AI for Physiotherapy Clinics: Finish the Course

Seven in the evening, a physiotherapy clinic in Petah Tikva. A patient recovering from ACL reconstruction is halfway through a course of ten sessions, Tuesdays at 17:30. He writes on WhatsApp: "Hi, I can't make Tuesday this week, can we move it?". The therapist is on the table with someone else, sees it at 21:40 and replies "we'll check in the morning"; in the morning seven patients and two missed calls are waiting. Tuesday's session never happens, next week's falls with it, and by session four the patient is gone. Seven sessions of revenue vanished without anyone deciding anything.

In rehab the money sits in the seventh session, not the first

In a rehab clinic, revenue from one enquiry is spread across weeks: a patient books a process of 8 to 12 sessions, not a treatment. Acquisition, the first assessment and building the plan are paid once, at the start; every session after that is almost pure revenue on the same investment. So the metric that matters is not new patients but how many planned sessions are actually completed.

An example calculation: 60 new patients a month, a planned course of ten sessions, ₪280 per session. If 6.5 are completed on average, 3.5 sessions per patient are missing, roughly ₪980 per patient and about ₪58,000 a month. There is a second cost no report shows: a patient who dropped at session three still holds a fixed prime-time hour while a new patient hears there is nothing for two weeks.

Where the course breaks: a reschedule request answered too late

Dropout in rehab is almost never a decision. The sequence is mechanical: the patient cannot come once, asks to move the session, the answer is late, the session passes, the weekly rhythm breaks, and the intention goes with it. Three friction points, all operational:

• The request arrives when nobody can answer it. A patient who works writes in the evening or on a lunch break, and the clinic answers the phone exactly when he is unavailable.
• The answer needs knowledge, not politeness. "Can we move it?" is a calendar question: open windows with the same therapist, the room needed, the gap allowed between sessions. Without those three in front of you, you postpone.
• Silence is an answer. A patient with no alternative slot within hours concludes there is no treatment this week.

A clinic fighting dropout with more reminders is solving the wrong problem: a reminder tells the patient he will miss the session, it does not give him another time.

Moving a session without breaking the treatment plan

This is the real work, and it is all rules you define in advance. Per treatment type, set four: who may treat this patient (the same therapist or a named substitute), the minimum and maximum gap between sessions, the room or equipment required, and the session length.

From there the agent does something narrow: it offers two or three slots that satisfy every rule, moves that session, updates the patient card and notifies the therapist. When nothing fits inside the gap window it does not push the patient a week and a half out; it hands the request to the team with the conversation, the treatment type and the session number. That flow is covered by the secretary agent, and its vertical version by the AI agent for physiotherapy and rehab.

The boundary is explicit: no diagnosis, no assessment of pain or range of motion, no exercises. "It hurts more than yesterday, what should I do?" gets a slot and a handoff rather than advice, and a flare-up, swelling or fever is flagged to a therapist immediately, even at two in the morning.

Referrals, health funds and reimbursements: the admin load that eats the day

In an Israeli physiotherapy clinic, much of the traffic is not clinical. The same seven questions arrive daily: which referral is needed, whether the commitment form is valid, how many sessions the arrangement covers, the private price, whether there is a receipt for supplementary insurance, where to park, what to bring first time. Two staff minutes each; forty a day is an hour and a quarter of treatment time.

That is the part to take off the phone. The agent answers from a knowledge base you write, in Hebrew, Russian or English by the patient's language, and it accepts a photo of the referral on WhatsApp and attaches it to the patient card, so the document is there before the session.

What it does not do matters as much: it does not decide entitlement for the fund, promise a reimbursement or interpret a medical referral; those go to the team with the context. And when enquiries arrive from WhatsApp, the website and Instagram at once, they belong in one inbox, not three, as the unified inbox guide details.

Three ways to run a course of sessions

A phone and a part-time receptionist covers exactly the hours the patients are at work. Automated calendar reminders are one-directional: they notify, they do not move, so a patient who replies "I can't, another day?" lands back in the queue of unanswered messages. An AI agent on WhatsApp and the website answers in seconds at any hour, knows the calendar rules and the arrangements, offers valid alternative slots and hands a human anything needing judgement. Hybrid on purpose: the agent takes the volume, the therapists stay with the patients.

