Missed calls
The call your clinic never heard is the one deciding where that patient goes
When nobody can pick up, the caller gets an answer rather than a voicemail. Every call is captured, answered instantly, qualified and routed to the right person, day or night. You get a record of every one, including the ones you never knew about.
The outcome
You cannot manage what you never saw
A missed call leaves almost no trace. There is no enquiry in the system, no name in the diary, and nothing for anyone to follow up, so the clinic carries on believing it handled everything that came in. It did handle everything it saw. The problem is the part it did not. The first thing this changes is not the answering, it is that the calls become visible at all.
What happens when nobody can pick up
- The call is answered
- Not a voicemail and not a promise that somebody will ring back. The caller gets a real answer, and where the diary can be reached it gets booked there and then, at ten past six on a Friday as readily as at eleven on a Tuesday.
- The reason is captured
- What they were asking about, whether they are an existing patient, and how urgent it is. That is the difference between a message and an enquiry somebody can act on.
- The right ones reach a human
- Urgent calls are routed by rules you set: to your on call number, to a named person, or with a clear instruction to the caller. It never attempts to judge a clinical question, which is a deliberate limit rather than a missing feature.
- Everything is logged
- Every call, the time it came in, what was asked and what happened next. Most clinics find the log more useful in the first month than the answering, because it is the first time they have seen the true volume.
What it’s worth
The arithmetic is unusually simple here
Count the calls that did not reach anyone last month. Multiply by what a new patient is worth to you. That is the range, and both numbers are yours. We do not need an industry average because you have the only figures that matter.
Ten missed calls a month, at an average case worth £800, is £8,000 walking to another clinic. Invented numbers, put your own in. The reason it goes unnoticed is that it never appears anywhere: the money does not arrive to be missed.
How it’s built
The number stays yours
We do not move your phone number to a platform you would have to buy back. The system is set up on infrastructure registered to your clinic, the call records are yours, and if we part company the log and the number stay where they are. A clinic should never risk its main line to change supplier.
- Registered to your businessThe numbers, the database, the automations, the website and every call record sit in accounts in your organisation's name.
- We hold access, not ownershipOur route in is a permission you grant, and one you can withdraw without anything stopping.
- If we stop working togetherThe system keeps running and nothing has to be exported, because none of it was ever somewhere else.
What it takes
We will tell you your own miss rate before you decide anything
The Leak Check calls your clinic the way a patient would, at the times patients actually ring, and reports what happened with dates and timestamps. It does the same to three named clinics in your catchment on identical tests. You keep the report whatever you decide to do next.
What owners ask first
How many calls does a private clinic actually miss?
More than it thinks, and the clinic cannot find out by asking its own team, because the missed ones leave no record. In our own outreach study of 346 UK clinics in 2026, 56.6% of calls reached no human at all. That is our measurement on other clinics, not a claim about yours: the only figure that matters for your clinic is the one the Leak Check produces.
Is this an answering service?
No. An answering service takes a message for somebody to action tomorrow. This answers the question, captures why they rang, qualifies whether it needs a person now, and routes it. The line between the two is whether anything has actually moved by the time your team reads it.
What happens with an urgent or clinical call?
It escalates to a human by rule, and the rules are yours. It never tries to answer a clinical question. That limit is set deliberately: a system that guesses at clinical judgement is worse than one that hands over quickly with the details already captured.
Will patients know they are not speaking to reception?
Yes, and it says so. Attempting to pass for a member of staff is both dishonest and, with this audience, immediately obvious. What it replaces is not a person, it is a voicemail nobody was going to return until Monday.
Does it work outside opening hours?
That is most of the value. Evenings, weekends and the whole of the period between the last appointment and the first one are when a large share of enquiries arrive and when almost nothing is answered.
What does it cost to find out our miss rate?
Nothing. The Leak Check is free, needs no card, no access to your systems and no obligation, and the report is yours to keep whatever you decide.
Free · No install · Results in 48 hours
Find out what's recoverable in your clinic
We mystery-shop your clinic the way a patient would, by search, phone and web form, then show you the patients you could be winning. Scored on three things: are you found, is the enquiry answered, does anyone chase it.