Support Center

WELL makes it easy for patients to communicate with you regarding whether they're coming to an appointment. Your practice can seamlessly follow up on reschedules and cancellation requests to ensure your patients get the care they need.

WELL enables you to reduce no-show rates and fill openings in the schedule to have a broader reach with your patients.

Patient-Initiated Confirmation

When a WELL-BOT automation sends a patient a confirmation link or you manually send them an appointment reminder, the patient may interact with the link and confirm, cancel, or reschedule an appointment. You can also see if the patient has viewed the link but not yet taken any action on it. Patients may also text certain key words in response to the link and yield the same results.

The patient receives a link either through an Automated Message or through a manual link. If they click the link, WELL routes them to a page with a map of the appointment, the details, and the opportunity to confirm, reschedule, or cancel it.

Here's what it looks like when the patient takes each of those actions:

Patients with a language preference of Spanish will see these screens instead. 

Here's what you see real time in WELL:

Color-coded Statuses

The color-coding system in WELL allows you to quickly and easily identify what action patients have taken.

 Confirm: Patient has confirmed their appointment.

 Reschedule: Patient has requested their appointment to be rescheduled. Requires follow-up.

 Cancel: Patient has requested their appointment to be cancelled. Requires follow-up.

 Viewed: Patient has viewed their appointment details through the confirmation link but has not taken any action.

 Unconfirmed: Patient has not viewed the link. May require follow-up.

Keyword Confirmation

Not all patients have smart phones or will click on the hyperlink they receive via text message. However, keyword confirmation recognizes when patients respond with select keywords. This allows the patient to confirm, cancel, or reschedule their appointment even if they do not click on the hyperlink.

Depending on your patient population, you may want to include verbiage in your automation to elicit certain keywords. For example, if you use the {eventConfirmText} Smart Phrase to say "Text 'yes' to confirm and 'no' to cancel," patients may be more likely to follow the prompts and respond.

A patient response that is less than 31 characters and contains any of the following letters or words will take action on an appointment if texted in response to reminders that include {eventConfirmLink} or {eventConfirmText}: 

• Y, Yes, Confirm or Tap = confirm appointment status 
• N, No, Cancel = cancel appointment status 
• Reschedule = reschedule appointment status 

NOTE:  If the patient replies "Cancel" to a reminder with the {eventConfirmLink} or {eventConfirmText} Smart Phrases, that will set the appointment confirmation status to Cancel.  However, it will also disable text messaging for the patient so you should avoid using this as a keyword.

WELL also collects keywords in Spanish that will automatically mark the patient's appointment status. 

The following are keywords in WELL:

• Sí, Voy a ir, Confirmar, Confirmado = confirm appointment status
• Cancelar, N, No = cancel appointment status
• Reprogramar, Cambiar = reschedule appointment status 

NOTE: If a message contains a designated keyword listed above in English or Spanish and is more than 30 characters, then the channel will re-open. It will not automatically change the appointment status in this instance.

WELL is also set to open a channel to the patient and leave the appointment status alone if the  message contains a question mark, regardless of message length.

In both of these cases, a WELL user should review the message and manually mark the appointment status. This logic to re-open a patient channel will only apply to actions that are NOT included in the "Channel Opening Appointment Statuses" in your practice settings. 

Phone Reminder Confirmation

Patients may receive an automated call from your practice with an Interactive Voice Response (IVR) explaining their appointment details and asking them to confirm. When patients press 1 they will confirm their appointment. Read more on setting up automated messages.

Staff-Initiated Confirmation

If a patient calls to confirm, confirms with you in person, or uses a phrase that is not detected, you may have to manually confirm their appointment. In the Upcoming Appointments section of the Patient Facesheet you can easily send a confirmation request, a reminder, or manually confirm appointments.  

Simply click the 3 dots next to the upcoming appointment and select Send Confirm Request, Send Reminder (both will instantaneously send messages), or Confirm Appointment which will mark the appointment confirmed in the schedule view. 

You can also use SHIFT + CLICK to confirm one or multiple appointments.

NOTE: You cannot manually mark appointments as reschedule or cancel in WELL, but if you cancel the appintment in your electronic medical record (EMR), the appointment will immediately be removed from WELL.