Every medical practice knows the phones never stop ringing. But few practices actually know why patients are calling — or how that knowledge could transform their operations. At CallMyDoc, we have processed over 26 million patient calls across 38 states, spanning single-physician offices to 200+ location enterprise groups. That dataset — the largest structured patient call dataset in healthcare — gives us a view into patient communication patterns that no survey, focus group, or industry report can replicate.
This article breaks down the top 10 reasons patients call medical practices, drawn from real call categorization data across primary care, specialty, and multi-site organizations. For each call reason, we share the approximate percentage of total volume, when these calls peak, how most practices handle them today, and what the data tells us about smarter alternatives. We also map each reason to the specific IVR routing sub-type that CallMyDoc uses to classify and route calls in real time — giving you a behind-the-scenes look at how clinical communication infrastructure turns raw call volume into structured, actionable workflows.
Understanding why patients call is not an academic exercise. It is the foundation for staffing decisions, technology investments, and patient experience improvements. When you know that 30–40% of your calls are appointment scheduling — and that most of those can be resolved in under 40 seconds with the right system — you stop treating the phone as an unavoidable burden and start treating it as an operational lever.
Before we walk through the top 10 call reasons, it helps to understand the system behind the data. CallMyDoc's AI categorization engine classifies every inbound patient call into one of several structured IVR routing sub-types, each identified by a letter code. These sub-types determine how each call is prioritized, where it is routed, and which staff member or workflow handles it. This is not a simple phone tree — it is an intelligent routing layer that ensures every call reaches the right person with the right patient context attached.
The following table maps the top patient call reasons to CallMyDoc's IVR sub-type routing categories:
| Rank | Patient Call Reason | % of Calls | CMD Sub-Type |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Appointment Scheduling / Rescheduling | 30–40% | C — Scheduling or Admin |
| 2 | Prescription Refills | 15–20% | J — Prescription Refill |
| 3 | Test Results / Lab Questions | High-anxiety repeat calls | B — Clinical |
| 4 | Billing & Insurance Questions | Longest avg. call duration | A — Billing |
| 5 | Referral Requests | Requesting / checking status | L — Referral |
| 6 | Symptom Triage / Clinical Questions | “Should I come in?” calls | E — Patient Case |
| 7 | Medication Questions | Side effects, dosage, interactions | H — Medication |
| 8 | Medical Records Requests | Electronic & paper requests | F — Electronic Medical Records G — Paper Medical Records |
| 9 | Appointment No-Shows / Cancellations | Last-minute cancels | K — Patient No Show |
| 10 | General Office Information | Hours, directions, insurance | Handled by override_call_type: Office Information |
Beyond these top 10, CallMyDoc's routing system includes additional sub-types that round out the full clinical picture: Sub-Type I (New Prescriptions) for first-time prescription requests that require provider review, and Sub-Type D (Non-Urgent Other) for calls that do not fit neatly into the primary categories but still need to be documented and routed. Every call gets classified. Nothing falls through the cracks.
The following rankings reflect aggregate patterns across practices of all sizes and specialties. Individual practices will vary, but the relative ordering is remarkably consistent across our 26 million call dataset.
Nearly one in three patient calls — and sometimes closer to two in five — is about scheduling. This includes new appointment requests, rescheduling existing visits, and cancellations. It is the single largest category by a wide margin, and it holds across every specialty we serve. CallMyDoc classifies all of these under Sub-Type C (Scheduling or Admin), which routes them to the appropriate scheduling workflow or self-service system.
Peak patterns: Monday mornings see the highest concentration of scheduling calls — up to 40% above the weekly average. Patients who experienced symptoms over the weekend drive a surge between 8:00 AM and 10:30 AM. A secondary peak occurs Tuesday through Thursday in the early afternoon (1:00–2:30 PM), when patients returning from lunch breaks make calls they deferred from the morning.
How most practices handle it today: Front desk staff manually answer, check provider availability in the EHR, negotiate a time with the patient, and enter the appointment. Each call takes 3–7 minutes. During peak hours, patients wait on hold or abandon the call entirely.
What the data shows: CallMyDoc's Schedule My Patient feature allows patients to self-schedule in under 40 seconds without a portal login. Across our network, practices using self-scheduling see a measurable reduction in scheduling-related hold times and a corresponding drop in abandoned calls. At Hudson Headwaters Health Network (89 offices across New York), 68.1% of business-hour calls are now handled automatically — and Sub-Type C scheduling calls are the largest category driving that number.
