As artificial intelligence evolves, workers have grown concerned that it will make certain jobs completely obsolete. About two-thirds of American employees are anxious about AI eventually replacing their job. However, some leaders are integrating AI in a way that assists their employees rather than replacing them. We’re seeing this today in healthcare contact centers.

“You know, at one point in time in the late 1800’s, a stethoscope was considered foreign and not integrated into practice,” says Mark Sugrue, Senior Director at Alvarez & Marsal. “I see a future where AI, machine learning, all these capabilities are so integrated within our workflows and our practice that they’re hanging on our neck just like the stethoscope is.”

Modern healthcare organizations are taking advantage of conversational AI to lift the burdens off the shoulders of their patient access center agents. This tool, known as an IVA (intelligent virtual assistant), does more than simply save time for these agents – it’s allowing them to work at the top of their skillsets while quantifiably improving their work output. Here’s how:

1. Helps agents attend to callers in urgent need.
   
   

Healthcare contact center agents spend far too much time answering FAQs. Redundant questions about topics like parking and office hours are time-wasting and unfulfilling, and they unnecessarily back up the call queue. Handling these calls manually is unsustainable when they outnumber the staff meant to answer them. This means that agents can’t prioritize patients with more urgent, complex issues.

IVAs easily understand and handle FAQs, taking them off the hands of overworked employees. Metrigy projects that 65.7% of inquiries will be resolved by AI in 2025 in organizations that already have implemented the technology. When the IVA assists patients with routine inquiries, live agents have the bandwidth to attend to patients that need personalized help from trained experts.

2. Helps cure burnout among exhausted staff.
   
   

When repetitive questions flood the stressful environment of a patient access center, employee dissatisfaction spreads and turnover rates rise. 63% of contact center agents have reported high levels of burnout within the last year, and heavy workloads aren’t the only factor. Agents are highly-trained individuals who are prepared to (and prefer to) handle more engaging inquiries that help people in times of need. This brings a level of fulfillment that answering simple FAQs can’t offer.

In fact, a 2024 Hubspot report revealed 78% of client support professionals agree that, “AI makes me feel more efficient in my role.”

With conversational AI, contact center staff can focus their energy on personalized service for patients that need complex help while routine questions are answered by voice assistants. This workflow also ensures low hold times, meaning agents will no longer have to bear the brunt of a caller’s frustration after they’ve spent eight minutes on hold. IVAs improve the agent experience and the patient experience together.

3. Gives agents time to make outbound calls.
   
   

“Why aren’t we picking up the phone and calling our patients to check in on them?” asks Mark Sugrue. “Why aren’t we using our contact centers and elevating those agents to a point where they can effectively be caregivers and leverage the technology to be able to proactively help our patients maintain their wellness?”

Hospitals and clinics must make better efforts to check in on patient health and address concerns. This is more than a formality; a study from the National Library of Medicine found that patients were over 20% less likely to return to the emergency room when the health system follows up over the phone.

Without voice assistants, agents rarely have the bandwidth to make outbound calls to recent patients. Now that IVAs have given contact center staff their time back, healthcare executives are beginning to discuss implementing check-in calls to recent patients. This enables agents to make a positive impact at both the beginning and end of the patient journey, boosting the health system brand.

As Rush University System for Health CIO Anil Saldanha says, “We are not introducing technologies or AI to replace people. It’s to make life easier for our staff and improve some of the efficiencies we have in patient care.” While it’s extremely helpful, conversational AI can never replace personalized care. That’s why this technology must be used together with trained healthcare agents to let them work at the top of their skillsets.

About Parlance

For more than 25 years, Parlance has been a healthcare IT leader. By utilizing conversational AI, Parlance easily connects callers to the resources they need, verifies callers, answers FAQs, and handles many appointment management tasks. Callers speak in their natural voices, ask for what they need, and reach their preferred destinations.

Our IVA solution streamlines patient access to care for hundreds of health systems across the United States by removing barriers to access and improving caller navigation. Healthcare consumers easily connect to the information, people, and services they need, no matter the volume of patient demand.