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VOCPhone for Healthcare
Your receptionist is on the phone. There are four patients at the desk.
A practice reception has two jobs happening in the same second: the person standing in front of them and the phone that will not stop. Whichever wins, somebody has a worse experience of your practice than they should.
Handles bookings and cancellations, never clinical advice
Keep every number you already advertise
We own and run the network, so uptime is ours to fix
Australian owned, hosted and supported, 15+ years in market
Booked · SMS confirmed
Mon 8:59am
Your reception08:59
Patient at the desk, mid bookingCannot be rushed, should not be rushed.in person
Fourth caller in the queueWants an appointment this week.12s28s44s61slost
Patient cancelling tomorrowWill just not show if nobody answers.06s14s22s31slost
One patient booked. One lost, one no show created.
Said out loud at every practice
You have said at least four of these this month
These are patient access problems that happen to arrive down a phone line.
01
Reception cannot serve two patients at once
The person at the desk deserves attention and the caller deserves an answer. One receptionist, two obligations, and somebody always loses.
The agent takes the routine calls so the desk looks after who is in front of it.
02
The first hour of Monday is unanswerable
Everybody rings when the doors open. Your queue is longest exactly when your team is busiest checking people in.
Capacity that scales with the queue instead of with your roster.
03
Most calls are the same five requests
Book, reschedule, cancel, opening hours, and where do I park. None need clinical judgement.
Handled instantly, without a person, from rules you set.
04
Cancellations that cannot get through become no shows
A patient who rings twice and gives up does not turn up, and the slot dies with nobody on your waitlist called.
Cancellations always get through, and the waitlist can be called automatically.
05
Results and script calls jam the line
Callers with clinical questions queue in front of people simply trying to book, and both wait.
Separate queues, so clinical calls reach a nurse and bookings never block them.
06
Nobody knows how many patients gave up
You can count the appointments you had. You cannot count the ones that rang out, which is the number that matters.
Every call logged, including the abandoned ones, so access becomes measurable.
Watch one get saved
7:40pm. Reception has gone home. The patient still gets booked.
This is the call that used to reach an answering machine. Here it is answered by a VOCPhone AI phone agent, from what you told it about your practice.
It sounds like it is from here. Genuine Australian accents, warm and unhurried, not a call centre.
It knows your practice, not medicine. Hours, locations, parking, practitioners, appointment types and fees. It does not give clinical advice, by design.
It books, reschedules and cancels. Real slots, so the patient gets an appointment rather than a promise.
It escalates anything clinical. Symptoms, results and anything that sounds unwell go to a person, or to emergency advice, immediately.
VPVOCPhone AI Agent Inbound · 00:46LIVE
AgentGood evening, you have called Ridgeway Medical. Reception has closed, but I can help with appointments. What did you need?
PatientI need to see a doctor this week. Nothing urgent, a follow up about my blood pressure.
AgentI can book that. Have you seen one of our doctors before, and do you have a preference?
PatientYes, Doctor Nguyen usually.
AgentDoctor Nguyen has Thursday at 2:20pm or Friday at 9:40am. Which suits?
PatientThursday, thanks. It is Margaret Doyle.
AgentBooked, Margaret, Thursday at 2:20pm with Doctor Nguyen. I have texted the confirmation and address. If you feel unwell before then, please call back or contact your nearest emergency department.
What happened after reception went home
- Appointment booked into a real slot with the patient's usual doctor
- Existing patient identified, so no duplicate record was created
- Confirmation SMS sent from the practice number
- Booking and transcript in your system for the morning
The number nobody tracks
An empty appointment slot is a call nobody could reach
Practices measure occupancy and no shows carefully. Almost nobody measures the calls that never got answered, which are the direct cause of both.
1Patients ring around. Somebody who needs to be seen this week rings the next practice on the map rather than waiting on hold.
2Unanswered cancellations become no shows. A patient who cannot get through to cancel simply does not turn up, and you lose the slot with no chance to refill.
3The 9am wall is predictable and unmanaged. Every practice knows the first hour is unanswerable. Almost nobody has capacity that scales to it.
Empty slots, per weekIllustrative. Put your own numbers in.
Calls to reception420
Answered by reception290
Abandoned or rang out130
Share that were a booking or cancellationx 0.55
Genuine booking calls lost per week72
Average value per appointment$85
Lost per week$6,120
Lost per year$318,240
Change the two highlighted lines to your own figures. The arithmetic is the point, not our example. The no shows caused by unreachable cancellations are on top of this.
