Custom-Built, Not Plug-and-Play
Custom AI Onboarding Timeline: Weeks 1-6, Setup to Go-Live
See what weeks 1-6 of MedReception AI onboarding involve: custom script build, EMR integration (athenahealth and eCW often 1-3 weeks), and go-live.
Section 1
Why onboarding takes weeks, not minutes
MedReception AI is not a plug-and-play phone tree with your logo on it. Every deployment is custom-built for the practice it serves: your scripts, your triage and escalation rules, your provider routing, your scheduling policies, your brand voice. That build work is why onboarding runs on a weeks-long timeline rather than an afternoon, and why the finished product answers like your front desk instead of a generic bot. The arc is consistent across practices. Weeks one and two cover discovery and configuration. Weeks two and three cover script review and live testing with your team. EMR integration runs in parallel, with athenahealth and eClinicalWorks often completing in one to three weeks and other supported systems in three to six. Go-live happens once you have approved every script and every routing rule. Here is what each phase involves and what your team will need to contribute.
Section 2
Weeks 1-2: discovery and configuration
Onboarding starts with a structured discovery session led by Bailey, our onboarding AI, and the human team behind her. We gather the details that make your practice yours: provider names and schedules, appointment types, refill and referral policies, after-hours protocols, which symptoms trigger escalation, and how urgent calls should reach a clinician. We start from one of more than thirty specialty templates, then rewrite it around your answers rather than asking you to adapt to ours. Payer-related questions are configured here too: the AI is set up to recognize calls about Medicare, Medicaid, VA, or TRICARE, route them to the right staff member, and capture the caller's question in a structured summary. It never gives coverage or billing advice; that stays with your team. By the end of this phase you have a draft configuration covering Katie for instant answering, Annie for after-hours, and Victoria for voicemail summaries.
Section 3
Weeks 2-3: script review and live testing
Nothing goes live without your sign-off. In this phase you review every script the AI will use: greetings, scheduling flows, triage questions, escalation language, and the exact wording callers hear when a call is routed to a human. You mark up anything that sounds off, and we revise until it reads like your practice wrote it. Then we test. Your team places real calls covering the scenarios that matter: a new patient wanting an appointment, a caller describing urgent symptoms, a routine refill request, an after-hours voicemail. You hear the AI answer in under a second, watch it route by provider and urgency, and see the structured summaries it produces in a format your staff can paste into your EMR. The AI never makes clinical decisions or changes a chart on its own; it routes and escalates, and clinicians decide. Testing continues until your team is satisfied, not until a calendar says so.
Section 4
EMR integration: what determines your timeline
EMR integration runs alongside script work, and it is the main variable in how long onboarding takes. We integrate with athenahealth, eClinicalWorks, Epic, Elation, Cerbo, Hint, Tebra, AdvancedMD, and ModMed. For athenahealth and eClinicalWorks, integration often completes in one to three weeks; for the other supported systems, plan on three to six. The difference comes down to each vendor's connection process, not your practice's complexity. Integration is what lets Sallie handle scheduling against your actual calendar and lets call summaries land where your staff works. One design decision matters here: MedReception AI is EMR-independent. We integrate with your EMR rather than living inside it, so if your practice switches systems, your trained AI, with its scripts, routing rules, and accumulated tuning, comes with you. EMR-bundled phone tools can be convenient, but they generally stay behind when you change platforms. Compliance is handled throughout: HIPAA-aligned with a BAA in the US, PIPEDA and PHIPA in Canada, and the Privacy Act and APPs in Australia.
Section 5
Go-live and what happens after week 6
Go-live is deliberately uneventful. Your number forwards to the AI, Katie starts answering in under a second, and unlimited simultaneous call capacity means a Monday-morning surge no longer produces hold music and hang-ups. Annie covers nights and weekends, Victoria turns any voicemail into a structured summary, and multilingual support is live from day one. Our team monitors early calls closely and tunes anything that needs it. Onboarding ending does not mean support ending. Every MedReception AI client gets free lifetime edits and optimization: a new provider joins, a policy changes, you want a triage question reworded, and we make the change at no cost, forever. Your AI keeps improving without a change-order invoice. If you want to see what your own weeks one through six would look like, with your EMR, your specialty, and your call patterns, book a MedReception AI demo and we will walk you through a timeline built for your practice.
See the AI medical receptionist in action
MedReception AI answers every call in under a second, books appointments, and routes urgent needs, 24/7 and HIPAA-aligned. Book a demo and hear it handle your real calls.