Automated Appointment Reminders - Are they Working?

Problem: An automated telephone appointment reminder system has been integrated with the Connect Care clinical information system and deployed at the end of January 2020. There will be growing pains. Physicians experiencing a no-show may wonder whether the patient received an appointment reminder but do not know how to do this within the Connect Care outpatient chart.

Context: Automated reminders can free up clinic support staff for other important patient support activities. However, they do not work for all situations. Clinics managers can submit a request to opt-out, some areas have customized reminder scripts (coming soon), and some outpatient venues (e.g. procedures) will not be enabled until more experience accrues.

Solution: There is a way to get the patient appointment reminder status but it involves using the Department Appointments Report (DAR) functionality and editing the display columns to include one or more appointment status-related columns (e.g., "Patient Communication Preference", "Patient MyChart Status", "Confirmed Appointment", "Appointment Reminder Sent", "ES Phone Reminder Status"). Instructions for doing this are included in the tip linked below.


Easier is to open the “Appt” activity within a chart. This has a appointment reminder letter audit trail for each apt. We are looking for simpler ways to know of reminder status and are seeking addition of this information to the Appt chart activity.