Blog · Private GP

AI receptionist, answering service, or another receptionist: what should a private GP practice do?

Four options, and they fail in different places. The question is not human or AI. It is who can actually finish the job on the call.

The direct answer

There are really only four options, and they fail in different places.

• Do nothing. The phone rings out while your one person on the desk is with a patient. In private practice the caller does not wait, they ring the next clinic.
• Hire another receptionist. This works, and it is the honest benchmark. It is also the most expensive option, it takes months to recruit and train, and they still go home at half five.
• Use an answering service. Someone picks up. But they are not in your diary and they do not know your fees or your plans, so the call tends to end as a message for you to deal with tomorrow.
• Use an AI admin agent. It answers instantly, at any hour, from your own fees and plans, and it books straight into your diary. It does administration only, and anything clinical goes to a person.

The real question is not "human or AI". It is who can actually finish the job on the call.

Compared honestly

Read that table honestly and two things jump out.

A receptionist is the only option that can handle a clinical question, because they are a person and they can put a clinician on. That is a genuine advantage and we are not going to pretend otherwise. It is also why an agent is built to hand those calls straight over rather than attempt them.

An answering service picks up but rarely finishes. That is the trap. It looks like the problem is solved, because the phone stopped ringing out. But a message saying that someone rang about an appointment is not a booking. Somebody still has to ring them back tomorrow, by which time they may have booked elsewhere.

The cost comparison, done properly

The comparison every practice manager runs is against another receptionist, so run it properly.

A receptionist is a real salary plus employer's National Insurance plus pension, and that is before recruitment, training, holiday cover and sickness cover. Official figures put the median full-time pay for a receptionist at £24,678 a year (ONS, 2025), and that is the salary alone, before any of the rest.

And here is the part the spreadsheet misses: a receptionist does not answer the phone at nine on a Sunday evening. That is not a criticism of receptionists. It is the job. But plenty of private patients look and enquire outside your opening hours, because they are working during them.

An agent is a monthly cost with no recruitment, no notice period and no rota. Plans start from £500 a month, and the first month is free.

That does not make the receptionist the wrong answer. It makes the two of them a different shape. The agent is not there to replace the person on your desk. It is there so the person on your desk is free for the patient standing in front of them.

What an answering service cannot do

This is the comparison most private clinics actually get wrong, because an answering service feels like the safe middle ground.

An answering service is outside your practice. It does not know:

• what a consultation costs at your clinic
• what the Family plan includes and what it excludes
• whether you take AXA
• what is free in the diary on Thursday
• whether that patient's health check is overdue

So it takes a message. Every message is a callback your team owes someone. You have not removed the work, you have deferred it, and you have added a delay in front of a patient who is comparing you with the clinic down the road.

Where the AI agent is genuinely weaker

Honesty is the point of this page, so:

• It does not do medicine. Any symptom, any urgency, any result, and it stops and hands to a person. If what you actually need is clinical triage on the phone, you need a clinician, not an agent.
• It is only as good as your own documents. If your fee list is three years out of date, it will confidently quote you a three-year-old fee. Feeding it takes some work up front.
• It is not a person. For a patient who wants to be talked round, or who is upset, a human being is better and the agent should be handing that call over.

Frequently asked

Will patients hate talking to it?

The usual objection is that private patients pay a premium and will not talk to a robot. It is a fair worry. But what a patient wants first is to be answered. Today the premium experience is often a phone ringing out at half five. It says what it is, it is quick, and it puts a person on when a person is needed.

Can we use it only out of hours?

Yes. Many practices start with the evenings and weekends, or with overflow when the desk is busy, and widen it later.

Does it replace our receptionist?

No, and it should not. It takes the repetitive admin calls so your team can look after the person in front of them.

How long does setup take?

Most practices are live in two to six weeks.

What will our reception team make of it?

This is the question worth asking early, because if your team does not want it, it will not work. It is built to take the repetitive calls away from them, not the job: the fee question asked for the tenth time that day, the confirmation, the chase. They can pick up any conversation at any point, they see the note of what was said, and it does not hand them a pile of new admin. It should mean fewer interruptions while they are with a patient, not more.

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