AI receptionist, live demo below
AI receptionist for medical practices and clinics
An AI answering service that picks up every call: after hours, at lunch, and when the queue is three deep. It answers the routine questions, books into the schedule your staff already use, and puts anything urgent through to a person. Built for medical practices first, and it works for any small business losing work to a ringing phone.
Talk to it yourself
Ava is the AI front desk for a demo clinic. Ask her about opening hours or insurance, book an appointment, switch language mid-call, or describe something urgent and watch her hand the call to a person. Nothing is stored, and nothing is scripted for you.
Loads on click so the rest of the page stays fast. Works best in Chrome, and you will be asked for microphone access if you choose to talk rather than type.
A demo clinic with fictional details. Your voice is transcribed by your browser’s speech service, and nothing is stored.
Pick the version built for your business
The receptionist is the same idea in all three, but the calls, the questions and the handoff are not.
What the AI receptionist does on a call
It handles the questions your front desk answers forty times a day, and it writes the appointment back into the schedule your staff already look at. It does not diagnose and it does not give medical advice.
- Hours, location, parking, which insurance you take, what to bring to the visit.
- Books, moves and cancels appointments, then writes the change back to your booking system.
- Takes refill and records requests as structured messages instead of a rambling voicemail.
- Answers by voice, text or WhatsApp, in the caller’s language.
- Anything that sounds urgent goes to a person immediately. That rule is in the code, not left to the model.
- Your team gets one short summary in the morning: who rang, what they needed, what still needs a call back.
A medical answering service that finishes the job
A traditional medical answering service takes a message and passes it on, which means the work is still sitting there when your staff arrive. The caller rang to book an appointment and ended up in a queue of callbacks. This answers the question, books the visit in your scheduler, and only involves a person when the call genuinely needs one.
- No queue. Every call is answered at the same time, so eight callers at nine in the morning all get picked up.
- It answers from your own hours, insurance list and policies rather than a script somebody typed up once.
- After-hours and weekend calls are handled live, not recorded for the morning.
- The on-call clinician is paged for the calls that need them, and left alone for the ones that do not.
After-hours calls and the ones that ring out
Most practices do not lose patients because of bad care. They lose them because nobody picked up. The phone rings while your staff are checking someone in, at lunch, and from six in the evening until eight the next morning. Those callers do not leave a voicemail and wait, they call the practice down the road.
- Overflow calls answered, so a queue never turns into a hang-up.
- Missed calls texted back within seconds, with a thread that can finish the booking.
- Evenings, weekends and holidays covered without paying for a shift.
- Reminders patients can reply to, and a waitlist that refills a cancelled slot in minutes.
A missed appointment at least shows up in your schedule. A missed call leaves no trace at all, which is why both are worth counting: the missed call calculator turns your answer rate into a yearly number, and the guide to reducing no-shows covers the reminder and waitlist side in full.
HIPAA, the BAA and what the stack is allowed to store
A BAA is signed before any protected health information is involved, and the stack is scoped so PHI stays inside systems you already trust. That is a contractual question as much as a technical one, so it is the first thing we go through on a call rather than a badge on a page.
- A signed BAA with every vendor that can touch PHI, before anything goes live.
- The smallest amount of patient data the call actually needs, and nothing kept that does not have to be.
- Access logged, so you can answer who saw what if you are ever asked.
- Emergency escalation by fixed rule rather than model judgement: the model may widen what counts as urgent, never narrow it.
- Every clinical output is reviewed and signed by a person. Nothing goes into a chart unread.
Answering service cost compared with an AI receptionist
Three ways to get your phone answered. A phone answering service cost is usually a monthly minimum plus a per-minute rate, so a busy month costs more than a quiet one; a receptionist is a salary; this is a fixed build price and then a running cost. The quote depends on your call volume, so what follows is everything else, which is where the three actually differ.
