Actionable Reminders

Luma automatically sends patients reminders about their upcoming appointments with your organization. When a patient has an upcoming appointment, Luma sends them customizable reminders to help reduce no-shows and ensure that providers see their patients on time.

The functionality described in this document is native functionality available within Luma. Any functionality or capabilities that your organization might want or need that isn’t outlined here may be subject to a Statement of Work. For more information, refer to the Statement of Work document.

Core Functionality 

These features are on by default in your Luma account. Some of these features can optionally be configured based on your organization’s needs.

Send Reminders to Patients

Feature	Description
Send appointment reminders to patients on a regular cadence	Luma sends reminder messages to patients on a regular cadence ahead of a scheduled appointment. Optionally, your organization can configure this cadence to match your preferences.
Allow patients to respond to reminders to confirm or cancel appointments	Patients can reply to all appointment reminders to confirm or cancel their appointment. Optionally, your organization can choose to only allow patients to respond when confirming an appointment, or to not allow any responses to reminder messages at all.
Add a customized link to an appointment reminder so patients can open appointment details in the Patient App	Include a customized link on appointment reminders that opens the appointment detail page in the Patient App. From here, patients can take action on the appointment depending on your account’s configuration.
Determine which appointments are returned in an appointment list squiggly	When a user at your organization adds an appointment list squiggly such as appointmentsListInDay to a message, the squiggly returns all upcoming appointments for a given day. Optionally, configure Luma so that appointments are returned by the squiggly only if all the related resources for that appointment have Reminders enabled.
Send a final reminder	Select whether Luma should send a final reminder when a patient has confirmed their appointment. If the patient has already confirmed or has taken no action on previous reminders, they still receive this reminder.
Retry sending a message when Luma cannot deliver an SMS to a patient	When Luma Health cannot deliver an SMS message to a patient, another attempt is made to the same phone number.
Determine when a cancellation is considered a no-show	When a patient cancels their appointment, Luma Health considers them to be a no-show and sends them a message letting them know the appointment has been canceled and that the patient might be subject to a cancellation fee. If your organization has a different no-show policy, you can configure your account so that patients are considered no-shows only when they cancel within a certain amount of time.
Send a scheduled reminder immediately	Users can manually force Luma to send a reminder message as needed.

Manage Cadences and Delivery Rules

Feature	Description
Configure working hours	Configure the the earliest hour of the day that Luma Health can start communicating with your patients.
Configure quiet hours	Configure the hours between which Luma will not send any reminders.
Don’t send messages on holidays	If a reminder is scheduled to be sent on a holiday, Luma Health attempts to reschedule to a different day before the original appointment date. If Luma Health cannot reschedule the reminder, it is skipped. Optionally, you can configure Luma to send messages on holidays.
Configure schedulable windows for certain message templates	Configure your Luma account to send messages with certain message templates during designated windows of time.
Configure blackout rules	Luma’s blackout rules prevent patients from receiving multiple messages of the same type too close together, improving the patient experience. When attempting to send a patient a message, Luma checks if the message template, contact method, and patient first name match a previous message sent. If a message matches these criteria, and the blackout period is still active, the new message isn’t sent.

Leverage Message Templates

If your organization integrates Luma with your EHR, then Luma can send patients automatic reminders about the time, provider, and location of their appointment. Patients can then engage with reminder messages that require a response, such as reminders that ask a patient to confirm or cancel an appointment. 

Each template can have up to three formats: SMS, Voice, and Email. Each format is stored separately, making it possible to customize a single template in different ways depending on how the patient will experience the message in the template.

Feature	Description
Send messages using pre-written standard message templates	Use pre-written, standardized message templates to send reminder messages to patients. Luma provides these message templates in English, as well as over 30 additional languages.
Create message template partials	Use message template partials to easily add repeating content in different message templates, which can then be maintained and updated from a single source location.
Review and restore older versions of a system template	View a message’s version history if the message has been edited at least once, and revert the template to a previous version if needed.
Maintain a message library	The Message Library stores saved message shortcuts that users can access in Broadcasts or the Hub.
Use squigglies to personalize reminder messages	Use squiggly placeholders in your messages to automatically pull in personalized information, such as appointment date and time, for each message sent to each individual patient.
Add special instructions to an appointment type, facility, or provider	All Practice Resources have a Special Instructions field that makes it possible to include specific instructions for that particular resource when sending an appointment reminder to a patient. A dedicated squiggly pulls the special instructions into the appointment reminder sent to the patient. Special instructions can be added to email, voice, and SMS message templates.

