CARROLLTON, Ga., May 30 — Tanner Health, a leading nonprofit healthcare system serving west Georgia and east Alabama, today announced its go-live with Hyro, the leading Responsible AI Assistant Platform for health care, to streamline patient access and improve call center efficiency.
To support the health system’s inbound call volumes, Tanner launched Clara, a bilingual AI voice chat assistant, to provide 24/7 call support to help minimize phone queues and hold times.
Clara serves as the first point of contact and can autonomously handle common questions and tasks, including appointment management, scheduling and prescription management without requiring human interaction. Leveraging Hyro is part of Tanner’s continuing investment in emerging technologies through its innovation arm, Healthliant Ventures.
“Implementing an AI initiative of this magnitude has quite a few moving parts, but our priority is getting patients the answers they need without waiting,” said Tee Ogletree, executive director of population health & innovation at Tanner Health. “Hyro’s voice AI assistant, which we’ve dubbed ‘Clara,’ is already making a significant difference in our daily operations. We’re excited to continue scaling this across our clinics and rolling out additional skills so our staff can stop acting as human routers and focus on actual patient care.”
Hyro handles common questions and requests to alleviate the burden of high call volumes and repetitive administrative tasks, ensuring patients can get the information they need any time of day and allowing patient care teams to reclaim time previously spent manually routing calls or managing appointments and confirmations.
Once an appointment is updated, Clara sends the latest details via text, so patients can conveniently reference their appointment information whenever they need it.
Hyro integrates with Epic EHR and Cisco telephone systems and operates natively within existing workflows — and through its built-in Care Intelligence dashboard, patient access teams and operational leaders gain full visibility into call drivers, trends and metrics, as well as data from the AI assistant’s output to continuously optimize care delivery.
“The real test of any new technology is whether staff actually wants to use it, and we’ve seen strong, early adoption of Hyro across our workflows,” said Tammy Davis, director of Tanner Medical Group. “Their AI assistants intercept and resolve the repetitive tasks so our staff doesn’t have to, and the transition for our patients has been seamless. We’re already looking ahead to what comes next in our partnership with Hyro.”
Clara can communicate in English and Spanish, but its most meaningful impact is in redefining the patient experience through security and equity. Clara verifies patient identity and adheres to the health system’s policies and standards before performing sensitive tasks.
“Tanner Health understands that exceptional access to care isn’t just about answering the phone faster; it’s about resolving the patient’s needs instantly and accurately,” said Rom Cohen, COO and Co-Founder at Hyro. “By integrating our AI platform within their contact center infrastructure, Tanner is eliminating the traditional bottlenecks associated with patient communication. Our assistants don’t just route calls — they understand patient intent and connect directly with Epic to complete tasks end-to-end, which protects the staff’s time and gives patients the immediate support they deserve.”
In its next phase of deployment, Tanner plans to activate Hyro’s omnichannel capabilities, bringing a chat AI assistant to its website and deploying new use cases that simplify access for a wider range of medical specialties.