Most clinics spend too much time on tasks that don't require a medical degree. Doctors and nurses waste hours on paperwork. Care coordinators get buried in routine follow-ups. Staff spend their days scheduling appointments and answering basic questions.

The obvious solution would be to hire more people, but that's expensive. Even if clinics could afford it, there aren't enough healthcare workers to go around. This leads to worse care—when staff are overloaded, things fall through the cracks. Patients wait longer, miss appointments, and don't stick to their treatment plans.

Some clinics try to solve this with patient portals and automated reminder systems. But these are like digital versions of "press 1 for billing." What if instead, patients could talk to an AI that understood them? Not a chatbot, but an AI agent that could have natural phone conversations, ask the right medical questions and handle all the follow-up tasks.

Here's how it would work: When patients call with a medical concern, they talk to an AI that knows what questions to ask. The AI flags any concerning answers and writes up a summary for the doctor, including a suggested diagnosis and treatment plan. The doctor reviews this, makes any needed changes, and approves it. Then the AI calls the patient back to schedule follow-ups, arrange tests, and order prescriptions.

After that initial visit, the AI stays in touch with the patient. It conducts regular check-ins, tracks symptoms, and makes sure they're taking their medications. If anything seems wrong, it alerts the clinic staff. It answers medical questions and adjusts care based on patient preferences, while staying within the doctor's prescribed treatment plan.

This continuous care navigation leads to better health outcomes. Patients are more engaged, stick to their treatment plans better, and get help before small issues become emergencies. For clinics operating under value-based care models, where they get paid based on patient outcomes rather than number of visits, this means more revenue.

We're building this system at my company, Puppeteer, because we believe healthcare workers should spend their time on things only humans can do – examining patients, performing procedures, making complex medical decisions, and building relationships through empathy and understanding. Everything else should be automated. That's how we'll make healthcare work better for everyone.