physical therapy

Physical Therapy Answering Service for Scheduling and Patient Follow-Up

Physical therapy calls often look administrative until a cancellation reveals a changed symptom, a post-operative concern or a visit-authorization problem. Callnovo captures appointment intent, plan-of-care context, referral and insurance questions, cancellation reason and callback urgency—then routes clinical decisions to the practice team.

Physical therapy answering service should protect attendance without pretending to be a therapist. Agents can schedule and move approved visits, capture referral or insurance questions, record cancellation reasons and help the practice follow up on an open slot. They should not diagnose pain, recommend exercises, interpret symptoms or decide whether a patient is safe to wait. Review public pricing, managed support, or map the practice escalation workflow.

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A therapist guiding a patient through an arm stretch

how it plays out

A patient cancelling the appointment before the one that mattered.

Phone Spanish

“My doctor referred me — how do I start physical therapy?”

Referral intake is where missing paperwork gets caught early.

AI records the referral source, reason for care in the patient’s words and insurance details
Flags whether a physician referral is on file and what the billing team still needs
Books the evaluation with the therapist the practice’s scheduling rules assign
Sends intake paperwork digitally

Evaluation scheduled billing gaps flagged before visit one

SMS English

“Am I doing this exercise right? It hurts more.”

Changed pain is clinical information, not a scheduling note.

AI does not coach the exercise or judge the pain
Routes the message to a live agent, who records what hurts, where and since when
Sends it to the treating therapist the same day under the practice’s urgency rules
Tells the patient who will call back and when

Therapist alerted no exercise advice given

Web Chat Mandarin

“How many visits do I have left on my authorization?”

Authorization tracking prevents surprise coverage gaps

AI checked current authorization status in billing system
Informed patient they had 6 visits remaining of 12 authorized
Noted that re-authorization would be needed if plan extended
Offered to schedule remaining visits to ensure coverage continuity

Authorization status provided remaining visits proactively scheduled

Phone Vietnamese

“I need to reschedule — I have a conflict every Tuesday now”

Recurring schedule changes disrupt therapy consistency

AI pulled up the patient’s current recurring Tuesday appointment
Checked therapist availability on alternative days
Found matching Thursday slot with the same therapist
Updated all future recurring appointments and sent confirmations

Recurring schedule updated therapy continuity maintained

the team behind it

Who fills the slot that just opened.

real members of the global team

Care Coordinators for Physical Therapy

Visit-authorization counts tracked and flagged to your billing team
Referral intake and physician-referral checks against your rules
Pain changes and post-operative concerns routed to the treating therapist

65+ Languages

Native-speaking agents in English, Spanish, Mandarin, and 60+ more
Real-time AI translation for rare language pairs
Cultural context training for every market we serve

Follow-the-Sun Coverage

Operation centres in Canada, Bolivia, Nicaragua, the Philippines and China
Smooth handoff between time zones with shared context
Holiday and weekend coverage without overtime costs

the part nobody prices in

Your outcome depends on attendance, and attendance dies one cancellation at a time.

Physical therapy is the rare clinical service where the treatment only works if the patient keeps showing up. A plan of care is twelve visits, not one, and the difference between a good outcome and a discharged-non-compliant note is usually four or five missed sessions.

And patients do not quit. They cancel one appointment, then reschedule the next, then stop answering the reminder text — the same quiet fade as a gym membership, except here it also means the shoulder does not get better.

Which makes the cancellation call the clinical moment it actually is. A person who asks what changed, offers a different time that same week and notes why, does more for the outcome than a system that processes the cancellation efficiently and moves on.

what it costs

Published rates, so you can do the arithmetic first.

Most vendors in this category quote by form. These are our published packages — not a quote, since language mix, hours and volume all move the number. The per-minute figures are simply the monthly price divided by the included minutes.

Option	Published price	Per minute	What it's for
Live shared team	from US$300 / month	includes 500 min → ≈ US$0.60/min	Filling a slot the same day it is cancelled
AI voice	US$0.15	per minute	Scheduling, rescheduling, insurance and authorisation questions
Web chat	US$0.15	per session	Website and portal requests that arrive after the clinic closes
Live shared team	from US$650 / month	includes 1,500 min → ≈ US$0.43/min	Evenings and weekends, when patients decide whether to keep coming
Dedicated agent	from US$5.80	per hour, per agent	Your plan-of-care rules, your escalation list, one team that knows your therapists

Anything involving a person is a starting price. Two things move it: which languages you need, and how senior an agent the work actually requires — a bilingual agent handling refund authority is not the same hire as one taking bookings. AI voice and web chat are flat, because there is no hiring in them. And every model above is open to every business on this page: which one fits is a question about the shape of your volume, not about your industry.

Minimum engagement is half a seat — not a five-seat block. We also bill per resolved issue, from US$1, where you pay nothing if it is not resolved; that model fits businesses where a customer problem actually gets solved on the call, not businesses where the call is intake.

who takes which call

Route by the cost of getting it wrong.