| What you are comparing | Human receptionist | Phone answering service | AI receptionist |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cost per month | A salary, plus payroll tax, benefits and cover for leave and sick days. | A monthly minimum, then a per-minute or per-call rate on top of it. Hold time is billable. | A fixed build price, then a running cost for the phone line and the models. No per-call rate. |
| Setup cost | Recruiting, then a few weeks of training before they know your practice. | An onboarding fee and a script you have to write and keep current. | One fixed project price. The packages are below. |
| Hours covered | The shift you are paying for, minus lunch. | Round the clock. | Round the clock, including weekends and holidays. |
| Calls at the same time | One. Everybody else hears a ring tone or hold music. | Queued behind whoever is on shift. | Every call at once. There is no queue. |
| What it can actually do | Everything, because they work for you. | Takes a message and passes it on. The work still waits for your staff. | Answers the routine questions and books, moves or cancels in your scheduler. |
| Knows your practice | Yes, after a few weeks. | Whatever is on the script you gave them. | Answers from your own hours, insurance list and policies. |
| If the caller describes an emergency | A judgement call, and usually the right one. | Pages the on-call number and logs it. | Fixed rule in the code: it reaches a person immediately. |
| PHI and a BAA | A workforce member under HIPAA. Training and sanctions policy apply. | A business associate. You need a signed BAA. | A business associate. A BAA is signed before any PHI is involved. |
There are no dollar figures in the first two columns on purpose. An answering service cost per month and a front desk salary both move with your market and your call volume, and a made-up number here would be worse than an open question. Send me your current quote and I will put it next to a real one for your volume.
What it costs to build
Fixed prices, you own everything, and no long-term contract.
Starter
$100
- ✓ No-show recovery bot (WhatsApp/SMS) or website AI assistant
- ✓ Setup + 30-min strategy call
- ✓ 7 days of support
Most popular
Growth
$200
- ✓ AI receptionist + after-hours triage
- ✓ Reminders + automatic Google review requests
- ✓ Monthly results report, 14 days of support
Custom
from $500
- ✓ Phone line integration, EHR/FHIR booking
- ✓ AI scribe, prior auth or claims automation
- ✓ Scoped on a free call
Not sure it is worth it? Put your own numbers in first. Everything else I build is on the services page.
Work out what it is costing you first
Free, no sign-up, and nothing you type leaves your browser.
What this looked like in real builds
Real projects with real numbers, not demos.
AI receptionist FAQ
What is an AI receptionist?
It is software that answers your phone, holds a normal conversation with the caller, and then does something with what it heard: books the appointment, moves it, takes the refill request, or puts the call through to a person. The difference from an answering service is that it finishes the task instead of writing a message for your staff to work through later.
Is the AI receptionist HIPAA compliant, and will you sign a BAA?
Yes, a BAA is signed before any protected health information is involved, and that covers every vendor in the stack that can touch PHI. The build is scoped so patient data stays inside systems you already trust, access is logged, and emergency escalation is a fixed rule in the code rather than a model judgement. HIPAA is a contract and a process, not a badge, so this is the first thing we go through on a call.
How much does an AI receptionist cost?
The packages on this page are fixed price: $100 for a single bot, $200 for the receptionist with after-hours triage and reminders, and from $500 for a custom build with phone line and EHR booking integration. You own what gets built and there is no long-term contract. The running cost after that depends on your call volume and which phone system you are on, and it is quoted before anything starts.
How is this different from a medical answering service?
An answering service takes a message and passes it on, so the work still waits for your front desk. This answers the question, books or moves the appointment in your scheduler, and only involves a person when the call genuinely needs one. It also answers every call at the same time rather than queueing them behind whoever is on shift.
What does a phone answering service cost per month compared with this?
An answering service is usually a monthly minimum plus a per-minute or per-call rate, so a busy month costs more than a quiet one and hold time is billable. This is a fixed build price and then a running cost for the phone line and the models, with no per-call charge. The comparison table on this page sets the two side by side on everything except the quote itself, which depends on your volume.
Does it work for a small business that is not a clinic?
Yes. An AI receptionist for small business is the same product with a different script: the calls, the questions and the handoff change, not the mechanism. Medical practices are the deepest cluster of work here, and there are dedicated pages for HVAC companies and real estate teams. If you are in another local service business and losing work to a ringing phone, it is worth a call.
Does it replace my front desk staff?
No. It covers the calls they cannot physically get to: overflow, lunch, evenings, weekends, and the ones that come in while they are with a patient. Your staff keep the work that needs a person, and they start the day with a list instead of a full voicemail box.
What happens if a patient describes an emergency?
It escalates to a person straight away and tells the caller to use emergency services if the situation calls for it. The escalation rules are deterministic, so the model can widen what counts as urgent but never narrow it. In the FrontDesk AI build every red flag was escalated in under a minute.
Will it book into the scheduler we already use?
That is the goal in every build, because an appointment that does not land in the calendar your staff already look at means two systems to check. Which integrations are possible depends on what your software exposes, and that is the first thing we check on a call.
Can it answer in a language other than English?
Yes, by voice and by text, and it can switch mid-call when the caller does. You can try that in the live demo on this page.
Try it, then talk to me
The demo above is the real thing, so start there. Then book a call and we will work out whether this fits how your practice takes calls today, and what it would take.