After Optum exited, patients flooded the phones. The Medical Group of New Jersey rebuilt access in under 48 hours.

The challenge

When Optum dropped New Jersey practices with no warning, The Medical Group of New Jersey had to act fast. Patients who hadn’t been seen in nearly two months started calling all at once.

One office was fielding 250 voicemails a day. At the height of the surge, patients couldn’t even get through to leave one—calls went unanswered while staff tried to manage the front desk and the phones at the same time.

The practice needed to handle the volume and get patients back in the door.

The solution

Phreesia had VoiceAI and self-scheduling live in under 48 hours.

Phreesia VoiceAI handled every call—scheduling, refill requests, billing inquiries, and after-hours triage—without adding to staff workload. In six months, VoiceAI handled 19.4K calls and 2.9K appointments were self-scheduled—61% for new patients, representing an estimated $435K in appointment value.

The collections picture strengthened too. Time-of-service collection rates recovered from 27% to 49%, with $1.1M collected at time of service over the same period.

What started as an emergency became a more scalable way to manage calls, scheduling, and patient access.