Most vendors sell you either an AI receptionist or a live answering service and leave the allocation to you. Since we run both, here is the split we would actually recommend — including the calls we think should never touch automation.

The call	Route to	Cost of getting it wrong
Booking or moving a routine visit	AI	An annoyed patient
"Do you take my insurance? Do I need a referral?"	AI	A lost new patient
Filling a cancelled slot from your list	AI	An empty hour that does not come back
Pain that has changed since the last session	Human	Clinical information lost in a scheduling note
A post-operative patient with a concern	Human	A complication nobody escalated
A third cancellation in a plan of care	Human	A patient who quietly stops coming, and an outcome that never happens

setup

Five days to put the right person on it.

Five days is our normal window to staff a live account — that is five days to find and place an agent who fits your business, not five days of software setup. AI voice can go live sooner because there is no hiring step.

your existing software

It goes into your system, with a record of who said what.

We work inside the CRM, practice system or case tool you already run, rather than handing you a second inbox to check. Every contact leaves a timestamped record — who called, what was asked, what was said back, what was promised — because in your line of work the question six months later is not "did someone call" but "what exactly did we tell them". Tell us what you run and we will say straight whether we connect to it today.

what comes off the call

What reaches the therapist before the visit.

A scheduling call in PT carries clinical information whether or not anyone writes it down. We collect it, under HIPAA-compliant procedures:

Patient name, date of birth and callback number, verified to your rules
New patient or existing plan of care, and which therapist they see
Referral source and whether a physician referral is on file — many plans still require it
Body region and the reason for care, in the patient's own words

Whether pain has changed since the last visit, and in which direction
Post-operative status and how many weeks out from surgery
Insurance, visit authorisation count and how many are already used
Why they are cancelling, if they are — the single most useful field on this list

It reaches you by secure message and into your practice system where we connect. The visit-authorisation count is the one most clinics discover too late, so we ask it early and flag when it is running out.

where AI should not be

The calls we will not put a bot on.

Pain that has changed since the last visit

New pain, worse pain, or pain in a new place after a session is clinical information, not a scheduling note. A person collects it properly and gets it to the treating therapist before the patient arrives.

A post-operative patient with a concern

Swelling, heat, a wound that looks wrong, a sudden loss of range. These go to a person who knows to escalate to you and, where your protocol says so, to the surgeon.

The third cancellation

One cancellation is life. Three is a patient leaving. That call needs somebody who can ask what actually changed — transport, work, cost, or they stopped believing it was helping — and get them booked rather than processed.

Authorisation and coverage disputes

A patient who has just found out their visits ran out is upset about money and about their shoulder at the same time. That is a person's conversation and usually needs your billing team the same day.

when we're the wrong choice

Three cases where you should hire someone else.

You want clinical triage on the phone. We collect and route under your protocol. We do not assess, advise on exercises, or tell a patient whether something is normal. If your clinic needs a licensed therapist screening calls, that is a member of your team.
You want us running authorisations with payers. We can flag when a visit count is running low and collect what your billing team needs. Talking to payers, submitting authorisations and appealing denials stay with your staff.
You are a single-therapist cash-pay practice with a full book. If you are booked out and there is no insurance authorisation to chase, most of this page is solving problems you do not have. A good reminder system will do more.

questions

What buyers ask before they sign.

How much does it cost?

AI voice is US$0.15 per minute and web chat is US$0.15 per session. Live agents start at US$300 per month including 500 minutes — about US$0.60 per minute — or from US$5.80 per hour for a dedicated agent working only your account. The minimum engagement is half a seat, not a five-seat block.

How fast can you start answering our phones?

Do you answer in Spanish?

Yes, on the same number, with agents in our Bolivia and Nicaragua operation centres — native Spanish, not machine translation. English and Spanish share one queue, and we cover 60+ more languages if you need them.

Can I mix AI and live agents on one number?

That is the normal setup. You decide which call types go to AI and which reach a person, and you can change the split as your volume changes. Nothing about that decision is locked in at signup.

Can an answering service schedule physical therapy appointments?

Yes. Agents can schedule, reschedule and confirm approved visit types using the practice’s availability and intake rules. They can also record why a patient cancels and route exceptions to the practice team.

Can agents triage a patient’s pain over the phone?

They should not diagnose or decide whether a symptom is normal. They can record the patient’s own description, apply the practice-approved urgency path and route the concern to a therapist or other designated clinical owner.

compliance

HIPAA & Physical Therapy Compliance

Business Associate Agreement (BAA)
Patient treatment and progress note confidentiality
Encrypted clinical communication channels
Role-based access with a per-agent audit trail

also worth reading

start

Need fewer lost visits and clearer clinical handoffs?

Map scheduling, cancellations, authorizations and practice-approved escalation rules before expanding coverage.

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