PatientNow Procedure Booking Prep Calls

Calls in the weeks before a procedure

Once a patient books a facelift, a breast augmentation or a series of resurfacing treatments, the calls do not stop. They change. Patients ask what time to arrive, whether someone must drive them home, where to park at the surgery center, whether the deposit was received, and what happens if they catch a cold the week before.

Each question is reasonable. Together they consume the surgical coordinator's afternoon, and the most important ones, the clinical ones, can get lost among the parking questions.

Logistics Katie can repeat

Your practice writes the non-clinical logistics Katie may share, and she shares them the same way every time.

When the facts differ by surgeon or facility, Katie keeps them separate, so a patient having surgery at the hospital never hears the parking directions for your in-office procedure suite. Typical examples:

• Arrival time guidance and where to check in
• Parking and directions, including a separate surgery center address
• Whether an adult must drive the patient home, as your policy states
• What to bring, such as photo ID and signed paperwork
• Who to contact with questions on the day of the procedure

Questions that go to your clinical team

Medication holds, fasting instructions for a specific patient, a new cough, a recent illness, or whether to stop a supplement are clinical questions. Katie does not answer them. She takes the details and routes them under your escalation rules, so the nurse or surgical coordinator who owns pre-op care sees them quickly.

This boundary matters more before surgery than almost anywhere else. A well-meaning but wrong answer about a blood thinner is exactly what a receptionist, human or AI, must never give. Katie is built to hand those questions to clinicians every time.

When a patient mentions something your rules treat as urgent, such as a fever or a new rash in the days before surgery, the call can go to a nurse right away instead of into a queue.

Deposits and paperwork

Pre-procedure calls often involve money: a balance due before surgery, or a deposit to hold the date. Katie takes no card details over the phone. She tells the caller how your practice collects payment and directs them to your billing line or payment link.

Paperwork questions get the same treatment. Katie explains your process in your words, and anything that needs a person, such as a missing consent form, is flagged for the coordinator.

MedReception AI is live with practices on PatientNow, and the summary of each prep call is routed to the person who owns that patient's procedure, so nothing waits in a shared inbox the week of surgery.