A website chatbot for medical practices: administrative questions only

Start with what an Allinaa website assistant must not do in a medical practice, because that is the part that matters most. Once those limits are set, the assistant can take a real load off your phones: locations, hours, accepted insurance, referral paperwork and patient-portal how-to questions.

Start with the limits: symptoms, medications and test results stay out of the chat

The assistant is not a clinician and is not connected to your records. Configure it so that it declines three kinds of question every time:

• Symptoms: "Is this rash serious?", "Should I come in for this cough?"
• Medications: doses, interactions, refills, side effects.
• Results: lab values, imaging, "did my results come back?"

Write the refusal text yourself, in your practice's voice, and make it point somewhere useful: the nurse line during business hours, the patient portal for messages to the care team, or the after-hours answering service. AI answers can be wrong, so run each of these question types against the assistant during setup and read what it says.

The emergency line: how the assistant responds to urgent symptoms

Put a short, unambiguous emergency instruction at the top of your knowledge: "If you think you are having a medical emergency, call 911 or go to the nearest emergency room. Do not use this chat." The assistant repeats it when a visitor describes chest pain, trouble breathing or something similar. It does not triage. If you run an urgent care location, add which conditions you treat there and the hours, word for word from your website.

No health details in requests: what the form can and can't do

The request form is the same for every business: a name (optional), an e-mail address or phone number, a free-text "How can we help?" box, optional fields for the service, the timing, specific requirements and what the team should do next, and the consent box. You can't remove those fields, and the free-text boxes can receive health details. So say it in your greeting and knowledge: "Please don't write symptoms or medical information here." Questions such as "new or existing patient?" or "which location?" are better asked in the chat, through your knowledge, than collected as free text. Visitors can still type symptoms, so this lowers the risk without removing it. Our privacy basics guide explains what is stored and who can see it.

What it can handle: locations, hours, accepted insurance, referrals, patient-portal how-to

With the limits in place, this is where the assistant earns its keep:

• Which locations are open on Saturday, and where to park at each
• Which insurance plans you accept, as published on your site
• Whether a specialist visit needs a referral, and how a referral gets to you
• How to reset a patient-portal password or request records, using your own instructions
• New-patient forms, what to bring and how early to arrive
• Which providers are accepting new patients

The widget skips any page whose address has a path segment such as portal, account, login, profile or dashboard. It does read the visible text of any other page it is loaded on, and the match is on whole segments: a logged-in page at /patient-portal/ would be read. Install the widget on public pages only, never on pages that show patient information. It then knows about your portal only what you put in its knowledge.

Multi-location practices: page-aware answers per location page

When a visitor is on your Eastside location page and asks "what time do you open tomorrow?", the assistant uses the page they are viewing, so the answer is about the Eastside office. Give each location its own page with hours, address, services and parking as plain text. Then add the same facts to the approved knowledge so the answer is right even when the visitor asks from the home page. More on page-aware answers.

Why Allinaa makes no HIPAA compliance claim, and what to ask any vendor

Allinaa makes no HIPAA compliance claim and does not sign business associate agreements. We would rather say that plainly than imply something we have not done. If a vendor tells you their chatbot can collect protected health information, ask them:

1. Will you sign a business associate agreement?
2. Which AI provider processes the text, and under what terms?
3. Where are conversations stored, and how are they deleted?
4. Who on your team can read the conversations?

The HHS HIPAA pages for professionals explain business associate rules. Our guide to regulated industries covers the same ground for legal, financial and insurance businesses.

Approving every source the assistant answers from

The setup wizard drafts knowledge from up to ten public pages of your website. Treat it as a draft. Read every line, delete anything clinical, and add the refusal and emergency text. Nothing in the draft is used until you press the button to apply it. Later changes go through the same review, and on Standard the Allinaa team reviews and applies the answer corrections you request. See how to keep answers accurate.

Testing it safely before launch

You can test the assistant on the setup screen before it ever appears on your website. Spend the first session trying to make it give medical advice, ask it for dosages and test results, describe an emergency, and only go live when it consistently declines and points to the right place.

Questions owners ask

Can patients ask about their symptoms?

They can type anything, but the assistant is configured to decline symptom, medication and test-result questions and to point to your nurse line, patient portal or 911 for emergencies.

Will Allinaa sign a business associate agreement?

No. Allinaa makes no HIPAA compliance claim, so the setup is designed to keep health details out of chats and requests, although visitors can still type them.

Can it see our patient portal?

Only if you load the widget there. It skips addresses with segments such as portal, account or login, but a portal at another address, such as /patient-portal/, would be read. Keep the widget on public pages; it then knows only the portal instructions in its knowledge.

Does it work for several locations?

Yes. It uses the page the visitor is viewing, so location pages get location-specific answers when each page lists its own hours and address.