Refill requests are the second most common call type, classified under Sub-Type J (Prescription Refill) in CallMyDoc's routing system. These calls are almost entirely routine: the patient needs a medication renewed, and the provider needs to approve it. Yet the traditional workflow involves a phone call, a message slip, a manual EHR lookup, a provider interruption, a pharmacy callback, and often a second patient callback to confirm. Five to seven touchpoints for a task that takes 30 seconds of clinical decision-making.
Peak patterns: Refill calls cluster mid-morning (9:30–11:00 AM) and late afternoon (3:00–4:30 PM). We see a notable spike on Fridays as patients realize they will run out of medication over the weekend. Monday refill calls are often urgent — the patient already missed a dose.
How most practices handle it today: Phone tree to voicemail, transcription by a medical assistant, routing to the provider's inbox, provider approval, pharmacy fax or e-prescribe, and sometimes a patient callback. Average turnaround: 4–24 hours. Some practices batch refill approvals, meaning a Friday afternoon request may not be processed until Monday.
What the data shows: CallMyDoc captures Sub-Type J refill requests with structured data — medication name, pharmacy, patient identifiers — and routes them directly to the provider's dashboard with the patient chart attached. Providers approve refill requests in under 30 seconds from their phone. At Castle Hills Family Practice in San Antonio, this workflow contributed to a 50% reduction in overall phone workload, freeing staff to focus on in-office patient care. (Note: first-time prescriptions are classified separately under Sub-Type I: New Prescriptions, ensuring providers know immediately whether a request requires chart review versus a simple renewal.)
Key takeaway: Roughly 50–60% of all patient calls are for scheduling and prescription management — two categories that are increasingly being automated, which is why practices configure their systems to streamline the remaining calls that truly need human handling.
Patients calling about lab results, imaging reports, and diagnostic test status are classified under Sub-Type B (Clinical). These calls carry higher anxiety levels than scheduling or refill calls — patients are often worried about their health, and delays feel personal. That anxiety drives repeat calls: patients who do not hear back within 24–48 hours frequently call again, compounding the volume beyond the initial request count.
Peak patterns: Results inquiry calls peak 48–72 hours after common lab draw days. Practices with Tuesday and Thursday lab schedules see Thursday and Monday spikes, respectively. There is also a consistent late-morning pattern (10:00 AM–12:00 PM) as patients assume results should be available by mid-morning.
How most practices handle it today: Front desk staff cannot share results, so they take a message and promise a callback from clinical staff. The nurse or MA retrieves the result from the EHR, discusses with the provider if abnormal, and calls the patient back. This round-trip frequently takes 24–48 hours. Many patients call repeatedly, compounding the volume.
What the data shows: Across our 26M+ call dataset, practices that route Sub-Type B clinical inquiries through CallMyDoc's structured categorization system resolve them significantly faster because the request arrives at the clinical team with the patient's chart context already attached. No message transcription errors, no lost sticky notes, no "I think they said their last name was..." The KPI dashboard gives practice managers visibility into results callback turnaround, enabling targeted process improvements.
Billing calls — classified under Sub-Type A (Billing) — stand out not for their volume alone but for their duration. These calls carry the longest average handle time of any category: outstanding balances, insurance verification, copay questions, EOB confusion, and payment plan requests all require extended conversations and access to billing systems. Each call averages 4–6 minutes, and complex billing disputes can run much longer.
Peak patterns: Billing calls spike in the first week of each month (after statements are mailed) and in January (new insurance plans, deductible resets). Tuesdays and Wednesdays see the highest volume, suggesting patients deal with financial matters early in the workweek.
How most practices handle it today: Front desk answers, attempts to help, and frequently transfers to a billing specialist (if the practice has one). Smaller practices have the same staff handling clinical and billing calls, creating context-switching inefficiency. Many billing questions require pulling up the patient's account in a separate billing system, adding time.
What the data shows: CallMyDoc's intelligent call routing identifies Sub-Type A billing inquiries and routes them directly to the appropriate department or staff member, bypassing the front desk entirely. This eliminates the transfer step and reduces average handle time. For multi-site organizations like Millennium Physician Group (34,492 monthly calls across 200+ locations), automated routing ensures billing calls reach the right team without manual triage — a critical efficiency at enterprise scale.
Referral-related calls — classified under Sub-Type L (Referral) — include patients requesting specialist referrals, checking referral status, and following up on authorization for referred visits. These calls frequently involve coordination between the practice, the specialist's office, and the insurance company — making them disproportionately time-consuming relative to their volume.
