24/7 Medical Answering Service

A medical answering service, sometimes known as a doctor answering service or physician answering service, is a way for your medical practice to ensure a seamless connection with your patients, doctors, and other medical professionals. Here, the answering service acts as the go-between for medical professionals; scheduling appointments, referring patients to their departments, and patching the triage nurse (or on-call) for emergencies.

With a physician answering service, you can be sure that your patients receive prompt and professional care and your doctors reached timely and appropriately at any time of day. It's useful for medical practices of any size that want to ensure a secure, consistent, and professional communication 24/7.

While the general call flow provides a solid foundation, answering services can also be highly customized for the healthcare industry. As a call center that first starting handling patient calls in 1932, we're fully aware of what needs to go into a medical answering service to make a practice manager and a patient's life easier. 

Learn more about how medical answering services work here.

Based on our annual data from the previous year, we found the average medical answering service plan in 2025 costs between $175 - $275 for a monthly call volume of 50.

Learn more about the results from our industry-wide analysis on the costs of medical answering services in 2025 here.

Are you finding it hard to keep up with the growing number of calls your practice is getting?

For medical professionals, patient satisfaction is key. That means a prompt answer for every call.

Whether you’re looking to unify your staff's communications, increase patient satisfaction and safety, reduce provider burnout or just handle an overwhelming volume of calls, we’ve got you covered.

Since 1932, we’ve been the voice on the other end of the line for medical offices like yours. With nearly 100 years of experience, we’ve perfected our medical answering service to make sure your patients feel supported while you focus on what you do best.

Our medical answering services can scale as high or low as you need. Our receptionists are always ready to handle multiple calls simultaneously, so your patients' experience is seamless.

We currently serve dozens of large healthcare organizations across the USA. When you sign up with us, you won't have to worry about hiring extra in-person staff and dealing with overtime pay, benefits, and more. We're available 24/7/365—even during weather emergencies, because we know how important it is to ensure that your patients can always reach you.

Yes! We take your patient health information’s (PHI) security seriously. Not only do we have HIPAA compliant secure texting and emailing between our answering service and your practice’s staff, we also conduct an annual third-party audit of our HIPAA compliance.

That’s fine! Our secure text messaging application, Startel Secure Messaging Plus, allows your doctors to receive text messages securely and, with one swipe, file the messages to show they’ve acknowledged the contents of the message. Want to use an app that you already use in your office? No problem! We also work and integrate with thousands of other apps—and we likely can connect to yours!

Most likely, yes! If the apps you use are found in our integrations page, then yes! In addition, we also have a HIPAA compliant API which can be used to exchange data in real-time. This allows to connect to thousands of your favorite apps, and some EMRs!