Health First Group: Why They Chose BookedSolid to Handle Calls

About Health First Group

Founded by Phil Smith and Shayne Podbury in 2016, Health First Group is one of Australia's larger national providers of comprehensive allied health services, with 22 different clinical locations spanning the country. Across these locations, Health First Group takes around 2000 calls per week, requiring significant administration handling.

The Problem

When Phil came to us back in 2025, he identified that a significant portion of the 2000 weekly calls were outside of clinical hours and therefore were often missed, or chased up unsuccessfully the next morning, resulting in both financial and operational leakage.

For an efficient and rapidly growing organisation like Health First Group, this presented a gap that ultimately needed filling.

Solution

Phil knew the solution had to be something which could be implemented and maintained at scale. This meant supporting the organisation's growth by avoiding large incremental costs at every step along the way. Consequently, human resources weren't the right option, but AI was.

BookedSolid stood out due to it being the first AI platform of its kind to integrate with Nookal. But beyond that, being able to handle all communications in one place was key, such as appointment reminder flows and even website chat:

• Appointment Reminders can be configured through the outbound module, and support two-way communication, allowing patients to respond and easily reschedule in natural language.
• Website Widget can be added to your website through a simple code block, enabling website viewers to instantly book appointments without even needing to locate the online booking portal.

Implementation

Implementation was key to ensure that BookedSolid would fit into the Health First Group technology stack. Most importantly, this required seamless integration with the existing PBX phone system used across the network of clinics.

This was achieved relatively quickly given the scale of the organisation. Custom instructions were then set up to ensure the AI would follow the specific rules required, for example, ensuring that certain NDIS appointment types were left in the diary when cancelled, so that clinicians and admin staff could follow up when needed.

Results and Impact

BookedSolid now handles all out of hours calls for Health First Group, keeping patients connected in all 22 locations across Australia. As well as this, it allows Phil's evergrowing team to focus on what truly matters – delivering care to patients.

For more information on how AI technology can answer your organisation's calls, check out our blog: How AI Receptionists Work.