Calling into a business and getting put on hold is frustrating — whether or not the caller is sick. But for urgent care clinics, that’s all too often the case, as busy staff juggle phones and help patients already at the clinic. 

To improve their patients’ experience, American Family Care rolled out a conversational AI solution from Flip. It answers the phones, addressing callers questions and booking appointments, thus allowing front desk staff to focus on the people in front of them.

“The phone is still where many patients go first when they need care quickly, so that's where we started,” AFC CEO Jeremy Morgan told CX Dive in an email.

AFC rolled out the solution as a pilot to only a handful of the more than 400 urgent care and walk-in clinics it operates across the United States. As of Sept. 22, AFC had rolled out the Flip-powered AI voice receptionist to 80 corporate clinics and more than 10 of AFC’s franchise groups.

The solution helps address a common issue among urgent care operators: missed calls. Most of the calls into AFC’s clinics come in after hours or while staff are with patients, which means, of course, that these calls typically go unanswered or are picked up, but placed on hold. 

“The typical urgent care operator has somewhere around a 30% missed call rate,” Brian Schiff, CEO and co-founder of Flip, told CX Dive. “When Flip is deployed to start handling phone calls, we're very focused on it as a conversion channel that patients use to get visits scheduled.”

Since entering healthcare in 2024, Flip has partnered with multiple U.S. urgent care operators, including Community Care Partners, which experienced a 33% missed call rate prior to implementing Flip.

“For the 70% of calls [urgent care operators] do answer, the busy front-desk person needs to get on and off the phone because they need to get back to taking care of the patient in front of them,” Schiff said. “If somebody calls in and asks, ‘Do you do sports physicals?’ the front desk person is going to say, ‘Yes, we do,’ and they're going to hang up the phone.”

Benefits of handling the routine

AFC has Flip handling the routine calls, including scheduling, clinic hours, directions, questions about clinic services, billing, self-pay pricing, walk-in availability and lab-result status. Flip is also integrated with AFC’s patient systems, so it can support personalized greetings, streamlined appointment booking and status updates.

“Flip answers immediately, doesn’t rush the conversation and helps them get to that outcome of scheduling an appointment,” Schiff said. “It is both the element of answering every single phone call and eliminating that missed call rate, and having an experience oriented toward driving the outcome that matters.”

By having Flip handle routine calls, AFC saw the share of inbound calls resulting in a scheduled visit increase from 11% to 34%. And, overall call abandonment rate — people hanging up after being left on hold for too long — has dropped from 40% to 14%. 

The share of canceled appointments rebooked rose from 6% to 10% while the share of missed appointments rebooked rose from 7% to 13%.

In the case of rebookings, Flip asks the caller to reschedule right away rather than transferring the patient to front desk staff — which could result in hold time. AFC is currently piloting outbound appointment confirmations, as well, Morgan said.

Though consumers are generally reluctant to engage with AI when they’re dealing with high-stakes issues, they’re often quite happy to use AI when it helps them accomplish a task — like scheduling an appointment.

Notably, AFC follows best practices and provides callers into AFC’s clinics the option to speak directly with staff if they choose — say, should they have a sensitive issue they’d like to discuss. 

If a caller does prefer to speak with staff, then they may wait on hold since how quickly they’re connected to a person depends on what’s happening on site at that moment, Morgan said.

But because Flip is handling routine calls, Morgan said the AFC clinic teams can prioritize delivering medical care and patient outcomes, so it’s a win-win for patients calling in and those already in office.

“Less time on the phone means more time with patients,” Morgan said.