One multi-location practice sent recall texts to patients who were past due for follow-up care. Within a month, 35% of them had booked a visit. Based on our internal data, 1,240 patients were seen from those texts alone, and every one of them was already in the practice’s records.
If you run a practice on CGM Lytec, you likely have the same kind of list. Years of visit history sit in the system. What’s missing is a quick way to text hundreds of those patients at once, so outreach falls to letters and phone calls whenever someone has a spare hour. Most weeks, nobody does.
From the patient’s side, that quiet stretch sends its own message. No reminder came, so the checkup must not be urgent. One year turns into three. The flu shot gets skipped, the blood sugar check slides, and a mammogram referral never gets written.
We think most dormant patients would still book with you if someone asked in a way that takes ten seconds to answer. A recall text does exactly that. It shows up where patients already talk with family and friends, and they can answer it without logging in, calling back, or finding a stamp.
A good one reads like it came from your front desk: “Hi Maria, it’s been over a year since your last wellness visit. Reply here and we’ll find you a time.” Maria can answer from her lunch break. Your staff can offer her Thursday at 9:40 before the next call comes in.
That short exchange is the core of reactivating dormant Lytec patients by text message. It takes the patient ten seconds and puts a real visit on your Lytec schedule.
Most lapsed patients drift for an ordinary reason. They walked out of a June physical with “see you next year” and no visit on the books. Next June, nothing arrived.
Inside the practice, the reason is usually plain. Pulling a recall list in Lytec is possible, but working it means calling one patient at a time. On a day when three patients need to be moved and the phones won’t stop, the recall list waits. Then it waits again.
Checkout is where the slip starts. A patient finishing a 20-minute visit wants to get to the car, and the front desk is checking in the next two people. Booking a visit 12 months out feels like a task for later, so nobody does it.
Small practices also tend to run a mix of add-ons for reminders, faxes, and forms. None of them was bought to send one message to 800 patients.
So the list grows, and the gap between “last seen” and “today” keeps widening. Dormant patient outreach for small practices usually stops right here, at the point where it needs a tool nobody has.
When a practice does reach out, it tends to use one of three channels. Each one hands the patient a small chore.
|
Channel |
What the patient has to do |
Where it usually stalls |
|
Recall letter |
Open the mail, then call during office hours |
On the counter under the store flyers |
|
Phone call |
Pick up an unknown number or check voicemail |
A voicemail box they never clear |
|
Portal message |
Find the login and reset a password |
A password they last reset in 2019 |
|
Recall text |
Read it and reply |
Rarely; the reply sits in the same thread |
A patient who hasn’t booked in two years has already shown you how much effort they’ll spend.
A letter asks for a phone call. The call asks for a callback. The portal asks for a password. Each step is small, and each one is enough to lose them.
Letters cost money even when they fail. You pay for paper, postage, and the staff hour spent stuffing envelopes, and a wrong address just disappears with no signal back.
Many dormant patients are behind on care they’d want if someone reminded them.
Medicare covers a yearly Wellness Visit once every 12 months, with no cost to the patient when the provider accepts assignment. The CDC advises a flu shot every season for nearly everyone 6 months and older. Patients with high blood pressure or diabetes need regular checks to keep doses right.
For one patient, a two-year gap can mean two missed wellness visits and two skipped flu shots. Add a lab panel that never got drawn. The patient doesn’t feel any of that on a Tuesday afternoon. It shows up later, often at an urgent care desk with a stranger reading their history for the first time.
Patients who don’t hear from you still need care. They book it somewhere that felt easier to reach. That might be the urgent care down the road or a clinic that texted them first.
Some don’t come back at all. A patient who books a physical with a new primary care doctor often moves her refills, labs, and referrals there too. Each of those used to run through your front desk.
Take an illustrative case. Say 600 records in your Lytec database haven’t produced a visit in two years. That’s up to 600 wellness visits a year landing on someone else’s schedule. Add flu shots and chronic-care follow-ups, and the loss grows from a list you already paid to build.
In one chair sits the patient. She thinks, “I should really get back in. I’ll deal with it after the holidays.” It’s the fourth year she’s said it. Your number is saved in her phone, but it hasn’t lit up her screen since 2021.
In the other chair sits the physician-owner. This owner went into medicine to know patients over time and catch problems early. Instead, they open a chart and see “Last visit: 03/2021” next to a name they used to see every spring.
Both would fix it with one booked visit. Nobody scheduled it, and three years passed.
Texting is the one channel almost every patient uses daily. An 80-year-old grandmother texts her grandkids. A 25-year-old grad student texts everyone. Neither needs a new app, an account, or a password to answer you.
Timing helps too. A recall letter shows up with the bills, and a call comes while the patient is driving. A text waits on the lock screen until she has a free minute. She can reply at 7 p.m., and your staff can answer the next morning.
Curogram works as the recall engine for Lytec practices. It sends the recall as an ordinary text to the patient’s phone. The patient reads it, types a reply, and that’s the whole job on their end.
Patients also want to know their health details are safe. Curogram is HIPAA compliant, so recall messages and replies stay protected inside a platform built for patient data.
Any practice that wants to win back inactive medical patients by text has to start with this low bar. The less the patient has to do, the more of them answer.
