# Instagram Automation for Clinics & Doctors > Answer appointment, timing and consultation-fee enquiries from Instagram instantly — without ever giving medical advice or collecting health details in a. Built for clinics & private practices # Answer the appointment question instantly. Never the medical one. Most of what arrives in a clinic's Instagram DMs isn't clinical at all — it's timings, location, consultation fees, whether you take a particular insurance, and how to book. Those answers should be instant. The clinical questions should reach a human, and only a human. Reachlee is set up to make exactly that split. Updated September 2026 · Human-verified [Start free ](/app/?src=seo&page=for%2Fclinics) For private clinics, specialist practices, diagnostic centres and polyclinics · never gives medical advice ## The short answer A clinic can safely automate its Instagram DMs for logistics: appointment enquiries, consulting hours, location and directions, consultation fees, which insurances are accepted, and how to book. It should never automate clinical content — no symptom triage, no diagnosis, no treatment or dosage guidance — and it should not ask for health details inside a DM. Reachlee's AI carries a non-editable system rule refusing medical advice, and any clinical question is handed to your staff instead of answered. 1Instant replies to the logistics questions every clinic gets: timings, location, consultation fee, insurance accepted, how to book 2Clinical questions are never answered automatically — Reachlee AI refuses medical advice as a hard rule built into the product, not a setting someone can switch off 3Don't collect health information in Instagram DMs; capture a name and a phone number and let your front desk take it from there 4Phone capture on Pro puts the number in your contact list; Business pipes name and number into a Google Sheet your reception calls from 5Comment a keyword on a post and the booking link arrives as a DM automatically, at any hour 6Built on Meta's official Instagram API — no password sharing, no browser bots, nothing that risks your practice's account 7Works in the language your patients type in, including Hindi and Hinglish, on the Growth plan ## Why a clinic's Instagram problem is a logistics problem Look at a week of a clinic's DMs and the pattern is unmistakable. Overwhelmingly the messages are administrative: what time does the doctor sit, do you work on Sunday, how much is the first consultation, do you accept this insurance, where exactly is the clinic, can I come today. Those questions have fixed answers, they arrive at nine at night, and every one that goes unanswered until the next morning is a patient who called somewhere else. Then there is a much smaller set of messages describing symptoms and asking what to do — and those must never be answered by software. The value of automation in a clinic is entirely in the first category, and the discipline is in refusing the second. A tool that blurs the two is a liability rather than a time-saver. * The high-volume questions are administrative and have fixed, correct answers * Response speed decides who the patient books with, and enquiries peak outside working hours * Clinical questions are low-volume and high-stakes — exactly the wrong thing to automate * Reception time saved on repeat logistics is time available for the people standing at the desk ## The line we will not cross, and how it's enforced Reachlee AI answers from knowledge you write yourself — your timings, your fees, your locations, your booking link. On top of whatever you write, the product carries system rules that you cannot edit and we do not expose as a setting. One of them refuses medical, legal and financial advice outright. Another forbids inventing any price, link or promise that doesn't appear verbatim in your own knowledge, so it cannot improvise a consultation fee or quote a treatment cost you never entered. A third makes it answer honestly that it is an automated assistant if anyone asks. When a message falls outside what it may address, it says your team will follow up rather than guessing — and that message sits in your inbox for a human to answer. This is deliberately conservative, and for a medical practice that conservatism is the feature. * No medical advice — a hard rule in the product's code, not a checkbox in your settings * Never invents a fee, a link or a promise; only states what you entered yourself * Answers honestly that it's an automated assistant when asked * Anything it can't safely address is handed to your staff, with the conversation intact in your inbox * You write the knowledge, so every factual answer is one your practice authored How it works ## Setting it up in an afternoon 01 ### Connect the clinic's Instagram account Sign in with Google and connect your Instagram professional account through Meta's official login. No password is shared with us and no browser extension is installed — it's the same OAuth flow Meta requires of every verified tool. 02 ### Write down the answers you already repeat Consulting hours per doctor, the consultation fee, the address with a maps link, which insurances you accept, how to book, and what to do in an emergency (which should always be: call these numbers, do not message). This is the knowledge your automation answers from, and it takes about twenty minutes to write once. 03 ### Put a booking keyword on your posts Add an automation so a comment like BOOK or APPOINTMENT sends your booking link straight to that person's DMs. Patients who see a post at eleven at night get the link at eleven at night, rather than deciding to call tomorrow and then not calling. 