Manage Reminders for Multiple Appointments in a Day

Feature	Description
Manage how many reminders are sent for a day with multiple appointments	For patients with multiple appointments in a day, Luma sends a reminder only for the first appointment of the day. Optionally, your organization can choose to send reminders for all appointments in the day.
Allow a patient’s confirmation or cancellation of the first appointment of the day to apply to all appointments	When a patient receives only a single reminder for a day with multiple appointments, a patient’s response to a reminder message applies only to the individual appointment that reminder message refers to. Optionally, you can configure your account to allow the patient response to apply to the rest of the appointments for the day, as well.
Send reminders for each appointment for a patient with multiple appointments in a day	If your organization wants a patient to receive a link for each appointment in a day with multiple appointments, you can send reminders for every appointment rather than only the first appointment of the day. That way, in each reminder message, the patient receives a unique URL that allows them to access the details page for that particular appointment and take action.

Confirm and Cancel Appointments

Feature	Description
Confirm an Appointment	Patients can use a variety of affirmative keywords to confirm an upcoming appointment through a reminder message.  After an appointment is confirmed, Luma will skip all subsequent reminders other than the final message by default. Optionally, configure Luma to skip all further reminders after an appointment has been confirmed by the patient.
Cancel an Appointment	Patients can use a variety of keywords to cancel an upcoming appointment through a reminder message.
Multiple appointments scheduled for the same day.	For patients who have multiple appointments scheduled in a single day, or for patients who manage multiple appointments for dependents this allows them to take action on their upcoming appointments. Patients can also confirm or cancel upcoming appointments directly in the Patient App using the Appointment Management feature.
Allow patients to confirm an appointment after canceling it	Patients can’t confirm an appointment through SMS if that appointment was previously canceled. Optionally, you can give patients the ability to confirm an appointment that they previously canceled.
Allow patients to cancel an appointment after confirming it	Patients can cancel an appointment after previously confirming it through a reminder message. Optionally, you can disable this feature.

Manage Contacts

Feature	Description
Contact Methods	Your organization can select the contact methods you want to enable for your account. Patients can receive messages only if they have contact information that matches the selected contact methods. By default, voice, SMS, and email methods are selected. If your organization uses Patient Scheduling, SMS is required.
Updating Contact Preferences	Luma Health can confirm with cell phone carriers whether a patient’s phone number is a mobile number or a landline. If Luma Health finds a cell phone improperly marked as a home phone, it automatically updates the label.
Manually change a patient’s preferred contact method	Luma Health syncs patient contact information from your EHR on a nightly basis, which helps ensure that any changes to a contact information are quickly updated in Luma Health. Sometimes, you might need to send a message to a patient using the patient’s updated contact information before the nightly sync. In this case, you can manually update a patient’s contact information directly in the Patient Profile. Luma Health always looks to your EHR or PM system as the source of truth for patient profile information. Any manual changes made to the contact methods in a patient’s profile are overwritten during the nightly sync.
Identify family members with shared contact information	If you have multiple family members as patients at your organization, and those patients share contact information, you can use message templates to help differentiate between those patients.
Determine Whether a Message Is Sent to a Patient’s Inactive Contact Method	When you configure your Luma Health account, you determine which contact methods your account will use to send messages to patients. For example, you might want to only contact patients by email and SMS, so you can enable only those two contact methods. A patient’s profile can have contact methods on file that aren’t enabled in your system.
Download a List of Patients with Invalid Contacts	Keep track of patients who need to provide updated contact information by downloading a list of profiles that have invalid contacts.
Limited contacts	Allow Luma Health to contact only certain phone numbers or email addresses in an account. This feature is often used for testing purposes.
Block Luma Health from Contacting Certain Phone Numbers or Emails	Sometimes, you might not want Luma Health to send a message to a particular phone number or email. For example, you might want to exclude a staff member’s phone number from being contacted in a test account. You can do this by adding that phone number to the list of blocked contacts in your account.
Manage the Do Not Contact list	Your organization can enter any phone numbers or email addresses that Luma Health should never contact. When a value is listed in this field, Luma Health never contacts a patient using that specific phone number or email address.
Download the Do Not Contact (DNC) list	Staff can download a list of all the patients who are currently on the Do Not Contact list.
Locate the number a message was sent from	While staff can manually remove patients from the list, patients must respond to the same number where they previously opted out to restart communications. If patients aren’t sure which number they originally responded to when opting out, staff can locate the number in your Luma account.
Manually add or remove a patient from the Do Not Contact list	Staff can manually add or remove a patient from the Do Not Contact list. Note that staff can only remove patients from the Do Not Contact list if the patient was put on the list manually by staff. If a patient is on the Do Not Contact list because they responded to a Luma communication with a request to stop messages, the patient must respond to the same phone number to re-initiate messages.

