HotDoc Virtual Assistant: someone to work the lists the automation leaves behind

Nobody searches “hotdoc virtual assistant” because HotDoc is broken. You search it because HotDoc works exactly as advertised, the bookings roll in and the reminders go out, and somehow reception is busier than before: a recall list full of patients who never tapped the link, registration forms abandoned at the Medicare field, a Waitlist nobody has looked at since March, and a roster change from Tuesday that still hasn’t made it into the online book.

HotDoc automates messages. It does not automate outcomes. The gap between the two is a part-time job, and that job is what a DotVA virtual assistant does.

The daily rhythm a VA runs in your HotDoc

The day starts in two windows: the HotDoc Dashboard on one side, your appointment book in Best Practice, MedicalDirector or Zedmed on the other. First job is reconciliation. Overnight online bookings get checked against the PMS book: right appointment types, no double-ups where a phone booking and an online booking landed in the same gap, new patients flagged as new patients. If a practitioner’s sessions changed in the PMS this week, the VA confirms the change is reflected in HotDoc, because HotDoc mirrors your appointment book and a mismatch means patients booking into sessions your doctor no longer works.

Then the confirmations. HotDoc’s reminders have already done the easy 80 per cent; the VA works the rest. Unconfirmed appointments for tomorrow get a phone call, not another SMS, because a patient who ignored two texts is not going to answer a third. Repeat no-shows get noted and raised with the practice manager rather than silently re-booked.

When a cancellation lands mid-morning, the Waitlist earns its keep, but only if someone drives it. The VA checks who has joined the Waitlist for that practitioner and appointment type, makes sure the offer goes out, and phones the patients who haven’t responded within the window. A gap that would have sat empty until lunch is backfilled before the next patient is called through.

New patient day-before checks are their own pass. HotDoc’s new patient registration form writes demographics, Medicare and concession details straight into the patient file, which is brilliant when the patient finishes it and useless when they stop halfway. The VA looks at tomorrow’s new patients today, chases every incomplete form with a friendly SMS and then a call, and makes sure the file your GP opens at 9am is complete before the patient walks in.

The recall work is the heaviest lift, and the most valuable. HotDoc’s recalls run off the recall list your GPs and nurses already maintain in the PMS: the clinic maps which recall reasons trigger a HotDoc send, HotDoc fires the SMS, the patient sees only that a message is waiting at the clinic, and most people click through and book. The ones who don’t drop onto a list that no amount of software will clear, because the next step is a telephone and a person. Your VA rings down that list on a schedule your practice manager sets, logs every attempt against the recall in the PMS so the record shows the clinic made its contact attempts properly, and escalates anyone unreachable so the practice can decide about a letter. For clinically significant recalls, that logged trail is the thing your accreditation assessor actually looks at, and it’s exactly the work that slides when reception is flat out on the phones.

There’s a quieter data job underneath all of this that determines whether any of it works: mobile numbers. A recall SMS can’t reach a patient whose file has a disconnected mobile or a landline in the mobile field. As the VA works the ring-around list they clean as they go, updating numbers, correcting the obvious typos, and flagging files with no usable mobile at all so the practice knows who will always need a call or a letter. Six months of that and the non-responder list itself gets shorter, because more of the automation actually lands.

Weekly, the VA keeps the messaging layer honest. Inform messages get audited: the fasting instructions still attached to the right pathology appointment types, the care plan prep message still current, the telehealth appointment types still sending the right joining instructions, nothing left over from a campaign that ended. Broadcast sends for flu clinics or catch-up campaigns get segmented and drafted, and nothing goes out without your sign-off, partly because every SMS costs the clinic money and a lazily segmented broadcast to the whole database is the fastest way to waste a few hundred dollars and annoy patients who were never eligible. And HotDoc Reviews gets watched: unhappy survey responses flagged to the practice manager the same day they land, and draft replies to new Google reviews queued for approval.

Seasonal campaigns get their own rhythm. Flu season is the obvious one: vaccine clinic sessions set up in the PMS and confirmed live in HotDoc, the broadcast drafted and staged, then bookings watched daily so extra sessions get flagged before the existing ones overflow rather than after. The same pattern covers care plan reviews, skin checks and whatever your practice runs as a yearly push.

The honest bit

Three things HotDoc will not do, whoever you hire.

It will not make non-responders respond. The recall and reminder automation is genuinely good, and it still leaves a residue of patients every single week who need a phone call. That residue is not a HotDoc flaw, it’s the nature of patients; but if nobody owns the ring-around, the automation just produces a neater version of the same unworked list.

It will not tidy your appointment book for you. HotDoc reflects the structure that exists in your practice software: session times, appointment types, practitioner availability. If the PMS book is messy, the online book is messy in public. The VA can keep the two in sync and flag the mismatches, but decisions about how sessions and appointment types are structured belong to the practice.

And it will not take the phones away. Because a HotDoc recall deliberately never says what the message is about, a portion of recipients ring the clinic to ask. That’s privacy working as designed, and it means recall campaigns create call volume at the same time they create bookings. Worth knowing before you send three thousand SMS in a week: the VA can absorb the outbound side, but your reception team should know a send is coming.

One more, smaller but real: HotDoc is only as current as the sync. The connector between HotDoc and your practice software is what keeps online availability true, and when a clinic’s server has a hiccup or the connector needs restarting, online bookings can drift from the real book for an hour without anyone noticing. Part of the VA’s morning reconciliation is exactly that notice: if the two windows disagree, someone finds out at 8am, not when a patient arrives for an appointment the book never had.

What stays with you

This is a medical setting, so the line is drawn hard and in writing before day one.

The VA does operational work only. Deciding which recalls are clinically urgent, what a recall is for, how results are handled, anything involving triage, and every conversation that turns clinical stays with your GPs, nurses and practice manager. If a patient on a ring-around call mentions symptoms, asks about a result, or says anything that sounds clinical, the VA stops and escalates under a written rule, they never interpret, reassure or advise. Item numbers, billing decisions and fee conversations stay with the practice. Scripts and results are never discussed by the VA, full stop.

The permission model backs the policy. HotDoc itself holds no clinical content to see, and the VA’s account in your practice software is a reception-level user with clinical notes, results and correspondence excluded under the same permission settings you already apply to front desk staff. The boundary is enforced by the software, not just promised by us.

What it costs and where to start

HotDoc and PMS admin sits on our admin tier: $12-17 AUD an hour excl GST, and most clinics run 10-15 hours a week, roughly $500-1,100 a month. That buys the morning reconciliation, the recall ring-arounds, the waitlist backfills, form chasing and reminder follow-up, which is more list-clearing than most clinics have ever had.

Placement takes 7-10 business days. The first 5-7 days are supervised inside your HotDoc Dashboard and your practice software before any solo work, starting with reconciliation and confirmations, with recalls added once the practice manager signs off. The $500 deposit is refundable and credits to your first month, there’s a 30-day recalibrate-or-replace guarantee, and no lock-in beyond 14 days notice.

If you want the wider view of how VAs fit into a general practice, the medical practices page goes deeper, the virtual receptionist page covers the phone-and-front-desk side, and the VA cost guide has the full pricing picture. Otherwise, book a discovery call with Jenn and bring your recall list.