What a clinic front desk really costs

At least the legal minimum, and in practice something close to the local going rate. There's no official pay figure for clinic receptionists on their own, so these are the most useful reference points:

Some salary figures you'll see online are now below the legal minimum, because they come from older job adverts or pay data. For a full-time receptionist aged 21 or over, anything under £24,784.50 a year at 37.5 hours a week is below the National Living Wage from April 2026.

Younger staff have lower legal minimums: £10.85 an hour at 18 to 20, and £8 an hour for under-18s and apprentices. These are the legal floor, not a guide to what an experienced receptionist will expect.

More than the wage. Here's one full-time receptionist aged 21 or over, on 37.5 hours a week at the National Living Wage:

The National Insurance rate and threshold come from HMRC's rates and thresholds for employers 2026 to 2027. The pension figure uses the minimum employer contribution of 3% on qualifying earnings; many employers pay more.

At the ONS full-time median of £13.22 an hour, the same sum comes to £29,482.02 a year. A medical secretary on £26,500, an example inside the National Careers Service range, costs £30,332.80 a year: £26,500 in pay, £3,225 in employer National Insurance and £607.80 in minimum pension.

Cover for when the receptionist is away, and the time it takes to train them. The table pays for one person in the seat, not for the seat when they're not in it.

• Holiday cover. Staff are entitled to 5.6 weeks of paid holiday a year, which is 28 days for someone working five days a week, and bank holidays can count towards it. Covering 5.6 weeks at the same rate costs £2,669.10 (5.6 × 37.5 × £12.71), plus National Insurance and pension.
• Sickness. Statutory Sick Pay is £123.25 a week, or 80% of the employee's average weekly earnings if that's lower, for up to 28 weeks. You also pay whoever covers the desk.
• Training. Your receptionist needs to learn your treatments, prices, insurers and booking rules. If your clinic is registered with the Care Quality Commission in England, Regulation 18 requires staff to have the training they need for their role.
• Recruitment. Adverts, interviews and the weeks a new starter takes to learn your systems. These vary too much to put a fair figure on, so use your own.

Two things can reduce the National Insurance line. The Employment Allowance cuts an eligible employer's National Insurance bill by up to £10,500 a year, but it's one allowance across the whole payroll, so a clinic with employed practitioners may already be using it. And employers pay no National Insurance on an under-21 employee's earnings up to £50,270.

Treatment time. In a clinic without a receptionist, every call you take between patients is time you can't spend treating, writing notes or catching your breath.

As an example only: if you spend 30 minutes a day on the phone over a five-day week, that's two and a half hours, or more than three 45-minute appointments. At £60 an appointment, that's over £180 a week of treatment time, if you could fill it. And the calls that arrive while you're mid-session still go unanswered.

This is why many small clinics don't need a full-time receptionist so much as something that answers during sessions and after hours. Our clinic answering service guide compares the options.

About 22% of the week. A full-time receptionist on 37.5 hours covers 37.5 of the 168 hours in a week, and even inside those hours the phone goes unanswered when they're checking a patient in, taking a payment or at lunch.

Part-time cover costs less but covers less. For example, 20 hours a week at the National Living Wage costs £13,218.40 in pay, £1,232.76 in employer National Insurance and £209.35 in pension, so £14,660.51 a year. For comparison, the ONS median for all receptionists, including part-time staff, is £18,152 a year.

When reception is with a patient, on another line or the clinic has no receptionist, those rings go unanswered unless you have overflow cover, and that is when new patients try somewhere else.

To put a number on it, use the sum in our guide to what missed calls cost a private clinic: missed new-patient calls a week × the share who'd have booked × what a new patient is worth × 52. For the hours after closing, our guide to out-of-hours calls for private clinics covers what callers should hear and how to handle urgent calls.

They do different jobs, so the answer is often a mix.

To be straight with you: an AI receptionist doesn't replace a front desk. It doesn't greet patients, take payments or give medical advice. It answers the calls the desk can't, so they don't ring out. Our comparison of AI receptionists and human answering services goes into the choice.