Peak patterns: Referral calls are relatively evenly distributed throughout the week but spike after specialist consultations (patients calling back to schedule the referred visit or check status). Late mornings and early afternoons are most common.
How most practices handle it today: A referral coordinator (if one exists) manages the process. In smaller practices, MAs handle referrals between clinical duties. The average referral involves 3–5 phone calls across multiple organizations and can take days to complete.
What the data shows: CallMyDoc captures Sub-Type L referral requests as a structured clinical task and routes them to the appropriate staff member with full context. This eliminates the "telephone game" where referral details are lost between staff members. Practices using CallMyDoc's IVR sub-type classification see referral requests documented and routed in seconds rather than floating as verbal messages between shifts.
These are the "Should I come in?" calls — patients describing new symptoms, reporting side effects, or seeking clinical guidance. Classified under Sub-Type E (Patient Case), they carry the most clinical weight. While they represent a smaller percentage of total volume, they require the most skilled handling and carry the highest liability if mismanaged. Many of these calls require nurse callback for proper triage.
Peak patterns: Symptom calls have a bimodal distribution. The first peak is early morning (7:30–9:00 AM) as patients wake up feeling unwell. The second — and more significant — peak is after hours, where symptom calls increase as a proportion of total volume. At Castle Hills Family Practice, 51.9% of all calls came after hours, and the after-hours mix skews heavily toward Sub-Type E symptom reporting and urgent clinical questions.
How most practices handle it today: During business hours, a nurse or MA fields the call, takes a history, and either triages to a same-day appointment or escalates to the provider. After hours, these calls go to an answering service where a non-clinical operator takes a message — introducing transcription errors, delays, and documentation gaps that create malpractice exposure.
What the data shows: Symptom calls require human clinical judgment — no AI should be making triage decisions. But CallMyDoc's role as clinical communication infrastructure ensures these Sub-Type E calls are captured accurately, transcribed in real time, categorized as clinical/urgent, and routed to the on-call provider with the patient's chart summary attached. The provider sees the patient's medication list, recent visits, and allergies before returning the call. At Hudson Headwaters, this workflow enabled 3× faster after-hours provider response times.
Distinct from prescription refills (Sub-Type J), medication questions are classified under Sub-Type H (Medication) and encompass a different kind of patient need: side effects they are experiencing, dosage clarification ("Did the doctor say once or twice a day?"), drug interaction concerns, and questions about newly prescribed medications. These calls often follow a recent office visit or pharmacy pickup and carry a clinical urgency that pure refill requests do not.
Peak patterns: Medication questions spike 24–72 hours after high-volume prescribing days, typically mid-week. A secondary pattern appears on Monday mornings when patients who started new medications over the weekend have questions about how they feel. Late afternoon (3:00–5:00 PM) also sees a rise as patients take evening doses and want guidance.
How most practices handle it today: Front desk staff take a message and route it to the prescribing provider's inbox or a nurse. Because the question often requires chart review — what was prescribed, the dosage, the patient's other medications — the callback can take hours. Meanwhile, the patient may skip a dose out of caution or take the medication incorrectly.
What the data shows: CallMyDoc's separation of Sub-Type H (Medication) from Sub-Type J (Prescription Refill) is a deliberate design choice. Refill requests are administrative — they can be approved in 30 seconds. Medication questions require clinical attention and chart review. By routing them separately, CallMyDoc ensures that a patient calling about a worrisome side effect is not queued behind a stack of routine refill approvals. The provider receives the medication question with the patient's current medication list, allergy history, and recent visit notes already attached, enabling a faster and more informed callback.
Patients requesting copies of their medical records, transferring records to a new provider, or authorizing record releases. CallMyDoc distinguishes between two sub-types here: Sub-Type F (Electronic Medical Records) for digital record transfers and portal-based requests, and Sub-Type G (Paper Medical Records) for physical copies, faxed records, and printed chart summaries. This distinction matters because the fulfillment workflow — and the staff member responsible — differs significantly between electronic and paper requests.
Peak patterns: Records requests spike in January (new year, new insurance, patients switching providers), during summer (families moving), and around school enrollment periods. Tuesdays and Wednesdays are the most common days.
How most practices handle it today: Front desk takes the request, mails or faxes an authorization form, waits for it to be returned, pulls the records (often from multiple systems), and sends them. Average fulfillment: 5–15 business days. Staff frequently lose track of requests in progress.
