SMS and Email Notifications

DPC Pro sends SMS and email notifications to keep patients informed about appointments, billing, and messages from your practice.

Notifications are the bridge between your practice and your patients outside of visits. DPC Pro can send appointment reminders, billing receipts, payment failure alerts, new message alerts, and practice announcements through email, SMS, or both.

This page covers how to configure notification settings at the practice level, what types of notifications are available, and how patients can manage their own preferences. Getting notifications right reduces no-shows, speeds up payment recovery, and keeps patients engaged with your practice.

All SMS and email notifications comply with opt-in/opt-out regulations and HIPAA requirements for protected health information.

Notification Types

DPC Pro sends notifications across several categories. Each notification type can be delivered through one or more channels.

Appointment Notifications

Notification	Description	Default Channels
Appointment Reminder	Sent before a scheduled visit to reduce no-shows.	Email, SMS
Appointment Confirmed	Sent when a visit is confirmed by staff.	Email
Appointment Cancelled	Sent when a visit is cancelled.	Email

Billing Notifications

Notification	Description	Default Channels
Payment Due	Sent when an invoice is issued or approaching its due date.	Email
Payment Received	Sent as a receipt after a successful payment.	Email

Messaging Notifications

Notification	Description	Default Channels
Message Received	Sent when a patient receives a new message from your practice.	In-App, Email

Document Notifications

Notification	Description	Default Channels
Document Shared	Sent when a document requires the patient’s signature or review. Includes a secure signing link.	Email, SMS

System Notifications

Notification	Description	Default Channels
System	Administrative notifications from DPC Pro (account updates, security alerts).	In-App

Practice-Level Settings

Practice-level notification settings determine the default behavior for all patients. Individual patients can override these defaults (see Patient Preference Overrides below).

Configuring Defaults

To manage practice notification settings:

Navigate to Settings → Notifications.
For each notification type, select which channels are active:
- In-App: displayed in the patient portal when the patient logs in
- Email: sent to the patient’s email address on file
- SMS: sent as a text message to the patient’s phone number
- Push: sent as a push notification to the patient’s mobile device (if the patient has installed the app)
Save your changes.

Channel Priority

When multiple channels are enabled for a notification type, DPC Pro sends through all active channels simultaneously. For example, an appointment reminder with both email and SMS enabled sends both an email and a text message.

Delivery Tracking

Each notification records its delivery status per channel. You can see whether a notification was:

Pending: queued for delivery
Sent: handed off to the delivery provider
Delivered: confirmed received by the recipient
Failed: delivery failed (bounced email, invalid phone number, etc.)

Delivery status is tracked in the notification record and visible in the patient’s communication history.

SMS Configuration

DPC Pro uses Twilio for SMS delivery. SMS is used for appointment reminders, document signing links, and broadcast messages.

How SMS Works

When your practice sends an SMS notification:

DPC Pro sends the message through your Twilio account.
The message is delivered to the patient’s phone number.
Delivery status is tracked and updated (queued, sent, delivered, or failed).
If the patient replies, the reply is routed to the correct conversation in your inbox (see SMS Reply Routing).

SMS Setup Requirements

To enable SMS notifications, your practice needs:

A Twilio account with an active phone number
The Twilio Account SID, Auth Token, and phone number configured in your practice settings

Contact your DPC Pro administrator or the support team for help setting up Twilio.

Two-Way SMS

DPC Pro supports two-way SMS messaging:

Outbound: your practice sends SMS notifications and replies to patients.
Inbound: when a patient texts your practice’s Twilio number, the message is received by DPC Pro and routed to the correct conversation based on the patient’s phone number.

Inbound SMS messages are encrypted and stored in the same conversation system as portal messages. Staff can reply from the inbox, and the reply is sent as an outbound SMS.

SMS Content

SMS messages are kept concise. For notifications like document signing links, the message includes:

Your practice name as a prefix
A brief description of the action needed
A secure link (for signing or viewing)

SMS message bodies are encrypted at rest for HIPAA compliance.

Inbound SMS Security

Inbound SMS from patients is validated using Twilio request signature verification. This prevents spoofed messages from being injected into your messaging system. Each inbound message is checked for a valid cryptographic signature before being processed.

Email Configuration

Email notifications are sent through your practice’s configured email provider (typically via SendGrid or your organization’s SMTP settings).

Email Content

Email notifications use HTML templates with a plain-text fallback. Each email includes:

Your practice name in the sender field
A subject line identifying the notification type (for example, “Documents to Sign - Acme Primary Care”)
A formatted body with the notification details
A plain-text version for email clients that do not support HTML

Personalization

Email content is personalized with the patient’s information:

Recipient name: the patient’s first name
Practice name: your practice’s legal name
Practice phone: your primary location’s phone number (for contact reference)
Custom content: any message text you include when sending the notification

For broadcast emails, personalization tokens (like {{first_name}} and {{practice_name}}) are replaced with each recipient’s actual values before sending.

Email Sender Address

All notification emails are sent from a configured sender address. This address should be a domain your practice controls to avoid spam filtering issues.

Unsubscribe Handling

Email notifications include standard unsubscribe mechanisms. Patients who unsubscribe are marked accordingly, and DPC Pro respects their preference for future notifications on that channel.

Patient Preference Overrides

Individual patients can override practice-level notification defaults.

How Patients Manage Preferences

Patients can manage their notification preferences through their patient portal account. Available options include:

Opting out of email notifications
Opting out of SMS notifications
Choosing preferred channels for specific notification types

Staff-Managed Overrides

Staff can also update a patient’s notification preferences from the patient’s record:

Navigate to Patients and open the patient’s record.
Go to the Communication Preferences section.
Update the patient’s preferred channels or opt-out status.
Save changes.

Opt-Out Compliance

DPC Pro tracks opt-out status at the patient level. When a patient opts out of a channel:

No notifications of any type are sent through that channel.
The opt-out is recorded with a timestamp for compliance.
Staff can see the patient’s opt-out status when composing messages or broadcasts.

For broadcast messages, patients who have opted out of the selected channel are automatically excluded from the recipient list (marked as “skipped” in the delivery report).

Need Help?

If you run into notification issues, reach out to the DPC Pro support team at [email protected] or visit the troubleshooting guide.