Oct 27, 2025

The Hidden Bottleneck At The Front Desk As mentioned above, when front-desk staff constantly churn, healthcare operations suffer. And the impact trickles down to every part of the practice workflow. Let's take a look at some examples: • Missed phone calls lead to lost revenue opportunities. • A lack of documentation due to staff shortages results in incomplete records for the providers. • Inconsistent post-treatment follow-up affects patient outcomes. • Scheduling breakdowns mean that patients often can't book appointments, even when doctors have availability. And the issue gets worse because front-desk staff are expected to manage multiple systems, from electronic medical records (EMRs) to insurance portals and third-party scheduling tools. Instead of focusing on patient needs, they're buried under repetitive, time-consuming tasks. The Turnover Problem And Why AI-Empowered Humans Can Be The Key From what I've seen, healthcare practices have tried everything—higher pay, better training and multilayer management—but the turnover persists. The reality is that front-desk jobs are stressful, repetitive and difficult to scale without technology. The problem is two-fold: • A lack of technology that meets the practice's needs. • A lack of understanding of technology at a practitioner level, leading to manual work for front-desk staff. Adding more people doesn't always solve the underlying problem. The operational burden keeps increasing as the number of patients increases because now more patients want faster access to care and faster communication. Without rethinking the model, clinics have remained stuck in the same loop for decades: hire, train, lose staff and hire again. In many industries, AI is being used to reduce the dependency on people, such as AI sales development representatives, AI copywriters in marketing and AI coders in tech. But healthcare is different. Trying to replace staff in healthcare is a recipe for disaster because it's already starved for staff. Attempting to fully automate or eliminate roles would create more problems, not fewer. Instead, AI's role in healthcare is to augment humans, filling the operational gaps caused by staff turnover and administrative overload. Real-Life Examples Some companies are already addressing this gap. For example, Emitrr is helping clinics handle front-desk loads through AI-powered agents that can answer phones, schedule and reschedule appointments, verify insurance and follow up with patients. These agents can reduce pressure on staff and make communication with patients faster and more consistent. Similarly, platforms like Hippocratic AI and Assort Health are building AI agents for care coordination and post-care follow-ups to check on a patient's condition. Although different companies target various stages of the care journey, whether pre-care or post-care, their shared goal remains the same. The Road Ahead AI won't and can't solve the healthcare front-desk staffing problem overnight, but it represents one path forward. Training and hiring take years. But AI can help right now by reducing the burden on the people already doing the work. The next decade of healthcare won't be defined by AI replacing humans. It will be defined by AI working alongside humans, helping the industry navigate one of its biggest crises. Forbes Technology Council is an invitation-only community for world-class CIOs, CTOs and technology executives. Do I qualify?