Text Message (SMS) notifications

Healthie makes it easy to automatically send text (SMS) reminders to clients for upcoming appointments. There is no additional charge for appointment confirmation and reminder texts, and there is no limit to the number of messages that can be sent on your behalf.

SMS text reminders are available on Production, not Healthie staging accounts. Additionally, SMS text reminders are available on all Healthie plans, whereas SMS appointment confirmations and cancellations are for Healthie Plus plans and above.

Set SMS Text Reminders for Appointments

In addition to sending email appointment reminders to your clients, you can also automate text appointment reminders. You can customize the frequency of these reminders within your settings, or disable them altogether. Text reminders can be especially powerful for clients who do not currently have an email address on file.

To adjust your client text (SMS) appointment reminders:

Settings > Appointments > Appointment Alerts
Under "Appointment reminder texts" select the timing and frequency of the SMS text appointment reminders you'd like clients to receive.

You can choose to send your client up to 4 text reminders. The timing of appointment reminders include:

One hour before
Two hours before
One day before
Two days before
Three days before
Four days before

Appointment Confirmations or Cancellations via SMS

If you've enabled your client to receive SMS appointment reminders, you can enable an additional setting to allow clients to confirm or cancel in response to an appointment reminder text. This can help to reduce late cancellations and no-shows for appointments.

To enable this setting, navigate to:

Settings > Appointments > Confirmations & Cancellation
Click the "Edit" option
Locate "Clients can confirm or cancel via text message" > YES
Save your preferences

If you have a cancellation timing limit in place via your settings (ie. cancellations are not possible within 24h of a scheduled appointment), then your policy will be upheld when clients attempt to cancel via text message.

Additionally, providers will receive a notification email when a client has cancelled an appointment (including SMS cancellations)

Phone Number Information for SMS

Texts are sent from a No-Reply, Generic Phone number
Clients cannot respond to these SMS messages
Healthie does not yet offer the ability to customize the phone number of your SMS message. This will be offered in a future update. Appointment confirmations and reminders are sent from a No Reply Generic Phone number, and clients cannot respond to these texts.
The text of text reminders is "Your session with [Company Name] is scheduled for [Date], [Time and Timezone]. To view details, visit [appointment link].
If you are on our Enterprise plan, there are two ways you can adjust the text of these reminders:
- Send SMS messages through your Twilio account, which will allow you to customize the content of these reminders
- We can hide all links to the portal from texts sent
The language of text reminders cannot currently be customized. If this becomes available, we will update this post.
Text reminders are sent out around 1:30pm EST each day. If an appointment is scheduled for the following day, but after that time, no text reminder is sent (email reminders will still be sent).
- If you have enabled SMS reminders for 1 hour prior to an appointment, this will of course send SMS reminder one hour before the actual appointment time.

Client Opt-out for SMS Text Reminders

Clients can opt out of text reminders at any time by replying "Stop" or "Unsubscribe

Asking Clients to Confirm a Session via SMS Text

Your account can be configured to either automatically confirm new appointments, or require clients to confirm. You'll find this setting in your Appointment Settings.