From Full Voicemail Boxes to Real-Time Answers: How OSMI Closed the After-Hours Gap

The Challenge

Owen Sound Medical Imaging (OSMI) is a local community imaging clinic that is owned and led by radiologists who also practice at the region’s largest public hospital network. The clinic’s Managing Radiologist is Dr. Neil Rosta who also practices at the local hospital.

With over 50 calls a day and a small front-desk team, OSMI staff handled every call during clinic hours. But after-hours calls were stored in voicemail with no way for patients to get answers to questions about appointments, required prep or clinic policies until staff called them back the next business day.

Each morning, the team arrived to a queue of voicemails to listen through, sort and return, on top of an already full workload. As a clinic built around accessible, community-centered care, OSMI set out to close that gap with a system that could:

• Pick up after-hours calls on the first ring, so no patient ever reaches voicemail
• Answer routine questions about appointments, prep and clinic policies from a clinic-specific knowledge base
• Record, transcribe and summarize the voicemails that need staff follow-up
• Give staff a prioritized view of overnight activity before the first patient arrives

The Solution

PocketHealth now picks up the phone after OSMI closes for the day. When a patient dials the clinic’s number after-hours, instead of a voicemail prompt they reach a live, conversational AI system that greets them, understands what they need and responds in a natural back-and-forth.

For routine questions, PocketHealth draws on the clinic’s own knowledge base, covering everything from prep instructions to parking and accessibility, and patients get answers on the spot with no callback required. For patients with more complex inquiries, PocketHealth collects patient information and a preferred callback time, then queues a structured request for staff to action the next business day. Anyone describing an emergency is told to hang up and call 911.

Integration did not require a modern phone system. OSMI still runs a traditional copper landline rather than Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), and PocketHealth worked with it as it was, with no new hardware, no telephony upgrade and no change to how the front desk operates during clinic hours. Through an interactive dashboard, staff easily see which overnight calls still need a human follow-up, with voicemail summaries and context already attached. Instead of listening through every message to figure out what each one needs, the team starts the day with a clear picture of what requires attention, cutting morning triage down to a fraction of what it used to take.

The Results

• Zero after-hours calls going to voicemail: Patients reach a live, conversational system on the first try, whether they call at 6 PM or 6 AM, weekends and holidays included.
• Improved patient access: Patients get immediate, accurate prep instructions, scheduling details and policy information, 24/7.
• 95% projected call resolution without staff: The vast majority of after-hours calls are expected to be adequately managed by PocketHealth in real time, with no need for the patient to call back during regular business hours.
• Hours of staff time reallocated each day: Time previously spent on after-hours call handling and morning voicemail triage shifts back to in-clinic patient care.

Beyond the metrics, the day-to-day has changed: patients get the answers they need when they need them, more complex requests are routed to staff with full context and team capacity stays focused on the patients physically in the clinic.

About PocketHealth

PocketHealth automates the operational complexity of healthcare: the manual, non-clinical work that surrounds every patient visit. For more than a decade, the company has automated this work from both the provider and patient sides, building a distinct understanding of how providers operate and how patients engage in their care. Its agentic operations platform extends that expertise across the enterprise, automating non-clinical workflows end-to-end while working inside existing systems and adapting to each site’s SOPs. The result for providers: improved capacity, financial performance and patient outcomes. PocketHealth is SOC 2 and HIPAA and PHIPA compliant, and trusted by 900+ health systems. Request a demo today.