eConfirmation phone number

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Mgostigian
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eConfirmation phone number

Post by Mgostigian » Tue Nov 21, 2017 12:18 pm

Will the eConfirmation send a text message to someone that has their phone number in the patient information area on the upper right marked Home Phone but the Wireless Phone area is blank?

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cmcgehee
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Re: eConfirmation phone number

Post by cmcgehee » Tue Nov 21, 2017 12:57 pm

It will not. The patient will receive an eConfirmation if they have a Wireless Phone entered and the Text Msg OK field in the Patient Information window is set to 'Yes'.
Chris McGehee
Open Dental Software
http://www.opendental.com

Mgostigian
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Re: eConfirmation phone number

Post by Mgostigian » Tue Nov 21, 2017 2:06 pm

So I have to go through every single one of my patients and add that in for this to work? Is there an easier way to do that?

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cmcgehee
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Re: eConfirmation phone number

Post by cmcgehee » Tue Nov 21, 2017 3:15 pm

There is an easier way. By default, patients will have their Text OK field set to '??' instead of 'Yes' or 'No'. There is a preference to treat '??' as 'Yes' so patients will receive a text message. You can set this in Setup -> Family -> Family Preferences -> "Text Msg OK status, treat ?? as No instead of Yes". By default that will be unchecked meaning that patients with '??' will receive text messages.
Chris McGehee
Open Dental Software
http://www.opendental.com

Mgostigian
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Re: eConfirmation phone number

Post by Mgostigian » Wed Nov 22, 2017 4:48 am

So unchecking that will allow those patients to receive a text message even if the "wireless phone" field is blank? Or we still have to copy/paste the phone number into that field?

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cmcgehee
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Re: eConfirmation phone number

Post by cmcgehee » Wed Nov 22, 2017 7:49 am

If it is unchecked, the patient still needs to have the "wireless phone" field entered. So it sounds like you will need to copy/paste the home phone into the wireless phone.
Chris McGehee
Open Dental Software
http://www.opendental.com

Mgostigian
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Re: eConfirmation phone number

Post by Mgostigian » Mon Nov 27, 2017 8:45 am

Under the miscellaneous tab, where it says Automated eServices Schedule, is that what time the program is running or is that what time the text messages go out at? Is there any way to specify what time the text messages go out? For example, if I have a 4pm patient tomorrow, I don't want to wait till 4pm the day before to send them their text confirmation. I'd rather send it out at like 10am.

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cmcgehee
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Re: eConfirmation phone number

Post by cmcgehee » Mon Nov 27, 2017 12:31 pm

That time is the time that the first messages will start going out. So if you have an appointment 4 PM tomorrow, the text will go out at 4PM today if you have a 1 day lead time for your confirmation. I am working on something now to allow specifying the days and the hours components of the lead time. Then you could set the lead time to 1 day and 6 hours, and it would send at 10 AM.
Chris McGehee
Open Dental Software
http://www.opendental.com

boboffice
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Re: eConfirmation phone number

Post by boboffice » Mon Nov 27, 2017 9:38 pm

cmcgehee wrote:That time is the time that the first messages will start going out. So if you have an appointment 4 PM tomorrow, the text will go out at 4PM today if you have a 1 day lead time for your confirmation. I am working on something now to allow specifying the days and the hours components of the lead time. Then you could set the lead time to 1 day and 6 hours, and it would send at 10 AM.
Excellent. Can you please include in your logic to send the message at the end of the allowable sending period for morning appointments that fall outside the earliest allowable. For example, if the sending period is 9am-9pm, and the lead time is 2 hours, a patient with an 8am appointment would get his text at 9pm. Thanks!
Robert Marcus DMD
Univ. of CT '93
Poway, CA

Mgostigian
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Re: eConfirmation phone number

Post by Mgostigian » Tue Nov 28, 2017 6:05 am

cmcgehee wrote:That time is the time that the first messages will start going out. So if you have an appointment 4 PM tomorrow, the text will go out at 4PM today if you have a 1 day lead time for your confirmation. I am working on something now to allow specifying the days and the hours components of the lead time. Then you could set the lead time to 1 day and 6 hours, and it would send at 10 AM.
That sounds great! Just to clarify with the new feature you're working on, a patient at 10am and a 1 day, 6 hr lead time won't get a text at 4am, right? It would still be 10am as set in the automated schedule? When do you think you'll be able to roll this out?