The slot that opened at 16:00: a waitlist that works

A short-notice cancellation is the clinic's invisible loss: an hour freed at three in the afternoon does not get sold by phone, because that is exactly when nobody is free to call. It stays empty while five waitlist patients would have taken it.

The process that works is ranking, not a mass message. The agent reaches out in a priority order you define: first patients with an open course who are past the planned gap and at risk of dropping out, then whoever matches that therapist and treatment type, then whoever asked for that window. Three or four candidates get the offer in parallel, the first to confirm gets the slot and it closes in the calendar. On every plan workflows and follow-ups are unlimited with no trigger meters, so a hundred waitlist outreaches a month cost the same as ten. In the example numbers, filling eight slots a month at ₪280 is ₪2,240, several times the subscription.

Five metrics a rehab clinic needs to see

Most clinics measure new patients and calendar occupancy. Neither shows the leak. These do:

1. Course completion rate: sessions completed divided by sessions planned. The headline metric.
2. Average gap in days between sessions. Exceeding the plan is an early warning of a dropout two weeks out.
3. Share of reschedule requests closed with an alternative slot, no call and no lost session.
4. Share of slots freed on under 24 hours' notice that were filled the same day.
5. Share of open-course patients who returned after proactive outreach.

The last three do not exist in most clinics, and they move fastest. All rest on one condition: enquiries, conversations and appointments on a single card in the WhaleBiz CRM rather than three systems that do not talk. Connecting that to your calendar software is in the guide to connecting AI to a CRM, and the same logic in other medical fields is on the AI agents for clinics page.

What it costs a clinic

Standard is ₪490 a month plus a one-time setup fee of ₪1,990: up to two channels including WhatsApp, booking across two calendars, 2,000 AI messages a month, an unlimited knowledge base and the WhaleBiz CRM. It is the practical entry point, because Start (₪190 a month, ₪990 setup) has neither WhatsApp nor calendar booking. Business, ₪990 a month plus ₪2,990 setup, adds a second agent, three channels and five calendars, for several branches or separate therapist calendars.

The message counter: a message is one agent reply, incoming patient messages are not counted, and a reply to a voice note, image or file counts as two, which matters here because referral photos arrive daily. Prices exclude VAT and setup is done by our team. The subscription starts counting the day the agent goes live, not the day you paid for setup; content updates such as a price list or opening hours are free and unlimited on every plan, and fixing a fault is always free. Details on the pricing page, and the line between setup, changes and support on the setup and support page. For setup, bring the calendar rules per treatment type, the session gaps, the private price list and the cancellation policy.

Frequently asked questions

How does the agent move a session without breaking the treatment plan?

In setup you define the rules: same therapist or a named substitute, the gap allowed between sessions, the room or equipment required. The agent offers only slots that satisfy them and moves that session alone, leaving the course in place. If nothing fits, the therapist gets the request with the context.

Does the agent give exercises or treatment instructions?

No. It handles enquiries, administrative questions and the calendar only. It does not diagnose, assess pain or range of motion, or give exercises. A flare-up, sharp pain, swelling or fever goes straight to a therapist, including outside opening hours.

Does it answer questions about health-fund referrals and reimbursements?

It answers the recurring ones from the clinic knowledge base: which documents to bring, how to send a photo of the referral, the private price, the arrangement. It does not decide entitlement for the fund, promise a reimbursement or interpret a referral; those go to the team with the conversation.

How much does it cost a physiotherapy clinic?

Standard is ₪490 a month plus a one-time ₪1,990 setup: WhatsApp, calendar booking, 2,000 AI messages and the WhaleBiz CRM. Start (₪190 plus ₪990 setup) has no WhatsApp and no calendar booking, so Standard is the entry point. Business is ₪990 a month plus ₪2,990 setup, with a second agent, three channels and five calendars. Prices exclude VAT; the subscription starts when the agent goes live.