Send patients SMS appointment reminders and reduce missed appointments.

Missed appointments are an ongoing challenge in healthcare. In additional to the inconvenience to clinicians and clinic administrators, the financial costs are significant. In the UK the NHS estimates that each missed appointment costs the NHS £150 on average, which is $200 USD. Multiple this number by all missed appointments in your service and the number is often eye watering. In the UK the NHS estimates that missed GP appointments alone cost £216 million.

SMS reminders sent 2-3 days before an appointment have been shown to reduce missed appointments, often referred to in healthcare as ‘Did Not Attend’ appointments, or DNA appointments for short. In a number of trials conducting in a range of healthcare services, the reduction in DNAs as a result of introducing SMS reminders varies from 5% to 35%. When considering the volume of appointments in your service, even a 5% reduction in DNAs is likely to result in a significant finance cost saving.

TrakGene SMS Appointment Reminders Utility

We have developed an SMS Appointment reminders utility that connects to TrakGene and sends SMS reminders for appointments stored in TrakGene. SMS messages are sent using Twilio, a cost effective SMS API provider.

SMS Appointment reminders can be customised to include additional information, such as the number to call to cancel or change the appointment. The utility is automated so once it’s up and running you can ‘set and forget’.

Existing customers who are interested in using our new SMS Appointment reminders utility should contact us through Help and Support.