Contents
Introduction
Merge Forms
Dates / Reminder Cycles
Dates
Reminder Cycles
Contact Codes
Picture Icons
The Appointment Reminder Process
Automating the process
Creating Pre-Defined Processes
Setting up the Processes
Batch Files
User 9000
Windows Scheduler
Additional Notes:

Introduction

The Oasis PMS has an appointment scheduler for recording patients appointment times. The same scheduler can be used for appointment reminders for patients, using various contact methods. Letters, Emails, SMS messages can be automated, whereas telephone reminders can still be made as an option.
Patients can specify preferred appointment times and contact methods when they are entered into Oasis. The preferred contact method can be used to generate reminders. Alternatively, pictures within the appointment book itself can be used for reminders.
This means the reminder process can be based on either CONTACT CODE or APPOINTMENT PICTURE ICON (or both). Bear in mind that if you use contact code (and update it at each contact) the original patient preference may be changed.
A picture icon can be assigned to a Contact Code, or to a pre-defined Appointment type. The picture associated to the Contact Code takes precedence over the Appointment picture.
Best practice calls for Email at 21 days prior to the appointment, SMS at 7 days prior and SMS at 2 days prior. This of course depends on the patient having both email address and mobile phone number recorded in Oasis, and that the appointment is more than 21 days hence.
If an email is sent to a patient without an email address, it will potentially stop the process, citing the lack of an email address as a problem. It is imperative that all patients to be emailed have a valid email address. Likewise all patients to be reminded via SMS must have a valid mobile phone number.

Merge Forms

To send email and SMS reminders, the system must have appropriate merge forms for use with each type of contact method. At this stage, merge forms for appointment reminders are simple text files having the wording of the reminder messages. Merge forms are created using Preferences, My Time, Scheduler Merge Forms.

In the example above, we have created a form number 01 - "Email Reminder" and we are now editing the record. You can have up to 99 merge forms for appointment reminders if required.

The edit screen allows us to insert appropriate merge fields into the body of an email message to be sent as a reminder. In the example above, the @104 is referencing the patient's given name (from the family member data listing at the right-hand side) and the @302 / @303 / @304 / @356 are selected from the Appointment Merge listing at the right. Email messages allow for significantly more text in a message than do SMS messages.
Once you have constructed your form, select File, Save Document to save the form.
SMS forms are typically shorter than email forms, as SMS messages have a limit of 160 characters (for a single message). You can send multiple SMS messages to make up a longer message, but you will use extra credits per message if they are longer. Some practices limit the amount of credits that can be used in a single message.

Above, we are editing an SMS reminder message and restricting the number of characters used as things like givenname/surname/date can be variable in length and push the message over the 160 characters. 

Dates / Reminder Cycles

Dates

Oasis allows you to define dates for use with automation, based on number of days. As you run automated tasks on a daily basis, you want the reminders to go out x number of days before the actual appointment. To do this, you define a number of days to a code to be used with automation.
Codes for dates are defined in the table Preferences, Date Menus.

By way of explanation, let's say you wanted to follow the standard 21, 7 and 2 day process. You would need a 21 day, 7 day and 2 day defined in this table. This would be OK if you were allowed to send texts 7 days a week. It is probably better to avoid texting patients on weekends or particulary on a Sunday.

Reminder Cycles

If we assume we do not want messages on weekends, we then need to work around the weekends and this means introducing 3 and 4 day dates in the system, with specific processes for Fridays (and optionally Saturdays).

Your first reminder process would use 21 days, the second would use 7 days and the third would use 2 days.

Monday to Wednesday, you would have three processes – 21 day 7 day and 2 day reminders. On Friday, you would need 21 day and 7 day and an additional process to pick up Monday's reminders a day earlier (as they will be three days ahead – not two).
This is on the assumption they do not work weekends. If they do trade on a Saturday, you may be able to just run the three standard processes for 6 days instead of five. Reminders for Monday would go out on a Saturday.

Contact Codes

Each patient can have a preferred contact method stored against their record.

In this example, the patient is willing to have appointments made between 8.30am and 5.00pm Tuesday to Friday. Their preferred contact method is SMS message. The SMS message contact code uses picture 90.
The ability to send reminders to patients is dependent on them having valid contact details – such as mobile telephone number and email address etc.

With a Contact Code of SMS and a mobile telephone number, you will be able to send reminders to this patient.
However, the message being sent will have to be a single one, as there is no way of differentiating between a first reminder and a subsequent one. The only way to get round this would be to have more than one contact code, and to change the contact code between reminders.
Oasis will allow you to do this through the "Update" option after reminders are processed.
A typical Contact Code structure would be as follows:

EMAIL Update to SMS7
SMS7 Update to SMS2
SMS2 Update to EMAIL

The premise here is that all patients will be set to EMAIL Contact Code, and will end up back at their original code at the end of the reminder cycle.

Picture Icons

An alternative to Contact Codes is the use of picture icons in the appointment book to generate reminders. When an appointment is made, you can associate a picture icon to the appointment type (pre-defined appointment codes). It will display in the left column of the appointment book as follows:

In this example, a red SMS icon is used to identify that this patient should be sent an SMS reminder.
This is a visual way of monitoring reminders as you can change icons with the update process.
A typical picture icon structure could be as follows:

Email icon updates to          7 day SMS icon
7 day SMS icon updates to 2 day SMS icon
2 day SMS icon updates to SMS sent icon

As these icons are associated to the appointment and not the patient, they are effectively transient and don't need to end up back at the beginning – unlike the Contact Code method.
Using picture icons also permits the person making the appointment to decide whether the appointment is 21 days or less and to assign the appropriate icon at the time the appointment is made.

