Practice growth
Language barriers are patient-safety risks
Health literacy and language access are safety issues. A multilingual portal is a clinical feature.
6 min read
A front desk does not lose its day to volume. It loses it to repetition — the same name written in the diary, then in the register, then on the invoice: three chances to be wrong, and three stretches of a morning in which nobody is looking at the patient.
Where the front desk loses time
The front desk loses time wherever the same fact is written twice: the appointment in one place, the arrival in another, the invoice in a third. Four moments carry nearly all of it — booking, arrival, the queue, and the invoice.
One definition, made once. The front desk is whoever holds the diary, the telephone and the cash box: a secretary in some practices, a spouse in others, the doctor between two patients in a good many.
Each is measured the same way: how many times one fact has to be typed before the day closes. How a day is filled before the counter opens, and where online appointment booking fits, is a subject of its own; this article starts at the counter.
One calendar, one queue
One staff calendar, on every plan, with drag-and-drop scheduling and conflict detection. Two visits dropped into the same slot surface as a named conflict rather than as a discovery in the waiting room, and walk-ins slot into a queue instead of being wedged into the grid by hand.
Microsoft 365 and Outlook calendar sync is included on all three plans. A second term, defined once: a patient connection is how a person is attached to their own record — by email, SMS, link, Patient ID or QR — and not how an appointment is created.
The queue this page describes is the list the desk actually holds, visible to the desk and to the doctor. Judge that against your own Monday morning: if the order of arrival lives today in a receptionist's memory, a shared list is the whole of the improvement.
Reminders are a channel question
Push and in-app appointment reminders are included on all three plans. SMS and WhatsApp reminders are metered credits, and that — not diligence, not intention — is what actually differs between the plans. The gate in full:
| Reminder channel | Essential | Pro | Premium |
|---|---|---|---|
| Appointment reminders, push and in-app | Included | Included | Included |
| SMS reminder credits | Add-on | 200 / mo | 500 / mo |
| WhatsApp reminder credits | Add-on | 200 / mo | 500 / mo |
Credits can be topped up on any plan, so the monthly figure is a budget and not a ceiling. What a slot left empty costs is arithmetic you can do and we cannot: the slots lost in an ordinary week, multiplied by your consultation fee, multiplied by the weeks you actually work. We publish no percentage; every one in circulation was measured in another practice.
Push and in-app on every plan, SMS and WhatsApp on credits: those channels are what this page describes. How far appointment reminders go is treated at length elsewhere.
Delegation, scoped and logged
Secretary seats are counted by plan: one on Essential, three on Pro, five on Premium. Each doctor grants assistants scoped permissions, and every access is captured in the audit trail, in full from Pro upward. Whether an assistant can open the clinical record is itself one of the four permissions the interface shows.
Four of those permissions sit in the interface: Manage calendar, Create invoices, View clinical notes, Message patients. Permissions are toggled one at a time and logged one at a time.
The trail behind them is gated, and the gate is worth printing rather than describing. The full audit trail — every read and every write, per secretary — starts at Pro, and audit log search with its investigation interface is Premium. On Essential neither is included, and we would rather write that limit down than let it be discovered after signature. How far delegation can sensibly go is the subject of secretary permissions.
Arrival is where the invoice starts
The act entered once, at check-in, is what the invoice is built from later. After the consultation the invoice is generated showing the patient share, the CNAM share and the CNAM code, and the bordereau is generated from that invoice. Conveying the file to the caisse remains with the practice.
That first clause is the whole of the front desk's part in it: entering the act as the patient arrives. Invoicing with manual payments — cash, cheque, transfer, card, insurance — is on every plan, and a payment taken at the counter is recorded and reconciled against its invoice automatically. Auto-invoicing from the consultation starts at Pro.
What that changes at the counter is small and cumulative: the patient already entered is not entered again, and the invoice is not assembled at seven in the evening from a paper slip. CNAM billing deserves its own reading; the front desk's share of it is one entry, made once.
Worth remembering
Enter each fact at the moment it first exists: the appointment on the shared calendar, the arrival in the queue, the act at check-in. Every later document — the invoice, the patient share, the bordereau — is then built from an entry already made. The ceiling on that is measured rather than asserted: McKinsey Global Institute, A Future That Works: Automation, Employment, and Productivity, 2017 found around half of all work activities technically automatable with already-demonstrated technology, while fewer than 5% of occupations are automatable end to end — a study of work in general and not of clinics, so reading it across to those four front-desk moments is our own argument. Doctopass records the order of arrival; this page describes only the list the desk holds.
Frequently asked
How many secretaries can I give access to?
One on Essential, three on Pro, five on Premium. Each is granted scoped permissions by the doctor rather than one blanket role, and every access is captured in the audit trail, in full from Pro upward. Four permissions are visible in the interface — Manage calendar, Create invoices, View clinical notes, Message patients — and no total is asserted.
Can my patients be reminded by SMS?
Yes, with credits. Push and in-app reminders are included on all three plans, while SMS and WhatsApp are metered: an add-on on Essential, 200 a month on Pro, 500 a month on Premium, and they can be topped up on any plan.
Who can see that a secretary opened a file?
The doctor, on the plans that carry the trail. Full audit logging records every access to patient data — who viewed it, who changed it, and when — and the trail answers to the doctor rather than to the desk. The full audit trail starts at Pro; audit log search with the investigation interface is Premium. Essential carries neither, and we would rather write that limit down than let it be discovered after signature.
What does a seat cost, and what is billed on top?
69 DT for Essential, 159 DT for Pro and 269 DT for Premium, per doctor per month, billed annually. Patients are free and unlimited on every plan, so a busy waiting room does not change the bill. There are no setup fees, no per-note charges, and data migration is free; every plan opens with a 14-day free trial. The detail is on the pricing page.
A front desk is not measured by how fast it types, but by how little it has to type twice. To watch one act entered at the counter come back out as a queue position, then an invoice, then a bordereau, request a 30-minute demo — bring one ordinary Monday morning's arrivals, walk-ins included.