With 80% of health IT startups failing—healthcare executives face significant risk partnering with unproven vendors. Parlance’s 30-year track record, serving 400+ health systems, demonstrates the financial stability and operational expertise healthcare organizations require. As part of $59 Billion Constellation Software, Parlance delivers measurable ROI within 30 days while eliminating the risk inherent in venture-backed alternatives.
What is the Greatest Competitive Advantage in Healthcare IT? Proven Performance!
I heard a comment from a prospect recently that got me thinking… They referred to Parlance as a “legacy provider.” At first, I bristled—we’re using all the latest models, our team is top notch, and we’re leveraging a cutting-edge technology stack! Then I thought, perhaps it’s actually a compliment.
In healthcare communication, there’s a fundamental difference between companies that promise innovation and those that have already delivered it at scale for decades. When it comes to the systems that patients and staff rely on every day, consistency matters more than hype. That’s where Parlance stands out in an increasingly crowded field of healthcare IT startups.
Proven Performance While Others Make Promises
When startups describe established solutions as “legacy,” the word is cast as an insult—a shorthand for “outdated.” But the Parlance legacy in healthcare IT represents longevity, experience, and long-term partnerships. This track record of sustained performance is an advantage that the healthcare leaders we serve recognize as evidence of proven reliability and results.
While none of us would have wanted to deploy and rely on the first versions Apple and Microsoft, we all continue to count established companies like this, for the next innovation. We rely on trusted partnerships to deliver consistent performance and innovation.
Parlance has been in business for 30 years, with 12 years of exclusive healthcare focus. We help our partners to evolve by consistently providing safe, reliable technology and service improvements in voice AI. While some vendors are still promising what they hope to deliver, we’ve already spent decades doing the work. We serve over 400 health systems across thousands of hospitals and clinics nationwide. When new competitors boast about the total call volume they’ve served in their entire company history, those numbers are often less than what Parlance handles in a single month.
Financial Stability in a Volatile Market
The statistics surrounding startup reliability are sobering: 80% of startups crash and burn, with failure rates significantly higher in health IT. In healthcare, where investment in vendor capabilities is high-stakes and directly linked to business outcomes, these failures carry major ramifications. When a vendor collapses, health systems face the costly reality of replacing integrated technology, retraining staff, and rebuilding workflows.
The phone remains the most widely used channel in healthcare communication, with 72% of consumers preferring the voice channel when they need fast or urgent support. From Baby Boomers to Gen Z, this customer base is far too critical to rely on unproven solutions from companies that may not survive their next round of funding.
Recent examples like Olive AI demonstrate the real risks healthcare organizations face. Despite securing substantial funding and initially promising revolutionary healthcare automation, Olive AI ultimately burned through its resources faster than it could generate sustainable revenue, forcing the company to shut down despite having secured contracts with major health systems. Olive’s eye-catching purple advertisements were on thousands of busses in cities across the country. But, the appearance of success can be deceiving.
Startups offer novel approaches to solve challenging problems, and venture capital cashflow often enables flashy websites, national ad campaigns, and conference booths with WOW factor… But the risk-reward ratio is poor. Can you depend on the success of technology and the service of the team at a young company, while also betting on the success of the company delivering it? From a practical executive standpoint, it’s hard to justify.
The majority of Parlance’s large enterprise and Fortune 500 customers have stayed with us for 15+ years. Unlike venture capital-backed companies focused on rapid growth and beholden to investors (often forecasting annual losses in the tens of millions of dollars for the foreseeable future), Parlance operates with proven financial stability.
As part of Constellation Software — a $59 Billion organization with a demonstrated “buy and hold” strategy—Parlance offers the long-term partnership health systems require. Parlance became a part of Constellation’s Volaris division in 2024. Volaris specifically looks for companies like Parlance that are dedicated to a specific vertical and have made a measurable impact with significant customer relationships and proven profitability.
Experience as the Ultimate Differentiator
A fundamental reality: while competitors may tout cutting-edge natural language processing and conversational AI, every vendor in this space operates on essentially the same core technologies from Google, Amazon, and other major providers. The real differentiator isn’t the underlying AI or LLM—it’s the proven capability to implement and integrate it effectively, and to perform.
Parlance combines 30 years of proprietary tools and methodologies with a customer solutions team averaging 10+ years of tenure. When healthcare organizations need guidance through complex integrations, regulatory compliance, or workflow optimization, they can rely on the Parlance team of experts who have solved these challenges hundreds of times. No amount of venture capital funding can replicate this depth of experience.
Meeting Rising Consumer Expectations
In a recent McKinsey survey of 3,500 consumers, respondents of all ages said that live phone conversations were among their most preferred methods of contacting companies for help and support. That finding held true even among 18- to 28-year-old Gen Z consumers, a cohort that favors text and social messaging for interpersonal communications.
Patient expectations continue to shift across all demographics. While many assume voice channel preference skews toward older users, data reveals that Gen Z and Millennial consumers also turn to the phone when they need urgent support or complex problem-solving. Even as healthcare portal usage increases, call volumes are holding steady without decline.
Today’s healthcare consumers expect immediate responses and frictionless experiences. Unlike older generations with established provider relationships, many younger patients approach healthcare with a marketplace mentality, switching providers when experiences fall short. This demands what successful retail brands have mastered: consistent, non-frustrating interactions that build loyalty through reliability.
Parlance addresses this reality by integrating cutting-edge, HIPAA-compliant voice AI with EHR systems, enabling patients to reschedule appointments, get answers to FAQs, and reach appropriate departments without hold times. Healthcare organizations partnering with Parlance consistently report improved patient satisfaction scores, reflecting our ability to meet evolving patient expectations while supporting operational efficiency. 2 of the top five most trusted healthcare brands are Parlance customers.
Longevity, Not Limitation
When startups call us a “legacy” company, they misunderstand healthcare’s fundamental requirements. In an industry where people’s health and well-being are on the line, it’s about who shows up consistently, weathers the ups and downs, and solves real problems — rather than who raises the most money to buy influence.
If legacy equals profitable, sustainable, and valuable partnerships, you can put that label on us anytime. Parlance delivers measurable ROI within 30 days through automated patient verification, seamless call routing, and voice-driven appointment management. We are THE best conversational IVR and IVA (intelligent voice assistant) for healthcare, on the market today. Proven performance when it matters most is the ultimate competitive advantage in healthcare.
