Your practice has a list of patients who stopped coming in. Maybe they missed a follow-up. Maybe they moved on. Maybe they just forgot. That list sits in a file or a tab in your EHR, growing longer every month.
The worst part? You already have the tool to reach them. DrChrono broadcast texting through Updox exists on paper.
But after reports of texts going out at 2 AM and reminders that never land, most practices turned the whole thing off. The recall feature went dark along with every other Updox engagement tool.
That means no patient recall campaigns. No seasonal flu shot blasts. No wellness check-ins. No re-engagement attempts at all. Lapsed patients never hear from you, and your practice bleeds revenue in silence.
This is the gap Curogram fills. As a reliable Updox broadcast alternative, Curogram brings mass text outreach back to DrChrono practices with one key promise: messages go out when you schedule them, and delivery is confirmed.
Based on our internal research, one multi-location practice ran a single recall campaign through Curogram and recovered 1,240 lapsed patients. Of those, 35% booked an appointment within a month.
This article walks you through why DrChrono practices lost trust in Updox broadcast, how Curogram restores that outreach as a recall and engagement engine, and what a real lapsed patient recovery campaign looks like in practice.
Whether you run a chiropractic clinic, a PT office, or an urgent care center, the goal is the same: turn the dusty recall list into an active patient pipeline.
Let's start with what went wrong.
On paper, Updox broadcast messaging inside DrChrono is a solid tool. You can filter patients by their last visit, provider, or insurance status. You can send recalls, seasonal promos, and care reminders. The feature exists. It works in a demo. It checks the box.
But in real life, DrChrono practices stopped using it.
Here is why. When Updox reminders began firing off texts at 2 AM to over 150 patients with no way to stop it and no one to call, practices did the only thing that made sense. They turned off all Updox engagement features. Not just the reminders. Broadcast messaging, forms, and secure messaging went dark too.
One DrChrono user summed it up plainly. They said they avoid all of the practice management and patient engagement features entirely.
They use DrChrono only as an EHR. That is not a one-off story. It is a pattern across practices that lost trust in EverCommerce patient communication tools tied to Updox.
The answer is simple and costly. Lapsed patients never hear from you again. Think about what that means in practice:
These are not edge cases. They are daily realities for practices that shut off DrChrono mass messaging because the platform behind it could not be trusted.
The recall list grows. It sits in a spreadsheet or buried in the EHR. No one touches it because there is no safe, reliable way to act on it.
Let's put a number on it. Say your practice has 500 lapsed patients from the past year. If just 10% of them would have rebooked with a simple text reminder, that is 50 visits. At an average visit value of $150 to $300, that is $7,500 to $15,000 in lost revenue from one cycle.
Scale that to a multi-location practice with 2,000 or more inactive patients, and the losses climb to $26,000 to $52,000 or more per recall cycle.
That is revenue your practice earned the right to recover. It slipped away because the outreach tool you pay for cannot be trusted to deliver.
Here is what makes this worse. The tool is still there. Updox broadcast still shows up in the DrChrono dashboard. Practices are still paying for access to it through their EverCommerce subscription. But nobody clicks it. Nobody trusts it.
The issue was never that DrChrono lacked mass messaging. The issue is that the system behind it broke trust so badly that practices threw out the entire toolset. The baby went out with the bathwater.
And every month that goes by without outreach, the list of inactive patients gets longer. The chance of getting those patients back gets smaller. The revenue gap gets wider.
The good news? The patient data is still in DrChrono. The patients are still out there. They just need a reason to come back and a practice that reaches them in a way that actually works.
That is where the solution starts.
Curogram brings DrChrono mass messaging back to life with a simple but critical difference: reliability comes first.
Here is how it works: Curogram connects to DrChrono through the Healthcare App Directory and FHIR API. This is the same path used by apps like Review Wave, Birdeye, and ZocDoc.
Patient data flows into Curogram in real time. It is read-only, which means your records stay safe. Nothing gets changed in your EHR.
From there, you build your campaign in three steps.
Curogram's Smart Segment Builder lets you filter patients from DrChrono by last visit date, provider, appointment type, insurance status, or custom tags.
