# Clinic receptionist

> After-hours and overflow answering for a single clinic. The receptionist confirms callers, books and cancels appointments, takes messages, keeps a waitlist and transfers to staff, with every call transcribed into a practice CRM hosted in Canada.

AI PHONE RECEPTIONIST + PRACTICE CRM. Status: In private production for one family clinic in Nova Scotia; not yet offered to a second clinic.

The phone is answered when your staff cannot pick up: after hours, on the busiest mornings, and while everyone is with a patient.

An AI receptionist answers your clinic line, confirms who is calling, books and cancels in a practice CRM built for the clinic, and transfers to your staff the moment a call needs a person.

## Who it is for

Family practices and small clinics in Nova Scotia with one phone line and a front desk that cannot answer every call.

## What it does

- Opens every call by saying it is an AI assistant on a recorded line, and says so again if anyone asks whether they are talking to a person.
- Confirms who is calling with date of birth plus name or phone number before it opens any record. Repeated wrong answers route the call to staff.
- Books an appointment with a named doctor, in person or by phone, checking the schedule so nothing is double-booked.
- Finds the next available slot, with a preferred doctor if the caller has one, looking ahead up to sixty days.
- Reads back and cancels an existing appointment for a confirmed patient.
- Adds a patient to the waitlist with their preferred doctor, days and times of day.
- Takes a message with a callback number and files it in the right staff inbox: appointments, insurance, medical requests, other providers, or general.
- Transfers the call to your staff line when the caller asks for a person, or when the request is about records, results, prescriptions, billing, insurance or referrals.
- Answers plain questions about hours, address and which doctors work at the clinic without asking who is calling.
- Stops and listens when a caller talks over it, instead of finishing its sentence.
- Writes every call and its transcript into the practice CRM, where staff read what was said and see the outcome.
- Comes with a practice CRM for patients, appointments, doctor schedules, waitlist and staff messages, with admin, doctor and receptionist roles and a spreadsheet import for your patient list.

## Boundaries

### Handles

- Booking and cancelling appointments for confirmed patients.
- Next available slot, waitlist requests and messages for staff.
- Hours, address and which doctors work at the clinic.
- Calls after hours and calls your desk cannot pick up.

### Escalates to a person

- Anyone who asks for a person.
- Records, test results, prescriptions, referrals, billing and insurance.
- A caller who cannot be confirmed, or a booking that cannot be completed: a message goes to the staff inbox.
- A symptom or a health worry: handed to staff, never assessed.
- Any request outside the list above.

### Never does

- Gives medical advice.
- Handles an emergency: it tells the caller to hang up and call 911, and does nothing else with the call.
- Records a health-card number: there is no field for one, so it cannot.
- Records without saying so at the start of the call.
- Claims to be human.

## How it goes live

1. **Listen to your calls** — We sit with your front desk and write down how calls go today: the greeting, hours, doctors, what gets booked, what gets transferred, and what must never be said.
2. **Set up your clinic's own copy** — Your clinic gets its own deployment in Canada. We load doctors and schedules into the practice CRM, create staff accounts with two-factor sign-in, and connect the transfer number for your team.
3. **Test calls with you** — We phone it together and read every transcript. The greeting, the questions it asks and the wording of a handoff are adjusted until your team is satisfied.
4. **Go live on your number** — Your line forwards to the receptionist after hours or when the desk is busy. We review the first calls with you and keep adjusting the wording.

## Works with

Twilio phone line, OpenAI Realtime speech, The bundled practice CRM, Transfer to your staff phone

## In use

**A family clinic in Nova Scotia** — Runs today on a private deployment in AWS Canada (ca-central-1) with a phone number connected. Automated test calls (greeting, answer, interruption handling, patient lookup) passed on the live release. A fix for speakerphone echo is deployed; it has not yet been measured on real calls. No patient call statistics are published.

## Your data

**Where it runs.** Your clinic's copy runs on AWS in Canada (ca-central-1). Patient records, appointments, messages and call transcripts are stored there, encrypted at rest; the fields that identify a patient are encrypted a second time inside the database.

**Who can see what.** Staff sign in with a password and a second factor. Admin, doctor and receptionist roles limit what each person can open. An audit log that cannot be edited records who looked at or changed which record.

**Backups.** The database is backed up daily in ca-central-1 and copied to a second Canadian region (ca-west-1). Backups are held for 35 days and cannot be deleted early.

**What the receptionist collects.** What a booking or a message needs: name, phone number, date of birth to confirm identity, and the appointment details. There is no field for a health-card number, so it cannot record one. A symptom or a health worry is handed to staff, not assessed.

**Recording.** Every call opens by saying it is an AI assistant on a recorded line. Transcripts go into the clinic's records, where staff can read them. A written retention schedule says how long transcripts and messages are kept and when they are erased.

**What leaves Canada.** The live audio of a call passes through two vendors that process it in the United States: Twilio carries the phone leg and OpenAI turns speech into speech. Neither holds your patient database. We can show you exactly what each receives.

**The laws we design against.** Nova Scotia's Personal Health Information Act (PHIA) and Canada's PIPEDA. We make no claim of a badge or a stamp: neither law issues one. We say what we built, and we put it in writing.

**Documents on request.** A data-flow diagram, the retention schedule and the list of vendors that touch call audio. A written service-provider agreement for your clinic is part of going live.

## Questions

**Will patients know they are talking to an AI?**

Yes. The first sentence of every call says it is an AI assistant on a recorded line. If a caller asks whether they are speaking to a person, it answers plainly that it is not.

**Does it replace my receptionist?**

No. It answers after hours and when your desk cannot pick up, and it hands the call to your staff the moment someone asks for a person or raises anything it should not handle. Your receptionist keeps the desk, the judgement calls, and the messages it leaves in the inbox.

**What happens in an emergency?**

It does not handle emergencies. If a caller describes one, it says to hang up and call 911 right away, and it never assesses symptoms.

**Where does the data go?**

Patient records, appointments and transcripts stay in Canada, on your clinic's own deployment in AWS ca-central-1, with backups in a second Canadian region. The live audio of a call passes through Twilio and OpenAI, which process it in the United States. The full data statement is on this page, and the documents behind it are available on request.

**What does it not do?**

It does not send text or email confirmations, does not make outbound reminder calls, does not connect to an EMR or an outside calendar, and does not give medical advice. It speaks English. Each of these would be new work, scoped with you.

**How does it get my doctors' schedules?**

They live in the practice CRM that comes with it. Before go-live we load each doctor, their working days and appointment types; your staff maintain them afterwards in the same place they see bookings and messages. There is no connection to an outside scheduling system today.

**Can it speak French?**

Not today. The receptionist is set up and tested in English only. We would rather say so than list languages we have not tested with callers.

**Can I see what it said on a call?**

Yes. Every call is transcribed into the practice CRM with its outcome, so you can read what was asked, what was booked and where a handoff happened.