Intermountain Wants AI to Handle 30% of Its 260K Monthly Patient Calls
How is Intermountain Health using AI to manage patient call volume? Its contact center fields about 260,000 calls a month across the 34-hospital system, 80% to 90% of them tied to primary care. AVP of consumer experience Matt Baird said the system is targeting 20% to 30% of those calls for AI-voice self-service, starting with rules-based, repeatable tasks like self-scheduling, where average handle time runs about 5.5 minutes. An early pilot of self-scheduling for three diagnostic-imaging modalities is already seeing roughly 30% patient adoption within a couple of months. Intermountain is centralizing three regional contact centers onto one Salesforce, Qualtrics and Epic stack and aims to offer next-step referral scheduling to 65% to 70% of patients by the end of 2027.
For operators, the contact center is where access, patient experience, and cost intersect. Intermountain’s numbers quantify the prize: converting even a fifth of 260,000 monthly calls to self-service is a major labor saving, and roughly 30% early self-scheduling adoption shows patients will use the option when it is offered and reliable. The scaling lesson: tie automation to a system KPI or board goal to win the cross-functional buy-in it requires.
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What is Intermountain Health’s AI patient-call goal?
Intermountain’s contact center handles about 260,000 calls a month, mostly primary-care related. The system is targeting 20% to 30% of those interactions for AI-voice self-service, focusing first on rules-based, repeatable tasks such as self-scheduling for new and existing patients.
Is the self-scheduling approach working?
Early signs are positive. A pilot offering self-scheduling for three diagnostic-imaging modalities has seen about 30% patient adoption within a couple of months of launch, which AVP Matt Baird called a strong indicator of consumer preference.
What made the initiative succeed where others stall?
Baird credited setting the goal as a system KPI or board goal, which made it easier to secure buy-in across the digital team, medical group, and revenue cycle. Centralizing three regional contact centers onto one Salesforce, Qualtrics and Epic stack also lets the AI assistant draw on each caller’s history and prior interactions.