Salient

Worked example · Dental and veterinary groups

How we would answer every call to a four-location dental group.

This is not a client case study. We have not built this for a practice group yet, and pretending otherwise would be the first thing you should not trust us on. It is the architecture we would propose on day one, with the numbers we would hold ourselves to. The same shape applies to a veterinary group.

The example group: four locations, ten providers, a practice management system, and a front desk at each site that is on the phone when it is not at the counter.

What the phone costs

Dental Economics and practice-phone studies put unanswered calls at around a third, and no-shows at tens of thousands of dollars a year per practice. Run that through the example group:

Inbound calls per month, four locations3,200About 800 per site.
Unanswered at 35%1,120Voicemail or rang out.
Of which new-patient related, at 25%280A conservative share; some studies put it far higher.
Of those who never call back, at 60%168Lost new patients a month, before any no-show cost.

Where the front desk week goes

Front desk phone handling60Across four locations. Published studies put the share of calls that ring out or hit voicemail at about a third, and over half at busy times.
Insurance and eligibility checks15Portal lookups, hold music, the same form again.
Recall and recare outreach12Lists pulled from the practice system, calls made when there is a gap, which is rarely.
Reminders and confirmations10Manual texts and calls the day before. Missed when the desk is busy, which is when it matters.
Reviews and post-visit follow-up3Asked when someone remembers.
Total, across four desks100hours per week on the phone and the admin around it

What is left afterwards

Front desk phone handling25Every call answered. Booking, rescheduling, directions, hours and insurance questions handled from the practice system. Anything clinical, distressed or unusual goes to the desk with the transcript.
Insurance and eligibility checks5Checked automatically the day before, exceptions surfaced to a person.
Recall and recare outreach2Overdue patients contacted on schedule, in the practice's words, and booked into real slots.
Reminders and confirmations1Sequenced by channel. A 1.6 million appointment study found automated reminders cut no-shows by about 23%.
Reviews and post-visit follow-up0.5Sent after every visit that went well.
Total after33.566 hours a week returned to four front desks, and no call rings out

What stays human is what should: the patient in pain on the line, the owner whose dog is not eating, the billing conversation, and every clinical question.

The architecture

01

Answer

A voice and text agent that picks up every call at every location, knows hours, providers, services and insurance accepted, and reads the schedule live. It never gives clinical advice. That is a rule in the system, not a hope.

02

Book and reschedule

Slots offered from the real schedule, by provider and location, confirmed by text, written to the practice management system you already run.

03

Remind and recall

Reminder sequences by channel, and recall lists worked automatically, with every message in the practice's own words and every reply routed back.

04

Eligibility

Insurance checks run ahead of the visit where a portal or clearinghouse allows it. Exceptions land on a person's list, not in the patient's face at the desk.

05

Human handover

Pain, bleeding, an anxious pet owner, a complaint, anything the agent is not sure about: straight to the front desk with the transcript attached. Designed path, not failure state.

06

Compliance by design

Health data stays inside your systems and your region. Access is logged. Retention follows your policy. We build for HIPAA in the US and UK GDPR in the UK, and we say in writing what the system stores.

How we would prove it works

Before it takes a live call, we replay 500 of your recorded calls through the agent, with consent and with health details redacted, and compare its intent, its booking and its handover decisions to what your best front desk did. Does it book what they booked, and hand over everything they would have handed over?

Reminders are tested the honest way: half the schedule on the new sequence, half on the old, for a month, and the no-show rates side by side. If the number does not move, we say so.

What it costs, and what it returns

Build, 6 to 8 weeks, fixed scope$24kVoice and text agent, booking, reminders and recall, eligibility checks, handover rules, compliance review, one practice system integration.
Operate, from month two$4.5kPer month. Monitoring, call review sampling, model cost control, small changes.
Hours returned66Per week, across four locations.
Break-even5Recovered no-shows or answered new-patient calls per week, at $200 each, group-wide.

Every number on this page is an assumption until we look at your call logs and your schedule. The first thing we would do is replace them with yours, in a paid one-week audit, and tell you honestly if the case does not hold.

If your front desk let a call ring out this week, the call is worth 30 minutes.

Bring last month's call report from your phone system. If there is no real project here, we will say so on the call rather than in an invoice.

Book a strategy call
The one-week audit