Healthcare · AI Receptionist · Scheduling Automation
An AI receptionist that books real dental appointments, 24/7.
Dental clinics lose bookings to missed calls, phone tag, and after-hours website traffic. I built Mira for iDENTical Smiles, a family dental clinic, and pitched it to them as a working system: a website chat receptionist connected to n8n and NexHealth, a real healthcare scheduling API, so patients can book, reschedule, cancel, or check an appointment at any time of day, with every action landing in the clinic’s actual calendar.
01 — Overview
The whole receptionist, in two minutes.
Here’s a short walkthrough of Mira handling a real booking conversation end to end, from the website widget to a confirmed slot in NexHealth.
Every booking, reschedule, and cancellation happens inside the clinic’s real scheduling system, not a demo calendar, so the front desk sees exactly what patients see.
02 — What I built
A receptionist that takes real action, not just chats.
This isn’t a scripted chatbot. Mira understands what a patient needs, checks live availability, and calls the right tool to book, move, cancel, or look up an appointment inside NexHealth.
Website AI chat widget
Custom HTML, CSS, and JavaScript widget embedded directly in the clinic's site, no app to download.
Real appointment booking
Books, reschedules, and cancels appointments directly inside NexHealth, not a fake calendar.
Live availability lookup
Pulls real open times from NexHealth and offers them as tappable options in the chat.
Natural conversation intake
Collects name, date of birth, phone, and email through conversation, not a rigid form.
Safe reschedule logic
Books the new time first, then releases the old one, so a patient is never left without an appointment.
Emergency & medical handoff
Hands off anything medical or urgent to the front desk instead of guessing.
Slack + Sheets logging
Every booking, reschedule, and cancellation posts to Slack and logs to a Google Sheet.
HIPAA-ready architecture
Patient health information stays inside NexHealth, with a production path via Azure OpenAI and self-hosted n8n.
The shift
Before a receptionist vs. after.
- —Patients call or use a static booking link
- —Calls go to voicemail while staff are with patients
- —After-hours requests wait until the next business day
- —Rescheduling and cancelling take staff time on the phone
- —Patients play phone tag to find an open time
- —No visibility for the team into what was booked or changed
- —Patient notes spread across calls and sticky notes
- ✓Patients book, reschedule, and cancel in a chat conversation
- ✓Mira responds instantly, day or night
- ✓After-hours requests are handled the moment they come in
- ✓Rescheduling and cancelling happen without a phone call
- ✓Live open times are offered directly in the chat
- ✓Every action posts to Slack and logs to a sheet automatically
- ✓Patient health information stays inside NexHealth
03 — How it works
One message in, one real action out.
The website widget sends every message to n8n with a session ID. Mira remembers the conversation, decides what the patient needs, and calls the right NexHealth tool before replying.
How the pieces connect
Simple Memory keeps track of each patient’s session, so Mira reuses details and appointment ids instead of asking the patient to repeat themselves.
04 — NexHealth tools
Seven sub-workflows that do the real work.
Each tool is its own n8n sub-workflow, triggered by the AI Agent and wired directly to NexHealth’s scheduling API. A shared authentication step trades an API key for a fresh secure token on every call, so the connection stays safe.
Pulls live open appointment times directly from NexHealth's calendar.
Finds or creates the patient record, then books the chosen slot for real.
Looks up the patient's appointments in NexHealth and reports back the status.
Cancels the appointment inside NexHealth and frees the slot.
Books the new time first, then releases the old one, so nothing is left unbooked.
Trades a stored API key for a fresh secure token before each request.
Posts a Slack alert and writes a Google Sheet row, with no patient health data included.
05 — Safety & handoff
Built to never leave a patient stranded.
Reschedule Appointment always books the new time first, then releases the old one, so a patient is never left without an appointment mid-conversation. Mira also follows a set of safety rules from her system prompt: anything medical or urgent, like a chipped tooth or severe pain, gets handed off to the office instead of a guess.
Every action also triggers Notify and Log, which posts a Slack alert and writes a Google Sheet row for the team, using only non-identifying details like the appointment id and time. Patient health information stays inside NexHealth and never enters Slack or the sheet.
06 — Results
Projected impact for the front desk.
Mira was built and pitched to iDENTical Smiles as a working system, not run for a full year yet, so the numbers below are projected results grounded in dental industry benchmarks. The clinic can confirm them against their own call and booking data.
What was built
Why it matters, by the numbers
A simple way to size the value: a new dental patient is worth roughly $4,500 or more over a typical relationship. If Mira recovers even a handful of otherwise-missed bookings each month, the annual revenue recovered adds up fast, the exact figure depends on the clinic’s call volume and new-patient rate.
The percentages above are industry benchmarks, not measured results from this specific clinic. They should be read as expected impact until confirmed with the clinic’s live data.
Want a receptionist like this for your business?
I build AI receptionists and scheduling automations in n8n that take real action inside your existing systems, not a chatbot bolted onto a static page. If you run a clinic, medical practice, or appointment-based business that loses bookings to missed calls, let’s talk.