Agentic AI: Move from friction to flow

Q. How can agentic AI reduce cycle time in care delivery?

A. When care delivery stalls, the risk isn’t theoretical. It shows up in delayed starts, disrupted therapy and preventable complications. And the root causes of these delays are maddeningly mundane: a missing signature, a phone call that never gets returned, a staff member buried in tasks that a computer could handle. For suppliers operating in an industry where cycle time directly affects patient outcomes, the status quo is no longer acceptable.

Luckily, agentic AI is poised to help solve this longstanding challenge. Unlike traditional automation, AI agents don't surface problems and hand them back to humans to solve. They act. They retrieve missing documentation from relevant systems. They field routine patient questions on eligibility, billing and order status – without staff involvement. They shepherd patients through onboarding: securing consent, configuring billing, delivering device insights. 

The result isn't marginal improvement; it's fundamentally a different operating model – one where the exceptions that once consumed entire workdays get resolved in the background before anyone even notices them.

The downstream effects compound quickly: fewer delays at therapy start, fewer inbound calls to manage, fewer dropped handoffs that spiral into costly follow-up. Patients stay on track. Staff stay focused on work that actually requires human judgment.

And this is only the beginning. In the near future, AI agents – like those recently launched by health care organizations like United Healthcare and Amazon – will interface directly with provider offices to close documentation loops, manage increasingly complex patient interactions, and initiate proactive outreach before a need becomes a problem.

The shift from task automation to true workflow orchestration isn't just an efficiency story – it's a care quality story. When operational noise drops, suppliers and care support teams can do what they're actually in business to do: deliver the right therapies to the right patients, without friction standing in the way.

Richard Mackey is the chief technology officer at CCS. Reach him at Richard.Mackey@ccsmed.com.