Outbound recall calls for medical practices
Quick summary
- Most outbound work in a practice is already on a list: reviews due, missed bloods, results you want to discuss.
- The assistant may say the practice needs to speak to you. It may not say what the bloods showed.
- A missed nurse bloods visit is recoverable the same week if someone rings the next morning.
- A reminder that a repeat can be requested does not issue the e-prescription.
- If the patient reports chest pain on an outbound call, the assistant stops and rings a phone.
- Set calling hours and give it a list a person has looked at, or Monday is spent apologising for a Saturday night ring about cholesterol.
TL;DR
Your outbound work is not finding new patients. It is the pile the desk never reaches: the diabetes review that slipped from March, the bloods patient who did not come on Tuesday, the file you marked please call — results, the repeat that runs out on Friday if nobody reminds them how to request it. An assistant that can ring out works those lists. It offers a real time when a time is the next step. It says the practice needs to speak to them when a result is the next step. It never reads the result, never issues a medicine, and never treats a symptom on the call as a booking preference.
Key takeaways
- Start with missed nurse visits and booked reviews that are due — types whose next step is a time, not a number.
- Results-ready calls may say only that the practice needs to speak to the patient, never what the file contains.
- Repeat-due reminders collect a request. They do not issue the e-prescription.
- If the patient mentions chest pain, trouble breathing or a very young child, stop the list work and ring the phone you named.
- Give the assistant lists a person has looked at, not a two-year export from the practice software.
- Set calling hours before the first name goes out. A results conversation does not belong on a Sunday evening.
After morning surgery the lists are still in the drawer
You are writing notes from the last morning patient. The receptionist is at the glass with a walk-in who needs a certificate for work. On the screen, or on a paper list beside the phone, the outbound work already has names. Maria did not come for bloods on Tuesday. Mr Kostas’s diabetes review was due in March. You marked three files this morning: please call the patient — results. Two people will finish the blood-pressure tablets on Friday.
The receptionist meant to start ringing at half past eleven. Then the inbound line filled with people asking whether Thursday’s bloods were back. Then a parent rang about a child. At two she leaves. You see patients after work. The list is still there.
That is not a shortage of patients. It is a shortage of minutes in which a person can start a call.
Those names are not one job. Some of them need a time on the nurse list. Some of them need a time on yours. Some of them need you to speak, because you have already looked at a result. If you put those on the same list with the same script, the assistant will read a number to someone you only meant to rebook, or offer a nurse time to someone you marked for a conversation. Each list needs a reason you chose, wording that stops short of advice, and a rule for when the call ends.
Start with the lists whose next step is a time
Missed nurse visits from this week. Bloods, dressings, injections — types with a length and an owner you already trust inbound. The assistant rings the next morning, names the missed visit without a lecture, checks the live list, offers two times that are actually free, books one, and sends the SMS itself.
Put overdue reviews on that list next, if the review is a standard length on a named list. Blood pressure with the nurse. Diabetes with the nurse or with you. Asthma. The call is an offer of that type. It is not a consultation about the last HbA1c.
A covering doctor on Friday changes what can be offered. The colleague may not do those reviews, may not see your patients by agreement, may not have a nurse list at all. That is a booking rule. If the assistant cannot see it, Friday afternoon is spent ringing people to move them. If the calendar cannot be reached, it takes a callback. It does not guess a Thursday.
Do not open with everyone you have not seen in two years. That export contains the dead, the moved, the angry, and the patients who asked not to be telephoned. A person looks at a list before a machine rings it. The first fortnight should be names someone in the building would have been willing to dial themselves.
August makes this worse, not simpler. You closed. The reviews that were due in August are now on top of September. Do not dump both months on the first Monday back. Batch them the way you would if you were dialling: a human-reviewed handful, then another.
Childhood immunisation lists are a special case. If you use them, the assistant offers the nurse type you named and does not discuss the schedule, the disease, or whether the child still needs it. Those questions are yours. A parent who raises a concern is a callback, not a debate.
Results-ready is a summons, not a sentence
You have looked at the file. You want to speak to the patient. Someone has to ring. The assistant may say: the practice needs to speak to you about a test, please can the doctor call you on this number, or please ring us back. It may offer a telephone-consult type if you asked for that type and if you already let the desk book it.
It may not say the test name if that name is itself something you do not want on a shared handset. It may not say normal, abnormal, slightly up, nothing to worry about, or that you just want a chat, in a tone that implies the opposite. It may not leave a message that contains a value.
