Arbol · Australia
Your roster covers 45 hours.
Patients ring for 168.
Arbol answers the other 123 — books into the appointment book you already keep, confirms the day before, and offers the cancelled slot to your waitlist before the morning is over.
Nine hours a day, five days a week. Every pale cell is an hour when the phone rings into a message bank.
Same roster, same team, same phone number. The teal is answered in seconds, in parallel, and booked in your schedule.
Illustrative roster · 9–6 weekdays · one cell = one hour
When you bulk bill everyone, an empty chair bills nothing
Bulk billing is rising, and the incentive now rewards practices that bulk bill every patient. That makes revenue a function of one thing: how many booked appointments actually happen.
- 81.9%
of GP attendances bulk billed
National rate for the January–March 2026 quarter, up 4.6 percentage points year on year.
Department of Health, Disability and Ageing / AIHW, 2026
- +12.5%
loading for practices that bulk bill everyone
The expanded incentive that started in November 2025 pays a loading on top of Medicare payments for fully bulk-billing practices.
Australian Government, bulk billing incentive expansion, November 2025
- 168 h
the week your patients live in
A rostered front desk covers about 45 of them. The other 123 are when people who work call.
Arithmetic: 7 days × 24 hours
Sources: Australian Government Department of Health, Disability and Ageing and the AIHW bulk-billing dashboards, 2026. We quote the national figures rather than modelling your practice — your own attendance and DNA rates are what the demo is for.
What happens to a DNA when nobody has to make the calls
- 1Day before
Confirmed, twice
A reminder goes out by SMS and, if there is no reply, by voice. The patient can confirm, move or cancel by simply answering — no app, no portal login.
- 2Instantly
The slot opens
The moment someone cancels, the appointment is released in the schedule instead of sitting in an inbox until the morning.
- 3Within minutes
The waitlist is offered it
Patients waiting for an earlier appointment are contacted in order, by message and by call, until one takes it. Your team does not dial a single number.
- 4Same day
The DNA that still happens is logged
Non-attendance is recorded against the patient record with the reminder history attached, so your recall and follow-up policies have something to stand on.
Put your own week in
We do not quote MBS item numbers at you — your billing mix is yours. Set your own average benefit per attendance and see what the non-attendance rate is worth over a year.
Your practice · per month
- Appointments not attended
- 195
- Consulting hours idle
- 49
Unbilled attendances · per year
$105,300
Fifteen minutes per appointment, your own benefit figure, twelve months. It sizes the gap — it is not a claim about how much of it comes back.
The message bank is not a plan
The calls that arrive after you close
Shift workers, parents after bedtime, anyone who could not step away from work. Right now they hear a message bank and try the practice down the road.
A hard clinical boundary
The agent gives no clinical advice and makes no assessment of urgency beyond the script you approve. Anything urgent-sounding is directed to emergency care or your after-hours arrangement immediately.
Handover with the whole conversation
When a call needs a human, your team receives the transcript, the summary and the details already collected. The patient never repeats themselves.
Every contact recorded
Calls and messages are recorded, transcribed and searchable, so a practice manager reviews what was actually said instead of reconstructing it.
Australian obligations, handled as defaults
- 01
Advertising: no testimonials, anywhere
Section 133 of the National Law does not allow testimonials about clinical care when advertising a regulated health service. Our customers advertise under that rule, so anything we produce for them fits it — which is why there is not a single patient quote on this page.
SourceAhpra, Guidelines for advertising a regulated health service
- 02
Privacy: health information is sensitive information
Under the Privacy Act 1988 and the Australian Privacy Principles, health information carries the highest handling standard: collected for a stated purpose, with consent, and protected accordingly. Each practice gets a dedicated database; data is encrypted in transit and at rest.
SourcePrivacy Act 1988 (Cth) and the Australian Privacy Principles
- 03
Breach notification, planned for in advance
The Notifiable Data Breaches scheme means an eligible breach has to be assessed and notified. Our incident process, retention settings and export tooling exist so your practice can meet that obligation instead of improvising it.
SourceNotifiable Data Breaches scheme, OAIC
- 04
Recalls and reminders you can evidence
Australian general practice already runs on recall and reminder systems, and accreditation against the RACGP Standards expects them documented and followed. Every attempt, response and outcome is logged and exportable.
SourceRACGP Standards for general practices
None of this is legal advice — it is what we build against, and what we will put in writing for your practice.
Five things worth being able to show, with or without us
None of these need a vendor. They are the difference between a practice that says it recalls patients and one that can prove it on the day somebody asks.
- 01
A recall and reminder register that is actually used
Not a spreadsheet somebody rebuilds each quarter: a live list where every attempt, response and outcome is recorded against the patient.
- 02
Evidence of the attempts, not just the intention
When a patient says nobody called, the answer should be a timestamp and a transcript rather than a memory.
- 03
Consent for reminders, per patient and per channel
Including the opposite: the patient who asked to stop, and proof that the request took effect everywhere at once.
- 04
A written after-hours arrangement patients actually hear
The words your callers get at 21:00 should be the words your practice approved, every time, on every line.
- 05
A complaints and feedback path that leaves a record
Anything raised on a call reaches a person with the conversation attached, and closing it is an event rather than a shrug.
Straight answers
Prefer email? Write tosupport@getarbol.com — a person answers.
01Do we have to change our practice management software?
No. Arbol answers the number your patients already ring and works with the appointment book your practice already keeps. Nothing is migrated, and your data is exportable in full.
02Does the agent tell patients it is not a person?
Yes, in the first sentence, using your practice's name. It also states that the call is recorded. That behaviour is not configurable.
03What happens if a caller sounds unwell or distressed?
The agent does not triage and does not give clinical advice. It follows the escalation path your practice approves — directing the caller to emergency care or your after-hours arrangement, and alerting your team with the full context.
04Can it handle repeat scripts, results and referral requests?
It handles the request end to end up to the point where a clinician has to decide: it collects the details, checks them against your policy, and puts a complete task in front of the right person. It never issues a clinical outcome itself.
05What does it cost?
A flat monthly fee in AUD, sized to your call volume, channels and locations — not per minute or per call. You get the number in writing after a 30-minute call.
Nobody should have to choose between the patient at the desk and the one on the phone
Thirty minutes on your call volume, your DNA rate and your after-hours demand. You leave with the business case in your own numbers — and no testimonials, because we are not allowed to show you any.