What's behind all of those appointment reminders?

TAMPA, Fla. - You may get a phone call, text or email reminding you about a medical appointment. You may get all three.

You may get repeat reminders. While some patients are okay with it, others aren't.

"We get a few people that are very organized with their calendar they get annoyed with reminders," said Dan Sultan with Bay Dermatology.

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So why so many notifications?

Well forgetting those appointments can be costly.

"The national no show average is about 20 percent in doctor's offices which is one in five if you think about that that's considerable so if we're able to cut that down to half which is 10 percent,  that's a huge impact on the practice as well as the business flow for the day and the week," said Sultan.

Some people like multiple reminders while others thing one is enough.

Dr. Cyril Spiro is the President of Doctor Dial, a software that sends those automated reminders for medical practices. 

"If you can have a system that emails them, texts them or calls them to remind them, it's much less expensive, and then it ensures that the patient gets there," said Dr. Spiro.

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He said their program is designed not to spam patients.

"If you have other software programs that don't have the sophistication to recognize the response of the original message then they're just going to send the other methods or mechanisms anyways, which I would think would be annoying to a patient," said Dr. Spiro.

Doctor Dial sends automated reminders for medical practices.

"If the patient requests it, they can actually opt out of it and have the office call them but with our system they're not going to get all of the notifications," said Audrey Daniel with Doctor Dial.

And those reminders aren't just about revenue.

"It also causes a lot of frustration for doctors because they care about their patients, and they want them to show up for their appointments," said Daniel.

For more information about Doctor Dial, click here.