The Appointment Reminder Process

When you open the Oasis appointment scheduler, you will see a Tools menu item at the top right of the appointment window.

The tools menu gives the following "merge" options:

Choosing any of the first three (excluding Merge Online) will display a windows where you can set up the merge parameters.

In the example above, we have chosen the SMS option.
The following data is required:

Start at Date                                              This is the start date for which you want the reminders to be generated.
End at date                                                The end date for which you want reminders generated. Can be the same as the Start date.
Sms/Email Form Number                          The form number to be used with this reminder.
Select Contact Code                                 The patient contact code to be used for this reminder
Select Picture Number                              The picture icon to be used to identify patients needing a reminder
Update Contact Code                               You can declare a new contact code for the patient when the reminder is updated
Update Picture Number                            You can declare a new picture to be defined for the appointment when the reminder is updated.
Skip Confirmed Records                          Tick this box to skid any records already confirmed by other methods.
Print Log                                                  Tick this box to print a log of reminders sent.

NOTE: Do not use a combination of Contact Code and Picture Icon when sending reminders.

At the bottom of the window, there are menu options

Cancel              Will cancel the process and return you to the appointment book
Date                  Allows you to select pre-defined date ranges
Settings            Allows you to save the settings you have defined for future use
OK                   Will process the reminders as you have defined them in this window

Also Note: Picture icons associated to contact code take precedence over pictrure icons associated to appointment codes.

Automating the process

Creating Pre-Defined Processes

Appointment reminders can be automated using the Oasis Pre-Defined process feature. This allows you to create a series of processes that can be called from a batch file and added to the Windows Scheduler to run at a pre-determined time.
The Pre-defined Process window is accessed by selecting the Reports option and then selecting the "PreDefined Processes" tab.

We are only concerned with the Public Processes listed at the right of the window.
If the practice already has automated recalls, there will be a number of processes already in place. We are going to add (for a five day practice) 5 processes as follows:

21 day App reminder
7 day App reminder
2 day App reminder
3 day App reminder (run Fridays only)
4 day App reminder (run Fridays only)

To add the processes to the list, click the "All Categories" option in the top box at the right and then choose Edit Categories from the drop-down menu. Find a group of vacant numbers in the list (you need five) and add each process using the New button.

In this example, we are going to add 60 to 64.
You can use whatever names you want. For example:

60    21 Day Email Appointment Reminder
61    7 Day SMS Appointment Reminder
62    2 Day SMS Appointment Reminder
63    3 Day SMS Appointment Reminder (Friday)
64    4 Day SMS Appointment Reminder (Friday)

Setting up the Processes

Once the categories have been created, you now have to use the appointment scheduler's Tools menu to add the actual processes.
To set up the 21 day email reminder, select Tools, Merge Email.

Click the Date button and select the 21 days from now option that you will have created in the Dates menu. You will note the dates shown in the window will be 21 days from today.

Next, select the form number to be used for the 21 day email.
Now, you can either set the reminders up based on Contact Code, or based on picture icon. It is not recommended to use both together.
As we are emailing the patient, you need to enter an email subject. The Skip Confirmed will do just that, and the Print Log option will print a record of reminders (if required).

In this example, we've chosen to go picture icon, with the send email icon to be targeted and the send SMS to be the update icon.
Once you have filled in the form, click the Settings option and then select the "Save Process using …….".

In the ensuing window, click the appropriate category number (in this example 60) and make sure the Public option is selected. You will have to type in the description again as the default may not reflect fully the process you are creating. Once done, click OK to save.
Repeat this process for each of the remaining four processes, using the appropriate dates, forms and Picture Icons/Contact Codes.

Batch Files

The automation of appointment reminders relies on batch files being created and added to the Windows Scheduler with the correct privileges. These batch files should be run at an appropriate time of day to ensure the SMS messages are not sent at un-sociable times.
For the five day week system you will need two batch files.

Batch File #1 – "Oasis App Rem1.bat" (to be run Monday to Thursday) will have the following entries:
rem Oasis Appointment Reminders
cd\
cd\oasis
oasis [B0000] [R0060]
oasis [B0000] [R0061]
oasis [B0000] [R0062]

Batch File #2 – "Oasis App Rem2.bat" (to be run Friday) will have the following entries:
rem Oasis Appointment Reminders
cd\
cd\oasis
oasis [B0000] [R0063]
oasis [B0000] [R0064]

User 9000

To run these batch files without interfering with other Oasis users, you need to create a User 9000 for both SMS and Email. Select Preferences, and under Communications, select SMS. Add a User 9000 to the user list, making sure they have field #7 set to "Y" and field #8 set to the correct path to the CXSERVER folder. Make sure all other fields are blank before saving.
Repeat the process for Email, except it's fields 9 and 10.

Windows Scheduler

The final step is to schedule the batch files to run. You may need the assistance of the practice's hardware technician to ensure the processes run under the correct privileges.
To schedule tasks in Window 10, type Control Panel into the Windows Search box. Select and load the Control Panel, and then select Administrative Tools. Locate the Task Scheduler and select it.

Double click the Task Scheduler Library and a list of Windows tasks will be displayed.
Select the Create Basic Task option.

Type in an appropriate name for the task and click Next.

In the Trigger window, select Weekly. And click Next.

Now enter an appropriate time for the process to run and select Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday – then click Next.

In the Action window, select Start a program and click Next.

In this window, either type in the full path and filename of the batch file, or Browse using Windows File Explorer to locate the batch file. Click Next.\

You will now be presented with a summary of the Task. If all is OK, click Finish to create the task.

You will now be able to see the task listed.
Repeat this process for the second (Friday) batch file.