The phone rings at 8:40. Reception is on the other line, and there are three people at the desk.
Your agent answers, takes the appointment request, and writes it down. It asks nothing clinical — not why they are calling, not what hurts, not how urgent it is. That is your practice’s judgement, and it stays yours.
It takes a request for an appointment. That is the whole job.
On every call it will:
- take the caller's name and a number to ring them back on, and read the number back
- take the day or time that suits them
- ask whether they are a new or existing patient
- say plainly that the practice will confirm, and that the request is not a booking
- write the request down and send it to your practice the moment the call ends
Then it stops. It does not decide who gets seen first, and it does not tell anyone they are fine to wait.
The list it cannot be talked into.
The agent does not, and cannot be configured to:
- ask why the appointment is needed
- give clinical advice, triage, ask about symptoms, or discuss medication or results
- say how urgent something is, or how soon anyone should be seen
- confirm or make a booking
- take payment, card or Medicare details
- hold itself out as a person, or as a nurse, doctor or other practitioner
This is not a setting. You cannot switch any of it off, and we will not configure a line that needs it off.
Every other answering service sells you flexibility here. We are telling you the opposite: the reason this is safe to put in front of your patients is that it is not adjustable.
If someone is in danger, it does not take a message.
- Where a caller describes danger to a person, the agent tells them to hang up and ring 000, and marks the call so your practice sees it first.
- It is not an emergency line and must not be described to patients as one. It does not dispatch, attend, or judge how urgent anything is.
- Your practice keeps at least one way for a patient to reach a person. We are never your only means of contact.
People tell you things you did not ask for.
Callers explain themselves without being asked. When that happens the agent does not repeat it back, and the written request records only that the caller mentioned a health matter and the practice should ask when it calls back — not what was said. The recording of the call still contains whatever they said, and is held and deleted under the periods below.
Two things it says whether or not anyone asks.
- Every call opens by saying it is recorded.
- Asked whether it is a person, it says it is not.
Neither is configurable.
Where your patients' calls are processed, in plain words.
While a call is happening, its audio and text are sent to specialist telephony, speech-to-text, speech and language providers to be processed outside Australia, including in the United States. Our database and call server are in Sydney. Storage is onshore; processing is not.
We publish a register naming every provider in the call path, where it processes, what it keeps, and whether it trains on customer content. Ask us for it and we will send it. Where a provider has not answered us, the register says so rather than leaving a blank.
We do not claim that an Australian region puts data beyond the reach of foreign law, and no practice should tell its patients that we have said so.
What your practice has to do, said here rather than buried
Your practice tells its own patients that calls to the connected line are answered by an automated service, recorded, and processed in part overseas. We will give you the wording. The obligation to give the notice stays yours.
How long we hold it.
| Call recordings and transcripts | 90 days |
|---|---|
| The written appointment request | kept as a business record — not deleted by age; deleted when you ask |
| Your practice’s own record of the appointment | yours, kept by you |
Whatever period is written here is the period the deletion actually runs on. A policy that says one number over a job that deletes at another is worse than saying the larger number.
What we are not.
This does not make us a health service provider, a party to anyone’s care, or a keeper of your clinical records. We answer a telephone and write down a request.
A practice line is set up with us, not bought from a page.
There is a short written addendum for practices — what the agent does, what it cannot be configured to do, where calls are processed, and what each side is responsible for. It is two pages and it is meant to be read, not initialled.
Or ring the line and put it through its paces — (02) 8000 1299