What the data shows: When records requests are captured under Sub-Types F and G in CallMyDoc's system, they enter a trackable workflow rather than an informal queue. The electronic vs. paper classification ensures the request is routed to the staff member who handles that specific type — rather than bouncing between departments. Practice managers can monitor pending requests via the analytics dashboard, ensuring compliance with state-mandated response timelines and preventing requests from falling through the cracks.
Last-minute cancellations and no-show follow-ups are classified under Sub-Type K (Patient No Show). These calls include patients calling to cancel within hours of their appointment, practices calling patients who did not arrive, and the rescheduling conversations that follow. While the volume is smaller than scheduling or refill calls, the operational impact is significant: every no-show is lost revenue, wasted provider time, and a patient who still needs care but is not getting it.
Peak patterns: Cancellation calls spike in the early morning (7:00–8:30 AM) as patients decide they cannot make a same-day appointment. Mondays see the highest no-show and cancellation rates, followed by Fridays. Weather events, school schedules, and seasonal illness also create predictable spikes. Outbound no-show follow-up calls cluster in the late morning and early afternoon as staff work through the day's missed appointments.
How most practices handle it today: Front desk staff process cancellations manually, attempt to fill the open slot, and make follow-up calls to no-show patients — often playing phone tag for days. Many practices lack a systematic process for no-show follow-up, meaning patients simply disappear from the care continuum until their next urgent need.
What the data shows: CallMyDoc's dual-reminder system (7-day and 1-day reminders via voice, text, and email) reduces no-shows by up to 40% across our network by catching cancellations before they become no-shows. When patients do call to cancel last-minute, the Sub-Type K classification triggers a rescheduling workflow rather than simply removing the appointment. And for patients who no-show without calling, the system logs the event and can initiate automated outreach — closing the loop that most practices leave open.
Hours of operation, office location and directions, accepted insurance plans, new patient availability, provider credentials, and similar informational queries. These are the most straightforward calls — and the most clearly automatable. Unlike the clinical sub-types (A through L), CallMyDoc handles these calls through a special override_call_type: Office Information routing path, which delivers pre-configured practice details to callers without consuming clinical routing resources.
Peak patterns: Information calls are distributed throughout the day but spike around practice open and close times. New patient calls peak on Mondays and after local advertising runs or insurance network directory updates.
How most practices handle it today: Front desk staff answer the same questions dozens of times per day. Some practices use phone trees with pre-recorded messages, but patients frequently skip them to reach a live person.
What the data shows: CallMyDoc's non-blocking architecture means informational calls never compete with clinical calls for staff attention. The override_call_type routing handles these calls without hold times — every call gets through, and the patient receives accurate practice information immediately. With 43-language support, this extends to patients who may not be comfortable navigating an English-language phone tree or website.
When you add up the top two categories alone, a striking pattern emerges: roughly 50–60% of all patient calls are for appointment scheduling and prescription management. These are two categories that are increasingly being automated, which is why practices configure their systems to streamline the remaining calls that truly need human handling.
Across all 10 categories, the data shows that a significant majority of inbound calls are routine, repeatable, and automatable. Appointment scheduling (30–40%), prescription refills (15–20%), general office information, and a substantial portion of records requests and no-show follow-ups involve no clinical decision-making. They are operational transactions that consume clinical staff time.
Let us put concrete numbers to this. A mid-sized primary care practice receives approximately 150–250 calls per day. If a majority of those calls are routine — roughly 100–160 calls — and each takes an average of 4 minutes of staff time, that is 400–640 minutes of staff time per day (6.5–10.5 hours) spent on tasks that do not require clinical expertise. That is the equivalent of 1–1.5 full-time employees dedicated entirely to answering routine phone calls.
At Castle Hills Family Practice, deploying CallMyDoc as their clinical communication infrastructure resulted in a 50% reduction in phone workload. At Hudson Headwaters, 41.6% of routine requests are now resolved entirely within the CallMyDoc system without any staff involvement. These are not theoretical projections — they are measured outcomes from practices that transitioned from traditional phone workflows to structured, AI-powered call management with IVR sub-type routing that classifies every call before it reaches a human.
For practices evaluating staffing models, the data suggests a reallocation strategy: redirect phone-handling hours toward in-office patient care, clinical follow-up, and revenue-generating activities. The phone does not need fewer people — it needs a better system.
One of the most significant findings from our dataset is the volume and composition of after-hours calls. Across our network, 40–50% of all patient calls occur outside standard business hours (before 8 AM, after 5 PM, weekends, and holidays). At Castle Hills Family Practice, the number was 51.9% — more than half of all calls came when the office was closed.