04 ### Capture a name and a number, not a medical history Ask for a name and a phone number inside the DM and stop there. On Pro that becomes a contact record; on Business each one lands in a Google Sheet as it arrives, so reception has a call list that builds itself. Never ask for symptoms, reports, or anything you'd treat as a medical record. 05 ### Decide what reaches a human, and check that inbox Anything clinical, anything urgent, anything unusual should land in the shared inbox for your staff. Automation handles the repetitive ninety percent so the remaining ten percent actually gets human attention, which is the point. What clinics actually use ## The parts that matter in a practice 01 ### Instant answers to timings and fees The two most-asked questions in any clinic's inbox, answered in seconds from what you wrote, at any hour, in the language the person typed. No patient waits until morning to learn when you open. 02 ### Booking links from a comment Someone comments on a post about a health check package and the booking link arrives in their DMs automatically. The interest and the action stay in the same minute rather than separated by a night's sleep. 03 ### Phone capture for the front desk The DM asks for a name and number; your reception gets a list to call. On Business those rows arrive in Google Sheets live, so the call list exists without anyone building it. 04 ### Multiple locations, multiple accounts Pro connects three Instagram accounts and Business connects ten with five team seats, so a group of clinics or a chain of diagnostic centres can run each branch's account with its own timings and its own knowledge. 05 ### Hindi and Hinglish replies Patients type how they speak. On the Growth plan Reachlee AI replies in the same language and script the person used, so a question typed in Hinglish gets a Hinglish answer rather than an English one. 06 ### A human always available behind it Every conversation lands in one inbox your staff can take over at any point. Automation is the first responder, not the only one, and your team can step in mid-thread without the patient noticing a handoff. Real scenarios ## Three situations every practice recognises. ### The 10pm appointment enquiry Before A patient finds your clinic on Instagram at ten at night and asks whether the doctor sits on Saturday and what the first consultation costs. Nobody sees it until the front desk opens at nine. By then they've searched again, found a clinic that replied, and booked there. With Reachlee They get both answers within seconds, along with your booking link. The appointment is made before they close the app. Your reception sees the conversation in the morning as a booking, not as an unanswered question. ### A health-check post that goes further than expected Before You post about a preventive health package and forty people comment asking the price and how to book. Someone answers a dozen of them over two days, the rest are missed, and a campaign that worked leaks most of its interest in the comment section. With Reachlee Everyone who comments the keyword gets a DM with the package details and the booking link, automatically, within seconds of commenting. Forty enquiries become forty conversations, and the ones who leave a number become a call list. ### Someone describes their symptoms in a DM Before A patient types out a paragraph about chest discomfort and asks whether they should be worried. A generic chatbot cheerfully offers an opinion, which is the worst possible outcome for the patient and for the practice. With Reachlee Reachlee will not answer it. It says plainly that the team will follow up, gives no clinical guidance, and leaves the message in your inbox flagged for a human. Your doctor or staff responds, or calls. The software's job was to know it wasn't its job. Pricing ## Free to start. $9/month for a full practice setup. The free plan connects one Instagram account with 1,000 DMs a month and no card, which is enough to run booking-keyword automations on a single clinic account. Pro at $9/mo adds three accounts, unlimited DMs and contacts, any-post triggers and lifetime analytics. Growth at $14/mo adds Reachlee AI for open-ended logistics questions in your patients' own language. Business at $29/mo connects ten accounts with five team seats and pipes every captured number into Google Sheets. [Start free ](/app/?src=seo&page=for%2Fclinics) FAQ ## Instagram automation for clinics, answered honestly. Is it safe for a clinic to automate Instagram DMs? For logistics, yes — timings, location, consultation fees, insurance accepted, how to book. Those are fixed facts you author yourself and there's no clinical risk in answering them quickly. For anything clinical, no, and you should treat a tool that offers it as a warning sign. Reachlee AI carries a non-editable system rule refusing medical advice, so a symptom question is handed to your staff rather than answered. The safe design is automation for admin and humans for medicine, with a clear boundary between them. Can the AI answer patient questions about symptoms or treatment? No, and it's built not to. Refusing medical, legal and financial advice is one of the system guardrails compiled into the product — it isn't a setting in your account and you cannot turn it off even if you wanted to. When someone asks something clinical, the reply says your team will get back to them, and the message waits in your inbox for a human. It also cannot invent a treatment price or a link, because it may only state facts that appear verbatim in the knowledge you wrote. Should we collect patient health information in Instagram DMs? No. Instagram DMs are not an appropriate place to collect or store health information, and you should design your automation so it never asks. Capture only a name and a phone number, then move the conversation to a channel and a system your practice already uses for patient records. Reachlee's lead capture is built for exactly that shape — a contact detail, not a case history — and what happens after the call belongs in your clinic's own systems. What about emergencies — someone messaging about something urgent? Put it in your knowledge explicitly, as the first thing you write: in an emergency, call these numbers, do not message us on Instagram. Then say it again in your bio and in the automated replies where it's relevant. Instagram DMs are asynchronous and nobody should be relying on them in an emergency. This is worth stating plainly and repeatedly rather than assuming patients know it. Can it DM patients who haven't messaged us? No, and no compliant tool can. Meta's Instagram API cannot start a conversation — the person has to message you, reply to your story, react to your story, mention you, or comment on a post you then privately reply to. That's a platform rule rather than a Reachlee limitation, and for a clinic it's a useful one: every conversation you're in is one the patient chose to start. If you need to reach patients proactively, that belongs on the phone or a channel they've consented to. We're a group with several branches. Can we run them separately? Yes. Pro connects three Instagram accounts and Business connects ten with five team seats, and each connected account has its own automations and its own knowledge — so each branch answers with its own timings, its own address and its own doctors. Business also pipes captured contacts into Google Sheets, which is usually how a multi-branch group wants leads delivered: one sheet per branch, reception calls from it. Will patients know they're talking to an automation? The replies come from your clinic's own account in your own words, with no automated-message label attached by Instagram. If someone asks directly whether they're talking to a bot, the AI answers honestly that it's an automated assistant replying on the practice's behalf — that's another of the hard rules in the product. We'd recommend leaning into that rather than hiding it: patients are generally happy to get an instant, accurate answer about timings and fees from software, as long as nobody pretends it's a clinician. Is Reachlee safe for our Instagram account itself? Yes. It runs on Meta's official Instagram API through Instagram Business Login, so we never hold your password and nothing operates a logged-in session on your behalf. It never first-contacts anyone, sends one private reply per comment inside Instagram's 7-day window, respects the 24-hour messaging window, and runs a rate-limit pre-flight check before every send. The tools that put an account at risk are the ones automating a logged-in session instead of the API, and that's a category we're deliberately not in. Keep exploring ## More for healthcare practices. [Reachlee for dental practicesTreatment enquiries, consult bookings and before-after reels, with the same clinical boundary.](/for/dentists/)[Lead capture in DMsHow a name and a phone number get captured inside the conversation, with nothing else asked for.](/use-cases/instagram-lead-capture/)[Leads into Google SheetsEvery captured contact lands in a sheet as it arrives, so reception has a live call list.](/use-cases/google-sheets-instagram-leads/)[Can I DM someone who didn't message me first?Why every conversation has to start with the patient, and what that means for your funnel.](/guides/can-i-dm-someone-who-didnt-message-me-first/) --- Source: https://www.reachlee.co/for/clinics