In brief
A good medical practice answering machine message tells callers four things, in this order: they have reached the right practice, why nobody is picking up, what to do in an emergency and when the desk will answer again. The twelve templates below cover a busy line, a desk tied up at the counter, the lunch break, evenings, weekends, public holidays, leave with or without a locum, an unplanned closure, a training afternoon, a move and a bilingual line. Replace the bracketed parts with your own details, keep the emergency sentence near the start, and remove a line rather than add one.
What every message has to say
Callers who reach your answering machine usually ring about something ordinary: an appointment, a repeat prescription, a test result. A few are frightened, and they need the emergency instruction before anything else. So every template below names the practice first, gives the emergency instruction second, and only then says when the desk answers again.
The templates say “the emergency services” so that they read the same wherever your practice is. When you record, say 112 instead, which the European Commission describes as the European emergency number, available everywhere in the EU. Say it slowly and once; a caller in distress hangs up as soon as they have heard it.
The bracketed slots are yours to fill: [practice name], [reopening day and time], [out-of-hours service], [locum’s name] and so on. Keep each sentence short enough for an older or anxious caller to follow without ringing back to hear it again. If a template does not match how your practice runs, cut a sentence instead of writing a new one.
Three templates for when the desk is open but busy
The busy-line message, played in the queue: “You have reached [practice name]. All our lines are busy at the moment. If this is a medical emergency, hang up and call the emergency services. Otherwise, please stay on the line and the next available member of the team will answer.”
Your phone system plays it while callers wait, not after hours. Keep it to these four sentences and let it loop with silence or quiet music between repeats. A queue message full of opening hours and website addresses makes the wait feel longer, and callers hang up to try again later.
The message for a desk tied up at the counter: “You have reached [practice name]. Our team is looking after patients at the desk and cannot take your call right now. If this is a medical emergency, call the emergency services. To book an appointment, leave your name, your date of birth and a number we can reach you on, and we will call you back [when you will call back].”
Fill the last slot with what the team really does: “this morning”, “before the end of the day”, “tomorrow”. The date of birth lets the desk tell apart two patients who share a name before returning the call. If nobody plays the messages back until the evening, say so, because a patient who expects a call within the hour will keep ringing until someone answers.
The lunch-break message: “You have reached [practice name]. The desk is closed over lunch and the phone line reopens at [time the line reopens]. If this is a medical emergency, call the emergency services. For anything else, please call again after that time.”
There is no invitation to leave a message here, on purpose. The desk would come back from lunch to a pile of voicemails at the very moment the afternoon calls start. A precise reopening time does more for the caller than a vague promise of a callback.
Three templates for evenings, weekends and public holidays
The weekday evening message: “Thank you for calling [practice name]. The practice is now closed and opens again at [reopening day and time]. For a medical emergency, call the emergency services. For a problem that cannot wait until we open, contact [out-of-hours service].”
Only add “leave a message after the tone” if someone plays the messages back before the first appointment of the day. A request left at night and heard at noon helps nobody: the patient has already rung again at opening time, and the desk deals with the same request twice.
The weekend message: “You have reached [practice name], which is closed until [reopening day and time]. For a medical emergency, call the emergency services. If you need to see a doctor before then, contact [out-of-hours service].”
Switch it on before the last member of the team leaves on the last working day of the week. When a public holiday falls on the following Monday, check the reopening day twice, because that is the detail callers act on. Many phone systems can switch between a daytime and a closed message on a timetable, which removes the risk of forgetting.
The public holiday message: “You have reached [practice name]. The practice is closed today for [name of the holiday] and reopens at [reopening day and time]. For a medical emergency, call the emergency services. For anything else, please call us again once we are open.”
Name the holiday: a patient who hears it understands at once that the closure is planned and short. If your patients come from both sides of a border, the public holiday planner shows the holidays of each neighbouring calendar, so you can prepare every closure message for the year in one sitting.
Four templates for leave and closures
The message for leave with a locum: “You have reached [practice name]. Dr [name] is away from [first day] to [last day] inclusive. During this time, Dr [locum’s name] sees patients at [locum’s address]. For a medical emergency, call the emergency services.”
