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FrontDesk AI | Primary Care
Primary care is the front door of the healthcare system. The sheer volume and diversity of inbound calls is unmatched: same-day sick visits, chronic disease management, lab results, referrals, prescriptions, forms, and insurance questions — all in the same queue, all day. AI receptionists are changing that by absorbing high-volume routine interactions.
A typical 3-physician primary care practice generates 120–180 calls daily. These calls land on 3–5 front desk staff who are simultaneously checking in patients, handling check-outs, processing referrals, managing faxes, and fielding walk-in questions.
The math simply does not work. Every call that goes unanswered is a potential missed appointment, a delayed refill, a frustrated patient, or a new patient who books elsewhere. The front desk becomes the bottleneck for the entire practice — not because the staff aren't working hard enough, but because the volume exceeds what any human team can consistently handle.
The primary care staffing math doesn't work without AI.
Not all calls require a human. Here's the breakdown of primary care call volume by type.
| Call Type | % of Volume |
|---|---|
| Appointment scheduling (new/existing) | 28% |
| Appointment rescheduling/cancellation | 12% |
| Prescription refill requests (routing) | 10% |
| General FAQs | 6% |
| Appointment confirmation/reminder response | 4% |
| Pre-visit preparation questions | 2% |
| Subtotal AI-resolvable | 62% |
| Lab results, clinical questions, referral status | 38% |
By handling 62% of call volume automatically, AI effectively doubles your front desk team's capacity for the 38% that genuinely requires human attention.
Every primary care practice knows the 8am phone rush. Lines light up the moment the office opens as patients call for same-day sick visits. Hold times spike, staff are overwhelmed before the first patient is even checked in, and patients who can't get through walk into urgent care instead.
The consequences are significant: long hold times push patients to competing practices and urgent care centers, inconsistent triage means some patients get slots they don't need while others who need same-day visits can't get through, and staff stress peaks at the worst possible time — the start of the day.
AI handles the same-day scheduling crush with configurable triage criteria. It answers every call instantly — no hold time, no busy signals — asks the right screening questions, and books same-day appointments against your live schedule based on the rules you define. Patients who need clinical triage are routed to nursing staff with complete information already captured.
The current refill process in most primary care practices is a multi-step chain of inefficiency: the patient calls, waits on hold, reaches the front desk, provides partial information, gets transferred or put on a callback list, and eventually a message reaches the clinical team — often with incomplete details that require yet another callback.
AI compresses this entire process. On the first call, the AI captures the patient's complete information: name, date of birth, medication name, dosage, pharmacy preference, and whether this is a routine refill or a new concern. This structured request is routed directly to the clinical team's queue — no front desk intermediary, no phone tag, no missing details.
The result is faster turnaround for patients, fewer interruptions for clinical staff, and zero front desk time consumed on what is fundamentally a routing task.
Lab result inquiries are one of the highest-volume call types in primary care, and they follow a predictable pattern: the patient calls to ask if their results are in, waits on hold, and the front desk checks the chart or transfers to a nurse.
AI handles the intake portion of this workflow. It confirms the patient's identity, acknowledges that lab results are managed by the clinical team, captures the patient's preferred callback number and availability, and routes a structured message to the appropriate staff member for follow-up.
What AI does not do is communicate lab results. This is a clinical function that requires provider oversight, contextual interpretation, and often a conversation about next steps. The AI's role is to eliminate the front desk bottleneck in the process — not to replace the clinical interaction.
Primary care after-hours calls fall into two distinct tiers that require different handling.
Patients often want to see their specific provider. The AI recognizes established patients, checks their provider's availability first, and offers alternatives only when necessary — maintaining continuity of care while maximizing schedule utilization.
For new patients, the AI follows your practice's distribution rules — whether that's round-robin, panel size balancing, provider specialty matching, or any custom logic you define. New patients get booked immediately instead of waiting for a callback.
For practices operating across multiple locations, the AI manages scheduling across all sites. It can prioritize the patient's preferred location, offer the nearest available appointment across locations, or route based on service availability — all in a single call.
FrontDesk AI reduced call volume to our front desk staff, and help with staff do more in-person patient care.
I was able to make a new appointment after dinner with the AI agent over the phone, very convenient!
FrontDesk AI answers every call, handles 60%+ of your volume automatically, and frees your team to focus on the patients who need them most.
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