AI receptionist for clinics: what it answers and what it hands over

What can an AI receptionist handle on a clinic's phone?

It handles the calls where the right answer is already written down somewhere in your clinic. At the start of every call it says it is an automated assistant.

• New enquiries. It asks what your front desk asks: name, contact details, which service the caller wants and whether they are a new or returning patient.
• Booking. It checks the diary in your booking system and books the appointment while the caller is on the line.
• Rescheduling and cancelling. It finds the appointment, offers new times and applies your cancellation policy as written.
• Opening hours and practical questions. Hours, address, parking and what to bring.
• Prices you have approved. It quotes only from a price list you have signed off. If a price is not on the list, it does not guess.

This page is about clinics. For other kinds of business, see our general page on what an AI receptionist can and cannot do, or the service page for voice agents.

Which calls must go to a person?

An AI receptionist never gives clinical advice. That rule is fixed, and the rest of the table follows from it.

How does handover work?

1. The agent spots a trigger. A clinical word, a complaint, a payment question, a request for a person, or a question it has no approved answer for.
2. It says what will happen. The caller hears that a member of the team will deal with this. The agent does not attempt an answer.
3. In opening hours, it transfers. The call goes to the line you choose, such as the front desk or the clinic manager.
4. Out of hours, it takes the details. Name, number, the reason for the call in the caller's own words and a good time for a call back.
5. Your team gets a summary. It arrives where the scope says, with the handover reason at the top, so nobody has to listen to the whole recording first.
6. You review the handovers. After launch we go through them with you and adjust the rules where the agent handed over too often or not often enough.

Urgent calls need their own rule. You decide the exact words the agent uses when a caller describes something that sounds urgent, and we test that path before launch. Our guide on how to test an AI agent before customers covers testing in more detail.

Can it make outbound calls to patients?

No. The agent answers calls, and we do not build automated outbound calling. Under PECR, automated marketing calls need the person's specific prior consent, and general marketing consent is not enough. A voice agent ringing lapsed patients about an offer would be an automated marketing call.

Appointment reminders and follow-up still matter. They go by text and email through our no-show reminder and follow-up work, not by AI calls.

What patient information does it hold, and who can hear the calls?

Calls are recorded and transcribed, and a caller may mention a health condition without being asked. Health information is special category data under UK GDPR. So the scope settles what the agent may ask, what patient information each system may hold, how long recordings are kept and who on your team can open them.

Everything is built in your own accounts. Recordings, transcripts and summaries sit with you, not with us, and you own the code and the data.

We make no claim about your regulatory position. The scope sets out how the system handles patient information, and you sign it off before anything is built.

What does it cost?

We do not have a fixed price for a clinic voice agent, because the work depends on your phones, your booking system and your call types. It sits inside our scoped build range of £5,000 to £20,000.

Three things move the price: the number of call types, how well your booking system connects, and how many sites or handover routes there are.

The audit comes first at £3,000 plus VAT, credited against the build when the deposit is paid within 14 days of the report. Phone minutes and AI usage are paid directly to the providers from your own accounts, and we estimate them with you from your call numbers.

When an AI receptionist is not the right choice

• Your front desk already answers every call and out-of-hours calls are rare. Check your missed-call log before you spend anything.
• A large share of your calls are clinical. The agent would hand over so often that it adds a step instead of removing one.
• Your patients mostly message. A chatbot or a faster reply process may suit you better: see chatbot vs voice agent.
• Your booking system cannot be connected. The agent could only take messages, and a simple answering service is cheaper for that.

The phone is one stage of the patient journey. The rest, from reminders to rebooking, is on our clinics overview.