AI receptionist for medical and health practices
The room is occupied for the next forty minutes. So is the desk.
GP clinics, physiotherapy, dietitians and optometrists all run the same phone: a room that cannot be interrupted and a line that rings anyway. Belline takes appointment and insurance enquiries from your own notes, answers nothing clinical, and hands anything urgent to a person immediately.
Answers in English.
By city
Where we have written it up.
Each page is about a practice's phone in that city — the week it keeps, the languages on the line and the calls it loses.
Dubai
Since January 2022 the federal public sector has worked Monday to Friday, with the weekend on Saturday and Sunday and a shortened Friday, and most of Dubai's private sector followed it.
Abu Dhabi
Monday to Friday, weekend on Saturday and Sunday, with a short Friday across the public sector.
Sharjah
Sharjah is the outlier.
Why the calls go missing
Nobody is ignoring the phone.
Medical and health practices lose calls for reasons that have nothing to do with caring about them.
The person on the desk is the person in the room
In a small practice the physiotherapist who is forty minutes into a session, the optometrist behind the phoropter and the dietitian with a patient in front of her are also the people who would answer the phone. Nobody is ignoring it. There is a patient in the room and the patient in the room comes first.
Insurance is the first question and the wrong one to improvise
Do you take mine, is there a co-payment, do I need a referral, will you bill direct. Those answers exist in writing at every practice and they change, and a well-meaning yes on the phone that the desk contradicts later is the complaint that follows a patient out of the door.
A course of sessions is a diary problem, not an appointment
Physiotherapy and rehabilitation are booked as a run of visits at the same hour each week, and a single cancellation in the middle of one leaves a gap nobody can fill while every clinician is treating. The call that would have filled it arrives during a session.
Occasionally the caller should not be booking anything
Somebody unwell enough that an appointment on Thursday is the wrong answer rings the practice they know rather than anyone else. Recognising that the call has to leave the booking line immediately, and go to a person, is the most important thing this phone does.
Where it stops
Knowing what not to say is the hard part.
Belline gives no medical information of any kind. It does not discuss a symptom, a result, a medication or a condition, it does not say whether somebody should be seen or how soon, and it does not triage or judge how urgent a call is — that is a clinician's decision and Belline is reception. Please do not use it for medical details. Anything urgent, and anything a caller calls an emergency, goes to a person immediately: it follows the routing you set, puts the call through to the number you gave it or reads out your own emergency instruction, and takes no appointment request at all.
How it works
Set up from what you already have.
Most of the work is checking what Belline found. You decide when customers reach it.
-
Give Belline what you already have
Your website, price list or brochure. It reads them and drafts your services, prices, hours and the questions a practice gets asked every day.
-
Check what it found
Fix anything wrong, fill the gaps, and set the rules it must hold. Nothing goes live until you have read it.
-
Switch it on
Ring it yourself first. Then forward your line and paste one line of HTML into your website. Customers only reach Belline once you do.
Questions
What operators ask us.
Will it answer a question about symptoms?
No. It says it is not able to help with that, takes the patient's number but not the symptoms, and marks it for your clinical team. It does not ask follow-up questions about how they feel, because that would be the beginning of an assessment.
What happens if somebody rings who needs help now?
It leaves the booking conversation immediately. Belline follows the routing you set — the number to put the caller through to, or the emergency instruction you wrote for your country — and takes no appointment. It does not work out how serious the call is first.
Can it tell a patient whether their insurance is accepted?
It reads back the list you have given it and nothing else. Whether a particular policy covers a particular visit, what the excess is, whether a pre-approval is needed — those are taken as a message with the patient's number, because a wrong yes on that question costs somebody money.
Does it handle a course of physiotherapy sessions?
It takes the request for the next one, or the change to one, with the patient's name and what they believe is booked. The diary is rearranged by somebody who can see it, which is why nothing is confirmed on the call.
Will it read out a test result?
Never, in any form, even one a patient says they are expecting. It takes the request and passes it to your team, who know what has been released and who is allowed to hear it.
Is this different from your clinics page?
Yes. The clinics pages are written for aesthetic and cosmetic work, where the conversation is about a treatment somebody has chosen, and there is a separate set for dental practices. This one is the everyday appointment: a GP follow-up, a physiotherapy session, an eye test, a dietitian.
Is it safe for patient information?
Treat it as reception and nothing more. It should take a name, a number and when somebody would like to come, and not medical details. Every conversation arrives as a summary and a full transcript so you can read what was said, and Belline does not record the audio of the calls it answers.
Will patients be told it is an AI?
If they ask, yes, plainly. It does not present itself as a nurse, a clinician or a member of your reception team.