You create named segments like "Chiropractic patients inactive 45+ days" or "Annual wellness visit due." Save these segments and reuse them for future campaigns.
Pick the best send time for your practice. No more 2 AM texts. No more system defaults you cannot control. You decide when the message goes out. You write the message. You hit send.
Every message has confirmed delivery. You see how many texts landed, how many patients replied, and how many booked. Responses flow into Curogram's unified inbox and sync back to DrChrono's chart.
This is what DrChrono patient recall campaigns should look like. Targeted. Timed. Tracked. Conversation-driven.
Broadcast texting is not spam when the message matches the patient's care needs. Here is what that looks like across practice types:
|
Specialty |
Campaign Example |
|
Chiropractic |
Recall patients who dropped off mid-adjustment series after 30+ days |
|
Physical therapy |
Re-engage discharged patients with return-to-care check-ins |
|
Mental health |
Send wellness check-ins and appointment confirmations |
|
Podiatry |
Remind diabetic patients about preventive foot care visits |
|
Urgent care |
Launch seasonal flu shot, COVID-19, or RSV vaccine campaigns |
|
Primary care |
Run annual wellness outreach for overdue patients |
Each of these is a DrChrono broadcast texting campaign built on patient data you already have. You are not blasting your full list. You are reaching the right patients with the right message at the right time.
The difference is not just the feature set. It is the foundation under it.
Updox bundles broadcast with its reminder system, which has the trust problem we covered. When one part fails, practices shut down the rest.
And Updox charges separately for broadcast, reminders, forms, and telehealth. That means a practice using all four tools is managing four billing lines.
Curogram rolls texting, reminders, broadcast, forms, payments, and telehealth into one platform with one login. One support team. One bill. It is simpler to manage, easier to trust, and more affordable to run.
That is the core of what makes Curogram a reliable Updox broadcast alternative. It does not just restore the feature. It restores the confidence that the feature will work as expected every time you press send.
Your DrChrono lapsed patient recovery starts the moment you build your first segment and schedule your first campaign. No cold calls. No labor-heavy phone trees. Just targeted texts that land and spark real conversations.
What does DrChrono mass text outreach look like when it actually works? Let's look at a real example from our internal data.
A multi-location practice with four offices had a growing list of lapsed patients. These were people who had missed follow-ups, canceled appointments, or simply stopped scheduling. The list had been building for months with no outreach in place.
They ran one recall campaign through Curogram. They built a segment of inactive patients, wrote a short text message, and scheduled it for mid-morning on a Tuesday. The message was simple. It reminded patients that they were overdue for care and asked them to reply to book.
That is not a best-case scenario. That is what happens when a practice uses the patient data it already has and reaches people through a channel they actually check: their phone.
Most practices have a version of the same problem. There is a list somewhere. Maybe it is a spreadsheet. Maybe it is a report buried in DrChrono.
It has the names of patients who have not been in for 30, 60, 90 days or more. Nobody owns it. Nobody updates it. Nobody acts on it.
That list is not just a record of lost visits. It is a record of lost revenue.
Here is a simple way to think about it. Say your average visit brings in $200. If you have 1,000 lapsed patients and recover just 15% of them with a single broadcast campaign, that is 150 visits. That is $30,000 in revenue from one send.
Now imagine you run that campaign every quarter. Or every month for different segments. The math adds up fast.
|
Scenario |
Lapsed Patients |
Recovery Rate |
Visits Recovered |
Revenue at $200/Visit |
|
Single location, 1 campaign |
500 |
15% |
75 |
$15,000 |
|
Multi-location, 1 campaign |
2,000 |
15% |
300 |
$60,000 |
|
Single location, 4 campaigns/year |
500 |
15% per cycle |
300 |
$60,000 |
|
Multi-location, 4 campaigns/year |
2,000 |
15% per cycle |
1,200 |
$240,000 |
These are not wild guesses. They are based on the kind of results we see in our internal data. The actual numbers will vary by specialty, patient base, and message quality. But the pattern holds: consistent outreach brings patients back.
Before broadcast, the front desk handles recall the old way. Someone pulls a list. They start calling. They leave voicemails.
