A multi-location dermatology group unified its calls, referrals, claims, and reporting

1One practice, many moving parts

California Dermatology Institute (CDI), a dermatology group with locations across Southern California and Arizona, faced a challenge common to growing practices: its essential work relied on a mix of separate tools and manual steps. This left staff to bridge the gaps between phones, referrals, claims, prescriptions, and provider reporting.

VoxHealth brought these functions together on a single platform built on CDI's EZDerm data. An AI agent now answers thousands of calls a month, booking appointments directly in EZDerm. The platform reads and prepares hundreds of monthly referrals for staff to follow up. It tracks every claim to payment. And it gives leadership a clear, unified view of prescribing patterns and provider performance.

2The practice and its challenge

CDI serves patients from one main phone number that routes to all its locations. The practice's scheduling and patient records are in EZDerm. Groups of this size tend to collect a separate tool or spreadsheet for each job, and when those systems don't talk to each other, staff fill the gaps by hand.

The friction showed first on the phones. With one number serving every location, a busy front desk or a closed office left callers waiting or in voicemail. Referrals created a second manual workload. Each faxed referral had to be read, checked for authorization, and matched to a patient before staff could call to schedule. Billing and reporting added a third layer of effort, requiring staff to assemble data from several sources.

3A unified view of five core functions

VoxHealth joined five areas of work on one platform, with each capability configured to CDI's rules.

4Calls

VoxHealth works with CDI's phone system to answer calls the front desk can't take, including those after hours.

• Answer overflow and after-hours calls on the main shared line
• Book, reschedule, confirm, and cancel appointments in EZDerm
• Handle requests for prescription refills
• Flag clinical questions for a nurse to review
• Take a message for the right team if a call can't be completed
• Transfer callers to available staff when a person is needed
• Send text reminders and offer an online booking page

5Referrals

Referrals are managed from arrival to final claim, following rules set by CDI's own referral team.

• Read incoming faxes and emails to find patient, physician, and insurance details
• Check authorization status: approved, pending, not required, or missing
• Maintain a directory of referring physicians to prevent duplicate records
• Link referrals to a patient's chart if an exact match exists
• Give staff a work queue to move each referral through its stages
• Call referred patients to schedule their first appointments

6Claims

Claims sync from EZDerm into a single view, so the billing team can see where every claim stands without running reports by hand.

• Display claims by status, with a detail page for each one
• Track claim aging and time to payment for each payer
• Flag claims a payer processed but paid nothing on
• Match each claim's prior authorization to its original referral
• Identify claims billed outside the authorized dates

7Pharmacy and prescriptions

VoxHealth provides a clear view of a prescription's journey after a provider writes it.

• Track every e-prescription by provider, location, and pharmacy
• Show the fill rate for new e-prescriptions from pharmacy data
• Report on formulary adherence for each drug list
• Add prescription data to each provider's performance scorecard

8Provider performance

Each provider gets a scorecard with an incentive calculation that uses CDI's own method.

• Show work RVUs, encounters, payer mix, production, and collections for each provider
• Display the incentive level each provider is on track to meet
• Provide projections to the end of the quarter
• Offer downloadable quarterly reports

9The results

Each month, the AI agent answers more than 7,000 patient calls and manages about 500 appointments in EZDerm. The platform also processes about 900 faxed and emailed referrals, which staff manage from a single, structured queue. Appointments are the most common reason patients call (41%), followed by general questions (29%) and prescription refills (14%).

On the billing side, CDI can see every claim's status, how long payers take to pay, and which claims are out of line with their referral's authorization. The practice can now see where its prescriptions go and how often new medications are picked up. And for providers, scorecards show every clinician where they stand this quarter, where they are projected to finish, and how their performance compares with their peers.

10What VoxHealth is worth to CDI

The platform's value comes from two sources: the staff time it saves and the patient visits it protects.

First is the manual work. Answering overflow calls during business hours would require about 430 staff hours a month. Covering after-hours calls would add another 75 hours on overtime, and processing referrals would take about 150 more. This totals about 650 staff hours a month, the equivalent of nearly four full-time positions, worth an estimated $22,000.

Second, the agent books about 200 new appointments a month, including some on evenings and weekends. If half of those patients would not have called back, the appointments protect about $18,000 a month in visits.

Together, the value is about $40,000 a month, or nearly $480,000 a year. This estimate does not include time saved on reporting, or the financial benefit of more accurate referral authorization and claims tracking.

11What this means for your practice

If you run several locations from one phone number, you can add coverage without changing your existing phone menu. VoxHealth works behind the scenes, and its value grows when it can act inside your scheduling system.

If your referrals arrive by fax or email, the entire process is an opportunity to improve, from reading the packet to checking the final claim. Staff still manage every referral, but they begin from a structured queue.

If your reporting relies on spreadsheets, a platform already connected to your scheduling, referral, and billing data can produce those reports automatically. Providers can see their performance while the quarter is still under way.

12What to know before you start

Referral rules are tuned to each practice. Expect a setup conversation about your authorization workflow and medical group relationships.

Provider scorecards should be checked against your existing incentive math before you rely on them. CDI's calculation was reviewed before use, and yours should be as well.

System connections have limits. The EZDerm connection does not allow chart notes or custom uploads, so linking a referral to a chart is a manual step unless an exact match is found. It is wise to ask what your own system permits.

Many callers still ask for a person. Decide in advance which hours and locations can accept live transfers and what the agent should promise when no one is free.

Booking volume follows your scheduling rules. At CDI, for instance, the agent does not book same-day or next-day visits from referral calls, which is consistent with clinic policy.

13How we measured

Volumes are approximate monthly ranges from VoxHealth call records over four months and include only calls CDI staff did not answer. Referral volume is an estimate from the first weeks of intake.

Value estimates count only calls handled past the greeting: about 5,000 a month during business hours and 900 on evenings and weekends. Each is valued at five staff minutes, with evening and weekend minutes at an overtime rate. Referrals are estimated to take about 10 minutes each to process.

Staff cost is based on the US mean wage for medical secretaries from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, plus 30% for benefits. New appointments average about 200 a month. We assume half of those patients would have been lost and value each visit at $180, the dermatology figure in the VoxHealth savings calculator.