VetReception: 24/7 Vet Call Answering Into Your PIMS
VetReception answers every veterinary call, triages against the practice's own written emergency protocol, and books straight into the PIMS.
What VetReception does
VetReception answers every call a veterinary practice cannot get to — after hours, during surgery, and at three in the morning — triages it against the practice’s own written emergency protocol rather than a generic script, books the appointment straight into the PIMS, and leaves the front desk a written summary instead of a voicemail to work through.
That is the whole product. It is not a call centre with a veterinary script, and it is not a chatbot on your website. It is a phone number your clients already dial, answered on the first ring, at every hour your front desk is closed.
If you want the short version of how practices actually run it day to day, see how veterinary practices use it.
The three things that go wrong without it
Most independent practices do not lose calls because nobody cares. They lose calls because the phone rings while two people are holding a fractious cat and a third is checking out a euthanasia client.
Calls that arrive when nobody can pick up
The 3am call is the one that matters most. A client whose dog is bloated, a cat that cannot urinate, a hit-by-car that someone found on the road. These calls arrive including the ones that arrive at 3am, and they arrive during surgery too — a two-veterinarian practice running a dental block at 11am is not answering the phone.
An answering service takes a message. A voicemail takes a message. Neither one tells the client whether to come in now or wait until morning, and neither one books anything.
Triage that does not match your protocol
A generic urgency model asks “is this an emergency?” and gets a yes or no. Your protocol does not work that way. Yours says a male cat straining to urinate comes in immediately; a dog with one episode of vomiting and normal energy waits until morning; a rabbit not eating for six hours is urgent because rabbits do not wait.
VetReception triages against the practice’s own written emergency protocol. You write it, or you send us the one you already have, and the calls are sorted by your rules — not by a vendor’s idea of what urgent means.
Bookings that never reach the schedule
A message taken at 2am becomes a callback at 8am, which becomes a phone tag loop, which becomes a client who booked with the emergency hospital forty minutes away and may not come back.
Every booking VetReception makes is written into the PIMS — the appointment exists on the schedule before the front desk arrives. The team gets a written summary of the call, not a voicemail to work through.
How it works, in three steps
1. You send us your protocol and your schedule rules
We need two things from you: your written emergency protocol, and the rules your front desk already uses for booking — appointment lengths, which doctor sees which type of visit, how far out you book routine appointments, what you do with a new client who has never been seen.
This is a one-time setup conversation, not a configuration project. If your protocol lives in a binder, that is fine. If it lives in the head of your lead technician, we write it down with you.
2. Calls are answered, triaged and booked
VetReception picks up. It works through your protocol’s questions, decides whether the client needs to come in now, come in tomorrow, or wait for a callback, and books accordingly. After-hours emergency calls get the on-call instructions your practice already uses.
The AI never gives clinical advice. Anything clinical — dosing questions, “is this normal”, “should I give him the medication” — is routed to a named person at your practice, with the client’s number and a summary of what they asked.
3. The front desk gets a written summary
Every call produces a short written record: who called, what the animal was doing, what the protocol said, what was booked, and what still needs a human. It lands where your team already looks in the morning.
No voicemail queue. No “I think someone called about a dog?” at 8:15am.
Who this is for
Independent small-animal practices in the US running one to six veterinarians, with a PIMS and no overnight front desk.
That is a specific shape of practice. It means you have a practice management system that holds the schedule, you have a protocol that reflects how your doctors actually practise, and you have decided not to staff the phones overnight. It also means you are the person who decides — there is no committee, no IT department, and no procurement process.
If you are a single-doctor practice, this still fits. The calls you miss are the same calls, and the protocol is shorter.
Who this is not for
It is not for practices that want a human being on the line at 3am. If your clients expect a person, and you are willing to pay for one, an overnight staffing model is the right answer and VetReception is not.
It is not for practices without a PIMS. The booking has to land somewhere, and we write into the system you already run.
It is not for specialty or referral hospitals with their own triage lines, and it is not for practices that want the AI to answer clinical questions. It will not, and it will hand those calls to a person every time.
Works with the software you already run
Booking is written into the PIMS, which means the integration matters more than any other feature. We integrate with the systems independent practices actually run, including Avimark integration, Cornerstone practice management phone, ezyVet integration, Shepherd veterinary software integration and Vetspire integration.
