Patients will receive friendly, secure messages about their care needs. These messages include:
✅ The patient’s name
✅ Your practice name and phone number
✅ A short, clear message about what the patient needs
✅ (For booking messages) A secure link to book an appointment or a note to call the practice directly
📸 Examples of messages
Below are some real examples of the standard default messages patients might receive:
📩 Adult appointment booking message:
📩 Child appointment booking (no booking link):
📋 Questionnaire invite:
👉 Here’s a dummy version of the questionnaire patients might see (it’s tailored to them, so they only see relevant questions):
✏️ Can we customise these messages?
Yes! While these are the default messages, practices can create customised message templates for their campaigns if they want to tailor wording to their patient base. You can find out more about custom messages here.
If you’d like help reviewing your custom templates or best practices for messaging, just let us know!
📨 Where do messages come from?
SMS
Our SMS messages come through to patients from the “GP Surgery” number/sender. This is the same sender as providers such as Accurx and should show up in the same thread as other messages from the practice, improving trust
By default, our email messages will arrive from the sender GP Recall Support ([email protected]).
We can adjust this to use your website domains (any .co.uk, .com, .nhs.uk domains usually work) and you don’t need to have an email inbox or pay any extra money. You will need to tinker with your DNS settings but our team can guide you through that if you’re uncertain.
Sadly because of the way nhs.net is configured, we can’t use your GP surgery generic mailbox if it’s an nhs.net email.
Our WhatsApps come from ‘Hippo Labs’ - this is due to restrictions on how WhatsApp allow partners to display their branding.
NHS App
NHS App messages should show as being from your surgery! They will come up as a push notification on a patients phone if they have the app installed.
💬 Can patients reply to the messages we send?
Patients can reply to most of the messages sent via Hippo, but it’s important to understand how each channel handles replies:
SMS:
Patients can reply, but replies aren’t monitored and won’t be received by your practice. There’s no auto-reply message, and when patients don't get a reply, we find that most assume the message hasn't gone anywhere.Email:
Patients can reply to the recall emails, but they’ll receive an auto-response letting them know that the inbox isn’t monitored.WhatsApp:
Replies will simply retrigger the automated flow and our WhatsApp messaging bot will simply keep asking patients to respond with Yes or No:Replying Yes displays the recall message.
Replying No opts them out of future WhatsApp recalls (they can opt back in by replying Yes again).
This makes it clear to the patient that it’s an automated system, not a monitored conversation.
NHS App:
Currently, there’s no way for patients to reply to messages via the NHS App.
⚠️ Note: Hippo can’t block patients from replying, but replies are not monitored or received by the practice team.
💡 Best practice tip:
Include a short line in your message templates such as:
“Please don’t reply to this message — it isn’t monitored.”
This sets patient expectations and reduces the risk of confusion.
🔒 Are these messages secure?
Yes! All messages are sent using secure NHS-approved systems and include your practice name for authenticity.
❗️When does the booking link expire?
The booking link expires immediately after the booking is completed, or in 365 days if it remains unused.
⛔️ What happens if there are no more slots to book into?
The campaign will automatically stop sending recalls out if there are no booking slots available. The campaign will then automatically resume once slots open up again.