When reception is treating, at lunch or gone home, calls roll to voicemail, and some of those callers simply ring the next clinic. BookedSolid picks up instantly, in a natural voice, 24 hours a day, and does more than take a message: it books, moves or cancels the appointment right in your practice management system.
appointment requests processed automatically every month across HSU’s two clinics
22 locations’
out-of-hours calls covered around the clock for Health First Group
What an AI answering service does on a real call
A patient rings your usual number. BookedSolid answers straight away with your clinic’s greeting, no queue and no hold music, and works out what the caller needs in ordinary conversation, not a menu of options. Then it completes the job on the call:
Finds the caller in your PMS and books, reschedules or cancels against real diary availability (the booking side in full: AI appointment booking)
Answers the questions that fill a receptionist’s day: opening hours, prices, directions, parking, what to bring
Takes a clear message when the call genuinely needs a human, and transfers it live when your rules say so
Writes the call and its outcome to the patient record in your PMS, so the morning starts with a diary that is already up to date rather than a voicemail box to work through
This is the difference between AI call answering and traditional phone answering: nothing waits for a callback. The mechanics are covered in our guide to how AI phone answering helps clinics.
Run it your way: front line, overflow or out of hours
An AI phone answering system should fit how your clinic already works, not the other way round. BookedSolid runs in whichever mode suits, and you can change mode at any time.
01
Every call, end to end
BookedSolid is the front line: it answers everything, handles what it can and passes the rest to your team with context. Clinics without dedicated reception cover, or with practitioners answering between patients, get their treatment time back.
02
Reception first, AI as overflow
Your team answers when they can; BookedSolid picks up after three rings, so the caller never knows the difference between a quiet morning and a slammed one. This is how Physica Physiotherapy runs more than 300 calls a day: reception still answers first, no call is lost, and no job is replaced.
03
Out-of-hours and after-hours call answering
Evenings, weekends and bank holidays are when patients have time to ring, and when most clinics send them to voicemail. With out-of-hours call answering the diary keeps filling while the clinic is dark: bookings made, cancellations taken and urgent messages flagged for the morning. Health First Group covers all out-of-hours calls across 22 locations this way. What those missed evening calls cost a clinic is set out in missed calls and after-hours enquiries.
You decide which calls the AI handles
Automated call handling only earns trust if the boundaries are yours. You set transfer rules by topic, by urgency and by caller request, and BookedSolid follows them on every call.
→A caller can ask for a person at any point and be transferred, or leave a message if nobody is free
→Sensitive or urgent calls route straight to your team under rules you define; the AI never decides for itself what counts as urgent
→Rules go down to the detail: some clinics, for example, never let a same-day cancellation complete without a human involved
→Every transfer arrives with context, so the patient does not repeat themselves
Try a live demo
The quickest way to judge an AI call answering service is to call it. Ask to book a physiotherapy appointment, move it, then cancel it: the same conversation your patients would have at 8pm on a Sunday.
Setting up call answering
01
Connect your practice management system.
Live read and write, pre-configured for physiotherapy, chiropractic, podiatry, osteopathy, audiology and psychology.
02
Set your greeting and your rules.
What the AI handles, what transfers, and which mode it runs in: front line, three-ring overflow or out of hours only.
03
Divert your number.
Your published number stays the same; calls forward to BookedSolid on the schedule you choose, and you can change or remove the divert at any time.
Most clinics are live in under 48 hours, on a 7-day free trial, with no setup fees.
Works with your practice management system
Answering the phone is only useful if the result lands in your system. BookedSolid reads and writes your diary live, so a booking made on a call at 11pm is in the patient record at 11pm, not typed in the next morning.
BookedSolid is built in-house for healthcare, on a data-minimisation model: on any call it accesses only the patient details needed to handle that call, every interaction is encrypted in transit and at rest, and UK and EU clinic data stays within the UK and EU. Compliance covers UK GDPR, EU GDPR, the Australian Privacy Principles and the New Zealand Privacy Act, plus the NHS Data Security and Protection Toolkit and ISO 27001 certification.
More than 300 calls a day, answered reception-first with the AI picking up after three rings. Average call down to 1 minute 13 seconds from 4 to 5 minutes, and the hour spent actioning morning voicemail gone.
Health Sciences University, Bournemouth and London.
Around 70% of 2,000 monthly calls across the university’s two clinics were going unanswered. Now around 60% of calls are handled with no human intervention. “BookedSolid has significantly improved our clinical service by ensuring that all patient calls are answered.” Matthew Southam, Deputy Director of Clinical & Rehabilitation Services.
Most answering services charge per call or per minute, which makes a busy week an expensive one. BookedSolid is one fixed monthly price based on practitioner count, with unlimited calls: the Monday 8am rush costs the same as a quiet Wednesday, and the price does not climb as your call volume grows.
AI call answering is software that answers your clinic's phone in a natural voice, understands what the caller needs and completes the task on the call: booking, changing or cancelling appointments, answering common questions and taking messages. The same product is variously called an AI answering service, an AI phone answering system or automated call handling. Our guide to the AI phone answering service category covers it in full.
A traditional medical answering service is a call centre: people answering on your behalf, charged per call or per minute, usually taking messages for your team to action later. AI call answering is software that answers instantly at any hour, completes the booking itself in your PMS rather than passing a note, and costs the same however many calls come in.
No. An IVR asks callers to press buttons and routes them down a tree; nothing is resolved until a person picks up. BookedSolid holds an ordinary conversation and finishes the job on the call, including the booking. The comparison in full: IVR vs AI voice agents.
Book, reschedule and cancel appointments against live diary availability, answer everyday questions such as opening hours, prices and directions, add patients to a waiting list, take messages, and transfer to your team under your rules. Everything it does is logged against the patient record in your PMS.
Yes. Each call gets its own line, answered in parallel, so a busy Monday morning never becomes a queue or an engaged tone.
Yes. Patients keep ringing the number they know; your calls divert to BookedSolid on the schedule you choose: every call, after three rings, or out of hours only. You can change or remove the divert at any time.
Yes. Plenty of clinics start exactly there: reception answers as normal and BookedSolid takes the evenings, weekends and the calls that would otherwise ring out. You can widen its role later, or not.
They reach a human, by your rules. You define which topics transfer immediately, callers can ask for a person at any point, and the AI never makes clinical judgements: an urgent call is routed, not handled.
BookedSolid does not pretend to be a person, and it does not need to: what patients notice is the call being answered instantly at 8pm and the appointment being booked before they hang up. Many, particularly patients who would rather ring than use an online booking page, prefer it to voicemail or a callback list.
It says so, takes a clear message or transfers the call, and logs the whole interaction in your PMS so your team can follow up first thing. No caller is left in a dead end, and nothing disappears into a voicemail box.
Yes, and arguably best of all: when you are the clinician, every ring during treatment is an interruption or a lost booking. BookedSolid answers while you treat, and the diary fills without you touching the phone. See answering services for solo practitioners. It scales from there to multi-site groups: one customer runs it across 22 locations.
Answer every call from this week
Put BookedSolid on your phones: live in under 48 hours, no setup fees, no lock-in.