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NS Health fine-tunes text message and YourHealthNS appointment reminder service
Nova Scotia Health is fine-tuning some of the text message and YourHealthNS appointment reminder features to eliminate confusion and improve the overall patient experience.
Last week, the text message appointment reminder service was paused after it was discovered a small number of patients had incorrect times included in their reminder notifications.
In response to valuable feedback from both clinicians and citizens regarding the timing and clarity of YourHealthNS appointment notifications, Nova Scotia Health is also implementing several improvements to better meet clinician and patient needs:
- We introduced a seven-day delay before appointments appear in YourHealthNS. This ensures clinics can contact patients directly before appointments are visible in the system.
- Appointments will only appear for the coming month (28 days), recognizing many changes can happen in schedules for both citizens and clinicians over a longer timeframe. Just showing the next month will ensure patients don’t receive multiple changes or information for tentative appointments.
- Proactively stopped notifications on:
- Specialist appointments from non-hospital appointment booking systems (e.g., private surgeon offices).
- Certain appointment areas to ensure that sensitive information can be communicated with patients most appropriately.
In addition, Nova Scotia Health has updated the language within the YourHealthNS app to clarify appointment location details. Reminders will also be added for citizens to refer to the information provided by their clinic, as not all details can be captured in a brief notification on the app.
The text message appointment reminder service will remain paused until Nova Scotia Health is confident these changes are implemented and improving the patient experience.
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