Appointment reminders are a good way to notify patients about their appointment and help reduce the DNA. iPlato allows you to fully customise your Appointment Reminders.

To set up and also check your current Appointment Reminder Settings please follow these 5 steps:

Head to mygpconnect.com and go to the Settings tab and select Automatic Reminders

Note that only All Access and High Level users will be able to amend the settings

You will then see the standard template that is recommended for your generic automatic reminders. From the reminder the patient is told the time, location and also given the ability to cancel the appointment. If the patient texts back CANCEL their appointment will be automatically cancelled from the clinical system.

Example text if single site: Appt reminder: <mmm> <dd> at <hh>:<mm> <a/p> with <doctor> at PRACTICE NAME. If you can't attend please text back CANCEL. Thank You.

Example text if multi-site: Appt reminder: <mmm> <dd> at <hh>:<mm> <a/p> with <doctor> at <branch>. If you can't attend please text back CANCEL. Thank You.

Reminder Settings relate to the frequency that messages are sent to patients prior to their appointments. You have the choice of sending up to two appointment reminder messages to the patient. You can configure when the reminder messages are sent based on how far in advance the appointment was booked (appointment lead time).

To access the Reminder Settings section, head to Settings and then select Reminder Settings

Please note, on the day appointments will not be sent an appointment reminder message as the bookings needs to be created at least 24 hours in advance.

Automatic cancellations are automatically set up for all practices so when a patient responds with the word Cancel the system can pick this up and automatically cancel their appointment in your clinical system.

To view these configurations go to Settings and select Cancellation. You have the option to amend the default cancellation confirmation message.

You can also add a nominated email in the Summary Report section to get a daily report summarising any cancellations your practice has had on that day. It also informs you of any appointments that may require manual cancellation.We recommend adding the generic practice email address.

Any questions around cancellations not working, please contact help@iplato.com and we can investigate the issue for you.

There might be certain appointments that you don't want patients to be reminded about e.g Default, Admin, Home Visit, On the day etc. The exclusion section allows you to choose your configuration by the Session Holder, Session Clinic, or Slot Type.

By default all Session Holder, Session Clinic, or Slot Types from your clinical system will be enabled to send out Appointment Reminders.

To change this head Settings and select Exclusions.

On this page you can customise reminders being sent based on the following tabs:

To disable a specific Clinician, Clinic or Slot Type from sending out a reminder, simply:

Please Note: If you are a Vision user, the Session Clinic section will not be available. For TPP/SystmOne users, the Session Clinic section only displays your branch locations.

Top Tip: By default, Exclusions will be switched to enabled. If you wish to disable, click the Activate the Session Holder Exclusions at the top of the page.

Customer Reminders allow you to configure custom appointment reminders depending on the session holders, session clinics and slot types. Custom reminders will override the default automatic reminder template set up in Step 1.

To create a Customer Reminder select Click + New Custom Reminder

You then need to select which type of exclusion you would like to set up a custom reminder for and enter the custom reminder in the Reminder Message box as shown in the example above. We recommend copying the initial message in Step 1 and tweaking it.

Two examples of Custom Reminders used by practices which can be copied and pasted:

Telephone Appointments - Telephone appt reminder: <doctor>, will call you as requested on <dd>, <mmm>. If you no longer require the Telephone consult, please text back CANCEL.

Baby Clinic - Baby clinic Appt reminder: <dd> <mmm> at <hh>:<mm><a/p> with <doctor> at [ Enter practice name ]. Please bring your red book with you. If you can’t attend text back CANCEL.

Once your automatic Appointment Reminders have been enabled, your reminders will begin sending out at the set allocated times. The process to enable them is done by:

The Slot Type Exclusion section within the Exclusions, has a unique function to use with enabled appointment reminders. This is the ability to mark an appointment as a Sensitive appointment.

This is ideal for a sensitive type of appointment a patient might prefer to keep private. By enabling it, it will disable the appointment from appearing on the main page of the myGP app when booked, and will also stop reminders from being sent.

To action this, please do the following:

You can add automatic reminders in a different language however, messages can only be sent in any language that is compatible with the 8bit encoding standard. Generally, this includes all languages that are based on the Latin alphabet.

To assign a patient to a specific language to a patient you would need to open their profile in Connect by going to Settings then Patients, search for the patient in question and select the language you would like to assign to them as shown below -

A total of 20 variable fields may be used in the message composition, please see examples:

<firstname> = first name of patient as is, so if you have 2 given names, this will give you both (TPP include only the first name in the first_name field)
​<firstname2> = first name of patient only first of given names (EMIS normally include the middle name in the first_name field)
​<surname> = lastname (surname) of patient
​<dd> = appointment date Two-digit day of the month (with leading zeros)
​<mmm> = appointment date Abbreviated month name Jan through Dec
​<month> = appointment date Full month name January through December
​<mo> = appointment date Two digit representation of the month
​<year> = appointment date Four digit representation for the year
​<yy> = appointment date two digit representation for the year
​<hh> = appointment date 12-hour format of an hour (1 to 12)
​<mm> = appointment date Minutes with leading zeros (00 to 59)
​<provider> = name of appointment session provider
​<patient#> = client ID form clinical system
​<day> = appointment date A full textual representation of the day Sunday through Saturday
​<a/p> = appointment date UPPER-CASE 'AM' or 'PM' based on the given time
​<sitename> = practice name

<doctor> = the name of the doctor/session holder (as specified on the clinical system, i.e. ‘Dr Jon Waters’)

<branch> = adds the name of any branch locations you may have (EMIS ONLY)

<practicename> = Shows the name of the practice as displayed when you complete the registration form with iPlato

<NHSnumber> = Adds the patient NHS number

For any practice who has branch locations enabled in EMIS, you can enter the branch placeholder instead of the practice name and the system will automatically pick up the correct location when sending out the message.

An example used by practices is shown below -

Nurse Appt reminder: <dd> <mmm> at <hh>:<mm><a/p> with <doctor> at <branch>. Please bring your red book with you. If you can’t attend text back CANCEL

For any questions or queries regarding setting up appointment reminders please email help@iplato.com.