Case study: behavioral health

The phone stopped running
the front desk.

New England Medical Group put Riley, an AI voice receptionist, on the phones at their Milford adolescent program. Calls get answered. Staff stay on the work that matters most.

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5to7

calls a day missed or sent to voicemail before Riley

80to90%

of calls handled fully by Riley

20%

of calls come in before the office opens

~400

calls a month answered by Riley

New England Medical Group is a behavioral health group in Massachusetts. Riley started with their Milford adolescent program: about 20 calls a day, 2 to 3 minutes each.

Run crews? Same problem.

Calls peak when your office is slammed and the overflow goes to voicemail.

Before and after

Same team.
No new front desk hire.

Before

At least 5 to 7 calls a day missed or sent to voicemail
A phone menu that lost about 18% of callers
Most calls landing at the busiest front desk times
Only 1 person trained on outpatient med management calls
A stretched team that needed more front desk help
A supervisor spending at least an hour a day on callbacks, making sure nothing was missed
Plus at least another hour a day helping the front desk at busy times

With Riley

Riley answers about 20 calls a day at Milford
80% to 90% of calls handled fully, start to finish
Calls that come in before the office opens get answered too
Outpatient med management calls picked up, so they don’t wait on 1 person
Referral calls routed to admissions
Staff get informed, and call back only when it’s needed
No extra front desk help added

What Riley handles

The calls that used to pull staff away.

New-caller questions
Scheduling and rescheduling
Intake questions
Calls before the office opens
Outpatient med management calls
Medication refill requests*
Billing questions*
Running-late notices
Medical records request instructions
New clients and referrals to admissions

*Riley takes these calls and gathers the details. NEMG chose to have their staff follow up on billing and refills.

Staff only step in
where the practice wants them to.

1A clinical concern that needs the clinical team

2A transportation issue

3Billing questions

4Medication refills

Everything else, Riley handles and lets staff know. No callback needed.

A patient or family calls
Riley answers and handles it
Summary lands in the AdvancedMD chart
Staff get informed

Runs on Retell AI, built under BAAs on a HIPAA-focused setup.

Time back

Phones handled.
Time put to work.

With time freed up, the practice manager got to the work that kept getting pushed.

Marketing

More focus on marketing. Social media engagement went up.

Billing

Worked more closely with the billing company. Collections improved.

Medical records

Put in place a medical records process she’d been delaying for months.

In their words

Not just time saved.
Stress removed.

Having an assurance that we can dedicate staff resources to address the most critical tasks, without compromising the customer experience, gave me peace of mind and allowed me to focus on operational improvements and growth instead of troubleshooting issues, and constantly checking the voicemail messages to make sure the team didn’t miss anything critical.

Practice Manager, New England Medical Group

Setup

Once we’ve learned your business and done the prep work, setup itself usually takes about a week. It can run longer depending on what you need and how quickly your team gives feedback.

Why it worked

The phone was the bottleneck.
So we fixed the phone.

Diagnose

Calls peaked right when the desk was busiest, and the old phone menu was losing people.

Repair

Riley answers, handles the routine calls, and hands the rest to the right person.

Protect

Every call leaves a summary in the chart, so nobody has to babysit the voicemail.

The phone stopped running the front desk.

Same team. No new front desk hire.

The calls that used to pull staff away.

Staff only step in where the practice wants them to.

Phones handled. Time put to work.