Do not let the assistant read a result marked normal. “Normal” is your reading of a number next to this patient, not a stamp the number carries by itself. A patient who hears it from an automated voice has been given a clinical answer by something that cannot take the next question. The next question is always what the number means for the pain they still have, or for the tablet they are already taking, or for the child they brought in.
Colleagues will ask for a shortcut. Just tell the normals, we will call the rest. That shortcut is how an automated voice becomes the person who delivered the easy files, and leaves the hard files even later. If a result was safe to leave to a machine, it was safe not to mark for a call. If you marked it for a call, a person speaks.
Urgent marks do not go in the ordinary retry loop. If you wanted the patient today, that name still belongs to you.
A result that is not back yet is still not a sentence the assistant may improvise. “Not in yet” from a voice that cannot see the file is a guess. Take the request that they asked. Let a person who can see the file call.
A repeat reminder is still a request
A reminder that a repeat can be requested is administration. Issuing the e-prescription is not. The assistant can ring, say this practice’s own sentence about how repeats are requested, take the request on the same call, read the item back as the patient named it — the blood-pressure one, the little white ones, the brand if they know it — and pass it on.
It cannot say the prescription will be ready at four. It cannot change a dose because the patient has been taking half. It cannot add the cough medicine. It cannot decide they are due or they are early. Those judgements stay with you, after a person has looked at the record.
It must not turn the reminder into a review. “How have the tablets been?” is a question you might ask in the room. If the patient says they have been dizzy since the dose changed, that sentence is written down as they said it and the request is flagged. Nobody on that call authorises anything.
A new item is not a repeat. “Can I also have something for the cough?” is a request for you. The assistant takes it as a request. It does not add it to the repeat form.
This list is tempting because it is large. It is also how you train patients to believe the machine is the pharmacy. Keep the wording small. Keep the issuing where it is. The assistant never says the e-prescription has already gone to the pharmacy. It says the request has been passed on.
If they mention chest pain on a call you started
People tell outbound callers things they would not walk in with. You ring about Tuesday’s bloods and they mention the tightness since Sunday. That sentence ends the list work.
Record it, in their words. Stop offering times. Ring the phone you named — you, a colleague, a nurse if you have one. Stay on the line if you have configured that. Do not say we will mention it when you come for the bloods. Do not book a review under a nurse type because that was the list you were working.
You started the contact. The duty is at least as high as on an inbound chest-pain call, and the patient did not even mean to present. Tell them it is an assistant. A person who does not know may hear a captured acknowledgement as advice.
You keep a short list of phrases that stop the conversation and reach a human immediately. Chest pain. Trouble breathing. A baby who is not right. Whatever else you decide for this practice. The list has to be short, or it fires on everything and people start ignoring it. And it has to go to a phone, not to an email someone opens after the last patient.
It does not tell the caller what the symptom means, or to wait, or to go anywhere. It captures what they said and it rings the number you named.
Mental-health follow-up after a crisis, and any conversation you would not leave with a new receptionist, stay off these lists. The assistant clears the booking and reminder lists so those calls can be made by the people who should make them.
Hours, the message, and the list you must not dump
Late afternoon reaches people who work. Mid-morning reaches the people who are already on your review lists. Early evening is a choice you make in writing, and it has to end before you would be embarrassed to have made the call yourself. Sunday night about a cholesterol is how a sensible setup becomes a complaint.
In a Greek practice the second busy window is often after work, when you still see patients and the receptionist has already gone. That window is for inbound capture, not for ringing people about a review. Set the outbound hours so they do not collide with the evening list you are trying to work in the room.
Before it names even a missed blood test, it confirms it has the patient — name and date of birth, or the AMKA if that is how you identify people on this telephone. A family phone is normal. If a child or someone at their work has picked up, the assistant asks for the patient or offers to call back. It does not leave the reason with whoever answered.
A message names the practice, says it is an assistant, and gives the reason at the level of missed blood test, review due, or please call the practice. No diagnosis. No value. No drug. “Please call Dr Georgiou’s practice about your blood test” is already close to the edge. “Please call about your cholesterol” is over it for some households. “Please call, the result was a bit high” is a clinical disclosure to whoever was holding the phone. Do not add “nothing to worry about” to soften the ask — that phrase is a result.
If you cannot agree a message that is safe, do not leave one. Retry, then a note.
Retries: two or three over a week for lists whose next step is a time. Results you marked urgent never wait on that rhythm. After the attempts, a note the desk can see, not a fourth try at nine in the evening.
Lists this assistant must not run
A flu vaccination invitation can be a time offer, if the nurse type exists and the wording is an invitation, not a medical argument. A result that is itself the bad news, a conversation after a crisis, a call you would only have yourself — those stay with a person. The assistant speaking the patient’s language does not make those calls safe to automate.