One number, several queues
A booking should never queue behind a clinical question
Publish one number. Behind it, bookings are handled without a person, clinical calls reach a nurse, and results and referrals get their own queue.
Live call being routedOverflow and after hours to the AI agent
Demand peaks
Your phone has a winter problem and a Monday problem
Practice call volume is not flat. It spikes every Monday morning and climbs through the whole winter respiratory season, which is exactly when your team has least capacity.
An AI agent does not need a roster. It absorbs the Monday wall and the winter season, handles bookings and cancellations without a person, and costs the same in February as in July.
Inbound calls across a practice yearshape, not scale
What reception can realistically answer Overflow the AI agent picks up
Illustrative shape based on a typical Australian general practice year. Specialist practices differ.
It plugs into what you already run
Your phone should know which patient is calling
VOCPhone connects to more than a thousand apps and offers open APIs, so a call arrives with a patient attached to it rather than just a number.
SalesforceHubSpotZohoXeroMondayGoogle WorkspaceMicrosoft 365SlackOpen APIs for the rest
Screen pops before you say hello
The caller's name, their history and their open appointment appear as it rings, so you open with their name instead of asking who is calling.
Click to call from the record
Ring a patient straight from your practice management system without typing a number, and every call logs itself against the right file.
Notes that write themselves
Recording, transcript, AI summary and next action land in your CRM. Untimed HD video for up to 30 people is included when a call needs faces.
Why VOCPhone
One provider, one network, one bill
Most providers sell you a phone system that runs on infrastructure they rent. We built ours, which changes what we can promise.
We own the network
Not a reseller reselling somebody else's switch. VOCPhone owns and operates its own Australian network, which is why we can guarantee 99.99% uptime and fix things ourselves.
AI phone agents that sound Australian
Inbound and outbound agents trained on your business. They answer, qualify, book and escalate, in a genuine Australian accent, at any hour.
Desk, desktop and pocket
Apps for Windows, Mac, iOS and Android, plus certified desk and cordless handsets. Untimed HD video for up to 30 people comes with it.
Australian, and answerable
Australian owned, Australian hosted, 24/7 human support, 15+ years in this market, and a price-match guarantee if you find better.
Straight answers
The questions practices ask us first
Will the AI give clinical advice?
No, and we configure it specifically not to. It handles access: bookings, reschedules, cancellations, hours, locations, practitioners, fees and preparation instructions. It does not triage symptoms and it does not interpret results.
Anything that sounds clinical or urgent goes straight to a person, and the agent is scripted to direct genuine emergencies to call triple zero or attend an emergency department. You define those boundaries and they do not drift.
Is this appropriate for patient privacy?
It is built for it. VOCPhone owns and runs its own Australian network, so calls, recordings and transcripts stay onshore rather than being processed offshore by a third party.
You control what is recorded, how long it is retained and who can access it. We would encourage you to run the configuration past whoever handles your privacy obligations rather than accepting our defaults.
Can it book into our practice management system?
Where your system can be reached through an integration or an API, it can hold and confirm real appointments, which is what turns a call into an attendance.
Where a live connection is not available it captures the request precisely, offers the times reception has made available, and queues it for confirmation. Either way the patient gets an answer.
What happens when the AI cannot help?
It hands over, and you decide where. Symptoms, results, medication questions and anything clinical can go to a person, a queue, or a manager's mobile.
The caller does not repeat themselves either. Whoever picks up gets the context the agent already gathered. Outside hours it takes the details, texts a confirmation and queues the callback.
What difference does owning the network actually make?
Most providers resell somebody else's switch, which means when something breaks they raise a ticket with a wholesaler and wait, exactly like you would. VOCPhone built and runs its own Australian network, so we fix it ourselves.
It is also why we can put a number on uptime and offer a price match. There is no reseller margin stacked in the middle of your bill.
Do we have to change our phone number?
No. Number portability is standard, including 1300 and 1800, so the number on your practice website, your referral pads and your directory listings stays exactly as it is.
We port it across and plan the cutover around your hours, not ours.
What happens if the internet drops?
Calls keep flowing. The mobile app works over 4G and 5G, so your people answer on their handsets while a site connection is down, and flows can divert to mobiles automatically.
We also supply NBN, so the connection and the phone system can come from one provider on one bill. When it is all ours, there is nobody to point at.
Voice over Cloud
Look after the patient at the desk and the one on the phone
Book fifteen minutes. Show us how calls reach your practice today, and we will show you the version where reception stops having to choose.
1300 663 222 · vocphone.com · Australian owned and operated