Case Study — Raleigh Orthopaedic
Advancing the Patient Experience and Call Center Performance
How a leading North Carolina orthopaedic group automated 54% of inbound calls and grew after-hours access by 33% with Dash® by Relatient.
Raleigh Orthopaedic
6 locations · 54 providers · athenahealth
Specialty
Orthopedics
Locations
6
Providers
54
EHR
athenahealth
Key Wins
78%
Online Appointment Conversion Rate
33%
of Appointments Scheduled After-Hours
54%
of Calls Handled by Voice AI
81%
Provider Utilization
The Platform
What Is Relatient and the Dash® Platform?
Relatient is a patient engagement platform that helps healthcare organizations automate scheduling, streamline communication and reduce inbound call volume.
The Dash® platform combines intelligent scheduling, automated messaging and AI-powered voice technology to improve patient access and operational efficiency across every channel patients use to reach you.
Intelligent Scheduling
Rules-based engine across every channel.
Automated Messaging
Confirmations, reminders and recalls.
AI Voice Technology
Agentic Voice AI for inbound calls.
The Stakes
Why Patient Access Failures Hurt Growth
When patients can’t get an appointment quickly, the cost compounds — across revenue, retention and team capacity. The math behind broken access is unforgiving.
15–30%
of appointments go unfilled
Churn
Patients leave if access is delayed
Bottleneck
Call centers become a chokepoint
Burnout
Staff turnover and fatigue rise
01 — Context
The Goal
Raleigh Orthopaedic, a leading orthopedic practice in North Carolina with over 50 providers across six locations, set out to modernize how patients access care. With rising call volume and complex provider preferences, the team needed a way to reduce friction for patients and ease the burden on staff.
Improving access wasn’t just about efficiency — it was about meeting patient expectations in a digital-first world.
“
Nobody wants to wait for an answer, and if you can’t provide that access to care, they’re going to seek it elsewhere. That’s why we’ve been focused on improving access and why we’ve been successful growing the organization.
– Ross Rigdon, Chief Operations Officer
The Challenge
- High inbound call volume overwhelming the call center
- Complex provider scheduling rules across multiple locations
- Limited patient access outside business hours
- Rising demand for digital-first healthcare experiences
02 — Approach
The Solution
Raleigh Orthopaedic approached patient access in strategic phases — first centralizing the call center, then extending access through self-scheduling, and finally scaling with agentic Voice AI.
01
Centralized Scheduling
They began by centralizing scheduling within the call center, standardizing provider rules and preferences across all locations to reduce complexity for staff and improve scheduling accuracy which in turn improved patient experience and retention.
- Improved scheduling accuracy
- Reduced staff complexity
- One source of truth across locations
02
Online Self-Scheduling
They introduced online self-scheduling to give patients 24/7 convenience and relieve the phones during peak hours. Patients book from any device. The practice captured demand outside business hours and freed the phones during peak periods.
- Always-on patient access
- Phones relieved during peaks
- 33% booked after-hours
03
Agentic Voice AI
They enabled agentic AI agents as an extension of their intelligent scheduling platform, handling routine confirmations, cancellations, and rescheduling calls. This freed their team to focus on high-touch interactions and new patient needs.
- Automates routine inbound calls
- 8% lower call abandonment
- Scales without new headcount
“
In a call center environment with high staff turnover rates in healthcare, you can get schedulers trained really quickly in Dash® with the guided user experience that provides them with a constant resource to succeed.
– Ross Rigdon, Chief Operating Officer
03 — Outcome
The Relatient Difference
Relatient’s intelligent, rules-based engine powers Raleigh Orthopaedic’s entire access strategy, supporting centralized scheduling, online self-scheduling, and agentic AI. By applying provider rules consistently across every channel, the team ensures patients are matched to the right appointment type, provider, and location no matter how they schedule.
The centralized platform also simplifies training and onboarding for new staff by reducing the dependencies on staff knowledge. Meanwhile, its agentic AI solution, Dash Voice AI supports the contact center by managing routine tasks, giving schedulers more time to focus on patients with complex needs.
“
It's just very user-friendly and easy to acclimate to. Dash® is easy to convey to other departments as well as my new hires. The self-scheduling is something our patients absolutely love.
— Olivia Collazo, Patient Access Manager
Executive Summary
As patient demand and call volumes increased, Raleigh Orthopaedic needed a more efficient way to improve patient access across multiple locations without adding administrative complexity. By partnering with Relatient, the organization centralized scheduling, expanded online self-scheduling, and implemented Dash Voice AI to automate routine patient interactions.
The result was a more scalable patient access strategy that improved provider utilization, increased digital scheduling, reduced contact center workload, and delivered a faster, more convenient scheduling experience for patients.
50K+
Providers
24/7
Access
Platform
