Patient booking and follow-up automation for clinics

Where does a clinic's patient journey break down?

The problems sit at the joins between stages, where a person has to remember to do something on a busy day.

• Enquiries are answered too slowly. A new patient who messages at 8pm and hears back at lunchtime the next day may already have booked elsewhere.
• Booking takes several messages. Your team goes back and forth on times, then types the same details into the booking system by hand.
• Patients do not turn up, or never rebook. Nobody owns the reminder or the follow-up, so it only happens on quiet days.
• Review requests are inconsistent. They depend on who is on the front desk and whether they remember to ask.

Speed has evidence behind it. A Harvard Business Review study of 2,241 US companies found that firms contacting a web lead within an hour were nearly seven times as likely to qualify it as firms that waited even an hour longer. That is US sales data from 2011, not clinic data, but it is why response time is one of the first things an audit measures.

What does each stage look like once it is connected?

The table shows six stages, what the system does at each one and what stays with your team. Your build may cover two of them or all six. The written scope decides.

Three of these stages have their own pages: an AI receptionist for the clinic phone, no-show reminders and a CRM for aesthetics clinics. The messages after the visit are covered under follow-up and nurture.

How does it work with the booking system you already use?

Your booking system stays the diary. We do not replace it unless the audit shows it is the cause of the problem. The automation reads appointments from it, writes bookings into it and starts messages when an appointment is made, moved, attended or missed.

How much is possible depends on what your booking system lets other software read and change. Some allow a full two-way connection. Some only send a notice when a booking is made, which limits what can be automated around it.

We check this in the audit, before you pay for a build. If your tools do not talk to each other at all, our guide to the cost of disconnected business tools is a useful read first.

What happens to patient information?

Health information is special category data under UK GDPR, so it needs more care than a name and a phone number. The written scope settles what patient information each system may hold, which messages may mention a treatment and who on your team can see what. We agree that before anything is built.

The AI parts have fixed limits. They answer only from information you have approved, say when they do not know, tell patients they are automated and hand over to a person. They never give clinical advice.

A person also reviews anything involving money, a complaint or a message sent in a clinician's name. Our guide to decisions to keep human in AI workflows covers where to draw that line.

How do we build it?

1. Audit. We map how the clinic runs today, the tools it uses and where patients drop out between stages.
2. Design. You get a written scope: systems, integrations, permissions and the numbers that will show whether it worked.
3. Build. We build inside your own accounts and keep what already works.
4. Test. Real cases, awkward cases and failure paths are tested before anything reaches a patient.
5. Launch. We go live in stages, train your team and hand over documentation.
6. Improve. We review the numbers with you and agree the next changes.

The timeline is agreed in the written scope, not before it. Each stage is explained on our approach page, and our wider work with clinics is on the healthcare page.

What does it cost?

The audit comes first. It costs £3,000 plus VAT, the written report arrives within 10 working days, and the fee is credited against the build when you pay the build deposit within 14 days of the report.

Scoped builds run from £5,000 to £20,000. Before the audit we can give you a range, not an exact price. The number of stages, the number of systems to connect, whether a voice agent is included and how much patient data has to move all change the figure.

Running costs such as software, phone minutes and AI usage are paid directly to the providers from your own accounts. You own the code and the data. Ongoing support is optional, through Run & Improve from £1,000 a month.

When is a custom build not worth it?

• Your booking system already sends confirmations, reminders and review requests, and your team uses them. Switch on what you are paying for first.
• Enquiries are few enough that one person answers them all the same day without strain.
• Your process is still changing month to month. Settle it, then build around it.
• The real problem is too few enquiries, not what happens to them. Automation will not fix that.

If one of these fits, we will say so on the first call. Our free Business Systems Scorecard is a quicker way to see where your systems are weakest.