Moonshot EHR includes an AI website chat. The clinic turns it on in Settings, pastes one line of script into its website, and a branded bubble appears on every page. The chat answers from the clinic's live services, prices, programs, hours and address plus rules the clinic writes, books open slots on the EHR calendar, creates leads on the Leads board, and takes messages that become staff tasks. It cannot look up records, never confirms whether someone is a patient, gives no clinical advice, and tells visitors it is an AI. It ships in the AI package at $100 per month per location.
The bot that used to sit on my own clinic's website quoted five stale prices in one afternoon and pitched a booking after someone described an emergency. That is the normal failure of a chatbot that reads a copy of your website: the copy drifts, and the guardrails are whatever the vendor's template happened to include. The fix is to give the chat the same data the clinic runs on, and to decide up front what it is forbidden to do.
What it answers from
The chat reads the clinic's service catalog with durations, prices and descriptions, its programs and memberships with prices, and its hours and address, all live from the EHR. There is no second knowledge base to keep in sync. On top of that the clinic writes its own rules block, up to 8,000 characters, which the chat follows word for word: how to describe a program, what to say about parking, which questions to deflect. Prices are quoted only from the catalog. If a price is not there, the chat says the clinic will confirm.
What it can do for a visitor
- Book a real appointment. It finds open slots and books through the same functions as the clinic's online booking page, so provider hours, blackouts and booking rules apply. It collects first and last name, mobile, email and date of birth, reads the details back, and books only after the visitor confirms. One booking per conversation.
- Create a lead. A visitor who is not ready to book becomes a lead on the Leads board with the source "website chat," so follow-up sequences and the CRM pick them up like any other lead.
- Take a message. A message becomes a staff task titled with the visitor's name, inside the EHR where tasks already live.
- Hand off to the booking page. A "Book online" button links straight to the clinic's booking page for visitors who would rather pick their own time.
What it refuses
This is the part that makes it safe to put on a medical website. The chat cannot look up appointments, records, results, prescriptions or bills, because it has no tool for any of those. It never confirms whether someone is a patient. It gives no diagnosis, no dosing guidance and no interpretation of results, and it does not ask about symptoms. An emergency gets a reply to call 911 and nothing else; a mention of self-harm gets 988. If asked, it says it is an AI. It puts no links in its replies and ignores attempts to override its instructions.
Where the conversation lands for staff
Bookings land on the calendar. Leads land on the Leads board. Messages land as tasks. Every transcript is stored under the clinic's account and listed in Settings with its outcome: booked, lead, or message taken. When a visitor's phone and email match exactly one existing patient, a staff-only note labeled "Website chat" is added to that patient's conversation thread so the front desk has context the next time the patient writes in. The note is marked unverified, because a web visitor's identity is a claim, not a login.
Install, branding and abuse protection
- One script tag before the closing body tag of your site. The bubble sits bottom-right, opens full-screen on phones, and closes on Escape.
- It shows the clinic's name, logo, accent color and a custom greeting. Platform attribution can be hidden.
- It only loads on domains the clinic has allowed, the same list its booking embed uses.
- Cloudflare Turnstile checks that a visitor is human before a session starts. Sessions and messages are rate-limited per visitor, and the clinic sets a daily message cap.
- Transcripts record the conversation and the model cost per turn. The visitor's IP address and page URL are not stored.
Model and privacy posture
The chat runs on Claude through Amazon Bedrock, inside Moonshot's own AWS environment, with usage metered per conversation. Transcripts are stored under the clinic's tenant with the same row-level isolation as the rest of the record, because visitors sometimes volunteer health information even when the chat does not ask for it. Nothing a visitor types is sent to a consumer chatbot service.
Built in vs a chatbot add-on
As of October 2026, most EHRs for cash-pay clinics ship an online booking widget but not a conversational chat. Unified Practice lists a chat widget that books. Cerbo, Jane, Practice Better and Healthie list booking links and widgets, so clinics on those platforms add a third-party chatbot. Those tools range from inexpensive templated bots to custom builds, and the thing to check is the same in every case: does it book into your real calendar from your real services, and what is it allowed to say about medicine.
Scroll horizontally to compare all columns. Keyboard: focus the table region, then use the arrow keys.
| Option | Answers from | Books into the EHR calendar? | Published pricing |
|---|---|---|---|
| Moonshot EHR website chat | Live service catalog, programs, hours, plus clinic-written rules | Yes, same functions as the online booker; leads and messages land in the EHR | $100/mo per location in the AI package, including $25 of monthly AI usage |
| Third-party chatbot (Hyperleap, Zavis, Frontdesk and similar) | A copy of your website or a knowledge base you maintain | Sometimes, through an integration or by linking out | From about $40/mo for templated tools; custom builds quoted |
| Enterprise conversational AI (Hello Patient, Assort Health) | EHR integrations | Yes, via enterprise EHR integrations | Quote-based |
| Cerbo, Jane, Practice Better, Healthie | Booking widget or link, not a chat | Booking widget only | Third-party chatbot on top |
Pricing and limits
The AI package is $100 per month per location. It includes the website chat and the staff AI assistant with $25 of AI usage per month shared between them; beyond that, usage bills at model cost plus 10 percent. The AI + receptionist package at $250 per month adds the phone assistant. Limits worth knowing: one booking per conversation, no cancel or reschedule through chat, English only today, and a per-clinic daily message cap the owner can raise.
Where Moonshot fits, honestly: a templated chatbot is fine for a clinic that only wants to deflect "what are your hours" questions. If you want the chat to book real appointments from real prices, capture the people who are not ready to book, and stay inside guardrails you did not have to write yourself, the chat inside Moonshot EHR does that for less than most add-ons. It is live on our own clinic's website if you want to try it before a demo.
Sources
Vendor materials checked October 14, 2026: Unified Practice chat widget announcement; Hyperleap healthcare chatbot comparison (pricing); Zavis widgets; Frontdesk AI chatbot for medical practices. Competitor descriptions summarize vendor-published material; features and prices change, so confirm with each vendor. This guide is general information, not legal advice; confirm your own privacy and consent obligations with counsel.