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Central Florida Health Care (CFHC) is a cornerstone of community health, providing quality, affordable primary and preventive care across Polk, Highlands and Hardee Counties in Florida. As an FQHC, CFHC serves a diverse and moderately rural patient population with a comprehensive suite of services, including primary care, pediatrics, OB/GYN, dental, and specialty care like rheumatology and endocrinology. CFHC’s vision is to improve health, enhance quality of life, create solid partnerships and focus on excellence.
At CFHC, the team is committed to evolving alongside the needs of their communities, with a particular focus on improving patient access. Greg Hall, Director of Clinical Operations at CFHC, explains, “By analyzing referral data, we can pinpoint where patients face barriers to accessing specialty care. From there, we strategically expand our services to close those gaps.” This commitment to adaptability also extends to how CFHC engages with patients. Specifically, with the surge of agentic AI, this innovative FQHC wanted to leverage the latest cutting-edge solutions to advance its communication strategy.
One major challenge they first identified was a communication breakdown: many patients tend to ignore phone calls, especially from unfamiliar numbers. This highlighted the need for a more effective way to connect. Hall notes, “Let’s be honest, when we see a call from a number we don’t recognize, most of us don’t answer. That’s a universal experience.”
This communication breakdown led to operational hurdles that impacted both patient access and staff productivity, as the organization handles approximately 800,000 calls per year (60-70K calls per month). This immense volume led to a high call abandonment rate, climbing to over 16%. Each unanswered call represented a potential loss of patient care and revenue for the organization.
The challenges also extended beyond the centralized call center:
Ultimately, CFHC needed a “best of breed” solution that could help manage call volumes, decrease no-show rates and offer a more seamless way for patients and staff ( clinical and Call Center) to connect. The organization sought a partner with proven expertise in the FQHC space to help transform its communication strategy.
CFHC went live with Artera in September 2024, seeking to leverage automation and modern communication channels to address its challenges head-on. The implementation process itself was a major win. Jerry Rains, CFHC’s IT Director, remarked that the “Artera implementation was the most comprehensive, most professional, most responsive implementation experience that I’ve ever been a part of at CFHC.”
This seamless integration, backed by Artera’s robust implementation process and team, allowed CFHC to deploy initial workflows across all locations (managed in the centralized Call Center). Following a successful launch, CFHC began a phased rollout to its clinical teams. This enabled nurses to use on-demand conversational messaging for tasks like medication refills or answering clinical questions, routing conversations directly to the appropriate health center, instead of back to the Call Center.
Some of CFHC’s automated and AI-powered workflows include:
Beyond AI-driven workflows, CFHC leverages Broadcasts for mass patient communication, especially during adverse weather conditions like hurricanes. The team also uses Artera’s language translation feature, which automatically translates messages into a patient’s preferred language, proving particularly useful for many Spanish and Creole-speaking patients.
The partnership with Artera delivered immediate and measurable results, enhancing CFHC’s patient engagement and operational efficiency. The most significant impact has been on appointment attendance and patient outreach efforts, ensuring more patients receive care and optimizing provider schedules.
Both staff and patients have responded positively to Artera as well. According to CFHC’s Call Center Manager, Mark Heatherly, “Artera has been a game-changer for us. Our patients and staff are very happy with it. We get a lot of messages from patients thanking us, saying, ‘This is a whole lot easier for me.’” This flexibility has proved critical, as patients can respond to messages at night or on their own time, knowing their request would be handled.
Above all, Hall is confident that CFHC has not only reduced communication barriers but developed greater patient trust: “Patients today just want to text – they don’t want to have to talk to anybody. They want to be able to ensure the information that they get is from a legitimate source. I believe Artera has helped us improve upon that, developing a greater level of trust with patients,” explains Hall.
As a leading innovator in the FQHC space, CFHC has embraced AI-powered solutions from the beginning. After successfully implementing Flows Agents, the organization is now advancing to Artera’s autonomous AI Agents, hoping to further streamline workflows and reduce the burden of routine scheduling on its busy call center staff.
“Not every call requires higher-level intervention. With Artera’s AI Agents, we can offload some lower-level work, automating routine requests and allowing staff to focus more on critical patient interactions and customer service. We’re confident this will be an overall positive for us and our patients,” said Hall. As the team prepares to set up AI Agents, Hall always comes back to one question: “How can we maximize the value of live staff engagement with our patients, while simultaneously leveraging AI Agents to manage appointment scheduling and routine patient needs?”
