Who answers your practice phone out of hours in Belgium?
Somebody still rings after you close. Tilcao answers that call in Dutch, French or English, books ordinary appointments straight into your diary and sends the confirmation. If the call is about pain or an emergency, Tilcao assesses nothing: it follows your practice’s own written rule, tells the patient exactly what that rule says, and hands over at once to the named person or the duty service you chose. A patient in pain must always reach a person, and Tilcao’s job is to make that happen faster rather than to stand in the way.
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How is out-of-hours dental cover organised in Belgium?
As a duty rota, called the wachtdienst in Dutch and the garde dentaire in French, and it covers weekends, public holidays and bridge days rather than ordinary weekdays. Bridge days are the working days squeezed between a public holiday and the weekend. The Dutch-language dental duty line for Flanders and Brussels is 0903 39 969, open on those days from 09:00 to 18:00 at 1.50 euro per minute. Brussels has a separate French-language garde on 02 426 10 26, open on Saturdays, Sundays, public holidays and bridge days from 09:00 to 17:00. Wallonia publishes no single number at all, only an interactive map that goes live during on-call periods.
Read that again on a Tuesday evening and the gap is obvious. A patient who rings at 21:00 on an ordinary weekday falls outside your opening hours and outside the duty rota at the same time. That call reaches nobody, unless your practice has arranged something itself. Weekday out-of-hours dental cover is a structural gap in Belgium, and no software closes it clinically.
The rota itself is organised regionally by the duty services and the professional associations, and the obligations that come with it sit with the dentist, not with a supplier. Numbers, hours and arrangements change, so we do not restate the rules here. Check them with the duty service for your region and with your own association, VVT or VBT on the Dutch-speaking side and the Société de Médecine Dentaire or the Chambres de Médecine Dentaire on the French-speaking side, before you write anything into a practice rule.
| Duty service | When it answers | Area |
|---|---|---|
| 0903 39 969, Dutch-language dental duty line | Weekends, public holidays and bridge days, 09:00 to 18:00. Not on weekdays. | Flanders and Brussels |
| 02 426 10 26, French-language garde dentaire | Saturdays, Sundays, public holidays and bridge days, 09:00 to 17:00. | Brussels |
| No central number, only a map that goes live | During on-call periods | Wallonia |
Who picks up when the practice is closed?
Tilcao does, on your own number, at whatever hours you forward it. Almost nothing that rings out of hours is an emergency: somebody books a check-up at 21:00, somebody wants to move Thursday to Friday, somebody asks whether you are taking new patients. Tilcao handles those from start to finish, in Dutch, French or English, and follows the caller when they switch language mid-sentence.
The next morning your front desk does not find a row of voicemails. It finds appointments that are already in the diary and a written summary of every conversation. Nothing is sitting there waiting to be rung back.
This is also the honest difference between an AI agent and a human telesecretariat, rather than an argument against one. A staffed service covers the hours it publishes, and in Belgium those hours usually stop in the evening and on public holidays, which is exactly when the practice phone is unattended. A forwarded line has no roster to run out.
- Identifies the caller on two matching details, usually the full name and the date of birth.
- Reads the real availability in your diary instead of inventing a time.
- Books, moves or cancels the appointment types you released to it.
- Offers a slot freed by a late cancellation to patients on the waiting list, so the chair is not empty tomorrow.
- Answers questions about opening hours, the address, parking and what to bring, from a knowledge base your practice controls.
- Confirms by WhatsApp or e-mail and leaves a structured summary for your team.
What does Tilcao do if someone calls at night in severe pain?
It assesses nothing. Tilcao makes no diagnosis, never weighs how urgent a complaint is and gives no advice about painkillers. What it does is answer, recognise that this call is urgent, apply the written rule your practice gave it, tell the patient in plain words exactly what that rule says, and hand over immediately to the person or the service you named.
From the moment a red flag appears, booking stops. Tilcao repeats the name or the number twice, offers to end the call so the patient can ring straight away, and alerts your team with the caller’s own words rather than an interpretation of them.
Where the patient goes is your decision. It may be your own mobile, a colleague on duty, the dental duty service during the hours it answers, 1733 for out-of-hours general practice, or 112 when there is a danger to life. Tilcao does not choose that route. It reads out the one you wrote down.
A patient in pain must always reach a person. An agent that picks up in two rings at 23:00 and states your routing accurately gets them there faster than a voicemail greeting does. It is not a replacement for the person at the other end of it, and it is not built to be one.
- Never name a condition.
- Never judge how serious or how urgent a complaint is.
- Never recommend a medicine or a dose, including anything sold over the counter.
- Never promise a prescription or a treatment.
- Never book an appointment over the top of a red flag.
Which rule does Tilcao follow out of hours?
Yours. Each practice writes it down once: what counts as an emergency here, who is called then, on which number, and what the patient hears if nobody picks up. Tilcao carries out that rule the same way every time, at three in the morning and on a bridge day, which is more than can be said for a stand-in who has never worked your front desk.
