Type is' dropdown, which will list all of the appointment types you have set up:



Once you have selected a delivery method, a template and an event, adding a linked appointment type will tell WriteUpp that the message you've defined should only be sent for that appointment type. This, combined with the ability to set up multiple custom templates to use, allows you to send out different instructions/information for different appointment types.

This dropdown doesn't need to be populated, so if you send the same information to patients regardless of the appointment type, you can leave it blank. Your message will be sent for all appointments types relating to the selected event.

To give you an example of how you might use it, let's follow the steps to set up a separate appointment confirmation, which will only be sent out for the appointment type "Initial Appointment":

Open the Main Menu, then choose Settings -> Scheduling -> Appointment Communication

If you would like to create any new templates for use with a specific appointment type, you can click on the Email Templates and SMS Templates buttons and set them up. I've already created an email template called "Appointment Confirmation - Initial Appt Only", which we'll use:



When you're ready to create the communication, click on New Trigger at the foot of the page

Complete the fields, choosing a delivery method, a message template, the event which 'triggers' the message, and the appointment type, then Save. You can see the appointment type used here is "Initial Appointment (<60 mins)":



Only one appointment type can be linked to each communication trigger. If you have multiple assessment appointments that you would like specific information to be sent out for, then you will have to create an entry for each one of these, choosing a different appointment type each time. You can, however, use the same message template as many times as you'd like - just follow steps 3 and 4 for each of the appointment types you'd like to link the template to.

Once saved, you will see the communication listed, with a note of which appointment type it is linked to:



Using the above example, patients booked in for the appointment type "Initial Appointment (<60 mins)" will receive an email confirmation of the appointment, using the template "Appointment Confirmation - Initial Appt Only".

Patients booked in for any other appointment types will receive the usual email confirmation, using the template "Appointment Confirmation - General".

Patients booked in for the appointment type "Initial Appointment" will not receive the email message for "Appointment Confirmation - General", as WriteUpp will recognise that a specific message ("Appointment Confirmation - Initial Appt Only") should be sent via email for that appointment. It will disregard the other confirmation, ensuring patients do not receive multiple confirmations for the same appointment.

Updated on: 28/11/2024

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