Dental phone answering for practices in Belgium
A Belgian dental practice has three real options for the telephone: the team answers it between patients, a human telesecretariat takes it during staffed hours, or an AI agent picks up every call at every hour. They differ on hours covered, on what happens while a patient is in the chair, on whether the caller ends up with an appointment in your own diary, and on languages. Tilcao is the third option. It answers in Dutch, French and English, books in the practice’s own software, and hands the unusual call to a named person on purpose.
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Which calls does a dental practice actually miss?
The ones that arrive while the practice is busy being a practice. A missed call is rarely a quiet moment with nobody there. It is the call that comes in at the exact minute the desk is occupied, and afterwards there is no record of it, so the request never becomes an appointment unless the patient tries again.
The odd part is that the rest of the practice is already digital. Electronic invoicing has been mandatory for Belgian dentists since 1 September 2025, so the eAttest and eFact flows run through the software without anyone thinking about them. The agenda is still defended by one person with one telephone.
Four of these moments repeat every week, in every practice, whatever the size.
- Reception is with a patient at the desk. The phone rings out and the caller reaches voicemail.
- A second patient rings while the first is still on the line. One line and one person handle one call at a time.
- The practice closes over lunch. The calls do not stop for lunch.
- Someone rings at 18:30, after the last patient has left. That call is answered tomorrow, or never.
- Saturday morning, when a patient with a broken crown simply rings the next practice that picks up.
RIZIV/INAMI on mandatory electronic invoicing for dentists from 1 September 2025
Answer it yourself, hire a telesecretariat, or use an AI agent?
Those are the three honest options in Belgium, and each is good at something different. Answering it yourself is free and personal until the practice gets busy. A human telesecretariat, the telesecretariaat or télésecrétariat a Belgian practice already knows, buys a trained person during staffed hours. An AI agent answers every call at every hour and writes the appointment into the diary itself.
The table compares the three categories, not individual providers. Read the middle column as what a human service can do in principle. Hours, languages and diary access differ per provider, and each one publishes its own on its own site.
| Your own team | Human telesecretariat | AI agent (Tilcao) | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hours covered | Opening hours, when somebody is free | Staffed hours only, which in Belgium usually stop in the evening and on public holidays | Every hour, including nights, weekends and public holidays |
| A patient is in the chair | The phone rings out or goes to voicemail | Someone outside the practice picks up instead | The call is answered at once, and nobody leaves the chairside |
| A second caller while the first is on the line | Waits, or hangs up and rings elsewhere | Depends on how many operators are free at that moment | Answered in parallel, on the same number |
| Where the appointment ends up | Straight into your diary, by the person who took the call | In your diary if the service has access to it, otherwise a message asking you to call back | Written into the practice software on real availability, during the call |
| Languages | Whoever happens to be at the desk that day | The languages the operator on duty speaks | Dutch, French and English, switching inside a single call |
| An unusual or distressed caller | A colleague who knows the patient and the history | A trained person, and this is the strongest argument for the option | Handed to a named person at the practice, with what was said |
| Pain or an emergency | Judged by your team, on your own rule | Routed on the script the practice supplied | No clinical judgement at all. The agent states your routing and hands over |
When is a human telesecretariat the better choice?
When the call is unusual. A person hears distress, follows an unfinished sentence, recognises the patient who has already rung three times this week, and knows when to stop following the script. No AI agent is better at that, and a page that claims otherwise is selling something.
Tilcao is built around that fact rather than against it. Its work is the repetitive call: the booking, the move, the cancellation, the opening hours, the question about what to bring. Anything outside that is handed to a named person, with the caller’s details and a summary of what was said, so the person picks up a call that is already half finished.
That is also the answer to whether this replaces your front desk. It does not. It takes the calls that interrupt the front desk and leaves it the calls that need a human.
- Any mention of pain, swelling, bleeding, a knocked-out tooth or a fever.
- A caller who asks for the dentist personally, or who is plainly upset.
- A question the practice knowledge base does not answer, including anything about a tariff the practice has not published.
- Anything the practice has written its own escalation rule about, because the rule belongs to the practice.
- A caller who simply asks to speak to a person. Asking once is enough.
Does the appointment really land in our practice software?
Where a route into your diary exists, yes, and the appointment is written during the call on real availability. Where one does not exist yet, Tilcao says so rather than pretending, and leaves a structured task for the front desk instead. That distinction separates an answering service from a message service, because a note asking you to ring Mrs Janssens back is not a booking, it is another task.
The second half is the state of Belgian dental software. No Belgian dental practice system publishes an open, documented booking API. The national rails run by RIZIV/INAMI, the national health and disability insurance institute, cover billing and insurability rather than agendas: eAttest, eFact, eTarif, MyCareNet insurability checks and the GMD/DMG all sit beside the diary and never touch it. The realistic route into a Belgian practice is therefore the online agenda layer in front of the practice system, and what is possible depends on which agenda your practice runs. That is a conversation before a pilot, not a promise on a web page.
Tilcao is not a practice management system and has no ambition to become one. It is not on the MyCareNet approved-software list, holds no eHealth certificate, and needs neither to book an appointment. It never attests, never invoices and never writes in the clinical record. The integration user it works through holds the narrowest rights that do the job: read the diary, create and move appointments of the types you configured, cancel.