Do not export all the labs from this month and let the assistant sort them. The sort is the clinical act. You mark the file for a summons with no values, or you keep the name. Everything else stays off the machine.
If you remind people that an invitation they already received still stands, use the sentence on the invitation. Do not add a local reading. If you would not let a new receptionist improvise that sentence, do not let the assistant.
A home visit is not an outbound list. The assistant can take a home-visit request inbound — name, address, the reason in the caller’s words, a number to call back on. It cannot ring through a pile of addresses and decide you will come after lunch. That decision stays with you.
What you configure first
One list: missed nurse visits from the last five working days. Live times only. SMS on. Quiet hours set. Escalation phrases live on the outbound path, pointed at a phone a person actually holds. A rule the doctors can see: results-ready scripts contain no values, including normal, including not back yet as a guess.
Tell the doctors what the assistant will not do, in writing, before the first name goes out. Agree the chest-pain rule and the results rule before a patient hears a clinical word from a voice that cannot explain it.
Look at the first twenty completed calls — rebooked, refused, no answer, escalated, asked about results — before you add overdue reviews. Add results-ready only when a doctor is marking files with that reason, not when someone has exported all labs this month.
Outbound does not change the rates. They live on the pricing section of the home page.
AI receptionist, in-house staff, or a call centre
| CITT | In-house | Call centre | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Rings a missed visit on the bloods list | Yes, from your list | When someone has a gap | If you export the names |
| Offers a real nurse time | Checks the live list first | Yes | Takes a preference |
| Your results are back | Practice will call — no values | Per the doctor's preference | Must not read values |
| Issues a repeat on the call | No | No, unless a clinician | No |
| Symptom spoken on the call | Records and rings a person | Takes over | Script-dependent |
| Quiet hours | As you set them | Variable | Shift-dependent |
What an unworked missed-bloods list does to the nurse morning
Worked from these assumptions — change any of them and the answer changes:
- A nurse bloods list of about 12 times a day, 5 days a week.
- About 2 of those times a day stay empty because the patient did not come and nobody rebooked them. Check your own book; replace 2.
- About half of those missed visits would have taken a new time the same week if someone had rung the next morning. Replace this take-up with your own.
- Each empty bloods time is about 12 minutes of nurse time in this example.
- 2 missed visits × 5 days = 10 empty bloods times a week.
- Half recovered would be 5 times × 12 minutes = 60 minutes of nurse time a week.
- 60 minutes × 46 weeks ÷ 60 ≈ 46 hours a year.
About 46 hours a year of nurse time that was already on a list, waiting for a phone call — before counting the result that is now late because the bloods were not taken.
What it costs
CITT is pay as you go: no packages, no minimum, no contract. The current rates — the monthly fee per number and the per-minute rate — are on the pricing section of the home page, which is the only place they are published.
Frequently asked questions
Can it tell the patient their result is normal?
No. Not on outbound, not as a courtesy, not to save you a call. "Normal" is your reading of a number next to this patient. The outbound sentence is that the practice needs to speak to them, or that a doctor will ring, or that they should return the call. A value, a "normal", or an "all clear" is still a clinical answer given by something that cannot take the next question.
What lists are safe to start with?
Missed nurse visits from the last few days, and reviews that are simply due — blood pressure, diabetes, asthma — where the next step is a named time on a named list. Add results-ready callbacks only once you have marked the file for contact, and only with the no-values rule on. Leave mental-health follow-up and any conversation you would not give a new receptionist with a person.
Can it remind people their repeat is due?
It can remind them that a request can be made, take the request on the same call, read it back, and pass it for you to issue the e-prescription. It cannot say the item will be ready, cannot change the dose, and cannot add a second medicine they mention in passing.
What if they say they have chest pain while we are ringing about bloods?
The outbound job ends. The assistant records the words, stops offering times or result-callbacks, and rings the number you named. A recall that continues over that sentence is worse than not having called. The fact that you started the contact raises the duty. It does not lower it.
Will patients accept a machine calling from the practice?
They accept it when the call is honest, short, and at a decent hour. The assistant says it is an assistant, says why it is ringing — review, missed bloods, please call the practice — and leaves a message that contains no clinical detail. Hiding what it is is how these calls become a trust problem.
What about people who never pick up?
You set the retries. Two or three attempts over a week, then a note the desk can see, is the usual shape. Results you marked urgent do not sit in that loop — those stay on a list a person works. Silence after honest attempts is information.
