Optimizing Patient Experience with Agentic AI
The Client
Piedmont Health Services, a mission-driven FQHC, serves diverse communities across North
Carolina
The Goals
Train AI agents to:
- Handle appointment scheduling inquiries
- Manage route clinical inquiries
- Trigger self-servicing links
- Provide bilingual support
- Offer patients a variety of communication options
The Result
1. Calls managed entirely by AI agents increased 22.5%
2. Spanish AI completion was up 61% from baseline
3. 40% decrease in abandoned calls
The Challenge
Piedmont Health, a mission-driven FQHC, serves diverse communities across North Carolina. With an ongoing commitment to equitable access and high-quality care, Piedmont faced a growing challenge: balancing patient communication while managing an unrelenting volume of inbound calls.
Call center and front desk administrative staff were often overwhelmed, leading to longer hold times and missed calls that the Piedmont quality team desired. Clinical inquiries, appointment scheduling, and after-hours routing all contributed to the strain. Despite their best efforts, staff were forced to choose between assisting the patients in front of them and those calling for support — a choice that could compromise patient satisfaction in either direction.
Solutions Implemented
The AI-Powered Solution
To address these challenges, Piedmont Health implemented Agentic AI, a smart assistant poised with their call center capable of understanding and responding to patient requests in both English and Spanish. The agents — Mary (English) and Maria (Spanish) — were deployed to help patients navigate common, and often repetitive, needs while freeing staff to focus on more complex inquiries.
The AI Agents were trained to:
- Handle appointment scheduling inquiries, which accounted for up to 49.4% of all inbound calls.
- Route clinical inquiries appropriately — whether escalating to clinical teams or triaging to the on-call staff after hours.
- Trigger self-service scheduling links via SMS, allowing patients to take action without waiting on hold.
- Provide bilingual support to ensure equitable access for Spanish-speaking populations
- Offers patients a variety of communication options, allowing them to choose the method that best suits their needs.
Implementation
Providertech collaborated closely with Piedmont Health to ensure that Mary and Maria were tailored to the practice’s needs and smoothly integrated into daily workflows.
Implementation Highlights
- Custom Call Flow Design: Scripts are created for compliance, clarity and empathy.
- Real-Time Optimization: Providertech’s analytics dashboard track performance metrics, informing updates.
- Staff Training: Hands-on onboarding ensures staff feel confident working alongside Mary and Maria and know clear AI-to-human handoff protocols are in place.
70.9% of routine inquiries are handled end-to-end by the practice’s Smart AI Agents, Mary & Maria, significantly reducing staff call management
The Spanish AI call completion is up +61% from the baseline, contributing to improved appointment access and continually rising rates of adoption
The Results
Key Highlights
- Appointment calls, previously requiring substantial staff time, are now largely handled utilizing AI. Patients requesting to schedule or reschedule receive an automated link via text to book directly, bypassing long wait times.
- Clinical routing is streamlined, ensuring urgent matters are escalated without delay and staff are not bogged down managing call traffic manually.
- Spanish-speaking patients have shown a strong adoption curve, with a 61% increase in fully AI-handled calls — affirming trust in Maria and the value of equitable, native-language support.
In just three months, the results were clear — and promising:
About Piedmont Health Services
Piedmont Health Services (PHS) is a Federally Qualified Health Center (FQHC) Community Health Center. As North Carolina’s first FQHC grantee organization in service for 54 years, PHS’ mission is “to improve the health and well-being of the community by providing high-quality, affordable, and comprehensive primary healthcare.” Its vision is “a healthy community where all people have timely access to quality care.” Piedmont Health Services is the largest not-for-profit health system in the Piedmont region, with 10 Community Health Centers and two PACE (Program of All-Inclusive Care for the Elderly) SeniorCare centers, serving residents in five counties. Visit www.piedmonthealth.org for more information.
Conclusion
What This Means for Piedmont Health
By integrating Agentic AI into their communication strategy, Piedmont Health has transformed their front desk experience:
✅ Enhanced access for patients in both English and Spanish
✅ Increased efficiency in clinical and administrative workflows
✅ Empowered staff to focus on in-person care
✅ Reduced abandoned calls – quicker answer times prevent patients from disconnecting before their needs are addressed
Mary and Maria are not just digital tools — they are extensions of Piedmont’s mission to provide compassionate, accessible care. As adoption continues to grow, so too does Piedmont’s ability to serve every patient with dignity and efficiency.
75%
decrease in time spent confirming appointments
With Providertech’s help, we achieved a 75% decrease in time spent manually confirming appointments, helping us to more efficiently engage our patients using the resources we already had.
Amy Bastianelli |
Director of Population Health, La Communidad Hiispana
Adelante Healthcare found that their population health campaigns were easier to manage and scale, meaning they could reach more patients with less manpower.
