The idea of a digital front door means the first way patients connect with healthcare providers. In the past, patients used phone calls or visits to make appointments, ask questions, or get prescriptions refilled. These methods often caused long waits and slow processes. Digital front doors use AI tools like virtual assistants, symptom checkers, appointment schedulers, and smart call systems to help patients find what they need more easily.
Recent studies show that about one in three Americans does not have a regular primary care doctor. This can make it hard for them to get the right care. Also, two-thirds of emergency room visits by insured patients could be better handled in offices or urgent care centers. These places usually cost only about 10% of what an ER visit costs. AI-powered digital front doors guide patients to proper care faster. This reduces extra ER visits and lowers costs for both payers and providers.
Orlando Health is a non-profit healthcare system in Florida, Puerto Rico, and Alabama. They serve many patients and offer more than 105 medical specialties. With over 20,000 births each year, they need strong tools to manage their services. Orlando Health uses the ThinkAndor® platform from Andor Health to bring together their virtual health services and fix problems caused by separate tech systems.
The ThinkAndor® AI agents give a digital front door by working with platforms like Epic MyChart. This creates a steady experience for patients and providers. Their system allows virtual services like emergency department triage, which lowers the number of patients who leave without seeing a doctor by 17%. This faster care helps both patients and the medical teams.
Novlet Mattis, Orlando Health’s Chief Information Officer, says that using one AI platform helps clinical teams work together in real-time. This breaks down communication problems caused by different systems. The integration supports staff and doctors, making it easier to give timely care and improve operations.
AI symptom checkers are an important part of digital front doors. Unlike old symptom questionnaires, these new AI tools use detailed medical models like UMLS and SNOMED along with knowledge graphs. This helps them analyze symptoms with accuracy from 49% to 90%. They can decide if a patient should take care of themselves, have a virtual visit, or see a doctor in person. This helps reduce crowding in emergency rooms by sending low-risk patients to the right care.
Scheduling also improves with AI. Automated systems check doctors’ availability, how urgent the patient’s need is, previous visits, and the chance a patient might miss an appointment. These systems send appointment reminders and make it easy to reschedule. This helps doctors use their time well and helps patients keep their care plans. This is very helpful for clinics with many calls, easing the work on administrative staff and making patients happier.
AI in healthcare also helps by automating routine tasks. It reduces work for staff by handling patient check-ins, symptom reports, insurance checks, and smart call routing. For example, AI call systems answer common patient questions without humans needing to step in. This frees up staff to handle harder tasks.
With this, phone wait times drop and answers come faster. Patients feel better about their healthcare. For managers, this means lower costs because fewer employees are needed in call centers and fewer mistakes happen thanks to automation.
AI can also study workflows continuously. It finds ways to improve and helps health systems plan better. This means better care coordination, patients keeping appointments, and fewer slow points. All of this can lead to better patient care.
AI working smoothly with electronic health record (EHR) systems is important for good communication. The Webex Contact Center has joined with Epic Systems’ Cheers/Hyperdrive platform to do this. Epic serves over 600,000 doctors and manages 305 million patient records, which covers 60% of the U.S. population. This partnership creates one easy system for healthcare workers.
With this, AI virtual agents work 24/7 to handle patient calls, emails, chats, and messages all in one place. AI gives summaries when patients switch between virtual and human agents, so patients don’t have to repeat information. Real-time transcripts and history help staff give better, personal answers.
Webex Connect also sends automatic patient reminders, chronic care alerts, and billing notices using real-time EHR data. These messages keep patients involved and help them remember appointments. This is very important in managing long-term illnesses and lowering hospital visits that could be avoided.
These AI tools not only improve patient satisfaction but also help call center agents. By handling routine tasks, AI lowers stress and lets agents focus on better care.
AI-driven digital front doors also offer useful changes to rural healthcare where doctor access might be limited. Mercy Health System in Missouri uses an AI platform called Aidoc. It helps radiologists by spotting serious problems like blood clots or brain bleeds at 50 rural hospitals.
This real-time AI review cuts down how long it takes to diagnose and helps patients, especially in emergency rooms that have fewer staff and resources. Memorial Health System in Ohio has digital platforms that let patients schedule, register, and manage billing remotely. These tools lower lobby crowding, cut down errors, and help control infections—important during public health events like COVID-19.
In Virginia, drones deliver vital medicines like insulin and antibiotics to rural areas within 30 minutes. This solves delays caused by geography. In North Dakota, mobile telehealth hubs run by nurses combine on-site tests with virtual doctor visits. This improves appointment keeping and cuts unnecessary ER visits.
Digital front doors with AI in these places help not just with technology but also with healthcare access problems found in rural America.
With these benefits, leaders at Orlando Health and other places focus on AI helping clinical teams work better and improving patient results.
In the future, AI will add data from wearable devices, social factors, and more health records to give earlier, more personal care advice. Mixed models that combine virtual and in-person care will help deal with doctor shortages and better handle long-term diseases.
As AI digital front doors improve, healthcare providers who invest now will be ready to meet growing needs for easy, efficient, and patient-focused care.
Orlando Health offers over 105 specialties with specialist physicians addressing complex and specific conditions, while their network of primary care physicians manages general health, preventive care, and chronic disease management across Florida, Puerto Rico, and Alabama.
Orlando Health employs ThinkAndor®, which integrates multiple systems into one unified AI-powered platform, streamlining virtual health services, enhancing patient-provider interactions, and eliminating fragmented technology use for consistent experiences.
Using ThinkAndor® Virtual Rounding for virtual triage in the ED, Orlando Health reduced ‘left without being seen’ cases by 17%, improving patient flow and reducing crowding.
Andor Health provides AI agents in Digital Front Door, Virtual Hospital, Patient Monitoring, Care Team Collaboration, and Transitions in Care, enabling real-time care team collaboration, operational efficiency, and improved patient outcomes.
ThinkAndor® unifies multiple healthcare systems into a single platform, enhancing collaborative workflows and information sharing, which leads to cohesive, efficient clinical decision-making and care coordination.
Digital Front Door AI agents streamline patient access by integrating existing platforms like Epic MyChart, providing consistent virtual interactions, thus increasing efficiency and patient satisfaction across multiple settings.
By leveraging AI agents and integrating technologies, Orlando Health increased capacity without adding resources, allowing more patients to be served effectively through virtual means.
Orlando Health pioneers therapies like end-stage breast cancer treatment, biomarker identification for traumatic brain injury, and exploratory advanced melanoma therapies through its specialty institutes blending clinical care, education, and research.
Andor Health’s AI enables scalable virtual care and collaboration, supporting Orlando Health’s $1.7 billion community impact through charity care and community programs by improving service delivery.
Chief Information Officer Novlet Mattis emphasizes AI unifying multiple systems to extend healthcare capabilities and foster greater clinician collaboration for improved patient outcomes.
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