Appointment reminders
Set as many reminders as you want, each by how far ahead it fires (thirty minutes to thirty days, no two at the same offset — seven days, one day and one hour is common), by email, SMS or both; a text measures itself to stay inside one 160-character segment, patients can reply CANCEL, RESCHEDULE or STOP, STOP is honoured before every send, and every reminder is logged as it goes so it is never sent twice.
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The schedule
Each reminder is set by its offset: anywhere from thirty minutes to thirty days before the appointment, and two reminders cannot share an offset. A common set is seven days (email), one day (email and SMS) and one hour (SMS). A reminder fires exactly that far ahead — a 24-hour reminder for a nine o'clock appointment goes out at nine the morning before — so if your clinic books late slots, set the short reminders in hours and check where they land. Reminders help reduce missed visits; they do not eliminate them.
The message
One hundred and sixty characters is one text; past that, a text bills as two. The message measures itself and shortens rather than quietly costing you twice — and the short version is also the one that gives away the least on a lock screen. The email carries the date, time and time zone, one button to manage, reschedule or cancel, and an unsubscribe on every message.
Replies
CANCEL cancels the appointment, RESCHEDULE opens the booking to change it, STOP ends every text from the clinic. Replies come back on the SMS side only; email is one-way.
Never twice, and delivery is reported
Every reminder is written to a log as it goes out and checked before sending, so a retry or an overlapping run sends nothing. The carrier reports queued, sent, delivered, undelivered or failed for every message; "sent" is not "delivered", and the unsent list is visible rather than silent.
Where to look