What You Should Know
- The Partnership: Atlantic Health, a not-for-profit health system spanning NJ, PA, and NY, has partnered with Artera to deploy outbound AI Agents for patient communication.
- Impact: This initiative marks Atlantic Health’s first use of an AI Agent for outbound communication to patients, designed to deliver an enhanced consumer experience and help patients better prepare for timely preventative care.
The Agentic Phone Call
Colorectal cancer has a 90%+ survival rate if caught early, but one-third of eligible adults remain unscreened. The primary culprit is the complex, multi-day preparation process, which frequently leads to confusion, cancellations, and high no-show rates.
For the last decade, healthcare outreach consisted of one-way SMS blasts telling a patient to “Press 1 to Confirm.” Artera’s deployment at Atlantic Health represents the shift to true “agentic AI” to help guide patients through the colonoscopy journey and close the screening gap.
One week before the procedure, Artera’s AI Agent initiates an automated phone call to the patient. It doesn’t just ask for confirmation; it actively encourages the patient to review their prep materials and opens the floor for questions in multiple languages (including Spanish).
Crucially, from a risk-management perspective, Artera has built a strict “walled garden” around the AI. The Agent is trained exclusively on a proprietary knowledge base of over 80 Atlantic Health-approved clinical and operational FAQs. It cannot search the open internet, ensuring that it never hallucinates rogue medical advice. It simply adjusts its conversational tone and language (including Spanish) to guide the patient through the approved protocol.
The Early ROI
Within the first 30 days, the AI Agent reduced the time GI schedulers spent on manual outreach calls by 38%. Furthermore, 39% of patients contacted by the AI confirmed they would attend their upcoming appointment.
“We have, within our power, the ability to protect many patients from colorectal cancer, but that starts with screenings, specifically with a colonoscopy,” said Ravish Parekh, MD, gastroenterologist with Atlantic Health. “By delivering personalized, easy-to-understand guidance, we hope to see better patient adherence and more effective exams. This initiative highlights Atlantic Health’s dedication to patient-centered care through innovation.”
