Every call starts with a heads-up.

In the United States, recording a phone call follows one of two rules. Under the federal rule — the one most states use — a call may be recorded when one person on the call knows it is being recorded and agrees. That is called one-party consent.

A group of states ask for a little more: everyone on the call must know and agree. You will hear this called two-party or all-party consent. It sounds stricter, but in practice it comes down to the same simple habit — tell people the call is recorded, right at the start. DewyDesk does that on every call, so both rules are covered the same way.

These are the states where everyone on a call must know it is being recorded and agree to it:

• California
• Connecticut
• Delaware
• Florida
• Illinois
• Maryland
• Massachusetts
• Montana
• Nevada
• New Hampshire
• Pennsylvania
• Washington

A few friendly footnotes, because some states read their own rules in their own way:

• Montana's rule centers on everyone being told the call is recorded — the heads-up at the start of the call is exactly that.
• Michigan is counted in the everyone-agrees group by many guides, because its rule has been read both ways over the years. We treat Michigan calls the same careful way, so it never matters.
• Oregon's everyone-agrees rule covers conversations held in person; for phone calls it follows the one-person rule. Either way, the heads-up comes first.
• When a call crosses state lines, the careful move is to follow the stricter of the two rules. Announcing the recording on every call does that automatically.

Agreement does not always have to sound like a signed form. It shows up in a few forms:

• A spoken yes. The clearest form — the person hears the heads-up and agrees out loud, and the conversation carries on.
• Implied consent. When the heads-up is given clearly at the very start and the person stays on the line and keeps talking, that continued conversation is treated as a yes in most places. It is the idea behind the "this call may be recorded" line you have heard from airlines, banks, and clinics for years. Washington's rule even spells it out: announcing the recording, in a way everyone on the call can hear, is how agreement is given.
• Permission already on file. DewyDesk only ever calls a practice's own past patients, and before the first campaign the practice confirms it has permission to reach out to the people on its list.

Implied consent only holds when the announcement is clear and comes first — which is why DewyDesk's heads-up is the opening line of the call, never buried halfway through.

• The heads-up is the opening line. Every agent begins with its name, the practice it is calling from, and the words "this call may be recorded" — in English, Spanish, or Portuguese — before anything else is discussed. The announcement is part of the recording itself, so there is always a record of it being said.
• One standard, everywhere. We do not sort calls by state or keep two sets of habits. The strictest rule — everyone knows, every time — is simply how every DewyDesk call works.
• "No thanks" is always an answer. If someone would rather not be recorded, or would rather not be called at all, the agent wraps up warmly, notes the preference, and that number comes off the list.
• Only your own patients. Calls go only to people the practice itself has treated, using the contact details the practice provided. No bought lists, no strangers, no surprises.
• Recordings stay with the practice. Every recording and call summary lives in the practice's own account, ready for the team to listen back and review.
• Paperwork first. The agreement covering patient information — a BAA — is signed during signup, before any patient list is uploaded or any call is made.

Recording rules can change over time, and this page is a plain-English summary of how DewyDesk handles recording — general information about our practices, not legal advice. If your practice has its own counsel, we are happy to walk them through exactly how the opening line, the lists, and the recordings work.

Last updated: October 22, 2026.