The general shape of a PIMS integration phone system is the same across all of them: the call ends, the appointment appears, the summary is written. See works with the software veterinary practices already run for the current list.
What it costs
Pricing is per practice, based on call volume and how many locations you run, and it is published on the pricing for veterinary practices page rather than quoted case by case. There is no per-minute billing and no charge for calls that turn out to be a wrong number.
If you want to compare it against what you currently spend on after-hours coverage — an answering service, overtime, or the revenue from calls that went to voicemail — the calculator walks through the arithmetic with your own numbers.
Two ways to start
Join the waitlist if you want to see it working before you commit to a date. You will get access in the order you signed up, and you can send us your protocol while you wait.
Book a demo if you want to see a call triaged against your own protocol, live, with your rules. Bring the protocol. We will run a scenario from it and show you what the front desk would see the next morning.
Either way, the first thing we ask for is the protocol — because that is the part that makes the difference between an answering service and something your practice can actually use.
Related reading
After hours vet phone answering covers the overnight case in detail. Veterinary triage protocol phone is about writing the protocol itself. Emergency vet call triage walks through how the questions are ordered. Vet clinic missed calls is about what actually happens to the calls you do not pick up, and veterinary answering service compares the models. For the wider picture, AI receptionist for veterinary clinics and best tools for veterinary practices put this in context, and the problem, in the words veterinary practices use is worth reading if you want to hear it from other practices rather than from us.
Questions people ask
Does the AI give clinical advice to my clients?
No. VetReception never gives clinical advice. It asks the questions in your protocol, decides which of your own categories the call falls into, and books or routes accordingly. Anything clinical — a dosing question, "is this normal", "should I give him the medication he was sent home with" — is transferred to a named person at your practice, along with the client's number and a note of what they asked. The AI does not interpret symptoms, does not suggest treatment, and does not tell a client whether a medication is appropriate. If a call drifts into clinical territory, it stops and routes.
What happens if a call does not fit my protocol?
It goes to a person. Protocols do not cover everything, and a client describing something your written rules do not address is exactly the case where a human should decide. The call is routed to the named person on your escalation list with the client's details and a summary of what they said. The same applies to calls that are ambiguous, that the client cannot answer clearly, or that involve a species or situation your protocol does not mention. You can also set a rule that any call from a client you have never seen goes to a person rather than being booked directly.
Which practice management systems do you integrate with?
Booking is written into the PIMS, so the integration list is the important part of the product. We integrate with the systems independent small-animal practices in the US actually run, including Avimark, Cornerstone, ezyVet, Shepherd and Vetspire. The behaviour is the same across all of them: the call ends, the appointment appears on the schedule with the right doctor and the right appointment length, and the written summary is filed. If your system is not on the list, tell us which one you run — the list is driven by what practices ask for, not by what is easiest for us.
How is this different from a veterinary answering service?
An answering service takes a message and reads it back to your team in the morning. VetReception triages the call against the practice's own written emergency protocol, tells the client whether to come in now or wait, and books the appointment straight into the PIMS. The difference shows up at 8am: with an answering service your front desk works through a queue of messages and calls people back; with VetReception the appointments are already on the schedule and the summaries are already written. The calls that needed a person are flagged as needing a person, rather than buried in the same queue as the routine ones.
What does it cost, and how is it billed?
Pricing is per practice and depends on call volume and the number of locations you run. It is published on the pricing page rather than quoted case by case, so you can see it before you talk to anyone. There is no per-minute billing, which matters because the calls you most want answered are the long ones — a frightened client describing a bloated dog takes longer than a refill request. There is also no charge for wrong numbers or spam calls. If you want to compare it against what you currently spend on after-hours coverage, the calculator on this site works through it with your own figures.
Do I have to write a protocol from scratch?
No. Most practices already have one, even if it is a laminated sheet by the phone or a paragraph in the staff handbook. Send us what you have and we work from it. If it is incomplete, we go through it with you and fill the gaps — that conversation is usually useful in itself, because it forces the practice to write down decisions that have been made verbally for years. The protocol stays yours. You can change it at any time, and changes take effect on the next call rather than at the next release.