CASE STUDY
MedCura Health: Closing the Loop on Referrals with HealthTalk A.I.
WHO
MedCura Health provides affordable, accessible, quality primary care services to ethnically diverse patients and their families. As a grassroots medical option for the underserved and uninsured, MedCura saves the state money by providing primary care to those who might otherwise seek help in emergency rooms for non-emergency issues. Serving as a vital healthcare safety net, MedCura operates 14 locations across metro Atlanta, including Cobb, Dekalb, Fulton, and Rockdale Counties.
CHALLENGE
Like many community health providers, MedCura faced significant challenges with referral management. Thousands of referrals remained open, and closing the loop was often difficult and time-consuming for staff. Tracking progress, managing responses, and ensuring patients followed through required extensive manual effort. Low patient answer rates to phone calls further limited MedCura’s ability to measure outcomes and coordinate care effectively.
APPROACH
To overcome these challenges, MedCura Health implemented HealthTalk A.I.’s Referral Management solution - a streamlined approach to tracking, reporting, and closing referrals.
The HealthTalk A.I. platform automates patient outreach and follow-up, allowing MedCura to engage patients more effectively while reducing the administrative burden on staff. With robust reporting and real-time analytics, MedCura gained visibility into referral status trends, patient responses, and completion rates. This enabled staff to identify bottlenecks, close out untimely or unneeded referrals more quickly and more efficiently, and place more time and focus on the patients who needed additional support.
By eliminating the traditional pitfalls in referral management, HealthTalk A.I. empowered MedCura Health to improve care coordination, ensure timely interventions, and enhance the overall patient experience.
RESULTS
Timeframe: March 6 - July 10
The impact of HealthTalk A.I. was measurable and immediate:
13,981 patients contacted about one or more open referrals
7,500 patients responded to outreach campaigns (53.54% response rate)
9,689 referral loops closed (69.30%)
2,426 patients (17.35%) reported their referral was complete, helping to improve coordination of care
782 patients (5.59%) requested to cancel their referral, leading to more informed care planning
6,481 referrals (46.36%) closed after 2 contact attempts, ensuring accuracy and compliance
1,042 patients reported they were scheduling or had a future appointment
397 referrals updated with new information through automation
RETURN ON INVESTMENT
By using HealthTalk A.I., MedCura Health realized an immediate return on investment in Referral Outreach and Loop Closure. Manually completing referral loop closure takes an average of 14 minutes per referral.
The HealthTalk A.I. outreach campaign successfully closed 9,869 referrals—the equivalent of 2,261 staff hours, valued at $41,000 ($18.31/hr)
Beyond the cost savings, this freed up the equivalent of a full-time employee to focus on higher-value care coordination activities, improving outcomes for high-risk patients who need additional support.
SUMMARY
With HealthTalk A.I., MedCura Health transformed referral management from a persistent challenge into a streamlined, data-driven process. By automating outreach, MedCura achieved a 54% patient response rate (compared to the typical <10% response to phone calls) and closed nearly 70% of open referrals. Patients who had once been difficult to reach are now engaged and responsive—creating benefits well beyond referral completion.
This success has given MedCura greater visibility into referral trends, reduced administrative strain on staff, and strengthened care coordination across the continuum. Real-time analytics empower leadership to make informed decisions, improve workflow efficiency, and enhance the patient experience, while also reducing organizational risk across clinical, operational, and quality domains.
Denatras Silas
Chief Information Officer
MedCura Health
"Referral management used to be one of our biggest challenges—time-consuming, manual, and difficult to track. With HealthTalk A.I., we’ve transformed that process. We now have the visibility, automation, and patient engagement tools we need to close the loop and ensure better outcomes for our patients.”