Record it the day before you leave and put a reminder in the diary for the morning you return. A leave message that is still playing after you are back tells patients the practice is shut, and they book elsewhere. Read the locum’s address out slowly, street name first, because callers write it down as they listen.
The message for leave without cover: “You have reached [practice name], which is closed from [first day] to [last day]. If you need to see a doctor before we return, please contact another practice nearby or [out-of-hours service]. For a medical emergency, call the emergency services.”
This template offers no callback and invites no message. The caller learns on the first listen that they need to make other arrangements, instead of waiting by the phone for a reply that cannot come before you are back.
The message for an unplanned closure: “You have reached [practice name]. The practice is closed today for reasons beyond our control. If you had an appointment today, we will contact you to arrange a new one. For a medical emergency, call the emergency services.”
Illness, a power cut or a burst pipe rarely leaves time to write anything better. Keep the middle sentence only if the team really will phone each patient on the day’s list; if it will not, ask patients to call again on [reopening day] instead. Either way, the message must disappear the moment the practice opens again.
The training-afternoon message: “You have reached [practice name]. The practice is closed this afternoon for staff training and reopens at [reopening day and time]. For a medical emergency, call the emergency services. For anything else, please call again once we are open.”
Training dates are known weeks ahead, so record this one early and schedule it if your phone system allows. Tell patients at the desk in the days before as well; fewer people then hear the message at all.
Two templates for news your patients need to hear
The message for a new address: “You have reached [practice name]. From [moving date], the practice receives patients at [new address]. Appointments already booked keep the same day and time. For a medical emergency, call the emergency services.”
Play it on every call, before the normal greeting, from a few weeks before the move until the desk stops hearing questions about it. Put the same address on your website at the same time, because a caller who reads one address and hears another rings again to check.
The bilingual message, in French and English: “Bonjour, vous êtes bien au cabinet [nom du cabinet]. Hello, you have reached [practice name]. En cas d’urgence médicale, appelez les secours. For a medical emergency, call the emergency services. Le cabinet rouvre [jour et heure de réouverture]. The practice reopens at [reopening day and time].”
Alternate the languages sentence by sentence rather than playing the whole message twice, so that nobody waits through a full message they cannot follow. Put first the language your patients use more often. Only invite a message in a language somebody at the desk can understand when they play it back.
Recording it so that callers understand it first time
Write the text out in full before you record, then read it aloud to a colleague who has not seen it. If they cannot repeat the reopening time and the emergency instruction afterwards, shorten the message. Record in a quiet room on the handset or a headset, not on a laptop microphone, and use the same voice for every message so the line sounds like one practice.
Listen to the result on a mobile phone, the way your patients will hear it. Check the slots one last time: a wrong reopening day does more harm than a plain message. If you would rather start from your own details, the phone greeting generator writes a greeting, a voicemail message and a holiday notice with your practice name and opening hours filled in.
To see how much of the week your line spends on the machine, lay your opening hours over the hours patients ring with the opening hours coverage tool. The gaps it shows are the hours your answering machine message has to carry.
Where an answering machine stops
However well written, an answering machine can only inform. It cannot take down a booking request properly, apply your emergency rules to what the caller says, or put a caller through when someone at the desk is available. Every message it records still has to be played back, sorted and returned by your team.
ClinicAll is a receptionist that answers your line as your practice’s front desk instead of a recording. It notes the caller’s name, the reason for the call and a number, and turns them into a callback request your team finds in the dashboard. If a caller asks, it says it is the practice’s virtual receptionist; it never claims to be a person.
The receptionist gives no medical advice and applies your emergency rules, so the instruction you would have put at the top of your message is still given. It transfers to the desk when it is staffed and a transfer line is configured; otherwise it takes a callback request. It never moves or cancels an appointment itself: your team confirms. French and English are verified on lines already in service.
The comparison between a receptionist and voicemail sets the two side by side, and how the receptionist works follows a call from greeting to callback request. The price is quoted in writing after a 30-minute call, as the pricing page explains. More practical notes on running a practice phone line are collected in the practice guides.