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Medical Data Systems (MDS) is a healthcare receivables and collection management company that has supported hospitals and physician practices across the United States for more than 30 years. Every day, MDS helps patients navigate medical bills, insurance payments, and outstanding balances — conversations that are often sensitive, time-critical, and operationally demanding.
As call volumes increased and staffing became harder to sustain, voice support turned into one of the company’s biggest challenges. In the collections industry, agent turnover is high and training new employees is expensive. At the same time, patients expect immediate answers when they call about their bills. For MDS, this meant growing inbound demand paired with rising costs and declining capacity.
The breaking point came when inbound call volume exceeded 3,000 calls per day. Many of those calls were going unanswered or going to voicemail, creating delays in both customer service and collections. MDS needed a way to absorb high call volumes without continuously adding headcount, while still preserving the quality and compliance required in healthcare revenue operations.
MDS had already expanded into text and email communication, but phone calls remained the most important channel. Patients want real-time answers when discussing their medical bills, and insurance companies still rely heavily on voice for claims and payment follow-ups. The phone was also the most expensive and hardest part of the operation to scale.
As MDS looked for ways to maintain performance without increasing costs, conversational voice AI became the natural next step.
After evaluating multiple AI vendors, MDS selected Retell for two reasons. First, Retell’s voice agents sounded more natural and human-like than any other solution they tested. Second, Retell made it easy to integrate directly into MDS’s systems, allowing the AI to receive patient and account data before each call and return structured information after the conversation was complete.
This combination of realism and reliability made Retell a strong fit for healthcare collections, where accuracy, compliance, and trust matter.
MDS built multiple voice agents on Retell, each designed to handle a different part of its operations.
One agent answers inbound patient calls, helping callers understand their balances, verify insurance payments, and complete transactions. Another agent makes outbound calls for secondary collections, reaching patients with lower-balance accounts to resolve payments quickly. A third agent calls insurance companies, navigates their IVR systems, waits on hold, and transfers live representatives to MDS staff when needed.
Together, these agents now form the first layer of MDS’s contact center.
Today, Retell’s voice agents handle 100 percent of inbound calls for MDS, with only about 30 percent of those calls needing to be transferred to a live agent. That means the AI completes roughly 70 percent of conversations end-to-end on its own.
Across inbound and outbound workflows, the AI now handles approximately 30,000 calls per month and collects an average of $280,000 per month for MDS. At the same time, call abandonment has not increased, and patients continue to complete payments and resolve issues just as they did with human agents.
The result is a more efficient operation where human staff can focus on complex, high-value cases while the AI manages the routine, high-volume interactions.
One of the biggest surprises for MDS was how natural the AI sounded. Many patients don’t realize they are speaking to a virtual agent, and even when they do, the experience feels seamless. Patients show no hesitation in making payments or asking questions through the voice AI, and abandonment rates have remained stable since deployment.
Rather than feeling automated, the experience feels responsive and immediate — exactly what patients want when dealing with medical bills.
Internally, Retell has become a workforce multiplier. The AI handles the easier, repetitive calls that human agents don’t enjoy, freeing staff to focus on more difficult, sensitive, or complex cases. This allows MDS to maintain service levels despite turnover and hiring challenges, without putting more strain on its team.
Unlike human staff, the AI is always available. It never takes sick days, never gets tired, and is always ready to serve patients with consistent quality.
MDS plans to continue expanding its use of voice AI across additional workflows. What started with inbound call handling has become a foundation for long-term efficiency, allowing the company to scale its healthcare revenue operations without sacrificing service quality.
With Retell, MDS has transformed voice from a cost center into a revenue-driving, always-on engine — one that supports patients, staff, and hospitals alike.