DrChrono Appointment Reminders: Setup and Statuses

Reminders go out by email, text and automated phone call. You set them on a single appointment or in a reminder profile that covers many, and the calendar status then shows who confirmed, who came and who did not, as long as your front desk keeps it current.

Quick answer

1. Under Schedule, open Reminder Profiles and build one profile with the reminders you want. Tick the Default? box so it applies to every patient.
2. Add your own wording only if it needs to be there; each added sentence can push a text into a second counted segment.
3. Check the Reminder Report the first week for errors, and fix phone numbers that fail.
4. Pull a month of appointments by status from the Appointment Report, decide in writing which statuses are your no-shows, and tell whoever runs your ads which ones mean a patient came.

What can DrChrono send, and who can receive it?

DrChrono's help pages list three channels: email, text message and phone call (DrChrono support: Set Up Appointment Reminders, checked 2026-10-12).

Reminders follow the provider's time zone unless a provider sets Reminder timezone source to Patient under Account Settings, General tab, Communications section (DrChrono support: Time Zones in Appointment Reminders, checked 2026-10-12). The language of email and text reminders (English, Spanish or French) is set in each patient's chart under Demographics, Important tab (DrChrono support: Reminder Language Settings, checked 2026-10-12).

For a practice in Canada, that text line rules out text reminders to Canadian numbers; the pages put no such note on email or calls.

Where does each setting live?

Labels are as the help pages show them today; if your screen differs, trust the screen.

Appointments made in the iPad EHR or Check-In app get the last reminder profile used; remove unwanted reminders on the website (DrChrono support: Creating and Using Reminder Profiles, checked 2026-10-12). The May 12, 2026 release notes fixed Auto Appointment Reminder so it now applies the most recent reminder to future appointments (DrChrono support: Release Notes - May 12, 2026, checked 2026-10-12).

Which reminders mark a patient as Confirmed?

DrChrono's page says that when a patient confirms through a phone call or email reminder, the appointment status updates to Confirmed on its own (DrChrono support: Are my patients getting their reminders?, checked 2026-10-12). It does not say the same about text replies. Until you test it, treat a text as a nudge and not as a confirmation.

The same page defines two words. Delivered means the reminder left DrChrono. Verified means something different for each channel: for a phone call, the person picked up and pressed 1, or a voicemail was left; for a text, the carrier accepted it; for an email, the recipient clicked the appointment link. A Verified text therefore says nothing about whether anyone read it.

Sort a day's schedule into three piles: confirmed, delivered but silent, and failed. Start with the failed pile. For texts, a link on the chart's Important tab checks whether a number is a cell phone that can take them (DrChrono support: Verifying your Patient's Cell Phone Number, checked 2026-10-12).

What will reminders cost on your plan?

DrChrono's pricing page lists email reminders as unlimited on all three plans and gives a text-and-phone allowance for each (DrChrono pricing, checked 2026-10-12):

The page does not spell it out, but in the label's order the first number is texts and the second is calls. Its footnote prices anything over the plan limit at $0.05 per text and $0.10 per phone call, so 100 texts over costs $5.00 and 100 calls over costs $10.00. The DrChrono pricing post covers the rest of the page.

Two reports show the count. The Usage Report in Account Settings, on the Usage tab, shows faxes, text messages, video visits and telephone reminders for the period, and only the account plan's primary provider can open it. The Reminder Report shows SMS use in segments of 160 characters; a longer message counts as several, and special characters can raise the count (DrChrono support: Usage Report, checked 2026-10-12). Two older help pages still say standard text reminders are limited to 140 characters (DrChrono support: Creating and Using Reminder Profiles, checked 2026-10-12), so keep added wording short and check the Reminder Report after any change.

Wording is in appointment reminder texts; timing and research are in the general guide to patient reminders.

Which status is a no-show in your own count?

The status field in DrChrono's API lists built-in values for outcomes (Complete, Confirmed, Not Confirmed, Rescheduled, Cancelled, No Show) and for a patient moving through the office (Arrived, Checked In, Checked In Online, In Room, In Session), plus any custom statuses you create (DrChrono API documentation, checked 2026-10-12). Custom ones are made under Account, Custom Fields, then Appointment Statuses (DrChrono support: custom appointment status, checked 2026-10-12).

To pull a month, go to Reports, then Appointment Report, filter by status, office and date, update the filters, and choose Export to File for a CSV, which arrives in the Message Center (DrChrono support: Appointment Report, checked 2026-10-12). DrChrono also has a No Show Predictor that gives upcoming appointments a low, medium or high risk score once you turn it on in Account Settings (DrChrono support: No Show Predictor, checked 2026-10-12). It looks ahead and does not count past no-shows.

Decide three things before you count anything:

• Only the No Show status is a no-show. A visit still marked Confirmed or Not Confirmed after its date has no outcome yet, so fix those rows first.
• Cancelled is not a no-show. There is no built-in late-cancel status, so create a custom one if you want that count.
• Rescheduled is not a loss. Follow the new appointment.

What should the ad account hear about a no-show?

Illustrative: the figures below are invented for an imaginary family practice with one provider; no client supplied any of them.

One month, by the status each appointment ended on:

If Google Ads is told about every booking, it records 40 conversions. At a made-up $2,400 of spend, that is $60 per conversion ($2,400 divided by 40). If it is told only about rows that ended Complete, it records 29, and the same spend gives $82.76 per conversion ($2,400 divided by 29). Of the 11 bookings that drop out, 6 are no-shows and 4 are cancellations; the rescheduled one waits for its new date. The higher price is the real cost of a patient who came.

I have linked DrChrono to Google Ads for a medical practice in the US, and built and debugged the offline conversions that report booked or completed visits back to the ads. The Complete-only count depends on the status field, so rows stuck on Confirmed matter: a visit never moved to Complete is never counted.

There are two ways to correct the count. You can send only Complete visits, which waits for the visit date. Or you can send the booking and retract it, a conversion adjustment, when the status turns No Show. Google gives up to 7 days after a conversion is first recorded for an adjustment to reach automated bidding (Google Ads Help, checked 2026-10-12); the conversion adjustment timing guide covers the rest.

What should you check in the first month?

1. Week one: open the Reminder Report and filter by channel. Fix every failed reminder.
2. Week one: send a test reminder to a staff phone and see what a reply does, for each channel you use.
3. Week two: read the Usage Report. If texts run above your allowance, shorten the extra wording first.
4. Week two: at day's end, have the desk move every appointment off Confirmed or Not Confirmed to its real outcome.
5. Week four: export the month from the Appointment Report, fill in the status table above, and send the person who manages your ads the statuses that mean a patient came.