St. Luke’s Hospital processes 400,000 patient interactions monthly, including scheduling and prescription requests. This operation previously required 100,000 labor hours per month, costing the organization over $3.5 million monthly and nearly $43 million annually. The workload involved administrative tasks that occupied call-center agents, administrative staff, and triage nurses.
NextGen Coding introduced an agentic AI system to automate routine workflows. The platform transcribes calls, classifies intent, and routes requests to either autonomous agents or human operators. For calls requiring human intervention, the system gathers patient information beforehand, which is expected to reduce the average handle time by approximately 1.5 minutes per interaction.
The implementation plan involves a phased rollout, starting with conservative automation thresholds before expanding into scheduling and prescription management. The system includes dashboards for monitoring automation rates, handle times, and escalation frequency, with clinical teams providing oversight for flagged interactions.
Projections indicate that human-handled interactions could decrease to 120,000 per month. Monthly labor hours are expected to drop to 27,000, while the required workforce could shrink from 781 to 211 agents. Monthly labor spending is forecast to fall from $3.57 million to approximately $965,536.
The transition is estimated to generate gross efficiency gains exceeding $2.6 million per month, or over $31 million annually. After factoring in monthly AI infrastructure costs of $212,250, the hospital expects an annual net financial benefit of more than $28 million.
