Case Study
Executive Summary
ENT Partners is the leading ENT physician practice management group in the midwest. Like other groups, ENT Partner’s local staff was drowning in documents, including hundreds of referrals per week, and struggled to respond to referrals quickly and consistently. All of this rote work prevented the team from focusing on patients, led to missed growth opportunities, and required significant headcount and costs.
By partnering with Valerie Health, an AI growth partner, they no longer need to worry about referrals. Valerie Health automated tens of thousands of faxes and referrals with 99.9% accuracy, saving thousands of staff hours annually. This automation accelerated appointment booking speed by 42%, increasing same-day booking by 79% and improving overall patient conversion by 5%.
About ENT Partners
ENT Partners provides world-class adult and pediatric ENT care across the midwest. Awarded various academic and research awards, including America’s Top Doctor by Castle Connolly, ENT Partners is a premier partner to local health systems, individual providers and payers. Across their multiple locations, they address sleep, sinus, audiology, and general ENT concerns and offer comprehensive treatments with innovative, minimally invasive solutions.
They use eClinicalWorks for their day-to-day management, but also work within Epic CareLink to receive referrals and coordinate care with their health system partners.
The Challenge
Manual processes create bottlenecks and drain resources
Time-Intensive Manual Work. Staff spent hours manually sorting faxes, transcribing referral information, and entering data into eCW, diverting focus from patient onboarding.
Slow Scheduling. Delays in processing referrals directly impacted how quickly patients could be scheduled, impacting patient experience and conversion rates.
Data Entry Errors. Manual processes increased the risk of mistakes, leading to billing issues, workflow disruptions, and frustration for both patients and staff.
The Solution
Automating referral and fax intake process with Valerie Health
Automated Referral Processing. AI-led system classified and routed thousands of faxes, extracted referral data with 99.9% accuracy, and reduced chart creation time to a median of 26 minutes.
Seamless EHR Integration. Referral info was pushed into eClinicalWorks, automatically updating patient records and alerting the scheduling team when a new patient was ready to book.
Actionable Growth Insights. Real-time data gave visibility into the referral pipeline, enabling marketing to target top referrers and scheduling to focus on high-priority patient follow-ups.
The Result
Significant Gains in Growth, Efficiency, and ROI. The pilot delivered outstanding, quantifiable results for ENT Partners. Moreover, ENT Partners reclaimed thousands hours of staff time annually, allowing staff to focus on higher-value activities, like scheduling patients. All together, ENT Partners achieved a 6x ROI, proving the clear financial value of automation.
Booking speed acceleration
Same-day bookings growth
Patient volume growth
Return on investment
“Our partnership with Valerie Health has meaningfully improved our operations. Our referrals are faster, our data is cleaner, and our staff is less buried in paperwork. Honestly, if all our vendors operated like this, we’d be out of things to complain about.”
Helen Shaw
Director of Clinical Operations
Conclusion
A Clear Path to Operational Excellence. By transforming their manual referral and fax processing into an automated, intelligent workflow with Valerie Health, ENT Partners reduced staff manual work while driving significant patient growth and financial value. ENT Partners can now focus on delivering exceptional patient access and care, knowing their referral process is efficient, accurate and helping them grow.