Easily Notify Wait List Patients of an Opening (With live transfer and option to request removal) – 1-800 Notify

This article shows you how to notify patients on a waiting list of a potential opening. The phone call allows them to "Press 2" to transfer to your office and schedule, or "Press 8" to request that they be removed from the waiting list.

SUGGESTION: Please have your staff start telling any new patient that is requesting to be put onto the waiting list that you will be using an automated system to notify them of openings and that they may be receiving a Text or Call from the system when openings occur.

NEED MORE DETAIL ON THE OPENING TIME OR STAFF MEMBER AVAILABLE? We have a separate process if you want to notify specific patients of specific available time slots for specific providers. Click here to view that article.

Sample Script for Phone Call:

Introduction:

Hello, this is (practice name) calling for <name>. We currently have you on a waiting list to join our practice. Our (provider name), is currently taking new patients and would love to meet you! We have opening as soon as next week.

Ending when a person answers:

If you are interested in an appointment, please press 2 now to be connected to our office, or you may call us at (office phone #). If you want to remove yourself from the waiting list, press 8 now. We are located at (address). Thank you, and we look forward to hearing from you.

Ending when an answering machine/voice mail picks up:

If you are interested in an appointment please call us at (office phone#). To remove yourself from our waiting list, please call us at the same number and let us know. We are located at (address). Thank you and we look forward to hearing from you.

Sample Script for Text Message:

Appointment Opening from (practice name)
<name>. we currently have you on a waiting list to join our practice! Our (provider name) is currently taking new patients and would love to meet you. We have opening as soon as next week.
Call us (office phone #) to schedule an appointment.
Reply “Remove” to take yourself off the waiting list
(Office street address)

Setup a Wait List Message In Your Account

Please ask us by emailing support@1800notify.com or calling us at 1-800-939-1853. We should be able to get your Wait List Message setup in just a day or so.

Need an account with us? We have a 30-day free trial - click here.

Tracking and Working with Wait List Removal Requests

Both the default CALL and TEXT scripts offer a removal option.

If someone presses 8 on a phone call - you will see a status of "Declined appointment" in the place where you normally see "Appointment confirmed" "Left Message" in our portal.

If someone replies "Remove" to a text sent to them, you will see "Text Message Sent (Remove)" in the same status area.

VERY IMPORTANT: It is very important to have your staff honor those removal requests and manually remove these patients from your Wait List spreadsheet file. If not, patients could get pretty upset with your practice.

Preparing the File to Upload

Once you have your messages all setup, you are ready to start sending out notifications to patients on your wait list!

The file we will be uploading is a simple Excel Workbook (XLSX) format file with the name in the 1st column (Column A) and the phone number in the 2nd column (Column B).

IMPORTANT: Make sure to erase all data in column C and beyond or you will receive an error when you upload your file.

You can have the name in any of these formats: "Last, First", "First Last" or "First only"

You can have the phone number in any of these formats: (386) 555-1111, 386-555-1111, 3865551111, 386.555.1111

Once you have the file you wish to use, you are ready to upload it to your Broadcast Reminder Message.

Upload and Schedule when Your Reminder Goes Out

See this related article:

https://1800notify.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/360054528271