They move to the next name. Most calls go to voicemail. Most voicemails get ignored. The staff member spends four hours and books maybe five patients.
With Curogram, that same staff member builds a segment in minutes. They write one text. They schedule it. Curogram sends it to 500 patients at once.
Within hours, replies start coming in. Patients text back to confirm, ask about open times, or request a callback.
Those replies land in Curogram's unified inbox. Staff can respond in real time. The conversation is logged and synced to DrChrono.
That is the shift. From a manual, phone-based process that takes hours and books a handful of patients, to a text-based campaign that takes minutes and recovers dozens or hundreds.
Broadcast is not just for lapsed patients. It works for same-day gaps too.
Say a patient cancels their 2 PM slot at 9 AM. Instead of leaving that slot empty, your front desk sends a quick broadcast to a waitlist segment. The message is short: "We just had an opening today at 2 PM. Reply YES to book it."
Within minutes, someone claims the slot. The practice keeps its revenue. The patient gets seen sooner. Everyone wins.
This is how DrChrono patient recall campaigns evolve from a quarterly chore into a daily tool. You stop reacting to no-shows and start proactively filling every slot.
Think about the calendar. Every practice has predictable outreach moments:
Each of these is a broadcast campaign built on a saved segment in Curogram. You write the message once, schedule it, and let it run. Delivery is confirmed. Replies are tracked. Patients book.
This is how a practice stops losing lapsed patients to silence. Not with a bigger call center. Not with an expensive marketing push. With targeted texts that go out on time, every time.
How Curogram Turns a Recall List Into Revenue for DrChrono Practices
Most DrChrono practices already have everything they need to run a lapsed patient recovery campaign. The patient data is in the EHR. The contact info is on file. The only missing piece is a tool that sends the message and confirms it was delivered.
Curogram fills that gap with a workflow built for speed and simplicity. You start by pulling a segment from your DrChrono patient list. Filter by last visit date, provider, care type, or any tag your practice uses. Name the segment and save it for reuse.
Next, write your message. Keep it short. Keep it personal. Something like: "Hi [first name], it has been a while since your last visit. We would love to see you again. Reply BOOK to schedule." That is all it takes.
Schedule it for a time that makes sense. Mid-morning on a weekday tends to work well. Curogram sends the broadcast and tracks every message. You see which texts were delivered, which patients replied, and which ones booked.
Based on our internal data, practices using Curogram for patient recalls see a 35% appointment reconversion rate. One practice brought back 1,240 patients from a single campaign. That is real revenue from real patients who were sitting on an untouched list.
Curogram also handles the follow-up. Patient replies land in one unified inbox. Staff can respond, answer questions, and book directly from the same screen. Everything syncs back to DrChrono.
This is not a complex setup. There is no coding. No IT project. Curogram connects through DrChrono's existing app directory. Most practices are up and running within a day.
The recall list does not have to sit there collecting dust. Curogram turns it into a pipeline.
Broadcast messaging should be the most powerful outreach tool in your practice. Instead, for many DrChrono offices, it is a feature no one trusts enough to use.
That changes with Curogram. Messages go out on time. Delivery is confirmed. Patients text back to book. Your staff manages it all from one inbox that syncs with DrChrono.
Here is the reality. DrChrono is great for clinical notes, scheduling, and billing. But it was never built to run patient recall campaigns or mass text outreach on its own. And the Updox tools that were supposed to handle that job lost the trust of the practices they serve.
Curogram does not try to replace your EHR. It works alongside DrChrono to handle the part your EHR cannot do alone: making sure every lapsed patient hears from you at the right time.
One platform covers texting, reminders, broadcast, forms, payments, and telehealth. One login. One bill. One support team that picks up when you call. That is what makes it a reliable Updox alternative for practices that need their engagement tools to actually work.
Based on our internal data, practices recover hundreds of patients per campaign. A 35% reconversion rate means one out of every three lapsed patients who gets your text books an appointment.
Stop letting a broken outreach tool cost you revenue. Curogram's 30-day free trial lets you run a real campaign before you commit a dollar. Build your segment. Send your messages. Watch patients come back.
Your lapsed patients are one text away from coming back. Schedule a demo and let us show you how to launch your first recall campaign today.