You can easily manage patient appointments and reduce no-shows through automated reminders and confirmations.
There are three types of reminders available that you can send to your patients:
Appointment Reminder
Appointment Confirmation
Queue Reminder
What is an Appointment Reminder?
Keep your patients informed about their upcoming appointments.
The Appointment Reminder sends an automatic notification to patients, ensuring they don’t forget their scheduled visit. You can customize the timing, sending it days or hours in advance to suit your clinic's needs.
What is an Appointment Confirmation?
This is more than just a reminder—it asks patients to actively confirm their appointment with a single click.
The Appointment Confirmation Request not only reminds them of their appointment but also gives you a clearer picture of who plans to attend, helping reduce last-minute cancellations.
Queue Reminder
The Queue Reminder automatically notifies the next two patients in line as soon as you mark the current patient as "In Progress."
This helps patients stay prepared for their turn.
Check out this short video demo 👇
How to Send an Appointment Confirmation Request
Step 1: Click on the "Request Confirmations" button in your queue.
📝 Note: If there are patients in your queue without contact information, a pop-up will appear asking you to input their details if you want them to receive the appointment confirmation message.
If you prefer not to send a message to these patients, simply tick "Skip" and proceed.
Step 2: You will get a preview of the message that is to be sent to the patients in your queue.
You can easily edit the message by clicking directly on the text box area. After making any changes, click Show Preview to save your template and view how it looks without the placeholders. The placeholders will automatically be replaced with your actual information.
Once everything is good to go, click Send Confirmation Request.
What does it look like on the patient's side?
This triggers an SMS message to be sent to all patients with mobile numbers.
You'll notice the "unconfirmed" status for each patient.
Once patient clicks on the link/opens the NowServing app, included in the SMS message and confirm
Once the patient confirms, their status in your queue changes to "confirmed" in your queue.
How to Send an Appointment Reminder
✍️ Note: This can only be manually sent if you are logged in to SeriousMD web
Step 1: In your queue, click on the message icon
Step 2: Click Send NowServing Reminder
Step 3: You will quickly preview and the message template. Click Send NowServing Reminder.
How to Send a Queue Reminder
✍️ Note: Notifications settings can only be found in SeriousMD web
Step 1: Go to Settings > Notifications
Step 2: Toggle on Clinic Queue Reminders
Automate your Reminders (Pro Feature)
No need for you or your secretary to manually send reminders every day—our system can handle that for you.
📝 For example, 2 hours before your clinic starts, an Appointment Confirmation will automatically be sent to patients in your queue.
By the time you arrive, you’ll already know which patients have confirmed their attendance, giving you a clearer view of your day.
Here’s how to set it up:
Go to Settings > Notifications
Toggle on Appointment Confirmation
You can customize how many hours in advance the confirmation is sent to patients.
✍️ Note: You can choose to send reminders via SMS. Email and NowServing push notifications will always be sent by default.
Patient record without a mobile number and/or email will not get any notifications.
Want to do the same for Appointment Reminders? You can easily enable that, too. 💪🏻
Customizing your Reminders
You can personalize each reminder by
Indicating additional instructions (ex. Bringing their test results, seeing the secretary upon arrival at the clinic)
Addressing patients by name using placeholders.
How placeholders work
Instead of typing out each patient's name and the date and/or time of their manually every time you send it, you can use placeholders like firstName and apptDate.
When you send the message, the system now automatically puts each person's name and the correct meeting time in those spots.
How to customize reminder messages
In your Appointment Confirmation Settings, navigate towards the area where you can see the current template.
Click Edit to make any changes to your message, then click Save to apply them.
When you send a reminder to patients, the updated message will be sent.
Create Appointment Confirmation Templates
You can easily create more than one template that can be sent to your patient to confirm their appointment.
Simply go to Settings > Appointment Confirmation Settings
Click Create New under Appointment Confirmation > Save
In your queue, before sending the appointment confirmation message, you can quickly choose the template you'd like to send.
How Patients Can Reschedule or Cancel Appointments
Yes, patients can easily reschedule or cancel their appointments through the Appointment Confirmation feature.
From the Appointment Confirmation message, the patient can click "Cannot Make It" if they need to reschedule.
The patient will then select a new date and time that works for them, and click Submit.
✍️ Note: If the patient prefers not to reschedule at that moment, they can simply select "Cancel for now."
This is what you'll see in your queue if a patient chooses to cancel their appointment.
What You'll See in your Account
On your end, the status of the appointment will be updated to show that the patient has cancelled and requested to reschedule.
This request will appear in your queue as a Consultation Request, allowing you to review and approve the new date.
Once you approve the rescheduled date, the patient will be added to your queue for the new appointment.
This gives you full control over your schedule while offering patients the flexibility to reschedule as needed