AI receptionist for GP surgeries and PCNs: End the 8am rush.
Prime Assist answers every line at once, handles routine requests under your rules and routes anything that needs your team, with a full audit trail. Bookings land in EMIS and SystmOne while the caller is still on the line, through NHS England's IM1 pairing route, and Vision is in progress.
Morning. I need to order my repeat prescription.
I can take that for the practice team. Can I take your full name and date of birth?
Margaret Ellis, 14 June 1958.
Thank you, Margaret. Your request is with the practice team to review, and a text confirming it is on its way now.
What can an AI receptionist do for a GP practice?
Prime Assist answers every line at once, so the 8am queue never forms, and it routes urgent, clinical and distressed calls, and anyone who asks for a person, to your team under written rules you agree. In EMIS and SystmOne, connected through NHS England's IM1 pairing route, the booking lands in your appointment book while the caller is still on the line; Vision is in progress. It never gives clinical advice or triages patients by symptoms.
Three pressures every practice manager knows.
8AM
The 8am scramble
Everyone rings the moment the lines open. Every line engaged, patients redialling, and the complaints follow.
THE FRONT DESK
Reception under siege
The hardest job in the building, made harder by a queue that never clears. Recruitment and retention get harder with it.
THE ADMIN
Admin buries everything else
Appointment moves, prescription queries and test result chasing clog the lines, ahead of the calls your team most needs to take.
How Prime Assist fixes each one.
The 8am scramble
Every 8am caller is answered at the same moment, so the queue never forms. In EMIS and SystmOne, bookings follow your slot rules and land straight in your appointment book. Vision is in progress.
Reception under siege
The phone pressure moves to Prime Assist. Your team keeps the front desk, the complex conversations and the patients in the building.
Admin buries everything else
Prescription requests are captured as admin tasks for your team, and in EMIS and SystmOne moves and cancellations are handled end to end while the caller is on the line. Everything else routes to your team with context, under rules you set.
Connecting to the national systems.
EMIS and SystmOne are live, through NHS England's IM1 pairing route, so bookings, reschedules and summaries can land in the record, not a separate inbox, as your practice agrees in writing. Vision, and NHS Spine for demographic checks, are in progress.
The 8am rush, worked through.
An example list of 10,000 registered patients, run through the national figures for GP telephony in England. It is arithmetic on published data, not a customer result.Note 1: source of the NHS England figures
About 272
calls each working day: 27.2 for every 1,000 registered patients, the national average from September 2025 to August 2026.
About 68
of them between 8am and 10am: 25.0% of calls to GP practices arrived in those two hours on working weekdays in August 2026.
About 28
ending unanswered while the caller waits: 10.4% of calls ended that way, voicemail included, in August 2026.
With Prime Assist, every one of those calls is answered at once, so none queues and none ends unanswered. Repeat prescription requests become admin tasks for your team, and urgent, clinical and distressed calls, and anyone who asks for a person, go to your team under rules you write. In EMIS and SystmOne the booking lands in your appointment book while the caller is still on the line, and Vision is in progress.
Put your own practice’s numbers through the missed-call check below.
GP and PCN questions, answered.
Ask us something elseCan NHS practices use Prime Assist?
Prime Assist is built for NHS and private practices, and is in trials. It has a clinical safety case under DCB0129, signed off by our Clinical Safety Officer, Dr Humzah Jessa, and a UK or EU processing region committed by contract. We have submitted the NHS Data Security and Protection Toolkit (DSPT), completed the Digital Technology Assessment Criteria (DTAC) and hold Cyber Essentials certification, and we share the evidence for each on request. Its connections to EMIS and SystmOne are live, through NHS England's IM1 pairing route, and Vision is in progress. We do not claim NHS approval, endorsement or partnership.
Does it make clinical decisions?
No. Prime Assist is an administrative and communications tool. It answers, books, routes and escalates, and it hands callers to your team and your existing pathways whenever a call needs them.