When your arrangement changes you change the rule, and it applies from the next call. Every conversation produces a structured summary and an audit trail: who called, what they asked, which rule was applied, and what changed in the diary. 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 overnight.
| Out-of-hours call | What Tilcao does |
|---|---|
| Check-up, cleaning or another ordinary appointment | Reads your availability, books it, and sends a confirmation |
| Moving or cancelling an appointment | Moves or cancels it, and offers the freed slot to the waiting list |
| Question about opening hours, the address or what to bring | Answers from the knowledge base your practice controls |
| Pain, swelling, bleeding, trauma or another red flag | Stops booking, states your rule, and hands over or gives the agreed number |
| Anything your rule does not cover | Records the question, alerts your team, and tells the patient when they will hear back |
Does the patient know they are speaking to an AI at 23:00?
Yes, and Tilcao says so in the first sentence. The transparency obligations in Article 50 of the EU AI Act have applied since 2 August 2026: a person must be informed that they are interacting with an AI system, unless that is obvious to a reasonably well-informed, observant and circumspect person. An agent that books appointments is not a high-risk system, and we do not claim a conformity assessment we have not done.
Out of hours that clarity counts double. Somebody ringing at 23:00 wants to know who they are speaking to and how they reach a human being. So there is always a way out: a transfer to a person, or a callback request that sits at the top of the list the moment the practice opens.
- The opening line is the same one used in the daytime: “Hello, you have reached the dental practice. You are speaking to the practice’s AI assistant and this call is recorded. How can I help you today?” A practice can change the wording. It cannot remove the disclosure or the recording notice.
- The patient can ask for a person at any point, including when your rule does not require it. Asking once is enough.
European Commission on the transparency obligations under Article 50 of the AI Act
What happens to the data from a night-time call?
The reason somebody rings a dentist is health data. It falls under Article 9 of the GDPR, and that does not change because it is 23:00. Your practice is the controller and Tilcao is the processor. A processing agreement under Article 28, the verwerkersovereenkomst or contrat de sous-traitance, has to be in place before the first real patient call, with an annex naming every sub-processor.
Before Tilcao reads anything back from a file it verifies two matching details. It does not volunteer the practitioner’s name, the reason for an appointment or any other appointment before that has succeeded, and it releases nothing to a third party, with the exception of a parent or guardian of a minor. Everyone at Tilcao who can see a transcript is bound by a written confidentiality obligation that mirrors the practice’s professional secrecy, and every access is logged.
What Tilcao never touches is worth stating plainly as well. It is not a practice management system, it is not on the MyCareNet approved-software list of Belgian health software, and it holds no eHealth certificate. It never attests, never invoices, never enters the eAttest, eFact or eTarif flows and never writes in the clinical record. At 23:00 it does exactly what it does at 11:00, through an integration user holding the narrowest rights that do the job.
Questions practices ask
How do we decide which hours Tilcao answers?
You keep your own number and choose when it forwards: only after closing, only at weekends and on public holidays, only when nobody picks up within a few rings, or always. There is no staffed roster behind the line, so no hour is excluded in advance. Turn the forwarding off and the phone rings exactly as it did before.
Can Tilcao cover the dental wachtdienst?
It answers your own practice line, including during a duty period, but it does not replace the wachtdienst or the garde dentaire and it does not take on the role of the dentist on duty. What it does is pick up, state your rule and point the patient to the right person or service, including the duty service when that is what your rule says. The rota and the obligations attached to it stay with the practice.
What happens if a patient calls at night with severe toothache?
Tilcao does not assess the complaint. It stops booking, applies the written rule your practice gave it, tells the patient what that rule says and hands over immediately to the person or number you named. The number is repeated twice, and your team receives a summary containing the patient’s own words.
Does the AI triage complaints or judge urgency?
No. Tilcao makes no diagnosis, names no condition, weighs no urgency and recommends no medicine or dose, including anything sold over the counter. That is clinical work and it stays with your clinicians. The only decision Tilcao makes is which of your own rules applies to the call in front of it.
When is an out-of-hours call handed to a person?
On any red flag written into your rule, on any question the knowledge base does not cover, and whenever the caller asks for a person. Out of hours a handover means either a transfer to a number you nominated or a callback request at the top of the list when the practice opens. The patient is told which of the two is happening, and when.
Does it really book into our diary at 22:00, or does it just take a message?
It books. Tilcao reads the real availability in your diary, holds the slot and confirms it to the patient during the call. Where no integration exists yet for your system it runs in the other mode: answer, record everything accurately and leave a structured task for the front desk in the morning.
What should our out-of-hours rule actually say?
Four things, in your own words: what counts as an emergency for this practice, who is called when one comes in, on which number, and what the patient hears if that person does not pick up. Keep the wording simple enough to be read aloud to a patient in pain. Review it whenever your duty arrangement or your own availability changes.
Which languages does Tilcao answer in out of hours?
Dutch, French and English, and it can change language inside a single conversation. In Brussels and the Flemish periphery that matters at 22:00 as much as at 10:00. The summary for your team arrives in the language your practice works in.
Is an AI allowed to answer patient calls in Belgium?
There is no Belgian rule forbidding it, and there is no Order of Dentists that could have issued one, since oversight runs through FOD/SPF Volksgezondheid recognition and the Provinciale Geneeskundige Commissie. No Belgian dental professional body has published a position on AI receptionists either way, so nobody should read this as an endorsement. The line that matters is clinical rather than technological: a receptionist, human or AI, gathers facts and routes, and never judges a complaint.