A recall text works best when it’s clearly about the person reading it. Curogram’s Targeted Broadcast Messaging filters campaigns using patient criteria from your Lytec data, such as last visit date, age, and visit type. Each group gets a message written for its situation.
|
Group |
Lytec filter |
Sample text |
|
Overdue wellness |
Last wellness visit over 12 months ago |
“Hi Tom, it’s been over a year since your checkup. Reply to book.” |
|
Flu season |
Age 65+, no flu shot this season |
“Hi Ruth, flu shots are in. Want a spot this week?” |
|
Provider change |
Patients of Dr. Lee |
“Dr. Lee now sees patients Fridays. Reply for a time.” |
Ruth gets a message about her flu shot. Tom gets one about his checkup. That fit is why automation can feel more personal to the patient, even when 900 people get a text the same morning.
CGM Lytec patient reactivation texting depends on clean patient data, and Curogram handles that part. Campaigns are built from your Lytec patient records through an integration pathway that Curogram manages. That includes the FHIR connector and the CGM approval process, so your team doesn’t sort through it alone.
When a patient replies, a real staff member sees it in Curogram’s unified dashboard. They answer, offer a time, and book the visit onto the Lytec schedule. Nobody has to export a spreadsheet from Lytec, clean it in Excel, and upload it somewhere else before a campaign can go out.
The patient never sees the data connection or the approval steps. They see a text from the practice they know, and then they see a reply from a person.
With two-way texting, the patient can act on the recall the moment they read it. A typical thread looks like this:
Practice: Hi Maria, it’s been over a year since your last wellness visit. Reply here and we’ll find you a time.
Maria: Can I come Thursday?
Practice: Yes! We have 9:40 or 2:15 with Dr. Patel.
Maria: 2:15 works.
That took four messages and a few minutes. Maria made the choice while the thought was fresh, at her desk, without waiting on hold.
Overdue follow-up texts patients respond to share this trait. The next step sits right inside the message. A letter or voicemail can raise the same intent, but the patient still has to carry it to a phone call later. Many never do.
Recall texts need to follow TCPA rules, and the consent standard depends on the message type.
Prior express consent covers informational messages like care reminders, while marketing content needs prior express written consent. Keep recall texts focused on the patient’s own care. Name the visit type and the practice, and leave out promotions like a new cosmetic service or a discount.
Every Curogram message includes a simple way to stop, such as replying STOP. Once a patient opts out, Curogram excludes them from future campaigns automatically. Your staff don’t have to track that list by hand.
Based on our internal research, a multi-location, cross-specialty practice ran SMS recalls to patients who hadn’t scheduled follow-ups within the recommended window. The results:
Those visits came from existing patients. No ad spend went into them. Across our clients, recovered appointments like these feed the 10% to 20% revenue increase that Curogram practices see.
The figures below are illustrative. They show how a single-location practice might plan its first campaign.
Step 1: Pull the list. Filter Lytec for patients 18 and older with no visit in 18 months. Say that returns 2,000 records.
Step 2: Split by reason. Patients due for a wellness visit get one message. Patients with chronic-care follow-ups get another that names their provider.
Step 3: Send in waves. Send 250 texts a day over eight weekdays. Replies then come in at a pace two front desk staff can handle between calls.
Step 4: Answer and book. Staff reply from the dashboard and place each visit on the Lytec schedule.
Step 5: Clean the list. Texts that fail to deliver point to stale numbers. Fix those records or flag them for a call.
|
Illustrative campaign |
Count |
|
Records pulled |
2,000 |
|
Texts delivered (if 80% of numbers are current) |
1,600 |
|
Booked within a month at the 35% case-study rate |
560 |
Your results will depend on how current your numbers are and how fast staff reply. Even half that rate would put 280 familiar names back on the schedule.
Expect the heaviest reply traffic in the hours after each wave goes out. With waves running for eight weekdays, the first two weeks are the busiest stretch, so plan staff time around them.
Track four numbers from day one:
Give the campaign a full month before judging it. In the case study, the 35% figure counted bookings made within a month of the recall. Give your slower responders that same window.
Targeted Broadcast Messaging lets your team send one recall campaign to hundreds of patients. Each person still gets a message that fits them. It’s built for practices with years of Lytec records and no easy way to reach them in bulk.
What it does day to day:
The integration side is handled for you. Curogram manages the pathway to your Lytec data, including the FHIR connector and the CGM approval process.
A front desk that used to call 15 patients in a slow afternoon can now reach 250 before lunch. Staff spend their time on the patients who reply, which is the part that books visits. Based on our internal data, that approach brought 35% of recalled patients back within a month in one multi-location case study.
Your dormant Lytec patients are mostly unreached. Letters sat on counters, calls went to voicemail, and portal messages stayed locked behind old passwords. A text they can answer reopens the conversation, and in one multi-location case, 35% of recalled patients booked within a month.
The way we see it, Lytec keeps the record of every patient you’ve ever treated. Curogram gives those patients a ten-second way to say “yes, book me.” Most Lytec practices have the first and lack the second.
Somewhere in your Lytec database is a patient who’s overdue for a wellness visit or a flu shot. She’d likely book this week if your practice texted her. If no text goes out, she’ll likely wait another year.
Schedule a demo with our team. In 15 minutes, we’ll show you how a recall campaign works with your Lytec system.