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AI receptionist for medical practices

A practice phone line fails quietly: on hold at 8:05, engaged at noon, voicemail after four. This page prices the services that answer it, from $99 a month for AI up to $720 a month for a trained human team, and puts the two questions that actually gate the decision first: will they sign a BAA, and what happens to an urgent call at 2am.

Prices read from vendor pricing pages in July 2026. Nothing here is legal or compliance advice. Full table on the pricing index.

What calls does a medical practice actually miss?

Practices rarely lose calls to an empty desk. They lose them to a queue, and to a front desk doing five jobs at once while people stand in front of it.

• The 8am rush. Everybody calls when the lines open. The callers who hold get through, the ones who hang up become tomorrow's problem or somebody else's patient.
• Refill and results calls during clinic. High volume, low complexity, and they occupy the same line as a new patient trying to register. This is the block of calls best suited to being handled somewhere else.
• Cancellations that never get replaced. A patient rings at 7:40am to cancel a 9am slot. If nobody answers, you have a hole in the schedule and a waiting list you cannot call fast enough.
• After hours and weekends. The question is not whether the phone is answered but what happens next. An answering service that takes a message but does not page anyone is a liability dressed as a saving.
• Patients who do not speak English. Ruby and Abby Connect bundle Spanish into every plan. AnswerConnect charges $30 a month for it and PATLive $20. Same requirement, very different bills.

What one missed call costs you here

A new patient in a primary care practice is commonly modelled somewhere in the $200 to $500 range for the first year, and far more over the life of the relationship once continuity and referrals are counted. Specialist practices sit well above that. Those are typical planning ranges, not a claim about your panel. Use your own revenue per new patient.

Two costs get left out of most calculations and both are larger than they look. First, the unfilled slot: an appointment that goes empty because a cancellation call went unanswered is capacity you already paid for. Second, the calls that never become anything but still consume front desk hours, which is the argument for moving routine volume off the main line rather than adding another person to it.

Put your revenue per new patient in the third field and keep the conversion figure conservative. The full calculator shows every step of the arithmetic.

Which service fits a medical practice

Ruby, the default choice, priced like one

Ruby is the name most practice managers already know, and it bundles the things practices ask for: bilingual Spanish, scheduling, no activation or setup fee. Plans run $395 a month for 100 minutes, $720 for 200 minutes and $1725 for 500 minutes. Price it with the two published caveats in mind: minutes are billed in 60-second increments rounded up, so a run of short refill calls burns the bundle faster than the minute count suggests, and the overage rate is not published on their pricing page at all. Check current Ruby pricing.

AnswerConnect, if the volume is steady and you want people

AnswerConnect publishes the lowest real per-minute cost among the human services: $395 a month for 300 minutes at $1.85 per extra minute, with $575 for 400 minutes above it. Entry is $350 for 200 minutes but the overage jumps to $2.50, so it is usually false economy. The feature that fits a practice line: the first 30 interactions under 30 seconds each billing cycle carry no charge, and a lot of practice calls are exactly that short. Spanish is a $30 a month add-on. Get the setup fee confirmed in writing, because their own pricing PDF contradicts itself on whether Growth carries it. Check current AnswerConnect pricing.

Abby Connect, to see the AI against human price honestly

Abby Connect is the only vendor here publishing both ladders in full, which makes it the cleanest way to decide how much of your call volume really needs a person. Human plans run $329 a month for 100 minutes up to $1380 for 500 minutes. The AI track runs from $99 a month up to $690, which is exactly half the equivalent human tier. Spanish is included on every plan, human or AI, and AI plans come with a 14-day free trial. The gap in their published data is significant: no overage rate for any tier. Check current Abby Connect pricing.

Goodcall, for the routine calls that run long

If what you want is the refill, directions and hours traffic moved off the main line, per-minute billing is the wrong shape. Goodcall charges per unique caller with unlimited minutes: $129 a month for 250 unique customers, $249 for 500 unique customers, and $0.50 per unique caller beyond that. For a practice the tier detail that matters is not the price, it is retention: 7 days of call history on the entry plan, 30 days on Growth, unlimited on Scale. Decide what your record keeping needs before you choose the tier, and ask the BAA question first. Check current Goodcall pricing.

Prices side by side

Verified July 2026. Every vendor with published pricing is on the pricing index.

What to ask before you sign

1. Will you sign a BAA, on this plan, and what does it cover? In writing, before a single call is routed. If it only exists on an enterprise tier, price that tier. On Retell AI the BAA sits in Enterprise, and Vapi lists HIPAA at $2,000 a month, so treat it as a real line item rather than a checkbox.
2. Where do recordings and transcripts live, and for how long? Goodcall publishes this openly: 7 days, 30 days or unlimited depending on tier. Most vendors do not put it on the pricing page at all, so ask, and match the answer to your own record keeping rules.
3. What is the escalation path at 2am? Name the call types, name who gets paged, name how fast. Then test it yourself once before go-live.
4. Is Spanish included or billed separately? Ruby and Abby Connect include it. AnswerConnect charges $30 a month, PATLive $20, Smith.ai $1.00 per call on the human plans.
5. What is the overage rate? AnswerConnect publishes $1.85. Ruby and Abby Connect publish nothing. That is the first minute past your bundle and it is where the bill grows.

Where to go next

Dental practices ask the same BAA questions but buy differently, because their calls are shorter and more of them are new patient enquiries: see AI receptionists for dental practices. If your practice also fields records requests and legal enquiries, the intake scripting section on the law firms page is worth reading. Every published plan is on the pricing index.