AI Receptionist for Physiotherapy Clinics on Cliniko

An AI receptionist for physiotherapy clinics answers patient calls, checks the clinic's live Cliniko calendar, and books, reschedules or cancels appointments without a staff member picking up, following the clinic's own rules about appointment types, practitioners and referrals. For a physio practice, the calls it has to handle well are specific: a new injury that wants to be seen this week, a patient with a GP care-plan referral, a follow-up that needs moving, and a question about what the first appointment involves.

Key facts

• Missed calls are common in busy practices. Medow Health AI said in September 2026 that up to half of patient calls to specialist clinics can go unanswered when reception is stretched (Startup Daily).
• Bookings happen outside clinic hours. HotDoc found 51% of online bookings on its platform were made between 5pm and 9am (HotDoc).
• Speed of booking affects attendance. A study of 6,971 physical therapy patients found each extra day between booking and the first appointment raised the odds of a no-show by 5.8% (Briggs et al., Physical Therapy, 2021).
• Since 1 July 2025, GP Chronic Condition Management Plans (GPCCMPs) have replaced GP Management Plans and Team Care Arrangements, and patients can still claim up to five Medicare allied health services a year (Australian Physiotherapy Association).

The calls a physio front desk actually gets

A generic answering service treats every call the same. A physio clinic's calls fall into a handful of types, and each needs something different.

New injury, wants to be seen soon. Someone rolled an ankle at netball on Saturday. They want the earliest initial consultation, they may not care which physio, and if the first slot offered doesn't suit they'll ring the next clinic. The receptionist needs to offer the soonest real availability and a second option if the first is taken.

GP care-plan referral. The patient has a GPCCMP referral and wants to use their Medicare-rebated sessions. They'll ask whether the clinic bulk bills or what the gap is, and whether they need to bring the referral. The answer comes from the clinic's own fee schedule, not from the AI guessing.

Follow-up reschedule. A regular patient needs to move Thursday's appointment. The receptionist needs to find another slot with the same physio and the right appointment length, because a 30-minute follow-up and a 45-minute initial consult aren't interchangeable.

Compensable and third-party patients. Workers' compensation, TAC in Victoria, or other insurer-funded patients often need a claim number or approval on file. The receptionist should collect what the clinic's rules require and flag the booking, not approve anything itself.

General questions. Parking, what to wear, cancellation policy, whether the clinic does dry needling or clinical Pilates. These come from the clinic's own FAQ content.

Anything that sounds clinical or urgent. Severe new symptoms, a fall, chest pain. The receptionist's job is to hand over according to the clinic's instructions, not to assess. Metilda passes anything urgent or outside its remit to staff, or to the emergency contacts the clinic sets.

How an AI receptionist books a physio appointment in Cliniko

The retry step, offering the next real slot instead of ending the call, is where an AI receptionist for physiotherapy clinics keeps or loses the booking.

Metilda reads and writes the Cliniko calendar directly. It respects the booking rules you set, for example "initial assessments only before 3pm", "leave a 10-minute gap after two back-to-back sessions", or "new chiropractic patients only with Dr Sarah". When a requested slot is gone, it offers the next available time with the same practitioner, or another practitioner, on the same call.

That matters more than it sounds. The Briggs study above found no-show odds climbing with every day of wait between booking and the first visit. A receptionist that finds Tuesday instead of "we'll call you back tomorrow" is also reducing no-shows. We go deeper on that in how to reduce no-shows at an allied health clinic.

After hours is when injured people ring

HotDoc's data is from GP bookings on its platform (published 2019, updated 2021), so treat it as a pointer rather than a physio benchmark. But the pattern fits any clinic: 51% of online bookings were made between 5pm and 9am, and eight in ten were made on a phone. People sort out appointments when they're off work, which is when your front desk isn't there.

For a physio, the after-hours call is often an injury that just happened. We've written about handling after-hours calls at allied health clinics separately, including why tone matters more on those calls.

What it costs a physio clinic

Metilda's plans, in AUD plus GST, excluding telephony:

Appointment and reminder SMS are included on every plan. Carrier charges are passed through at cost: roughly 1 to 2.5 cents a minute for calls, about $4.50 to $7.00 a month for a clinic taking 60 calls. You keep your clinic number and forward calls to Metilda when the desk is busy or closed. There's a 14-day free trial and no lock-in.

Patient privacy for physio clinics

Health information is "sensitive information" under the Privacy Act, and the OAIC is clear that allied health professionals are covered even if they're a small business under the $3 million turnover threshold. So "where does the call data go?" is a fair first question for any vendor.

Metilda's servers and the language models it runs on are hosted in Australia, so patient details aren't sent offshore for processing. Calls, transcripts and booking records are encrypted in transit and at rest, and each clinic's records are isolated from every other clinic's. We don't claim certifications we don't hold. For more on this, see what to check before you trust an AI receptionist with patient calls.

FAQ

What is an AI receptionist for physiotherapy clinics?

An AI receptionist for physiotherapy clinics is software that answers patient phone calls, checks the clinic's live calendar in practice software such as Cliniko, and books, reschedules or cancels appointments according to the clinic's rules for appointment types, practitioners and referrals. It hands clinical or urgent calls to staff rather than assessing them.

Can an AI receptionist handle GP care-plan referral bookings?

It can book the appointment and give the patient the clinic's own answers about fees, gaps and what to bring, drawn from the clinic's FAQ content. Since 1 July 2025, these referrals come under GP Chronic Condition Management Plans, and patients can claim up to five Medicare allied health services a calendar year.

Does Metilda work with Cliniko?

Yes. Metilda is built specifically for clinics on Cliniko. It reads live practitioner availability and appointment types and writes bookings, reschedules and cancellations back to the same calendar your front desk uses.

How much does an AI receptionist for a physio clinic cost?

Metilda costs $29 to $299 AUD a month plus GST for 25 to 600 included calls, with extra calls at $0.40 to $0.55. Appointment and reminder SMS are included, carrier charges are passed through at cost, and there is a 14-day free trial with no lock-in contract.

Where is patient data stored?

Metilda's servers and language models are hosted in Australia. Calls, transcripts and booking records are encrypted in transit and at rest, and each clinic's data is isolated from other clinics'.

Sources

• Startup Daily, "Doctors microdose AI receptionist with another $3.5 million in Seed funding" (16 September 2026)
• HotDoc, "What 1 million bookings a month has taught us about how Australians book online"
• Briggs MS et al., "Predictive Factors for Patients' Failure to Show for Initial Outpatient Physical Therapist Evaluation", Physical Therapy 101(5), 2021
• Australian Physiotherapy Association, "Changes to Medicare chronic disease management"
• OAIC, "Rights and responsibilities" under the Privacy Act

About the author. Arnab Chakraborty is the founder of Langoedge, the Melbourne company that builds Metilda, an AI receptionist for allied health clinics on Cliniko. He is not a clinician; clinical questions on calls are handed to the clinic's own staff. Disclosure: this article describes our own product.