This week's poll is sponsored by Insight Health AI, whose mission is to build AI-powered clinical agents that offload routine and complex tasks, enabling clinicians to practice at the top of their license and deliver meaningful, personalized care. 

Even as medical practices have invested in patient portals, automated reminders, and other digital solutions, the phone often remains the real “front door” for a large share of patients, and it still consumes disproportionate staff time. 

In a March 10, 2026, MGMA Stat poll, practice leaders pointed to a familiar set of time-intensive tasks for their staff on the phones: eligibility/prior authorization (45%), scheduling (31%), intake (9%), prescription refills (6%), and an always-messy “other” category (9%). The poll had 294 applicable responses.  

The most time-consuming phone tasks 

1. Eligibility and prior authorization (a payer friction tax) 

Practices are expected to provide consumer-grade access while navigating payer rules that are anything but consumer-grade. Staff spend much of their phone time verifying insurance coverage and benefits, checking coordination of benefits, and confirming detailed eligibility information.  

The other major time drain is managing prior authorizations — submitting requests, tracking status, handling denials and appeals, and responding to constant status‑check calls from both patients and other offices. Medication PAs, imaging and surgery approvals, and referral-related updates also add significantly to the workload. 

This work frequently pulls staff into portal switching and outbound payer calls. The time cost balloons when a patient’s understanding doesn’t match the plan’s rules, or when staff must translate vague responses like, “we need more information,” into clear next steps. 

2. Scheduling (volume and complexity) 

Scheduling often dominates because it’s high volume and rarely one-and-done. Practice leaders in this week’s poll reported that scheduling calls are most time‑consuming largely because appointment openings are limited — especially for complex visit types, specific providers, or surgery slots — forcing extensive back‑and‑forth and phone tag. Staff also spend significant time navigating complex scheduling rules, provider‑specific guidelines, and helping patients determine what type of visit they need. High call volume, unclear visit‑type decision trees, and patients being unprepared or overly chatty further slow the process. 

Even practices with online scheduling still field phone calls for exceptions: new patients who can’t find the “right” slot, specialty triage questions, or staff trying to squeeze in post-op concerns. When callers wait on hold, a second-order workload follows: voicemail backlogs and phone tag. 

3. Intake/Patient Registration (the rework problem) 

Intake/registration calls often start as simple requests and quickly become a multi-step data chase: demographics, insurance details, referral requirements, prior records, consent forms, and “what do I need to bring?” These calls take the most time when patients are unprepared — missing paperwork, incomplete demographics, absent insurance details, or language barriers all require extensive back‑and‑forth. Staff also spend additional time gathering clinical and administrative details that online forms miss, while managing long-winded callers and new‑patient screening questions. 

The time sink lies both in the first call collecting details and in the rework that follows when information is missing or inconsistent, such as calling back to clarify a policy number, spelling, prior visit history, or medication list. Each gap cascades into downstream tasks: additional eligibility checks, rescheduled appointments, or chart clean-up. 

4. Other (where risk lives) 

“Other” is a catchall where operational strain and several clinical risks collide. Respondents to this week’s poll said the most time‑consuming phone work often involves handling patient questions — about results, medications, and portal access — along with billing issues such as denials, pre‑authorizations, and long hold times with payers. Additional burdens include clinical triage, surgery education, self‑pay pre‑collections, referrals, credentialing tasks, and navigating language barriers. 

5. Prescriptions/refills (high frequency, high interruption) 

Prescription and refill requests arrive throughout the day, often missing essential details such as the pharmacy, dose, or current med list. They trigger back-and-forth with pharmacies, require clinician sign-off, and often overlap with symptom questions (“I’m out and feeling worse”). Even when there’s a portal option, patients call because the issue feels urgent, confusing, or they want confirmation a request was received. The result is constant interruption — one of the most disruptive patterns for front-desk productivity. 

When teams are short-staffed, every call competes with check-ins, checkouts, clinical messaging, and claims follow-up. Nationally, nearly half of physicians report working with an incompletely staffed team more than a quarter of the time — a pattern associated with higher burnout. “Just answer the phone” becomes a daily tradeoff: serve the patient in front of you, or the patient on hold. 

Your phones ask staff to do two jobs at once 

Most practices still run phones as a real-time switchboard. Staff simultaneously keep access moving and act as a human intake engine: capture the request, clarify it, document it, route it, and often resolve it. That’s hard enough when fully staffed; it’s crushing when you’re not. And every missed call has cost implications: no-shows and missed appointments are estimated to cost the healthcare industry around $150 billion annually. 

What changes when the “front door” becomes an AI workflow 

A modern AI phone agent doesn’t just “answer calls.” It moves work to resolution by doing what great staff do — but consistently, instantly, and with structured documentation: 

• Picks up immediately and handles multiple calls at once, reducing hold times and abandonment. 
• Understands intent in natural conversation (not keypad trees), so callers can say what they need and be guided through the right path. 
• Captures the missing details upfront (for example, medication name and pharmacy details for refill requests) so staff aren’t doing call-backs just to complete the basics. 
• Routes and escalates intelligently, including flagging potential urgent situations for immediate staff attention instead of burying them in voicemail. 
• Creates a structured summary and writes it back into the workflow/EHR context, reducing sticky notes, retyping, and “what did the patient say?” follow-ups. 

Practical next steps for practice leaders 

For many medical groups, the point isn’t to “replace the front desk.” It’s to stop spending your most valuable human time on tasks that technology can reliably complete while making sure the calls that do require judgment arrive with context, priority, and clean documentation. 

Complete this simple operational review to understand your opportunities for improvement and where an AI solution might be right for your practice: 

1. Map your top call types and identify where rework is happening (missing info, call-backs, manual documentation). 
2. Define escalation rules for clinical risk (“send to nurse now” vs. “message for next business day”). 
3. Start with high-volume, lower-risk workflows (basic scheduling, FAQs, refill intake) and expand once the process is stable. 
4. Measure what matters: call abandonment, time-to-resolution, staff minutes per call, number of touches per request, and after-hours message backlogs. 

The phone is still where operational drag and patient or payer friction concentrate for many practices, and it’s one of the clearest opportunities to give time back to your team while improving access, responsiveness, and safety.