Piedmont Urgent Care, the largest urgent care network in Georgia, has replaced its billing voicemail system with an AI voice agent that now handles more than 20,000 patient billing calls a month across the network's 88 locations statewide.
The network, which is managed through a joint venture with WellStreet Urgent Care, worked with Austin-based startup Hello Patient to build and deploy the agent, named Pete. Since launch, the companies report that patient hold times have dropped to zero and 48% of billing calls are resolved entirely by the AI agent without a staff member picking up the phone. Rather than taking a message for later callback, Pete pulls up a patient's charges, explains insurance coverage, walks the patient through payment options and collects payment directly through WellStreet's payment vendor.
Hello Patient co-founder and CEO Alex Cohen said the agent was deployed and taking live calls within 40 days, without requiring urgent care staff to learn a new system. Cohen said the underlying voice AI technology has matured quickly since the company started in 2024, when real-time conversational agents for patient calls were not yet a proven capability. He added that some patients carry skepticism toward voice AI based on past experiences with automated phone systems, so the agent is designed to hand off to a human staff member whenever a patient insists on speaking with one.
Hello Patient, which is HIPAA-compliant and SOC 2 Type 2 certified, raised a $22.5 million Series A in 2025 from investors including Alumni Ventures, Bling Capital, 8VC, Flex Capital and Scale Venture Partners.
Source: Hypepotamus -- https://www.hypepotamus.com/georgia-urgent-care-ai-patient-billing-calls/