Discover how this medical practice significantly improved contact center efficiency, reduced missed calls, and doubled appointment conversion rates by implementing RingCentral AI Receptionist and AI Quality Management.
Helix Urgent Care
Helix Urgent Care in Florida chose AI Receptionist (AIR) to transform their patient experience and empower staff to focus on providing exceptional care.
Region
Americas
Company size
100–399
Industry
Healthcare
Products used
100%
Calls answered
13 hours
Saved weekly by front desk staff
64%
Calls handled by AIR
We believe the investment in AI Receptionist is worth it. Once we demonstrate that we can rely solely on this system to optimize our staff expenses, we plan to implement it across all six of our brick-and-mortar offices.
Leo Mercedes
IT Manager
Transforming patient experience and staff efficiency with AI
Urgent care clinics, like Helix Urgent Care in Florida, are at the forefront of a major shift in healthcare. Driven by a demand for more convenient, affordable, and accessible medical services, urgent care centers have become a critical alternative to traditional primary care and costly emergency room visits.
Helix Urgent Care has grown significantly since its beginnings more than two decades ago. Its services have expanded to include six physical locations and a thriving telemedicine division. Throughout this growth, their commitment to providing prompt and reliable medical attention has remained a top priority.
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A bottleneck of missed calls and unanswered voicemails
As the business grew, so did the challenge of managing a corresponding surge in communication. Across their brick-and-mortar locations, the call volume was so high that each office required two full-time front desk staff just to manage phones in addition to other duties. This approach became dependent on "pure manpower," creating a bottleneck that impacted both patient satisfaction and staff efficiency.
The situation was even more challenging within the growing telemedicine business, where communication now relies entirely on remote staff. Helix Urgent Care's existing system—which used queues and voicemails—simply couldn't keep up.
“With staff working from home, we were experiencing a lot of missed calls,” explains Helix IT Manager Leo Mercedes. If the staff was tied up, patients had to leave a voicemail, and would often complain about feeling ignored while waiting for a return call.”
This was unsustainable. Leo recalls that the calls were high-volume and high-frequency, focusing on common, round-the-clock inquiries such as, “Where’s my prescription?”, “Can you change the pharmacy?”, or “I have a question about my bill.” Helix Urgent Care needed a modern system that could handle simultaneous calls and meet patient needs 24/7.
AI Receptionist becomes the deciding factor
To meet these demands, Helix Urgent Care chose AI Receptionist (AIR) to transform their patient experience and empower staff to focus on providing exceptional care. The owner and CEO of Helix Urgent Care, Robert Rodriguez, saw the AIR’s potential early on, even before it was widely available. The business was already using RingCentral’s RingEX to manage all their communications in one place; but, when he saw this technology coming, he said ‘fire it up quickly.’ He was really excited to see what it could do.” His enthusiasm for a quick launch was rewarded. As Leo recalled, “the implementation was simple and straightforward,” allowing the practice to be up and running with AIR rather quickly.
Leo also appreciated having everything integrated in one platform rather than using multiple solutions. RingCentral’s reliability and HIPAA compliance were crucial requirements. “As a healthcare organization, HIPAA compliance wasn’t a nice-to-have,” Leo adds. “It was a must-have and certainly one of the reasons we chose RingCentral. Knowing that patient data is secure gives us the peace of mind to focus on improving our services and technology.”
Increased bookings and a streamlined patient journey
To streamline operations, Helix Urgent Care set RingCentral’s AI Receptionist to answer 100% of the telehealth calls. Leo highlights one of its most valuable features is the ability to text patients a direct link to the scheduling page on the Helix website, which eliminates the need for staff to manually book appointments over the phone.
By efficiently addressing common questions about scheduling, prescriptions, and billing, 64% of calls are being handled by AIR which is saving staff 13 hours a week. Before using RingCentral AI Receptionist, Leo says “it could take some back-and-forth calls just to lock in one appointment. Now patients are sent a link to our website where they can book, reschedule, or cancel appointments in real time without ever waiting on hold, and we’re seeing more slots filled each month and fewer missed connections.”
The results have been impressive and immediate. In just one week, the AI Receptionist handled 310 calls, answering every single one. The fact that the AI Receptionist can answer multiple calls simultaneously is just great.
Leo Mercedes
,
IT Manager
Actionable insights and instant adaptation
Conversational insights are also helping Helix adapt quickly. “Previously we had no visibility into the top recurring patient questions, like what was trending or being asked most often,” Leo explains. “For example, when ‘prescription refills’ showed up at the top of the list, we taught the AI Receptionist in minutes by uploading a file to enhance its knowledge base. We can even resolve several questions at once, which has cut down on repeat calls and given patients faster, more accurate answers.”
Operational savings and improved staff focus
The biggest endorsement came directly from the top. “The owner and CEO knew the system was a game-changer when he saw the volume of answered calls increase and the complaint emails stop,” says Leo.
Helix is rolling out their new AI Receptionist to all six of their brick-and-mortar locations. This change allows them to reduce front desk staff from two members to one per location. “Right now, every office is running two front desk staff. We’d like to see if we can bring that down to one,” Leo says, “and let those workers take on other important back office tasks.”
This transition is projected to deliver significant reduction in operational costs. Critically, the shift has also freed up staff to focus more on patient care. This has made a dramatic difference for the front office staff, who can now focus on in-person patients and clinical support.
Moving forward, the practice is focused on scaling RingCentral AIR across all locations and expanding how staff use it day to day. As the business grows, having scalable communication technology is crucial. The team wants technology that works seamlessly without complex workflows, allowing them to prioritize patient care over technical processes.
Our vision is to keep raising the bar on efficiency. That means using AI Receptionist not just to answer calls, but to help us spot trends, reduce repeat questions, and make every patient interaction smoother. AI Receptionist aligns perfectly with that goal and the more we lean on it, the more time our staff has for patient care.
Leo Mercedes
,
IT Manager
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