Tanmay Patel, Founder
Thousands of Australian allied health clinics run on PracSuite. Their phone setup? Still stuck in 2015.
If you're reading this, there's a decent chance your PracSuite calendar is beautifully organised, your online booking is switched on, and your clinical notes are humming along nicely.
And yet someone on your team is still spending half their day answering the phone. Bookings, cancellations, "what time do you open on Saturdays?", the parent who wants to reschedule their kid's speech path appointment for the third time this month. Every one of those calls pulls your front desk away from the patient standing right in front of them.
Here's the bit that's easy to miss: a big chunk of those calls follow the exact same pattern every time. They're important, but they don't require a human to handle them.
AI phone answering picks up where PracSuite's existing tools leave off. It answers every inbound call, handles the routine stuff (bookings, changes, FAQs), and writes everything straight into your PracSuite calendar. No new software for your team to learn. No parallel system to reconcile. Just fewer missed calls and a front desk that can actually breathe.
This guide covers how that works in practice, what it means alongside the booking channels you're already using, and how to work out whether it makes sense for your clinic.
PracSuite already does a lot. But the phone is still a problem.
PracSuite has come a long way since the old Smartsoft Front Desk days. Cloud access, real-time scheduling, integrated online booking, PracSuite AI for clinical notes. It's a proper modern PMS.
But online booking only catches patients who are comfortable booking themselves in digitally. And that's not everyone.
Some patient groups will always default to the phone: older patients, first-timers with questions, anyone navigating NDIS or workers' compensation, and the working professional who only remembers to book a physio appointment at 7pm on a Wednesday. For these patients, if nobody picks up, one of two things happens: they leave a voicemail (maybe), or they call the next clinic on the list.
Research consistently shows that the majority of callers won't leave a voicemail. They just hang up. And after hours? That number is essentially everyone.
This is the gap AI phone answering is built to fill. Not replacing your receptionist, but making sure every call gets answered, whether it's 10am on a Tuesday or 8pm on a Saturday.
What actually happens when a patient calls
An AI phone answering service like Lyngo sits between your clinic's phone number and your PracSuite calendar. When a patient calls, an AI voice assistant picks up, understands what they need, and either handles it directly or routes them to your team.
The important distinction is between AI that just takes messages (which creates more work for reception) and AI that actually does things inside your PMS (which removes work). Lyngo does the latter.
Here's what that looks like for routine calls:
Booking a new appointment. The AI checks real-time availability in PracSuite, offers the patient a suitable slot based on your booking rules and practitioner schedules, and confirms the appointment. It appears in your PracSuite calendar immediately.
Rescheduling or cancelling. The AI identifies the existing booking, processes the change, and updates PracSuite. Your receptionist doesn't need to touch the calendar.
Answering common questions. Clinic hours, location, parking, what services you offer, whether you're accepting new patients, what your initial consultation costs. These are high-frequency, low-complexity calls that eat up a disproportionate amount of reception time.
After-hours and overflow calls. Every call answered. No voicemail. No "please call back during business hours." Patients can book, reschedule, or get their questions answered at any time.
Collecting deposits. If your clinic takes pre-appointment payments, Lyngo can handle that on the call, reducing no-shows and saving your team a follow-up.
Anything clinical, urgent, or sensitive routes straight to your team. The AI doesn't try to handle things outside its scope. Depending on how you configure it, it either transfers the call live or flags a callback request with a full summary of what the patient needed.
How Lyngo connects to PracSuite
Lyngo integrates with PracSuite via API. It uses PracSuite's existing booking infrastructure rather than creating a parallel system. Practitioner availability, appointment types, booking rules, and patient records all come from PracSuite.
Anything Lyngo books, moves, or cancels updates the same calendar your reception team sees. There's nothing to reconcile.
Setup takes about 15 minutes
Connecting Lyngo to PracSuite involves:
- Generating an API key in PracSuite (under Settings > Integrations > API)
- Enabling the required permissions: Appointment Data (Write), Patient Data (Write), Financial Data (Read), and System Data (Read)
- Entering the key into your Lyngo dashboard
Lyngo's onboarding team gets you up and going within hours. No number change required; calls forward to Lyngo from your existing clinic number.
What this means day to day
Real-time calendar sync. The AI works from the same availability data as PracSuite's online booking. Double-bookings aren't possible because both channels read from the same source.
No new software for your team. Appointments booked by Lyngo show up in the PracSuite calendar alongside everything else. There's no second system to learn, no new tab to check, no daily export to run.
Works alongside everything you already use. PracSuite's online booking, your existing reception workflow, and Lyngo all draw from the same calendar. A slot booked through one channel is immediately reflected everywhere else.
Is AI phone answering right for your clinic?
AI phone answering isn't a universal fit. It works best where certain conditions are present, and it's worth being honest about where it's less useful.
It's likely a good fit if:
- Your reception is consistently stretched during peak periods, and calls are going to voicemail or ringing out
- A high proportion of inbound calls are routine: bookings, rescheduling, basic questions
- Online booking is switched on but you're still fielding a high volume of calls
- You're losing bookings after hours because patients won't leave a voicemail
- You're running a multi-practitioner clinic where scheduling complexity is high
It's probably not the right tool if:
- Call volume is very low across the board
- Most of your calls involve clinical triage or complex patient discussions
- Your patient base has strong preferences for speaking with a specific named staff member and won't engage with any alternative
A simple way to test
Track your inbound calls for one week. Count how many are routine versus complex. Note how many go unanswered. Estimate how much cumulative time your front desk spends on the phone each day.
If routine calls make up the majority, and they're visibly pulling your team away from in-clinic patients, the maths tends to be straightforward. Lyngo's Starter plan covers up to 70 calls per month for $139 AUD, with no lock-in and a free 7-day trial, so you can test it against real call data before committing.
