HotDoc has become a significant part of how Australian patients find and book allied health appointments. For physiotherapy, chiropractic, podiatry, and psychology practices, it provides a patient-facing directory and online booking layer that genuinely captures patients who prefer to book without calling.
It solves a specific problem well. It doesn't touch the phone.
Understanding the distinction matters for practices trying to figure out where their bookings are coming from and where they're being lost.
What HotDoc actually does
HotDoc is a patient acquisition and online booking platform. It operates primarily as a directory — patients search for practitioners by specialty and location, find your practice in the results, and book an appointment through HotDoc's interface.
Behind the scenes, HotDoc writes that booking into your practice management system — Cliniko, Nookal, Best Practice, depending on your PMS.
For practices on HotDoc, this captures patients who:
- Found them through search
- Prefer to self-service rather than call
- Are booking at a time when they have access to a screen
It's a genuinely useful tool for those patients.
The gap HotDoc doesn't touch
HotDoc's entire model requires the patient to initiate digitally. A patient who picks up the phone and calls your practice number is outside HotDoc's system entirely.
Research consistently puts phone booking at 60-70% of total appointment bookings for Australian allied health practices — higher for older demographics, urgent situations, and patients with complex needs who want to speak to someone before committing.
A physio practice on HotDoc might have 30% of their bookings coming through the portal, 70% still coming through the phone. HotDoc is solving the smaller problem.
What happens on the phone determines more of your revenue
When a patient calls a practice and someone answers: they book. When a patient calls and nobody answers — the receptionist is with a patient, it's lunchtime, it's after 5pm — they enter a decision tree that usually ends badly for the practice.
They might leave a voicemail. Industry data suggests that fewer than half of voicemails left for health practices result in a successful return call that converts to a booking. The timing mismatch between when staff call back and when the patient can answer is significant.
They might try online booking. If your HotDoc profile doesn't show availability that works for them, they'll look at the next practice on the results page.
They might call one of the other practices in your suburb. The first practice that answers gets the appointment.
Phone booking conversion is heavily dependent on whether the phone gets answered — not whether you have a portal.
The positioning that makes sense
HotDoc and AI phone answering aren't competitors. They serve different patient journeys.
HotDoc → Patient searches online → Finds practice → Books without calling → Appointment in PMS
AI phone answering → Patient calls → AI answers → Conversation → Books into same PMS → Patient gets SMS confirmation
Both end in the same place: an appointment in your system, the patient confirmed. The difference is the patient's starting point and preference.
For practices with HotDoc, adding AI phone answering means the patients who prefer to call get the same seamless experience as the patients who prefer to book online. Neither group is a second-class experience.
The after-hours comparison
HotDoc's online booking is available 24/7 — patients can book at any hour because it's a portal.
Phone booking without AI is only available when a human is present. For most practices, that's 8am-5pm on weekdays.
AI phone answering makes the phone channel 24/7. Patients who call at 7pm get the same experience as patients who call at 10am. For a practice serving working-age patients who can't call during business hours, this is significant.
The after-hours booking rate for Turnless-powered practices is consistently 15-25% of total AI-handled bookings. These are appointments that didn't exist before — patients who were calling outside business hours and reaching voicemail.
How Turnless and Cliniko/Nookal work together
The integration question is the same whether you're on HotDoc or Turnless: do bookings land in your PMS?
Turnless connects directly to Cliniko, Nookal, Core Practice, and other major Australian allied health PMS platforms. A call that results in a booking writes directly to your diary — the same way HotDoc does.
For a practice on Cliniko with HotDoc for online bookings, adding Turnless means:
- Online bookings → Cliniko via HotDoc
- Phone bookings → Cliniko via Turnless
- Both appear in the same calendar
- No manual entry required for either
You're not adding another system to manage. You're filling the channel HotDoc doesn't cover.
The cost comparison
HotDoc charges practices a monthly subscription plus a per-booking fee for new patients. Costs vary by plan and patient volume.
Turnless charges a monthly subscription based on call minutes, with no per-booking fee. At most call volumes, the monthly cost is comparable to HotDoc for a similar number of bookings.
The difference is that HotDoc's fees are specifically for the patient acquisition (directory listing) plus the booking technology. Turnless's fees cover phone answering, automatic SMS notifications, call transcripts, customer profiles, and the booking technology.
For practices not on HotDoc
For many allied health practices — particularly those in smaller markets, specialties without strong HotDoc presence, or practices that haven't prioritised online booking — the phone is essentially their only inbound channel.
For these practices, AI phone answering is the more impactful investment. The patients are already calling. The question is whether those calls are being answered and converted, or going to voicemail and competitors.
What to track
If you're evaluating the phone vs online booking split for your practice, look at:
- Total calls per month (from your phone provider)
- Total online bookings per month (from HotDoc or your PMS)
- What percentage of calls during business hours are going unanswered (from your phone provider data if available)
- What your after-hours call volume looks like
The comparison usually reveals that phone is the dominant channel and that a meaningful percentage of calls are going unanswered.
Turnless integrates with Cliniko, Nookal, and other Australian allied health platforms. It fills the channel HotDoc doesn't cover. Start your free trial.