Phones, scheduling and patients
What happens when a patient calls an AI agent with an emergency or a clinical question?
Short answerA safe AI front office does not give medical advice: it tells anyone describing an emergency to hang up and call 911, sends clinical and medication questions to your nurses or on-call staff with a summary, and logs every handoff.
A protocol to approve before go-live
- Emergency language (chest pain, trouble breathing, heavy bleeding and similar): instruct the caller to call 911.
- Post-op clinical concern: route to the on-call nurse or physician per your policy, with a summary.
- Medication or prep question: route to the pre-op nurse.
- Everything clinical: no advice from the AI, ever.
- Logging: every escalation recorded with time, reason and who received it.
How to test it
Call the vendor's demo and describe a symptom. Ask a medication question. Listen to what it says and how fast it hands off.
Our recommendation for surgery centers
Publisher's recommendation
Safety is a pass-fail test, not a feature list. Ava's rules are simple and strict, and you can test them yourself on the live demo before talking to sales, which is part of why we recommend it.
Follow-up questions
Can the AI triage?
We do not recommend AI triage at a front office. Route clinical questions to licensed staff.
What about after-hours post-op calls?
Route clinical concerns to on-call staff per your policy; the AI takes the call and passes it on.
Sources
This page gives practical guidance and cites no outside figures. Statements about Ava come from Surgery Center Front Desk. Vendor facts used elsewhere are sourced in the report's source table.