Introducing Referrals →
average patient hold time and abandoned calls
of referrals matched to a better-fit provider
of referrals automated end-to-end with AI
referral-to-appointment conversion rate
Concord Orthopaedics is an independent orthopedic practice serving communities across New Hampshire. The organization has more than 50 providers, 250 employees, and six locations, offering specialized care across foot and ankle, sports medicine, joint replacement, spine, hand and upper extremity, and other orthopedic subspecialties.
Over the past five years, Concord added new providers and locations, but its operational infrastructure struggled to keep pace with that growth. The practice needed a more scalable way to connect patients with the right care while preserving the local, community-centered experience it had built its reputation around.
Patient access had become Concord Orthopaedics’ greatest operational constraint. Call volume was growing, staffing remained challenging, and the complexity of orthopedic scheduling made it challenging to train new team members quickly.
Concord Orthopaedics had tried adding more people to the phones, but the underlying problem remained. Hold-time performance was reviewed at every board meeting, and according to White, it had become “the worst slide” to present because the practice could not reach its goals regardless of how many staff members it assigned to the phones.
The team needed a solution that could manage the practice’s complex scheduling rules without losing the personalized experience Concord’s patients expected.
Concord Orthopaedics partnered with Assort Health to introduce an AI agent for inbound patient access. The practice named its agent “Cheryl,” after a longtime switchboard operator who had once served as the voice of the organization.
Assort's implementation team went on-site and worked with Concord to translate the scheduling preferences, protocols, and routing rules of its providers into a consistent patient experience. The inbound agent now picks up the phone and helps patients:
The results gave Concord confidence that Assort could manage the highly specific rules of an orthopedic practice. Over 95% of the 720 appointments per week* are scheduled accurately. Patients were being scheduled correctly on the first attempt, without staff needing to review appointments and redirect them to a different provider.
For Concord, expanding with Assort was as much a decision about the partnership as it was about the technology. The practice had already seen Assort’s product, implementation, engineering, and support teams work alongside its staff to test workflows, translate provider preferences, and resolve issues quickly.
That responsiveness gave Concord the confidence to keep bringing Assort more complicated problems. Instead of forcing the practice into a fixed workflow, the teams build together around how Concord’s providers and patients actually operate.
Once Assort had proven it could manage Concord’s complex inbound scheduling workflows, the practice was ready to apply that same partnership to another persistent operational challenge.
Assort's outbound agent gets referred patients scheduled on the same call, leading to higher conversion rates compared to the industry standard of 50%.
Automated referral management was the natural next step. Assort had already shown that it could follow the scheduling preferences of more than 50 providers, navigate orthopedic subspecialties, and give patients a reliable experience without creating cleanup work for staff.
Concord did not want to start over with a new vendor or test another isolated tool. Instead, they preferred to expand a partnership that had already solved one of the practice’s most visible patient access problems.
Incoming referrals arrive in widely different formats. Some contain only basic patient details, while others include dozens or even hundreds of pages of medical history. The agent reviews each referral, identifies the information relevant to scheduling, applies the same eligibility and routing rules from Concord’s inbound agent, and conducts outreach to the patient.
Assort maintains the deepest provider triage rules engine, handling the most complex routing logic so each referral is matched to the right provider the first time. In 50% of the referrals Concord receives, Assort identifies a better-fit provider than the one originally named on the referral — getting patients in front of the right specialist faster and keeping wrong-fit visits off providers' schedules.
When information is missing, the AI agent can collect it directly during the patient conversation rather than sending staff back to the referring provider. For standard referrals, Assort manages the process from document intake through patient outreach and appointment scheduling with little staff intervention.
More complex referrals, including second opinions, out-of-state patients, urgent injuries, or other exceptions, are directed to Concord’s referral coordinators for review.
Assort also helps close the loop with referring providers by automatically communicating when their patient is scheduled to be seen. Concord gains greater visibility into referral sources through its analytics dashboard, helping the practice identify community partners and understand where patient demand is coming from.
Concord joins practices such as SENTA Partners, which also expanded from inbound patient access into proactive referral scheduling.
Concord Orthopaedics has transformed patient access across both its inbound calls and referral operations.
For Concord’s team, the change has not been about replacing people. It has been about allowing them to work at the level their patients need.
Pam Rand, a patient care coordinator who has worked at the practice for 20 years, initially worried that AI might take her job. Instead, Assort has given her more time to support patients with postoperative pain, incision concerns, and other situations that require empathy, coordination, and human judgment.
“By having Cheryl, we are able to spend more time helping the patients who need a little bit more care over the phone. Some patients have difficult situations, and we’re able to spend time with them and help them resolve them.” — Pamela Rand, Patient Care Coordinator, Concord Orthopaedics
Dr. Ronald Resnick, Concord’s medical director and a practicing orthopedic surgeon, has seen the same change from the provider perspective.
“Before, my patient care coordinator spent so much of her time scheduling patients, rescheduling, and moving them around. Assort has taken that load off her plate and enabled her to help me help my patients better.”
As Concord Orthopaedics continues to grow, Assort gives the practice an operational foundation that can grow with it, helping every patient reach the right provider while reserving staff expertise for the moments that need it most.
See how Assort can take on the next patient access workflow your team cannot scale. Book a demo with Assort Health.
*720 appointments per week don’t include revisit after study or post-op appointments booked by diagnostics of surgery scheduling
