Franklin, Tenn.-based Community Health Systems has deployed a conversational artificial intelligence tool within its patient access center, which serves almost 1,000 CHS-affiliated primary care providers and handles more than 25,000 inbound calls a day.
Five things to know:
1. The AI bot was developed by Denim Health, a healthcare tech company. After a successful pilot program, CHS has incorporated the company's conversational AI tool across its call center workflows.
2. In the initial phase, conversational AI is being used to authenticate the identity of callers, understand the reason for their calls and capture other information before transferring callers to agents in the PAC.
3. The AI bot has successfully authenticated the identities of existing patients with zero instances of misidentification in the pilot program, according to CHS. In cases where the bot is unable to verify a caller's identity, the call is transferred to a PAC agent for further assistance.
4. CHS said the initiative has already reduced total call time, creating "immediate efficiencies" and freeing agents to handle more complex patient needs. The systemwide deployment also lays the groundwork for additional use cases, including using conversational AI, machine learning and natural language processing to enable patient self-scheduling, care gap closures and other common transactions.
5. Callers to the PAC retain the option to speak with a human agent at any time during their call.
"Our partnership with Denim Health harnesses the power of conversational AI but also recognizes the importance of human interactions, especially for callers with more complex needs," Tomi Galin, executive vice president of marketing and communications at CHS, said in a news release. "This initiative empowers our patients to complete their calls quickly and efficiently, streamlines agent workload to the patients who need more attention, and will create savings for the organization."