For clinics
A missed appointment costs a clinic twice — the empty slot and the patient whose follow-up slipped. Most clinics fight no-shows with phone calls that interrupt the front desk. The ones below moved that work to approved WhatsApp templates instead; here is what they send and what it costs.
The empty 11 a.m. slot is rarely a cancellation — it is a patient who booked ten days ago and forgot. A reminder the evening before, on the app patients actually open, is the single highest-return message a clinic can send.
Dear {{1}}, this is a reminder of your appointment with Dr. {{2}} at {{3}} on {{4}} at {{5}}. Please arrive 10 minutes early with any previous prescriptions. To reschedule, call our reception on {{6}}.
Report-collection calls interrupt the front desk all day. A short alert when results are in ends the calls without putting any medical detail in the message — the template names the test, never the finding.
Dear {{1}}, your {{2}} report dated {{3}} is now ready. You can collect it from {{4}} between {{5}}, or ask for it at your next visit. Please bring your receipt.
Screening camps live or die on turnout. An announcement to patients who opted in — sent a week out, with a clear date and a phone number to book — reliably outdraws a poster at the gate.
Namaste {{1}}, {{2}} is organising a {{3}} screening camp on {{4}} at our {{5}} centre. Slots are limited and screening is free for registered patients. Call {{6}} to book your slot. Reply STOP to opt out of camp updates.
Notice what the templates leave out: no test results, no conditions, no prescriptions. The variables — {{1}} for the patient's name, {{2}} for the doctor or test — are filled from your appointment list at send time, so one approved template serves every patient on the day's schedule.
Say the clinic sends 1,500 reminders and report alerts a month, and announces one screening camp to 400 opted-in patients:
| 1,500 utility messages × ₹0.25 | ₹375 |
|---|---|
| 400 marketing messages × ₹1.25 | ₹500 |
| Total for the month | ₹875 |
Set that against a single consultation fee recovered from one prevented no-show. There is no monthly platform charge, credits stay valid 12 months, and messages WhatsApp cannot deliver are credited back rather than quietly billed.
Two obligations frame all of this. Patients must opt in — take WhatsApp consent at registration, and keep a separate consent for promotional camp announcements. And every template is reviewed by Meta before it can be sent, which is a feature for a clinic: the review is one more pair of eyes ensuring nothing promotional masquerades as a medical notification.
Keep medical detail out of the message and the question mostly answers itself. A well-built clinic template carries logistics — a doctor's name, a date, a test name — never a result, a diagnosis or a medication. The patient is told something is ready or due; the sensitive content changes hands at the clinic, as it always did.
No. A reminder about an appointment the patient booked is a utility message — it relates to something they already arranged — and Meta prices it accordingly. On WABAPI a reminder costs ₹0.25 while a promotional message such as a camp announcement costs ₹1.25. Keeping the two in separate templates keeps most of a clinic's volume at the cheaper rate.
Yes — collect WhatsApp consent at registration, the same form where you already take a mobile number. One line on the intake form covers appointment and report messages; a separate tick for health-camp and wellness updates keeps your promotional list clean. Patients who opt out must actually stop receiving messages, and WhatsApp's reporting tools mean they will let Meta know if they do not.
Patients can always reply, and their replies arrive on your WhatsApp Business number for your reception team to read. WABAPI sends campaigns and shows you per-recipient delivery — it does not run chatbots or automated replies — so the reliable pattern is the one in the template above: put the reception number in the message and let the front desk take the call.
The delivery report marks that recipient as failed and WABAPI credits the message cost back automatically. For a clinic this doubles as useful data: numbers that consistently fail on WhatsApp are the ones worth confirming by phone at the next visit.
Connect your clinic's WhatsApp number through Meta's official signup and send from your own identity. The pricing page lists every rate up front.