What about patients who find automated phone systems hard?
They ring the same practice number and speak normally, with no app or login. Prime Assist is built for UK accents, place names, postcodes and date formats. Any caller who asks for a person, and any caller it cannot understand, goes to your team with the transcript.
Does a GP surgery need to change its phone system?
No. Your existing number stays where it is and is diverted to Prime Assist, with no new hardware and no site visit. NHS England's advice to practices on virtual (AI) receptionists asks you to check with your telephony supplier whether forwarding calls to a third party adds a charge, and to agree how support and business continuity are split between the two suppliers. Ask on your demo for the documents we can share, and we will tell you plainly what is complete and what is not.
Do patients know they are speaking to an AI?
Yes. Prime Assist tells every caller at the start of the call that it is an AI. The disclosure is recorded in the audit trail, and a route to a person is always offered.
Where is patient data processed?
In a UK or EU processing region committed by contract, under UK GDPR and a written data processing agreement, with a DPIA template supplied. No call audio or transcript is used to train third-party models.
Can it answer messages as well as calls?
Yes. As well as phone calls, Prime Assist answers text messages (SMS), iMessage, WhatsApp and web chat on your practice's own website. Which channels your practice uses, and what they cost, are set out in writing in your quote after the demo.
EVIDENCE POLICY
We publish practice results only with evidence and written permission.
Prime Assist is in trials, so there are no results to publish yet. Nothing on this site is invented, and no practice is named without its agreement.
IN THE MEANTIME
We publish example scenarios instead: modelled before-and-after examples that state the call volumes and assumptions behind them, so you can judge whether they resemble your operation.
Read the example scenariosWhat GP practices are advised to check, and what we can show you.
Before buying any AI or virtual receptionist, GP practices are advised to check its clinical safety, data protection and security, and how it fits their phone system and clinical system. Here is what Prime Assist can show you today. This is our own summary, not an NHS document.
| A clinical safety case under DCB0129, with its hazard log | Held | Signed off by our Clinical Safety Officer, Dr Humzah Jessa, a practising doctor, and shared with you on request. Your own DCB0160 assessment builds on it. |
|---|---|---|
| Registration with the ICO | Held | Registration number ZB592265. |
| The NHS Data Security and Protection Toolkit (DSPT) | Submitted | Evidence shared with you on request. |
| The Digital Technology Assessment Criteria (DTAC) | Completed | Evidence shared with you on request. |
| Cyber Essentials certification | Held | Evidence shared with you on request. |
| Callers told they are speaking to an AI | Held | At the start of every call, logged in the audit trail, with a route to a person always offered. |
| A data processing agreement and a DPIA template | Held | Supplied with your agreement. |
| Where patient data is processed | Held | A UK or EU region, your choice, committed in the contract. |
| Keeping your practice number | Held | Your number stays as it is: calls are forwarded to us, with no porting. Your phone provider may charge for forwarding. |
| Booking into EMIS and SystmOne | Live | Through NHS England’s IM1 pairing route: the booking lands in your appointment book while the caller is still on the line. |
| Booking into Vision | In progress | Until it is live, requests reach your team in writing. |
Your checklist will go further, into security, business continuity and your own review of the DTAC evidence we share. On your demo we go through every item with you, show you the documents we can share, and tell you plainly what is complete and what is not. Book a demo
How it is priced.
By the call minutes it answers. A GP practice answering every call needs a larger bundle than our 500-minute starting point (from £150 a month including VAT), so price your own practice in the check below, from your list size or your phone report, and get your exact price in writing on the 30-minute demo call.Note 2: messaging channels and complex setup Your phone provider may charge for forwarding calls to us.
- Your first three months free with a 12-month commitment: 12 months for the price of 9, for every new customer.Note 3: new customer offer terms
- A free proof of concept on one call type, before you sign.
- Standard setup included.Note 2: messaging channels and complex setup
- Prices are shown with and without VAT, so a practice that cannot reclaim VAT can budget on the price including VAT.