Manage Reminder Retries

Feature	Description
Retry sending messages over the same channel when Luma cannot send a message	Single channel retries are available only for SMS messages. By default, when Luma Health cannot deliver an SMS message to a patient, another attempt is automatically made to the same phone number.
Retry sending messages over different channels when Luma cannot send a message	When your organization uses OmniChannel Retries, Luma Health can try sending a message to a different contact method on a patient’s profile when the first attempt isn’t successful. For example, let’s say Luma Health sends an SMS message to a patient, but receives an error code from the phone carrier indicating the phone number is no longer valid. With OmniChannel Retries, Luma Health can try to send a message to the patient again, but this time via email.
Give patients control over their communication preferences	Patients can access notification settings in the Patient App and decide how they want to receive different types of notifications for message changes such as broadcasts, referrals, reminders, and more.

Send Catch-Up Reminders

Feature	Description
Send Catch-Up Reminders	When Luma Health can’t send a reminder to a patient following the normal reminder cadence, it sends a catch-up reminder. By default, Luma Health sends appointment reminders seven, five, and two days before an appointment. Catch up reminders are sent when an appointment is scheduled outside of this appointment reminder window, helping to ensure the patient receives at least one reminder for their appointment. Catch up reminders are sent only if the final reminder of the cadence is missed.
Disable Catch-Up Reminders when forcing reminders at a specific time	If your organization forces reminders to be sent at a specific time, you can disabling catch-up reminders so that Luma always sends reminders at the time you’ve chosen.

Track Message Deliverability

Feature	Description
Messaging Activity	Dashboard for tracking message deliverability.
Last Sent Messages	See the latest messages sent to patients.
Last Undelivered Messages	See all messages that couldn’t be successfully delivered to patients.
Last Patient Responses	See the most recent responses from patients.
Next Reminders	See the next reminders that are scheduled to be sent out.
Standard reporting	Use standard reports available from Luma to understand your patient population’s referral experience.

Luma Health Message Content Policy

Luma Health’s content policy helps ensure that all content sent using Luma Health messaging tools is compliant with the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA). Under the TCPA, healthcare organizations can deliver messages to patients and consumers if the messages comply with HIPAA and TCPA guidelines. For more details on these TCPA guidelines, refer to this article by providertech.com.

Luma Health does not permit the use of Luma Health messaging tools, including broadcast and reminder messages, for any promotional or vulgar content, in accordance with the Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991.

Messages containing the following symbols, words, or similar words, are considered to include prohibited content, and may automatically be blocked from being sent to patients. Luma Health reserves the right to update this list at any time. This list is not exclusive, and does not absolve any responsibilities under the TCPA or your organization’s contract with Luma Health.

• %
• Discount
• Free
• Gift
• Giveaway
• Percent
• Promotion
• Sale
• These seven expletives

Messages containing these following symbols, words, or similar words may be considered to be prohibited content unless specific patient consent and content specific communication campaigns have been set up in your account.

• $
• Dollar

Any other obvious offensive, exploitative, excessive is also prohibited without exceptions. Certain promotional or marketing language may be prohibited unless specific patient consent and content specific communication campaigns have been set up in your account. 

Additional Configurable Functionality

The following features are off by default in a Luma account and can be configured for organizations that would benefit from these features.