But it is not just the volume that shifts after hours — the call type mix changes dramatically:
This after-hours call mix has profound implications. Traditional answering services — staffed by non-clinical operators without EHR access — are handling the most clinically sensitive calls of the day. They are taking messages for Sub-Type E symptom reports without seeing the patient's medication list, allergy history, or recent visit notes. Every handoff introduces delay and potential error.
CallMyDoc's after-hours coverage puts the patient's chart summary in the on-call provider's hands before they return the call. The provider sees medications, allergies, recent diagnoses, and prior visit context on their mobile device. This is why Hudson Headwaters achieved 3× faster after-hours call handling — providers spend less time gathering information and more time making clinical decisions. Every interaction is timestamped and logged in the EHR automatically, creating a complete documentation trail that traditional answering services cannot provide.
Appointment scheduling and rescheduling is the number one reason patients call, representing approximately 30–40% of all inbound calls based on data from 26 million patient calls across 38 states. CallMyDoc classifies these as Sub-Type C (Scheduling or Admin). This includes new appointment requests, rescheduling, and cancellations. Monday mornings see the highest scheduling call volume — up to 40% above the weekly average — driven by patients who experienced symptoms over the weekend.
A typical single-provider primary care practice receives 40–80 calls per day. Mid-sized practices (3–5 providers) receive 150–250 calls daily. Large multi-site organizations handle significantly more — Millennium Physician Group, for example, processes 34,492 calls per month across 200+ locations. Call volume varies by specialty, patient panel size, and whether the practice uses automated scheduling and refill systems.
Based on CallMyDoc's analysis of 26 million patient calls, roughly 50–60% of inbound calls fall into just two categories — scheduling (Sub-Type C) and prescription management (Sub-Type J) — both of which are increasingly being automated. When you add in general office information (handled by override_call_type), records requests (Sub-Types F and G), and no-show follow-ups (Sub-Type K), the automatable share grows further. At Hudson Headwaters Health Network, 68.1% of business-hour calls are handled automatically through CallMyDoc's clinical communication platform, and 41.6% of routine requests are resolved without any staff involvement.
CallMyDoc uses an IVR sub-type routing system with letter-coded categories that classify every inbound call in real time. The primary sub-types are: A (Billing), B (Clinical), C (Scheduling or Admin), D (Non-Urgent Other), E (Patient Case), F (Electronic Medical Records), G (Paper Medical Records), H (Medication), I (New Prescriptions), J (Prescription Refill), K (Patient No Show), and L (Referral). General office information calls are handled separately through an override_call_type: Office Information path. This structured classification ensures every call is routed to the right person with the right context.
Patient call volume peaks between 8:00 AM and 11:00 AM, with the single busiest window being Monday mornings from 8:00–10:30 AM. A secondary peak occurs early afternoon (1:00–2:30 PM). However, 40–50% of all calls come outside standard business hours. At Castle Hills Family Practice, 51.9% of calls occurred after hours — before 8 AM, after 5 PM, on weekends, or on holidays. The after-hours call mix skews more clinical, with a higher proportion of Sub-Type E (Patient Case) symptom reports and urgent Sub-Type J (Prescription Refill) requests.
Understanding why patients call enables data-driven decisions about staffing, technology, and workflow design. When practices know that 30–40% of calls are scheduling (Sub-Type C) and 15–20% are refills (Sub-Type J) — together accounting for roughly 50–60% of all volume in just two highly automatable categories — they can redeploy staff from phone handling to direct patient care. Practices using this data to implement clinical communication infrastructure report 50% reductions in phone workload (Castle Hills) and resolution of 41.6% of routine requests without staff involvement (Hudson Headwaters). The data also reveals that after-hours calls carry higher clinical acuity, supporting investment in structured after-hours systems rather than basic answering services.
The practices that thrive in 2026 and beyond will not be the ones that hire more staff to answer more phones. They will be the ones that understand why patients call, when they call, and which calls require human clinical judgment versus structured automation.
CallMyDoc exists because these patterns are not random — they are predictable, measurable, and actionable. With 26 million calls processed, zero breaches, and zero lost calls, we have built the clinical communication infrastructure that turns every patient call into a documented, routed, and resolvable clinical task — classified by IVR sub-type, matched to the patient's chart, and delivered to the right staff member in seconds. Not a voicemail. Not a sticky note. Not a message that sits in an answering service queue until Monday morning.
Whether your practice handles 50 calls a day or 34,000 a month, the data tells the same story: most of your phone volume is routine, most of it is automatable, and all of it deserves to be documented.
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