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cmcgehee
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Re: eConfirmation phone number

Post by cmcgehee » Tue Nov 28, 2017 7:51 am

If a patient had an appointment at 10 AM and the lead time was 1 day, 6 hours, the text would go out whenever the start of the Automatic Send Window (in the Misc tab for eService setup). This would usually be set to 8 or 9 AM. It's hard to say exactly when this feature will be available, but it looks like there's a good chance I'll be able to get it done for 17.4.
Chris McGehee
Open Dental Software
http://www.opendental.com

boboffice
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Re: eConfirmation phone number

Post by boboffice » Tue Nov 28, 2017 11:10 am

cmcgehee wrote:If a patient had an appointment at 10 AM and the lead time was 1 day, 6 hours, the text would go out whenever the start of the Automatic Send Window (in the Misc tab for eService setup). This would usually be set to 8 or 9 AM. It's hard to say exactly when this feature will be available, but it looks like there's a good chance I'll be able to get it done for 17.4.
In your example, that makes sense. However, we start our appointments at 7 o’clock in the morning. We like to send our last minute reminder two hours before the appointment. Since 5:00 AM is outside of our reminder window, we would like the logic of the software to send it the evening prior. So anything that will fall out of the sending window is sent at the tail end of the prior sending window. Is that possible?

Also, while we are chatting about this here, currently it is possible to add one confirmation, one same day reminder, and one future day reminder. I would love if it were possible to have a fourth category, called save the date. Whenever somebody makes a new appointment or changes an existing appointment to a new day or time, an email and/or text is sent out saying save the date… It will be even more fantastic if a link could be added to add it to the appropriate calendar system, whether that be iCal or Google. I know many of these items belong in the future request page, if things get lost easily in that huge list. I will add it if you feel it necessary. Thanks for reading! As I said before, I would be willing to pay more than the current fee if some of these features could be implemented. After all it would be replacing lighthouse, which cost over $300 per month.
Robert Marcus DMD
Univ. of CT '93
Poway, CA

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cmcgehee
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Re: eConfirmation phone number

Post by cmcgehee » Tue Nov 28, 2017 11:51 am

boboffice wrote:Since 5:00 AM is outside of our reminder window, we would like the logic of the software to send it the evening prior. So anything that will fall out of the sending window is sent at the tail end of the prior sending window. Is that possible?
Currently that is not possible. That is a great idea as are your other ideas, so I would submit a feature request for them and post the number of the feature request here so that future readers can vote on them.
Chris McGehee
Open Dental Software
http://www.opendental.com

Mgostigian
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Re: eConfirmation phone number

Post by Mgostigian » Thu Nov 30, 2017 7:20 am

Is there any way to make it so it changes the appointment confirmation color when someone replies with something other than a 'c'? We've had a few patients respond with things like "please cancel" and it would be nice to see the people that responded to the message with something other than a 'c' with a different color so we know where to look quickly.

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cmcgehee
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Re: eConfirmation phone number

Post by cmcgehee » Thu Nov 30, 2017 7:48 am

The appointment will only change confirmation status if the patient replies "C". Any other response will not have an effect on the appointment.
Chris McGehee
Open Dental Software
http://www.opendental.com

boboffice
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Location: Poway, San Diego County, CA

Re: eConfirmation phone number

Post by boboffice » Thu Nov 30, 2017 9:12 am

cmcgehee wrote:The appointment will only change confirmation status if the patient replies "C". Any other response will not have an effect on the appointment.
So, it seems that you are saying that the confirm code must be the letter C. This is a dealbreaker for us because we have eliminated the word “confirm” from our vocabulary and use instead the word “remind”. We find that when we use the word confirm with patients, if they don’t send the C they think they don’t have an appointment at all. I would prefer it were replaceable and user defined. We would like to use the Y, for example.
Robert Marcus DMD
Univ. of CT '93
Poway, CA

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cmcgehee
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Re: eConfirmation phone number

Post by cmcgehee » Thu Nov 30, 2017 9:36 am

The confirm code must be the letter "C" (sometimes it will be "C1" or "C2" if there are multiple appointments pending confirmation for that patient). You can modify the template to not use the word "confirm". I wouldn't think that patients would realize they are confirming an appointment just because they are asked to text the letter "C".
Chris McGehee
Open Dental Software
http://www.opendental.com

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