Assort Health and Nextech to Codevelop Integrated AI Agent Offering for Ophthalmology Practices

Partnership builds on Assort's growing ophthalmology footprint, proprietary Nextech integration, and experience across hundreds of healthcare deployments to automate more patient access workflows.

SAN FRANCISCO, Oct. 9, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Assort Health, the AI agents platform for the patient journey, and Nextech, a leading technology provider for specialty practices, today announced they will codevelop a joint AI agent offering for all Nextech customers, with deeper integration into Nextech's platform. The partnership builds on Assort's experience across hundreds of healthcare deployments, including 40% of the Fortune 20 healthcare enterprises, and expands access to AI agents already in growing use across ophthalmology practices.

In ophthalmology practices, Assort's AI agents work across complex patient access workflows that require far more than answering a phone call. A single patient request can depend on provider subspecialty, visit history, testing requirements, insurance, referral status, location, urgency, and clinical escalation rules.

Assort is built to handle exactly that kind of complexity. Unlike general-purpose AI platforms adapted for healthcare, it's built exclusively for healthcare organizations. That deployment experience has informed a growing library of tested workflows and operational best practices. It has also shaped Assort's proprietary Nextech integration, giving ophthalmology practices a head start on the complex scheduling rules and patient access workflows that would otherwise need to be built from scratch.

That depth is what's making ophthalmology an early proving ground for the next generation of healthcare AI, which will be measured by requests resolved, not conversations handled.

"You learn quickly in ophthalmology whether an AI agent can resolve a patient request or whether it books the wrong visit and leaves someone on staff to fix it the next morning," said Jon Wang, co-founder and co-CEO of Assort Health. "Patients rarely call knowing the exact appointment type, provider, testing sequence, or next steps they need. The technology has to understand the patient and the practice well enough to resolve the request, not just route it. We've spent years building that depth across specialty care. Partnering with Nextech lets us bring it to many more ophthalmology practices and keep expanding how much of the work our agents can complete inside the systems they run on."

Growing Momentum Across Ophthalmology

Assort has built its ophthalmology offering around the operational rules and edge cases that make eye care unusually complex, including testing-based follow-up, optical versus medical routing, retinal injection scheduling, cataract surgery coordination, urgent symptom escalation, after-hours access, and multi-location scheduling.

Across ophthalmology practices, where front-desk teams are stretched thin by high call volumes and layered scheduling rules, Assort is resolving patient requests that would otherwise land back on staff.

At DuPage Ophthalmology, a Nextech practice, Assort supports roughly 500 patient calls each week, navigating provider, location, and appointment-type rules. After seeing the impact during daytime operations, the practice expanded Assort into after-hours coverage.

"What matters is whether the technology works in the reality of an ophthalmology practice. Assort has helped us save more than 60% of call time while navigating the provider, location, and appointment rules our team manages every day," said Maureen O'Malley, practice administrator at DuPage Ophthalmology. "The results gave us the confidence to expand Assort into after-hours coverage."

A Shared Roadmap for Deeper Integration

Nextech has spent more than 25 years serving specialty practices and was named the 2026 Best in KLAS winner for Ambulatory Ophthalmology Solutions for the second consecutive year.

Assort's existing Nextech Practice+ integration supports core patient access workflows, including patient and appointment information, scheduling, and rescheduling. Built on experience from real ophthalmology deployments, the integration combines Nextech connectivity with specialty-specific workflow logic and implementation best practices. Through the new partnership, the companies will deepen that foundation with a shared API roadmap, enabling additional workflows and helping Nextech practices realize value faster.

"Specialty practices need AI that understands how they operate, not technology that forces them into generic workflows," said John Beck, chief strategy officer at Nextech. "Assort brings meaningful experience in patient access and ophthalmology workflows. Together, we see an opportunity to help practices reduce administrative burden while making it easier for patients to reach the right care."

"We've already built and deployed a deep integration with Nextech practices. What sets this partnership apart is what Assort brings to that foundation: we only build for healthcare, and we're live with hundreds of organizations, including 40% of the Fortune 20 healthcare enterprises. Every deployment strengthens our platform, workflows, and best practices. Nextech customers get more than an integration. They get a purpose-built ophthalmology platform and a team that knows how to adapt it quickly to the complexity of their practice," said Jeff Liu, co-founder and co-CEO of Assort Health.

From Answering Patients to Completing the Work

The Nextech relationship is the latest step in Assort's expansion from AI-powered phone access into a broader operating platform for the patient journey.

Assort's agents now support inbound and outbound scheduling, patient intake, referrals, after-hours coverage, medication requests, payments, and task management. The company recently launched Referrals, an AI agent designed to process and work referrals through scheduling rather than stopping after document intake.

Assort and Nextech will both be at the American Academy of Ophthalmology (AAO) Annual Meeting in New Orleans. Wang will also participate in AAO's Industry Showcase on Sunday, Oct. 11.

To see Assort's ophthalmology AI in action, visit Assort Booth #3126 at AAO or visit assorthealth.com/nextech 

About Assort Health

Assort Health is an AI agents platform for the patient journey, from scheduling and intake to referrals, forms, document processing, medication refills, and payments. It is built on more than 300 million specialty patient interactions, with models that update in real time to manage the operational complexity of healthcare. That foundation powers patient access across multi-site practices, multi-specialty groups, and health systems.

Customers see results including a 5% lift in appointment volume, a 115% increase in labor capacity, up to $4.3 million in revenue captured per 100 providers, 97% resolution rates, and 79% referral-to-appointment conversion. The platform integrates natively with leading EHR and practice management systems, including Epic and athenahealth, enabling deployment without disrupting existing clinical workflows. Provider groups and health systems turn to Assort when the complexity outgrows their existing tools. To learn more, visit assorthealth.com.

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SOURCE Assort Health