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A missed appointment is not a rate to look up. It is an hour that has already gone. What follows is what Doctopass sends, on which plan, what a reminder may contain, and where the software stops and the desk takes over.
Two sums, not one statistic
The cost of a missed appointment is arithmetic, not a benchmark: empty slots in an ordinary week, times your consultation fee, times the weeks you work. Run it once against last month's diary and the number stops being an opinion.
The second sum is the one nobody runs before signing. Count the patients you would genuinely text in a month, then multiply by the messages you would send each. Hold that against the bundle your plan carries and you know whether the metered channel is a budget line or a rounding error.
We will not publish a no-show rate, a delivery rate, or a best hour to send. Every figure of that kind belongs to another practice's patients, in another country, with another appointment mix. The only count that binds you is your own, taken over the same stretch of weeks before reminders and after. How the appointment reaches the calendar at all is handled in the online medical appointment booking hub.
Four channels, four gates
Reminders by push and in-app message are included on all three plans. SMS and WhatsApp are metered credits: an add-on on Essential, 200 a month on Pro, 500 a month on Premium. Post-visit care plans, delivered by SMS, WhatsApp or push reminder, start at Pro.
| Reminder channel | Essential | Pro | Premium |
|---|---|---|---|
| Appointment reminders, push and in-app | Included | Included | Included |
| SMS reminder credits | Add-on | 200 a month | 500 a month |
| WhatsApp reminder credits | Add-on | 200 a month | 500 a month |
| Post-visit care plans, SMS / WhatsApp / push | Not included | Included | Included |
Two things the table does not say. SMS and WhatsApp credits can be topped up on any plan: the monthly bundle is a budget, not a ceiling, and running out is a purchase rather than an outage. And the rates behind those columns are 69 DT, 159 DT and 269 DT, per doctor, per month, billed annually, with patients free and unlimited on every one.
Push and in-app reminders carry no credit row at all: they are included on every plan, alongside the web and mobile applications for doctor, patient and secretary, the handset side of which is set out in a mobile app for doctors in Tunisia.
What a reminder is allowed to say
A reminder should carry the appointment, not the reason for it. In the mobile application, push reminders are delivered through Firebase Cloud Messaging, and the notification payload — the text and data the handset receives — is kept free of clinical detail.
Delivering appointment reminders is a named processing purpose in the application's privacy disclosure, listed beside the service that performs it and the narrow data that service receives: the push token, the application version, and the device and SDK versions.
The harder question is who decides what a given patient may be told. For clinical data the doctor or the practice is the data controller and Doctopass is the processor, acting on documented instructions. The wording that reaches a particular patient is therefore settled by that practice's own documented instructions, not by a vendor template. Which is why we publish no specimen reminder text: a sentence that is unremarkable for a dermatology follow-up is not unremarkable for every appointment on your Thursday.
What the reminder carries
The reminder is a message, delivered by push and in-app on all three plans. What we can print is the gate: SMS and WhatsApp credits are an add-on on Essential, 200 a month on Pro and 500 on Premium, and we would rather write that down than let it be discovered after signature.
The appointment calendar is staff-side: drag-and-drop scheduling with conflict detection, on all three plans, which catches two visits at 09:00 on a Wednesday before the second patient walks in. Patient connection — email, SMS, a link, a Patient ID or a QR code, five methods — attaches a person to their own record, which is what puts a reminder on the right handset.
What exists alongside the message: patients who arrive without an appointment go into a walk-in queue rather than being wedged into the grid by hand; secure patient chat and the patient portal are on all three plans, and the portal itself runs in Arabic, French and English, which is where a request to move a day actually lands; and family and caregiver shared accounts are on every plan, so the person holding the phone can be the one reminded. Both the calendar and the walk-in queue sit on the platform page.
Recovered revenue is the kept visit
The revenue a reminder recovers is the appointment that happens because the patient remembered. When Thursday at ten opens up, filling it returns to the practice — a statement about your desk, not about the software.
Who at the desk does the sending is a plan question too. Secretary seats are counted per plan — one on Essential, three on Pro, five on Premium — and permissions are granular and individually toggled. Four appear in the interface: Manage calendar, Create invoices, View clinical notes, Message patients. A secretary can hold Manage calendar and Message patients and nothing else.
Whether every send and every calendar change is captured in a trail depends on the plan: the full audit trail starts at Pro, and audit log search with an investigation interface is Premium. It is the same distinction that governs delegating the desk without giving up the record.
Worth remembering
Enter the appointment once on the shared calendar and let the included push and in-app reminder go out on its own. Buy SMS or WhatsApp credits only against a number you have actually computed. Keep the clinical detail out of the message: your practice is the controller, and its own documented instructions settle the wording. Doctopass sends the reminder and flags the collision; refilling the hour that empties belongs to the desk.
Frequently asked
How does a patient reply to a reminder?
Through the secure patient chat and the patient portal, on all three plans, where a request to move a day arrives as a message somebody reads. The reminder itself goes out by push and in-app on every plan.
How do I reach a patient who is not in the app?
By SMS or WhatsApp credits: an add-on on Essential, 200 a month on Pro, 500 a month on Premium, toppable on any plan. On what a patient must install to receive a push, we take no position in a text — ask to see it in the demonstration, on a real handset.
What does the reminder message actually contain?
The appointment, not the reason for it. In the mobile application the payload is delivered through Firebase Cloud Messaging and is kept free of clinical detail; the service receives the push token, the application version, and the device and SDK versions. Beyond that, your practice is the controller and decides what its own patients are told.
Are SMS reminders included in the price?
Push and in-app reminders are, on all three plans. SMS and WhatsApp are credits: 200 a month with Pro at 159 DT, 500 a month with Premium at 269 DT, and an add-on with Essential at 69 DT — each per doctor, per month, billed annually, and toppable on any plan. Patients are free and unlimited, so the price does not move with how many you remind. What one credit buys is worth settling in the demonstration; the columns are on the pricing page.
The cheapest appointment to fill is the one that was never lost. To watch the reminder leave, the conflict get caught and the credit column behave the way the table says it does, request a 30-minute demo — bring last month's absences and your own consultation fee, so the two sums run on your figures rather than ours.