Scheduling patient messages allows you to choose when an individual patient message will be sent to a patient. This feature can be enabled or disabled from your practices feature settings page.
This help article explains how.
When sending an individual patient message you can chose when to send the message. It can be sent either:
Sending now
Sending a message now will send the message to the patient, by email and/or SMS, as soon as you select the Send Now button.
If you choose to save to the clinical system, the message will be added to the clinical system when it's been successfully sent.
Sending at 8am on the next working day
Sending a message at 8am on the next working day will schedule the message to be sent to the patient by email and/or SMS, at 8am on the next working day. This takes into account weekends and bank holidays - so if you send the message on a normal Friday it will be sent on Monday, and if you send it on a Friday before a bank holiday Monday it will be sent the following Tuesday.
If you choose to save to the clinical system, a placeholder will be added to the clinical system when it's been successfully scheduled.
Sending at a custom data/time
Sending a message at a custom date/time will schedule the message to be sent to the patient, by email and/or SMS, at a time you choose .
If you choose to save to the clinical system, a placeholder message will be added to the clinical system when it's been successfully scheduled.
Scheduled messages
Any messages you have scheduled to be sent will be visible on the Scheduled Messages Tab on the patient details page. On this tab you will see
- Who scheduled the message (Sender)
- The date and time the message is scheduled to be sent
- The message content
The earliest scheduled messages will show at the top of the list and when a scheduled message is sent, it will move to the Requests and Messages tab.
From here you can use the Edit or Delete buttons to edit or delete a scheduled message.
Editing a scheduled message
You can update the content of the message or the scheduled message time but any placeholder in the clinical system will not be updated.
Deleting a scheduled message
You can delete the scheduled message but you will need to manually remove the scheduled message placeholder from the clinical system.