A medical virtual receptionist for GP, specialist and dental practices.
Every consulting room shares the same weak point: the phone rings hardest exactly when everyone is with a patient. The caller who cannot get through books with the practice that picks up, the recall that nobody rings quietly lapses, and front desk spends the day apologising for the queue. A medical virtual receptionist keeps a person on your line through consulting hours without adding another seat behind the desk.
One receptionist model, three clinical settings
In a general practice the job is volume: appointment requests, reschedules, results-line messages taken and logged for the nurse, and recall lists worked patient by patient to the doctor's notation. Your VA runs all of it from inside Bp Premier, MedicalDirector or Zedmed on a permission-scoped login, so the diary, the recalls and the message log stay in the system your team already audits. The wider back office, billing rework, correspondence and onboarding included, is covered on our virtual assistants for medical practices page.
Specialist suites get the same cover with different plumbing: a Genie or Gentu diary, referral-driven bookings, and callers who expect the rooms to sound like the rooms. For a dental practice the receptionist is usually the difference between an empty chair and a filled one: recall and short-notice lists worked daily in Dental4Web or EXACT, cancellations backfilled the same morning, and new patients booked with their history forms already on the way. The reception-only version of that role has its own page, the dental virtual receptionist, and the broader dental scope, HICAPS reconciliation included, lives on our dental practice VA page.
Two pointers before you book anything. First, the triage boundary is not fine print: your VA books, reschedules, messages and recalls, and no clinical question is ever answered on the phone, full stop. Second, the quiet stretches between calls need not go to waste; most practices hand the same VA the billing tail, and the medical and NDIS billing page shows what that looks like. Physio, podiatry, psychology and OT rooms are a different setting again, served by the allied health answering service.
What your receptionist covers between open and close
Phones answered while the practice consults
Overflow pickup when front desk is with a patient, or full ownership of the line: the VA answers through a softphone on your existing number, with your greeting, and the caller never learns the desk is remote. Urgent calls route to the practice under your rules; everything else becomes a booking or a logged message.
Bookings, reschedules and recalls in your PMS
The work happens inside your own practice software rather than a third-party booking layer bolted on top. Appointment types, gap rules and availability behave exactly as your team configured them, and your usual confirmation and reminder messages keep going out, which is what keeps failure-to-attend rates down.
The clinical line never moves
A receptionist who books is not a triage nurse, and we keep those roles apart deliberately. Symptoms, results, medication and how-urgent-is-this questions all travel to your team under your written protocol; the VA offers an appointment, escalates anything ambiguous, and answers nothing clinical.
Confidentiality built in, not promised
A signed confidentiality agreement before day one, credentials shared through 1Password, and a role-scoped login you can revoke in seconds. Patient information stays inside your systems, where your audit trail already lives. The full access model is documented on our data security page.
The questions practices ask us first
Can the receptionist answer on our practice number, in our practice name?
Yes. Your VA receptionist picks up through a softphone connected to the practice line you already have, using the greeting and scripts you approve during onboarding, on Australian business hours. Many practices begin with overflow, where the VA catches whatever rings while front desk is checking patients in, then hand across the whole line once the process has proven itself. Callers hear your practice, not a call centre, and each message lands in the patient record or your inbox the way you specify.
What happens when a patient asks a clinical question on the phone?
The receptionist never attempts an answer. That boundary is written into the scripts before day one: a VA receptionist books, reschedules, takes messages and works recall lists, while anything clinical, symptoms, results, medication, how urgent something is, goes to your practice team under your written protocol. A patient pressing for reassurance is offered an appointment instead of an opinion, and anything ambiguous is escalated rather than guessed at. Your emergency-slot rules are applied exactly as your clinicians wrote them.
Which practice management software can a medical receptionist work in?
Whatever your rooms already run. On the GP side that usually means Best Practice (Bp Premier), MedicalDirector or Zedmed; specialist suites tend to hand over a Genie or Gentu diary; dental practices run Dental4Web (D4W) or EXACT. The VA works under their own permission-scoped login inside your system, follows your appointment-type and availability rules, and keeps your usual confirmation and reminder messages going out, so nothing about your booking setup changes except who answers the phone.
How is patient confidentiality handled with an offshore receptionist?
The same way DotVA scopes every health placement: technically, not on trust. Your VA signs a confidentiality agreement before starting, receives credentials only through 1Password, and works inside your practice software under a login you control and can revoke in seconds, with permissions cut down to the diary and message queues the job needs. Nothing is stored on personal devices and no patient data leaves your systems. You remain the accountable entity under the Privacy Act, and the setup is built so you can demonstrate that to a surveyor or an auditor.
What does a medical virtual receptionist cost?
A dedicated VA receptionist is $12-17/hr AUD, billed only for the hours you book, against roughly $35-45/hr loaded for a local front-desk hire once super, leave and downtime are counted. If the line also needs covering overnight and on weekends, the AI receptionist starts at $89/month plus setup. Placement of a dedicated VA typically takes 7-10 days, and the first 30 days carry the recalibrate-or-replace guarantee: if the match is wrong, we fix it or replace the VA.
Book a free discovery call
Thirty minutes with Jenn, who runs DotVA. Tell her which software your rooms use, how many calls the desk drops in a week and the hours you consult, and she will map whether a VA receptionist, the AI line or both fits your practice, with the numbers attached. No obligation, and the clinical boundary is agreed in writing before anyone answers a call.
Go deeper on your setting: medical practice VAs · dental practice VAs · medical and NDIS billing
Prefer to skip the form? Book the discovery call directly, or start at the virtual receptionist overview.
Step 2 of 2
One step left: pick your time
Your details are with Jenn, but the call is not in her diary yet. Pick a time and it is locked in, about 20 seconds. Within 48 hours of the call you will have a written recap: the tasks we would delegate first, an indicative cost and a timeline.
Pick a time with Jenn now →Nothing that suits? Call (03) 9961 6076 and we will book it around you. Or leave it and Jenn will email you within one business day.
Looking for a VA job?
This form books a call with our client team.
It won't reach our hiring team, so it can't book you an interview. DotVA hires virtual assistants from the top 1% through a separate application system. If you think that's you, apply there with your resume, a short video and (if you have one) a little portfolio.
Apply at apply.dotva.com.au →Actually a business looking to hire a VA? Call (03) 9961 6076 or email [email protected] and we will sort it out.