The Phone Never Stopped Ringing
The clinic — two Gold Coast locations, six podiatrists, high volume of Medicare and DVA patients — had a website that looked professional but did not work hard enough.
Reception manager Kate: "We'd get calls asking if we bulk bill, what a referral needs to say, whether we treat kids, where we park. Same questions, all day. After hours, website enquiries sat in a form inbox until Monday morning — and half those patients had already booked somewhere else."
Medicare bulk-bill reconciliation was a weekly pain: cross-checking Cliniko treatment codes against what actually got lodged, catching rejected claims, and fixing coding errors before they compounded. One quarter, $3,200 in claims were rejected due to incorrect item numbers — discovered weeks after the appointments.
AI Website Chatbot
OceanSoft deployed a custom AI chatbot on the clinic's WordPress site, trained on:
- Service descriptions (general podiatry, sports, paediatric, diabetic foot care)
- Fee structures: Medicare bulk billing eligibility, DVA coverage, private fees, health fund gap payments
- Referral requirements: GP referral needed for Medicare EPC plans, what information to include
- Location details: addresses, parking, public transport, wheelchair access
- Practitioner bios and specialties
Conversation capabilities:
| Patient question | Chatbot response |
|---|---|
| "Do you bulk bill?" | Explains Medicare eligibility criteria; asks if patient has a current GP referral and care plan |
| "I need an appointment" | Shows Cliniko online booking widget with next available slots per location |
| "Do you treat children?" | Confirms paediatric podiatry availability; links to practitioner bio |
| "I have a referral from my GP" | Explains what to bring; offers to capture enquiry for admin follow-up |
| Clinical question ("Is this ingrown toenail serious?") | General guidance + recommends booking; escalates to staff with transcript |
After-hours conversations are captured in a morning digest email to reception — patients who enquired overnight receive a personal follow-up call by 10 AM.
Cliniko Online Booking Integration
The chatbot embeds Cliniko's online booking directly in the conversation flow:
- Patient expresses booking intent
- Chatbot asks location preference (Southport / Robina)
- Cliniko availability API returns next 5 slots
- Patient selects slot → redirected to Cliniko booking page with fields pre-populated
- Confirmation SMS sent via Cliniko automated messaging
Online bookings increased 35% in the first quarter — patients who would have called during business hours now book at 9 PM from their couch.
Medicare & DVA Reconciliation Automation
OceanSoft built a claim reconciliation workflow between Cliniko and Xero:
- Daily export of completed Cliniko appointments with Medicare/DVA item numbers
- Validation rules check item numbers against appointment type, practitioner provider number, and referral status
- Valid claims batch-lodged via Medicare Online / DVA channels
- Rejected or flagged claims appear in admin review inbox with specific error reason
- Successful claims reconcile to Xero revenue accounts automatically
Kate's weekly reconciliation session went from 4 hours to 20 minutes reviewing exceptions.
In six months of operation: zero rejected claims due to coding errors. Previous quarter had $3,200 in rejections.
Enquiry Routing and Escalation
Not everything goes to the bot. Escalation rules ensure clinical and complex cases reach humans:
- Immediate escalation: mentions of infection, severe pain, diabetes foot emergency → SMS to on-call podiatrist with patient contact
- Same-day escalation: DVA gold card enquiries, workers compensation → admin callback queue
- Standard capture: general enquiries outside business hours → morning digest
- Spam filter: AI detects non-genuine submissions and suppresses from digest
Staff receive escalation notifications via SMS and email with full conversation transcript — no need to ask the patient to repeat themselves.
Results After Six Months
| Metric | Before | After 6 months |
|---|---|---|
| Website enquiries auto-resolved | 0% | ~70% |
| Inbound phone calls (reception) | ~85/day | ~42/day |
| Online bookings (monthly) | 120 | 162 |
| Medicare claim rejections (coding) | $3,200/quarter | $0 |
| Admin hours on claim reconciliation | ~4 hrs/week | ~0.5 hrs/week |
| After-hours enquiry response time | Next business day | <2 hours (chatbot) / same morning (staff) |
Principal podiatrist Mark: "The phone used to be our biggest distraction. Now reception actually greets patients when they walk in instead of being stuck on hold explaining our bulk billing policy for the hundredth time."
Privacy and Compliance
- Chatbot does not store Medicare numbers in conversation logs — patients directed to secure Cliniko intake forms
- All chatbot data hosted on Australian-region Azure infrastructure
- Conversation transcripts retained 30 days for quality review, then purged
- Escalation SMS for clinical emergencies include disclaimer: "This is not emergency medical advice — call 000 for emergencies"
Engagement Model
Five-week delivery: chatbot training data preparation and website embedding (weeks 1–2), Cliniko booking API integration (week 3), Medicare reconciliation workflow (week 4), reception training and hypercare (week 5). Chatbot hosting on managed Azure tier; reconciliation workflow runs on practice-owned infrastructure.
Podiatry and allied health clinics looking to reduce phone volume and automate Medicare workflows can explore Managed Technology from OceanSoft Solutions.