Healthcare · Dental Practice Owners

AI Agent for New Patient Inquiries

Answers what a prospective patient asks before booking — plans accepted, what an exam costs, when you can see them — and books it.

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How it works
1 Step
Answer what they ask before booking
2 Step
Be plain about insurance
3 Step
Book while they are still there
Accepting patients, plans in network, exam cost, availability, location and what to bring.

Overview

The most valuable call the practice gets, answered worst.

An AI agent for new patient inquiries handles the call and the web message that decide whether somebody becomes a patient. A prospective patient asks a predictable set of things before they commit: are you accepting new patients, do you take my plan, what does a first visit cost, how soon can I be seen, where do I park. Every one has a documented answer, and every one is asked several times a day. What makes these calls disproportionately valuable is that the caller is choosing between practices in real time — they will call two or three, and the one that answers all five questions and offers an appointment usually wins. The agent answers from the practice's own records and books from the live schedule. What it does not do is discuss treatment. Built on Agentplace: the agent runs on its own page, so a visitor finishes the whole request in the conversation.


Capabilities

What the New Patient Agent does

Answers the five questions and books the exam.

01

States whether the practice is accepting new patients

02

Says which insurance plans the practice is in network with

03

Gives the documented cost of a new patient exam

04

Offers the real next available appointment

05

Answers location, parking and what to bring

06

Routes any question about treatment to the practice

Why you should use the New Patient Agent

A prospective patient with a problem is not running a procurement exercise. They are working down a list, and the practice that picks up, answers plainly and offers a date wins a patient who may stay for a decade. The practices that lose these calls rarely lose them on price — they lose them by ringing out at lunchtime, or by answering with a promise that somebody will call back, which is an invitation to keep calling down the list. Handling the predictable questions immediately is most of the win. The insurance question is worth particular care: it is the single most common reason a new patient does not book, and the honest answer is often more nuanced than yes or no. Stating clearly which plans the practice is in network with, and what happens if theirs is not among them, is better service than a vague reassurance and it is more likely to result in a booking.

Before
The most valuable call of the day rings out at lunchtime
A callback is promised while the caller keeps working down their list
The insurance question gets a vague answer
Cost is deflected instead of being given from the fee schedule
The caller is not offered a date on the first call
After
The predictable questions are answered immediately
Insurance is answered plainly, including when the answer is no
The exam cost comes from the practice's own fee schedule
The caller is offered a real date while still on the call
Treatment questions are routed rather than improvised
Process

How it works

Answer the standard questions, then book.

Step 01

Answer what they ask before booking

Accepting patients, plans in network, exam cost, availability, location and what to bring.

Step 02

Be plain about insurance

Which plans are in network, and what out-of-network means for them, rather than a reassurance.

Step 03

Book while they are still there

The real next available appointment from the live schedule, not a callback promise.


Example

Example workflow

A caller who was on their third practice.

Scenario: a practice reviewed where new patient calls were lost and found most had been answered with a promise to call back. A caller says they have just moved to the area and need a check-up. The agent confirms the practice is accepting new patients, checks their plan against the in-network list and finds it is not there — and says so directly, then explains what the practice charges out-of-network patients for a new patient exam and X-rays, from the published fee schedule. The caller says they have already rung two practices and neither told them a number. They book. The agent also captures that they mentioned a chipped molar, and does not comment on it at all — it records it on the booking so the clinician sees it, without any suggestion of what it might need or how urgent it is.

Dental & Patient Front Office AirtableGoogle CalendarTwilio VoiceTwilio SMS AI Agent flow

Audience

Who can benefit

Anybody whose new patient calls are answered inconsistently.

✍️ Dental practice owners

A new patient is a decade of revenue, decided in one call.

💼 Practice managers

The same five questions are answered differently by different people.

🧠 Treatment coordinators

These are the calls you most want handled well.

Squat and growing practices

New patient acquisition is the whole business right now.

🎯 Practices in competitive areas

Callers are ringing two others this morning.

📋 Associate-led practices

Growing the list is how you fill an associate's book.

Integrations

Where the answers come from and what gets booked.

Airtable

Holds accepted plans, the fee schedule and practice information.

Google Calendar

Offers and books the real next available exam.

Twilio Voice

Answers the call the prospective patient makes.

Twilio SMS

Confirms the appointment and sends what to bring.

HubSpot

Records the inquiry and where the caller came from.

Google Sheets

Reports how many inquiries book and where they are lost.

Applications

Best use cases

The questions asked before somebody becomes a patient.

Whether the practice is accepting new patients
Whether a specific insurance plan is in network
What a new patient exam and X-rays cost
How soon somebody can be seen
What to bring and where to park
A mention of a specific problem, which the clinician should see


FAQ

FAQ

Questions about handling new patient inquiries.

An AI agent for new patient inquiries answers what a prospective dental patient asks before booking — whether you are accepting patients, which plans you are in network with, what an exam costs, when you can see them — and books the appointment from the live schedule.

For a new patient exam, yes, from your published fee schedule. Deflecting the cost question is the most common reason these callers keep dialing. Anything beyond the standard exam is a treatment conversation and routes.

It should say so plainly and explain what the practice charges out-of-network. A clear no converts better than a vague maybe, because the caller can decide rather than being left to guess.

It records it so the clinician sees it before the appointment, and says nothing about it. No indication of urgency, no suggestion of what it might be — that is the same boundary as every other call.

It should, since the same questions arrive by form and chat. The advantage on the phone is that you can book before the caller moves on; on the web the advantage is answering at all, at nine in the evening.

Where the caller heard about the practice, because new patient acquisition is usually the one marketing number a practice cannot produce. It costs one question and it settles a lot of arguments.

No. It handles the questions that come before anybody is a patient. The treatment conversation, which is where a coordinator earns their place, starts after the exam.

It runs on Agentplace. Agentplace is an AI agent platform where the agent gets its own page, talks to your visitors there, and carries the request through to the end instead of handing it to a form. You can open this template and change any step before you publish it.


AI Agent for New Patient Inquiries

Answers what a prospective patient asks before booking — plans accepted, what an exam costs, when you can see them — and books it. Open it in Agentplace and change any step before you publish.

Start from this template
Edit it — the agent is built from this briefBuild this agent