Your 8am rush, with and without Prime Assist
Start from last Monday’s phone report, or your list size and the England average. Every caller in that hour is drawn, today and with Prime Assist, and every step is shown. Then see what answering every call would cost.
Your figures stay in your browser. Nothing you enter is sent anywhere or saved.
Set up for GP practices and PCNs.
1. Your Monday 8am
From your phone system’s report for last Monday: every call that came in, answered or not.
Enter a whole number between 1 and 2,000.
Your registered list size. For a PCN, add the practices together.
Enter a whole number between 500 and 200,000.
Monday 8am, today
Answer the three questions
Enter last Monday’s calls between 8am and 9am, or your list size.
The first half hour can be worse than this. The model spreads the hour’s calls at random; if yours bunch as the lines open at 8am, more callers wait, and for longer.
Monday 8am, with Prime Assist
No one waits
Every caller answered at once, however many ring at 8am.
Routine requests are taken on the call. Anything urgent or clinical goes to your team, under written rules you agree. In EMIS and SystmOne it can book while the caller is on the line, where your agreed scope includes it. Vision is in progress; until it is live, requests reach your team in writing.
Calculated with the Erlang C formula, the standard way to estimate phone queues. It assumes callers wait rather than hang up, and does not estimate staff time saved or what callers do next.
What they are worth
Answer step 1 first, then these two.
It does not estimate how many of those callers we would win back: that depends on your calls, which is what the demo is for.
Answer all three to see your busiest hour, with and without Prime Assist.
Busiest hour, today
Busiest hour, with Prime Assist
No one waits
Calculated with the Erlang C formula, the standard way to estimate phone queues. It assumes callers wait rather than hang up and that calls arrive at random through the hour: if yours bunch at the start of the hour, more callers wait than this shows. It does not estimate staff time saved, or what callers do when they cannot get through.
What answering every call would cost
Answer step 2 first, then choose how long a call lasts.
Show every step and source
- A month is 52 weeks divided by 12, and a year is 52 weeks. Weekdays only. Some unanswered calls may be the same caller ringing again.
Sources: NHS England Digital, Cloud Based Telephony Data in General Practice, official statistics in development.
How this compares across England
A quarter of calls to GP practices arrive between 8am and 10am on working weekdays (25.0%, our calculation).
Of the calls answered between 8am and 10am, almost a quarter waited more than five minutes (23.5%).
On working weekdays between 8am and 10am, about 1 in 9 calls ended with the caller asking for a call back (11.1%), about twice the rate later in the day (our calculation).
National figures for context, not a judgement of any practice. NHS England Digital, Cloud Based Telephony Data in General Practice, August 2026, official statistics in development.
Contains information from NHS England, licensed under the current version of the Open Government Licence.
2. Across the week (optional)
All inbound calls, answered or not, from your phone system’s daily report.
Enter a whole number between 1 and 5,000.
3. What answering every call would cost (optional)
When does a person answer your phone? (optional)
One booking or appointment, not lifetime value.
Enter a whole number of pounds between 1 and 100,000.
Pricing NHS urgent care? NHS England’s figure for an urgent course of treatment is £75, from 1 April 2026.
How this works and where the figures come from
It multiplies your figures, and in step 3 our published price, and nothing else: calls on a typical weekday, times 5 weekdays, times the share that go unanswered. A month is 52 weeks divided by 12, and a year is 52 weeks. Weekends are left out, and so are repeat visits, referrals and reviews. If you put a value on it, the unanswered calls are multiplied by the share you judge were someone wanting to book, and by your value.
Step 3 multiplies the calls in a month by the call length you choose, rounds up to the next 500 minutes (500 at least) and prices them at 25p a minute plus VAT at 20%; the bundle for the 12 months costs 9 times the monthly price, because new customers get the first three months free with a 12-month commitment. Higher volumes show no price, because a lower rate per minute applies, quoted in writing. For fee-earning sectors it divides the monthly price including VAT by your own fee to show how many of your bookings that price equals. It shows no saving and no estimate of callers won back.
