Who actually calls your clinic (it's mostly your patients)
We read 78 real calls to a busy clinic line. Most came from patients the clinic already had, asking for things they couldn't do online. Here's the breakdown, and what to change at your desk.
Picture one Monday morning's call log. A hormone patient wants to know when her next visit is. A man asks whether his refill went through. A woman needs to move Thursday. A pharmacy calls about a shipment. Someone says "can I just talk to a person?" and nothing else. Out of all of them, one caller is new.
That isn't a made-up mix. It's close to what we found when we read every patient call to our first clinic, a Florida medspa on athenahealth, over four days in September.
What 78 calls were about
We read each transcript one by one and labelled why the person called.
| Why they called | Share of calls |
|---|---|
| Scheduling: book, move, cancel, confirm, "when is my appointment?" | 32% |
| Asked for a person without saying why, or hung up without speaking | 40% |
| Refills and medication questions | 15% |
| Pharmacy or shipping | 5% |
| A new patient | 3% |
| Wrong number or wrong practice | 3% |
| Labs or general information | 2% |
| A bill | 0% |
How we counted: every patient call on September 14, 15, 21 and 22, 2026, 78 calls from 55 different numbers, each read individually from its transcript. Our own test calls are excluded. Shares are of calls and are rounded.
Three things jump out.
1. The phone is your existing patients' front door
73% of these calls came from people already on the clinic's books. Only two of the 78 were new patients asking to come in.
How we counted: callers' numbers matched against the mobile numbers in the clinic's patient records. That's a floor, since only mobile numbers on file can match.
Most practices think of the phone as a lead channel and staff it that way: answer fast, book the new person. At this clinic, the phone was mostly how current patients managed care they were already getting. A missed call was far more likely to be a returning patient than a stranger shopping around.
2. They call because they can't do it anywhere else
Why would a patient who has been coming for years phone instead of booking online? Because the visits they need can't be booked online. At this clinic, follow-ups and refills need a provider to look at the chart first, so they aren't on the booking page. Of 445 upcoming appointments we looked at, 321 were follow-ups, and only 4 were for a service a patient could have booked on their own.
So the phone isn't a preference. For almost everything on the schedule, it's the only door.
How we counted: upcoming appointments read from the clinic's live schedule on September 22, 2026, matched against the services on its online booking page.
3. "Get me a person" is a signal, not a failure
More than a third of calls included a plain "can I talk to a person?" About four in ten either asked for a person without saying why or hung up before speaking.
That doesn't mean the AI failed. Patients with an ongoing relationship want the people who know them, especially about their own care. The answer isn't to talk them out of it. It's to make the path to a person fast, and to make sure nothing is lost when the desk can't pick up.
Most calls were short, too. The median was 34 seconds. These aren't long conversations; they're quick asks that pile up.
And nobody called about a bill. If you staff the phone as though billing questions are the hard part, this line says otherwise.
Which agent takes which call
| Why they called | Share | The agent that takes it |
|---|---|---|
| Scheduling | 32% | Gigi, the Receptionist, books, reads the next visit, or hands a change to the Front Desk Coordinator |
| Asked for a person, or hung up | 40% | Gigi puts them through during open hours, and the Front Desk Coordinator emails the desk at the same moment. A quick hang-up gets one call back |
| Refills and medication questions | 15% | The Refill Coordinator, by your medication list |
| A new patient | 3% | Gigi books them; the New Patient Coordinator follows up with anyone who doesn't finish |
| Pharmacy, labs, wrong numbers | 10% | Gigi takes a message for the desk or points them to the right place |
What this means for your desk
If your call mix looks anything like this, here's where we'd start.
Answer "when is my appointment?" without a person. Gigi reads the next visit from the patient's record during the call, which takes a slice of the scheduling calls off the desk.
Give refills a lane. A refill isn't a booking. The Refill Coordinator routes each one by your rules instead of putting it on a callback list. Here's how it works.
Make the path to a person fast. During open hours, anyone who asks for a person is put through to the desk, and the Front Desk Coordinator emails the desk at the same moment with the caller's name, number and next visit, so a missed pickup isn't a lost patient. After hours, the caller leaves a message that reaches the desk in writing.
Decide where change requests go. Cancellations and reschedules either go straight into your EHR or reach your desk in writing through the Front Desk Coordinator. That's your call.
Look again at which follow-ups could be bookable. Some truly need a provider's eye first. Others might not. Every visit type you open to online booking is a call you won't get.
Run this on your own line
You don't need software to find your own mix.
- Take a week of calls: the call log, the voicemails, the desk's notes.
- Label each one by reason, using the table above as a starting list.
- Mark whether each caller is already a patient.
- For the top two reasons, ask: could a patient have done this without calling?
If the answer is mostly no, your phone is carrying work that your booking page and your processes could take on. For the full list of desk work an agent can carry, see the clinic workflow checklist.
To hear how Gigi handles these calls, try her at radarrr.io/clinic/try. Radarrr is HIPAA compliant, and we sign a BAA with every clinic.