Medical After Hours Answering Service.
Patient calls don't keep office hours. Your front desk does.
A medical after hours answering service tuned for the calls your practice actually gets after 5pm, weekends, holidays. HIPAA-aware intake, symptom triage, appointment booking, and direct paging to the on-call provider for anything that can't wait. Two-week build, $2,000 fixed, you own the rig.
§ 01Why a medical practice needs an after-hours rig.
A traditional medical answering service runs $400–$900/month for HIPAA-compliant coverage, with per-minute charges that spike on flu-season nights. Most of what those operators do is read a triage script, capture seven fields, and page the on-call. An AI medical after hours answering service does the same job — triage script, structured intake, paging — without the monthly bill, without the on-hold delay, and with a verbatim transcript every time. The patient gets answered in under a minute. The on-call only gets paged when the protocol says page.
Triage to protocol
The rig follows the symptom triage protocol your practice already uses. If the protocol says page, it pages. If it says route to morning, it books.
HIPAA-aware intake
PHI captured to your encrypted inbox, transcripts retained per your policy, BAA in place with the SMS and hosting providers. Audit trail on every call.
Direct on-call paging
When the protocol triggers, the on-call provider gets a structured page — patient name, callback, symptom, triage level — not a voicemail relay.
§ 02What the medical rig actually does.
Four jobs, every after-hours patient call. Tuned to the structured intake your front desk does in the daytime — minus the front desk and minus the monthly bill.
Triage to your protocol
Patient describes a symptom. The rig walks the triage tree your practice already uses (chest pain, pediatric fever, post-op, medication question), tags severity, and decides: page on-call, route to morning, or refer to ER.
HIPAA-aware intake
Patient name, DOB, callback, symptom, current meds, last visit. Captured to your encrypted inbox or EHR-adjacent intake queue. Retention and BAA per your compliance policy.
Page the on-call
When the triage protocol triggers, the on-call provider gets a structured page on their preferred channel — SMS, secure messaging, or call — with the relevant fields, not a generic "please call patient back."
Book the routine ask
Appointment requests, prescription refills, lab result inquiries, billing questions. Routed to the morning queue with the intake already done so the front desk closes them in minutes.
§ 03$2,000 once. Then the rig is yours.
MedConnectUSA, MAP Communications, Answering Service Care, PCN Health, and every other HIPAA-compliant medical answering service in the top SERP runs on monthly recurring. Plans that cover nights, weekends, and on-call paging start around $400/month and reach $800–$1,200/month for busy practices. That's $4,800–$14,400 a year for software answering a phone you don't own. The Pulp rig is $2,000 once. You own the source, the prompts, the triage tree, and the BAA chain on day 15.
$2,000 fixed. One time.
Two weeks. Fixed scope. Triage tree wired to your protocol, HIPAA-aware intake to your encrypted inbox, on-call paging on the channel you actually check. If we estimate wrong, we eat it. The number on the proposal is the number on the invoice.
NO RETAINER REQUIRED
§ 04Honest objections, medical edition.
Is this HIPAA compliant?
HIPAA compliance is a chain — provider, SMS gateway, hosting, storage. The rig is built so every link in the chain has a BAA, PHI stays in encrypted stores, and the audit trail is intact. We walk you through the BAA chain on the scope call before you commit. If your compliance officer needs to review, we hand them the diagram.
Will the AI practice medicine?
No. The rig follows the triage script your practice already uses — the same decision tree your nurse follows on the phone at 2pm. It does not diagnose, prescribe, or interpret. It triages, intakes, and pages. Anything outside the protocol routes to a human, fast.
What about my EHR?
The rig drops intake into the queue your front desk already opens in the morning — an encrypted inbox, a HIPAA-compliant form provider, or an EHR-adjacent intake tool. We don't write directly into Epic or Athena. Your front desk reviews and posts, same as today, with the intake already done.
How does this compare to MAP Communications or MedConnectUSA?
Those are monthly subscriptions: $400–$1,200/month plus per-minute. Cancel and coverage stops. Pulp builds the rig once for $2,000 fixed and hands you the source. The triage tree is yours, the BAA chain is yours, the rig keeps answering after the invoice is paid.
§ 05Related medical builds.
- After-hours answering service — the general pillar.
- 24/7 answering service — round-the-clock variant.
- All vertical builds →