Feature	Feature definition
Allow patients to confirm past appointments	Configure Luma Health to update a past appointment in your EHR if a patient responds to a reminder message with a confirmation after the appointment occurs.
Block reminders from being sent to patients for upcoming appointments	You can block reminders for an appointment until you manually unblock reminders.
Reschedule messages that would have been sent on Sunday	Reschedule any reminders that would have been sent on a Sunday to be sent on the preceding Saturday at the exact same time.
Determine whether messages scheduled in the past should be sent immediately or not at all	If an appointment is scheduled less than 24 hours before the appointment time, by default, Luma Health doesn’t send the message generated by the custom action. If your organization prefers that Luma Health send the message immediately, rather than not at all, you can configure your system to do so.
Allow patients to cancel or confirm all appointments in a multi-appointment day through a single cancellation or confirmation	For patients who have multiple appointments in a single day, you can make it easy for them to quickly confirm or cancel all their appointments based on their response to a single appointment for the day. When you configure this feature, a patient can confirm or cancel a single appointment, and that response applies to all appointments for the day.
Allow patients to cancel or confirm all appointments in a multi-appointment day through a single cancellation or confirmation	For patients who have multiple appointments in a single day, you can allow them to confirm or cancel a single appointment, and that response applies to all appointments for the day.
In multi-appointment reminders, exclude appointments with reminders disabled	You can configure whether an appointment list squiggly shows all appointments scheduled for that patient, or only appointments for which reminders are enabled for all related facilities, providers, and appointment types.
Forward inbound calls from reminder messages to the appropriate facility phone number	Configure your account so that when patients call the toll-free number they received a reminder message from, their call is forwarded to the phone number of the facility related to the reminder message.
Require patients to reply to reminders only with yes and no	Luma Health can recognize variations of the keywords Yes and No when a patient responds to a reminder message to confirm or cancel an appointment. Optionally, you can configure Luma so that patients can reply only with the words Yes or No to confirm or cancel an appointment.
Configure Luma to message multiple campaign numbers at once	You can Luma so that, when Luma sends a message to a patient’s preferred contact method, it sends the message to all contacts for that method.
Determine the types of reminder responses allowed and how they impact subsequent reminders	Determine how patients are able to respond to appointment reminders in the days leading up to the patient’s appointment. By default, patients can reply to all appointment reminders to confirm or cancel their appointment.
Send subsequent reminders as voice rather than SMS	Configure Luma so that if a patient doesn’t respond to an initial appointment reminder sent via SMS, subsequent reminders are sent as voice messages.
Send catch-up reminders during your schedulable window	By default, catch-up reminders are sent at 9 AM and 6 PM. If these hours occur outside of your schedulable window, Luma doesn’t send the catch-up reminders. To avoid this situation, configure Luma to use the hours in your Schedulable Window settings as guidelines on when to send catch-up reminders.
Reload patient demographic information before sending a reminder	Configure Luma to always reload patient demographic information before Luma sends them a reminder.
Prevent patients from canceling appointments after the start time	To help ensure your EHR reflects the most appropriate appointment status, you can prevent patients from replying to a reminder to cancel their appointment after the start time has passed.
Ask patients which message they are replying to	When a patient has multiple messages waiting for replies in their patient chat, you can have Luma ask the patient to specify which message they’re replying to.
Configure a custom action for a patient’s first appointment of the day	Configure a custom action that sends patients with multiple appointments in a day a single message regarding only their first appointment.
Determine whether patients can confirm or cancel hidden appointment types for a multi-appointment day	If your account is configured to allow patients to cancel or confirm all appointments in a multi-appointment day through canceling or confirming a single appointment, you can further configure your account to specify whether the cancellation or confirmation applies to appointments with a hidden appointment type.

Training and Documentation Materials

Feature	Feature definition
Help Center	The Help Center is Luma’s online library for self-service support content. Users can access the Help Center directly from within their Luma account. From within the Help Center, users can submit tickets to Luma Support for additional assistance.
Luma U	Luma U is your home for Luma education. There are two learning tracks in Luma U – one for sub-account users and one for managers and administrators. Users can access Luma U directly from within their Luma account.