What does it take to implement AI in a healthcare contact center successfully? Not just pilot it, but scale it, sustain it and get your staff to embrace it? 

We explored these questions in a webinar with CCD Health, featuring executives who’ve guided AI strategy and a Memorial Hermann Health System contact center leader who’s lived it firsthand.

The conversation featured CCD Health executives Rafael Alfonso Peña Pelletier, Vice President of Business Intelligence and Valerie Grullon, COO; alongside Kimber Molke from Memorial Hermann Health System, who shared her real-world experience implementing an AI assistant in their Nurse Healthline program.

“Patient access is where efficiency and patient trust intersect,” Pelletier says. “It’s that frontline moment where technology meets humanity. And as many of you know, sometimes both technology and humanity don’t always see eye-to-eye.”

While AI adoption in healthcare jumped from 3% in 2022 to 27% in 2025, scaling solutions that generate real-world impact remains difficult. Pelletier says that rising patient expectations, financial pressures forcing departments to do more with less and outdated systems are creating what he calls a “sprained ankle marathon” for healthcare organizations.

Grullon outlined what she sees as the three essential responsibilities for leaders on an AI journey: governance, trust and change management.

“As soon as agents start hearing conversations about AI, the first thing that will pop into their mind is that either their entire job or part of their job will be replaced,” Grullon says. “As leaders, that’s where we have the responsibility to give them the proper visibility of the goal.” 

Building trust requires transparent communication about what AI does and doesn’t do, making team members part of a collective purpose, rather than casualties of technological change. Effective change management means upskilling staff for new competencies and workflows, much like the transition from paper-based systems to computers transformed business operations decades ago.

These principles came to life at Memorial Hermann Health System, Molke shared how to implement AI at the contact center. Memorial Hermann’s Nurse Healthline, a free 24/7 service for Texas residents seeking clinical guidance, was receiving 164,000 calls annually by 2023, up from 90,000 five years earlier.

Her nurses were burning out, rushing calls because they saw the queue building and spending hours making follow-up phone calls instead of handling complex clinical questions. That’s when Molke introduced “Grace,” an AI bot designed to handle routine follow-up calls.

“My leadership mindset for implementing AI was to shift from managing change to creating readiness,” Molke says. “I introduced Grace as a solution and also as a member of the team. I stressed that AI Grace would enhance, not replace our staff.”

Grace has completed nearly 118,000 follow-up calls with a 25% completion rate, higher than human staff achieved. She’s saved almost 2,000 FTE hours, equivalent to one full-time employee dedicated solely to follow-ups. Nurses who were previously making between 200 and 300 follow-up calls are now making five to 10 per day, freeing them to focus on incoming clinical calls.

Patient satisfaction scores have improved, and some callers now specifically ask to speak with “Nurse Grace.”

Molke got her team to embrace Grace because she consistently connected the AI solution back to problems her team had been voicing for years. She involved nurses in pilot testing and used their feedback to refine Grace’s empathy levels and speech patterns. Most important, she celebrated the positive outcomes at every staff meeting.

“Nobody has been fired because of Grace, and I can tell you that staff are looking forward to Grace answering the NHL calls in the future because they know that they’re only going to get clinical calls,” Molke says. “Grace allows our nursing staff to practice at the top of their licensure.”

CCD Health’s approach centers on four dimensions: technological (building trust through data integrity and transparency), operational (embedding AI into everyday workflows), organizational (creating a culture of confidence through education and inclusion) and strategic (aligning innovation with measurable business goals).

“Technology solutions do not transform organizations, but people do,” Pelletier says.  

Thanks to our friends at CCD Health for co-sponsoring a webinar with us. Would you like to do one, too? Learn more.