NIC/CIN list of MyCareNet-approved Belgian dental software, version of 10 March 2026
Can one line answer in Dutch, French and English?
Yes, and in most of Belgium it has to. A Brussels practice takes Dutch, French and English calls in the same morning, and practices around the EU quarter answer in more languages than that. A Flemish practice takes French calls from patients who commute. Tilcao answers in Dutch, French and English and follows the caller, including when the caller changes language halfway through a sentence.
The Belgian vocabulary matters as much as the language. Callers ask whether the dentist is geconventioneerd or conventionné, meaning bound to the national tariff agreement, which mutualiteit or mutualité they should give, meaning their sickness fund, and whether the derdebetalersregeling applies so that the fund is billed directly. The agent answers all of that from the practice knowledge base, which the practice writes and controls, and it never estimates a tariff it was not given. Convention status is per practitioner and, where it is partial, per hour and per place, so it can only come from your own configuration.
The voice is chosen by ear per language, so a Flemish patient does not get a Netherlands voice and a Walloon patient does not get a Paris one. That sounds like a detail until it is your patient on the line.
What happens when a patient calls in pain?
The agent stops booking and follows the rule your practice wrote. It never names a condition, never judges how urgent a complaint is, never recommends or doses a medicine including anything over the counter, and never promises a prescription. It states the routing your practice gave it, repeats the number twice, and hands the call to a named person where one is reachable.
Out of hours the routing matters more, because Belgian cover has a real gap in it. The dental on-call duty, the wachtdienst or garde dentaire, runs on weekends, public holidays and bridge days and not on ordinary weekdays, so a patient ringing at 21:00 on a Tuesday falls outside your opening hours and outside the rota at the same time. Alongside it sit 1733 for out-of-hours general practice and 112 for an emergency. The out-of-hours page on this site prints the duty numbers, their hours and the regional differences in full.
No agent closes that gap clinically, and none should pretend to. What Tilcao can do at 21:00 on a Tuesday is answer, take the details, state your routing accurately, and leave either a booked appointment or a written handover waiting when the practice opens.
Questions practices ask
What is a dental answering service?
It is an arrangement where somebody other than the practice team answers the practice telephone, either during busy moments or outside opening hours. In Belgium that has traditionally meant a human telesecretariat working from a call centre. An AI answering service is the same idea with a different worker: it answers every call, and where it has access to the diary it books the appointment during the call instead of leaving a message.
What is the difference between a telesecretariat and an AI receptionist?
Hours, parallel calls and what happens to the appointment. A telesecretariat staffs a shift, so it covers the hours it publishes and one operator handles one caller. An AI agent answers every hour and several callers at the same time, and it can write the appointment into the practice software on real availability. The trade is judgement: a trained person handles the unusual call better, which is exactly why Tilcao hands those calls to a person.
Do we have to change our telephone number?
No. You keep the number your patients already have and forward the line. Practices usually choose one of three settings: forward everything, forward only when nobody picks up within a few rings, or forward only outside opening hours. You can change which one you use, and you can take the line back at any time.
Does the patient know they are talking to an AI?
Yes, and they are told at the start of the call, before anything else happens. Article 50 of the EU AI Act has applied since 2 August 2026 and requires a person to be informed that they are interacting with an AI system. An appointment booking agent is not a high-risk system under that regulation, and Tilcao does not claim a conformity assessment it has not done. Any caller who asks for a person is handed to one.
Can it book an appointment in DentAdmin or CareConnect Dentist?
There is no honest one-word answer, because no Belgian dental practice system publishes an open, documented booking API. What exists is the online agenda layer sitting in front of the practice system, and that is where an integration is realistic. What works for your practice depends on which agenda you run, so we check your actual setup and say what is possible before a pilot rather than after.
Who answers the telephone outside opening hours?
The agent does, at any hour, including nights, weekends and public holidays. It books ordinary appointments on your real availability and takes the details on everything else. For pain or an emergency it applies your own routing, which in Belgium means the wachtdienst or garde dentaire on weekends, public holidays and bridge days, 1733 for out-of-hours general practice, and 112 for an emergency. It makes no clinical judgement of its own.
What does an answering service for a dental practice cost?
Human services are usually sold per month with a bundle of calls included and extra calls charged on top, so the bill moves with how busy the practice is. Tilcao has published no prices, because it is pre-pilot and quoting a number before we have measured a real practice would be a guess. Pricing is per practice and is discussed on a call, after we have looked at your call volume and your agenda setup.
Can we see what was said and what was booked?
Every conversation produces a structured summary and an audit trail. The summary records who called, what they wanted, what the agent did and whether anything was handed to a person. The booking outcome is derived from what was actually written to the diary, not from what the agent said on the call, so the record and the diary cannot drift apart.
Is an AI answering patient calls allowed under GDPR?
A dental call is special-category health data under Article 9 of the GDPR, so it needs care rather than a disclaimer. The practice is the controller and Tilcao is the processor, which means an Article 28 processing agreement has to be in place before the first real patient call, with every sub-processor named in its annex. There is no Belgian rule forbidding an AI from speaking to patients, and no Belgian dental body has published a position either way.