For GP practices only, the starting points come from public data, and you can change each one: 27.2 calls for every 1,000 registered patients each working day (September 2025 to August 2026), 10.4% of calls ending while the caller was waiting, including voicemail (August 2026), and 4.4 calls an hour for every 1,000 patients between 8am and 10am on a Monday (August 2026). Source: NHS England Digital, Cloud Based Telephony Data in General Practice, official statistics in development covering 86% of practices in England; the first and last figures are our calculation. Contains information from NHS England, licensed under the current version of the Open Government Licence. Every public figure we use is listed with its date and source on our facts page.
The queue uses the Erlang C formula: from the calls in an hour, the people answering and the minutes a call takes, it gives the share of callers who find every line busy. It assumes callers wait rather than hang up, and that calls arrive at random through the hour, so a rush in the first minutes shows fewer waits than really happen.
Your figures stay in your browser. Nothing you enter is sent anywhere or saved.
Page last updated . Every figure and claim on it is on our facts page.
Three ways to test us. Only one of them involves talking to a human.
Buying voice AI on a slide deck is how people end up with something that fails on the first awkward caller. So we made the product itself easy to try before you commit to anything.
Hear it for yourself, right now
Ring the line, choose a scenario, for example a dental practice or a trades business, and talk to Prime Assist the way one of your callers would. Ask it to book you in, then try to catch it out. No form and no email address.
Call +44 20 3747 7785We only get in touch if you ask us to.
See your Monday 8am queue
Enter last Monday’s calls between 8am and 9am, or your list size, to see how many callers wait for a free line today, next to the same hour with Prime Assist, where every call is answered at once. Then see the bundle that would answer your calls, and its price.
Run my numbersNo email needed: nothing you enter leaves your browser.
Watch it handle your calls
Bring the three calls that waste the most of your team’s day. We run them live, in your sector’s language, and tell you honestly which ones we would not take. One short form to book.
Book a demoNo card, no sales sequence, one human reply.
Do all three, in that order, and it takes a little over half an hour in total. We would rather you tested the product than read our claims about it.
- DCB0129 safety case
- UK or EU processing region
- First three months free for new customers, with a 12-month commitmentNote 3: new customer offer terms
Let AI answer the phone, so your team can answer your patients.
Bring your IG lead and your 8am call volume. We will show you every call answered at once, and how the booking lands in EMIS or SystmOne.
Free proof of concept on one call type, no cost and no obligation.
HEAR IT FIRST
Call +44 20 3747 7785 and put Prime Assist through its paces before you book anything.
Notes
- Source: NHS England Digital, Cloud Based Telephony Data in General Practice, official statistics in development, August 2026 edition. 27.2 calls and the 25.0% share are our calculation from the published data; 10.4% is published. Back to text, note 1
- Text, iMessage, WhatsApp and web chat are quoted in writing after the demo. A complex setup, for example work that needs our Clinical Safety Officer, may carry a one-off fee, quoted and agreed in writing before work starts. Back to text, note 2, mention 1Back to text (2), note 2, mention 2
- New customer offer: 12 months for the price of 9. When you sign, you commit to all 12 months, starting on the day you go live. Months 1 to 3 are free, then you pay your bundle price each month for months 4 to 12, from £150 including VAT (£125 plus VAT), with the price before VAT fixed for your 12 months. On 500 minutes, the bundle for your 12 months costs £1,350 including VAT (£1,125 plus VAT), plus any extra minutes, at 36p a minute including VAT (30p plus VAT) in every month, free months included. For new customers, switchers included, once per customer. A new customer is a practice or business that has not used Prime Assist in the 24 months before it signs. Switching? We do the switch, and a notice period of up to three months runs alongside your free months. Full terms on our pricing page. Back to text, note 3, mention 1Back to text (2), note 3, mention 2