$30B Pacific Northwest health system with 125,000 employees leverages Parlance to ensure seamless transition to cloud telephony.
Key Facts About the Health System:
The $30B healthcare organization is a faith-based non-profit with a significant presence across several western U.S. states, including Alaska. It was formed from the merger of multiple health systems and has roots dating back over 160 years to a Catholic religious community.
- Mission & Values: Its core mission is to provide compassionate care to vulnerable and poor populations, reflecting its Catholic heritage.
- Scale: It operates a vast network that includes 51 hospitals and more than 1,000 clinics. Its care team consists of approximately 125,000 employees, and over 35,000 physicians.
- Geographic Reach: The system’s services are available across seven states: Alaska, California, Montana, New Mexico, Oregon, Texas, and Washington.
- Services: In addition to traditional hospital and clinic care, it offers a wide range of health and social services. This includes virtual visits, same-day care, supportive housing, and health plan options.
- Community Impact: The organization demonstrates its commitment to community well-being through extensive community benefit programs. In 2024, it provided about $1.9 billion in such benefits.
- Innovation & Transformation: It is actively pursuing innovative strategies to improve healthcare delivery, focusing on initiatives like addressing clinician burnout, improving digital services, and transforming care to enhance patient access and affordability.
Goals for Parlance Implementation:
- Simplify the way patients connect: Improve the calling experience / reduce frustration
- Reduce operator and agent burden: Decrease agent turnover and improve job satisfaction by lowering call volume and removing the burden of redundant tasks that can easily be automated with voice AI
- Geographic Reach: The system’s services are available across seven states: Alaska, California, Montana, New Mexico, Oregon, Texas, and Washington.
- Deliver clear financial returns: Achieve 2x to 6x ROI from Parlance implementation, across hospitals throughout the health system network
Overview
This $30B Pacific Northwest health system embarked on a majorenterprise-wide initiative to modernize its telephony infrastructure.Migrating to a new, cloud-based platform with a unified 11-digit dialing plan promised improved performance and flexibility. However, this transition also risked creating confusion and frustration among providers, staff, and patients, who would have to adopt new dialing habits. Anticipating a surge in operator-assisted calls and poor caller experiences, this faith-based system turned toParlance, a voice AI solution with intelligent call routing that’s purpose-built for complex healthcare environments.
Challenge
- Complex Dialing Changes: Employees and providers faced an 11-digit dialing requirement, disrupting established habits for internal calls
- Surge in Operator Calls: Anticipating that users would revert to “dial 0”,switchboard volume was set to skyrocket without a modern hospital IVR system
- Consistent Branding & Call Experience: As the hospitals and clinicsrebranded and consolidated under a single telephony platform, leadership wanted a uniform, user-friendly call experience
Solution
Parlance Answers the Call with Automated Routing: Conversational IVR for Healthcare
Parlance was implemented to answer all calls directed to hospital operators—both from the public-facing main numbers and from internal “dial 0” inquiries. Callers can simply speak naturally (“Cardiology, please” or “Dr. Patel’s office”). Parlance voice AI instantly routes them to the correct destination.
This HIPAA-compliant IVR has not only improved user satisfaction among staff and providers but has also delivered clear and measurable operational value:
- Parlance delivers a consistently branded calling experience across the enterprise, reinforcing organizational identity and professionalism
- Standardized best practices for call handling help reduce errors, improving the overall caller experience
Results & ROI
By rolling out Parlance in tandem with the migration to cloud telephony, the health system has proactively addressed one of the biggest risk factors in enterprise communications: user frustration. Early deployments of Parlance have measurably increased stakeholder satisfaction with the telephony modernization project.
- 2x–6x Return on Investment: Different facilities report high multiples of ROI based on call volume, reduced operator overhead, and improved efficiency
- Consistently Branded Experience: From main hospital lines to specialty clinics, callers enjoy the same intuitive interface
Standardized Best Practices: Parlance enforces uniform call handling protocols, reducing errors and improving caller satisfaction
“
“We’ve solved this problem for thousands of hospitals and clinics over the last 25+ years. When callers can speak naturally and connect quickly, every part of the operation improves.”
— Scott D’Entremont, Parlance CEO
Next Steps
With half of its facilities already live on the new platform and Parlance in place, the health system plans to extend the voice AI solution across the enterprise, ensuring consistent caller experiences, reduced call wait times, significant labor savings, and sustained satisfaction from staff and patients alike.
Conclusion
With half of its facilities already live on the new platform and Parlance in place, the health system plans to extend the voice AI solution across the enterprise, ensuring consistent caller experiences, reduced call wait times, significant labor savings, and sustained satisfaction from staff and patients alike.
