AI receptionist for medical practices
Primary care and specialty practices lose patients to the phone tree. Clinic Answering Service books same-day and follow-up visits into real slots (OpenEMR, athenahealth and eClinicalWorks write-back is planned; sandbox today), checks medical eligibility on the call and sends refills, results and clinical questions to the right queue.
Built for OpenEMR, athenahealth, eClinicalWorks, Google Calendar practices · integration status (sandbox today, REST API live)
Sample call · sample data, not a real patient or payer response
Caller My daughter has had a fever since yesterday. Can Dr. Nguyen see her today?
Clinic Answering Service Yes, let me help. Can you confirm her date of birth? Thank you. Her Blue Cross plan shows as active, with a $25 office copay listed. Dr. Nguyen has 11:40 today, or Dr. Ortiz has 10:20.
Caller 11:40 with Dr. Nguyen please.
Clinic Answering Service Booked at 11:40 with Dr. Nguyen. I have texted the confirmation. If she has trouble breathing or a fever above 104 before then, call back and say "urgent" or go to the nearest ER.
Sample data. Eligibility and EHR steps shown run in sandbox (demo) mode today.
Patients hang up on hold and book with the urgent care down the road
Refill and results calls interrupt the nurse all day
Eligibility is checked the morning of the visit, too late to fix a lapsed plan
What the medical pack does on every call
- Book sick, follow-up, annual wellness and telehealth visits into real EHR slots by provider
- Verify commercial, Medicare and Medicaid eligibility (270/271) and read back copay
- Route refill requests to the nurse queue with medication, pharmacy and last-fill date captured
- Symptom triage words escalate to the on-call provider with a whisper summary
- New-patient demographics and insurance by SMS, written to the chart
- Spanish-speaking patients handled in Spanish, texts in Spanish
What is live today, and where a person stays in charge
- EHR write-back: sandbox (demo) for OpenEMR, athenahealth, eClinicalWorks, Google Calendar. Bookings land in the built-in Clinic Answering Service schedule and reach your system by REST API or CSV export until a production adapter is released. Status per system.
- Insurance eligibility (270/271): sandbox until a clearinghouse is contracted for your account; sandbox results are test data and are labelled as such in the app. Once live, the assistant reads back only what the payer's 271 response states, says "the plan shows as active" rather than "you are covered", never quotes a price or guarantees payment, and flags errors, timeouts or inactive results to your front desk for a manual check.
- Clinical safety: the assistant books, routes and escalates. It never gives medical advice, triages symptoms or approves refills; urgent words you define go to a person on your on-call list, emergencies are told to call 911, and crisis calls go to a clinician or the 988 Lifeline. Your staff review escalations, new-patient records and flagged eligibility results.
Intake and booking examples
Each call type has its own short intake. Answers are written to the patient record, not to a message pad.
Sick visit
Symptoms, onset, fever, who the visit is for, preferred provider
Refill request
Medication, dose, pharmacy, last fill date; routed to nurse queue, never auto-approved
New patient
Demographics, insurance card by SMS, primary concern, referring provider
Systems for this specialty: OpenEMRathenahealtheClinicalWorksGoogle Calendar See how each integration works →
Read next: How to choose a medical answering service · After-hours answering service for clinics · AI vs human medical answering services
ROI for medical practices
What do missed calls cost you?
Defaults are typical for medical practices. Change them to your own numbers.
Frequently asked questions
Can Clinic Answering Service give medical advice?
No, and it is configured not to. It books, verifies, routes and escalates. Symptom words you define trigger an immediate warm transfer to the on-call provider or a clear instruction to call 911 for emergencies.
How are refill requests handled?
Clinic Answering Service captures the medication, dose, pharmacy and last fill date, creates a task in the nurse or provider queue in your EHR and tells the patient when to expect a call. It never approves or denies a refill.
Does it work with athenahealth and eClinicalWorks?
Not in production yet. Both run as a sandbox (demo) today. The planned design uses FHIR R4 for reads and HL7 SIU for appointment write-back, and athenahealth also requires Marketplace approval, which has not been obtained. Until then, bookings stay in the Clinic Answering Service schedule and reach your EHR by API or CSV export.
Can it check Medicare and Medicaid eligibility?
The 270/271 transaction covers Medicare, state Medicaid plans and commercial payers, and Clinic Answering Service is built to read back active status and copay and flag a lapsed plan for the front desk. Today the eligibility connection is a sandbox: results are test data until a clearinghouse is contracted for your account, and the assistant never promises coverage beyond what the 271 response says.
What about results calls?
Clinic Answering Service confirms identity, checks whether results are released in the EHR and, if the provider has approved release, tells the patient to view them in the portal. Anything requiring interpretation becomes a provider callback task.
Other specialties
Never send a patient to voicemail again.
Ask for a demo and a person replies within one US business day. BAA signed before the first patient call. No long-term contract.