Which primary care calls can an AI answering service handle?

The calls that fill a primary care line

Primary care phones ring with everything, and each call type has rules your schedulers know by heart. You write them into the agent in Dialog Studio (formerly Agent Studio), and it applies them on every call. These are examples of what teams build in, and we think same-day sick calls are the place to begin, because a patient who feels unwell wants an answer before they hang up.

Same-day sick visits

A caller who needs to be seen today gets the same-day slot your rules allow, or a walk-in time when the day is full. Symptoms your clinicians list as urgent go to a person at once, with the details captured.

Annual wellness visits on a covered date

Medicare annual wellness visits come with timing rules that decide whether the visit is covered. The agent checks when the patient last had one, where your system shows it, and offers dates that fit the rule your billing team gives it.

Chronic care follow-ups at your intervals

Patients with diabetes or high blood pressure come back at intervals your providers set. The agent books the follow-up inside that interval, keeps the patient with their usual provider where your rules say so, and can send a reminder by voice or SMS with rebooking on the same call.

Specialist referrals that keep moving

Patients call to ask whether a referral went through. The agent gives them its status where your system shows it, or passes the call to your referral coordinator with the patient's details. It does not read faxed referrals, so those stay with your team or another tool.

Bookings land in your EHR on the call

For your IT team: PolyAI connects to Epic through SMART on FHIR, and to athenahealth for scheduling and billing in ambulatory practices. NexHealth syncs scheduling across practice management systems, and anything else connects through its API. Patient data runs under HIPAA Security Rule controls examined within our SOC 2+ report, and a business associate agreement (BAA) is available for eligible healthcare deployments.

Results from a federally qualified health center

Howard Brown Health is a federally qualified health center serving more than 40,000 adults and youth a year in Chicago. Its phones take about 15,000 calls a month, with spikes to 60,000 during Covid and Monkeypox. With its PolyAI agent, Alex, Howard Brown reached 30% call containment against a 20% target, and the agent's average handle time is about 58.6 seconds against 3.5 minutes for its human agents.

Your clinicians keep the clinical calls

The agent does not diagnose or give medical advice. Medication questions, symptoms your clinicians flag and requests outside your rules go to a person, along with what the agent has already learned, so your nurse picks up mid-conversation instead of starting over. Wren, the agent inside Dialog Studio, reviews live calls and drafts a fix on a branch with tests, and a person approves every change.