Assort Health Unveils Referrals, the First AI Agent that Handles Processing, Triage, and Continuous Patient Conversations for Every Referral

Most referral technology stops after reading a document. Referrals works each one to completion, helping organizations reduce referral leakage, get more qualified patients to the right provider, and convert 79% of referrals into scheduled appointments, while identifying a better-fit provider in 50% of cases.

SAN FRANCISCO, Aug. 12, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Assort Health, the most widely used AI agents platform for the patient journey today announced the general availability of Referrals, an AI agent that helps specialty practices and health systems recover patient volume and revenue lost in manual referral workflows.

• Referrals processes inbound referrals, confirms patient eligibility, and matches each patient to the provider best suited to treat them. In 50% of referrals, Assort identifies a better-fit provider than the one originally referred to, helping physicians see more appropriate patients, so patients can get the right care faster.
• Once the appropriate path is determined, Assort's AI agent proactively reaches out to patients via voice, text, or email, books appointments directly in the EHR, and keeps referring providers informed until each referral is resolved.
• As part of the Assort platform, Referrals enables Continuous Patient Conversations by carrying referral context into future interactions. When a patient calls or texts later, Assort's inbound AI can pick up where the referral conversation left off and handle multiple needs in the same interaction, from scheduling and payments to medication refills and other care needs, without requiring the patient to start over.

Inbound referrals reach medical practices and health systems through the EHR, faxes, scanned PDFs, or phone calls from a referring office. Without a single system to process and track them, they can remain untouched for days while staff review documents, update patient records, and conduct outreach manually. Patients wait for calls that never come, while referring providers often receive no confirmation that their patient was scheduled or seen. As those delays stretch on, patients may seek care elsewhere, specialists lose appointment volume, and practices often never see the revenue they missed.

Referrals that once sat untouched for days can now be processed within the hour they arrive. The AI agent extracts and structures information from each referral, applies the organization's eligibility and specialty-specific criteria, and identifies missing information. Eligible patients receive an outbound call from Assort's voice AI, which confirms details, resolves gaps, and books the appointment in the same conversation. Patient Journey Memory carries the referral context into every interaction, so the AI agent does not have to start over if a patient responds days later or switches from voice to text. Cases that require clinical judgment or manual review are routed to staff with the relevant information attached.

Referrals is powered by Synapse, Assort's proprietary model built on specialty-specific patient interactions, care protocols, and decision pathways. That foundation allows the agent to apply the terminology, scheduling rules, and acceptance criteria required in referral-heavy specialties such as orthopedics, ENT, and gastroenterology. As a result, patients are matched with providers who can treat their specific condition, not simply the next available appointment.

By structuring referral data across inconsistent documents and sources, Assort also gives organizations a clearer view of where referrals originate, which relationships drive patient volume, and where referrals are being lost. That turns referral management from a back-office workflow into a tool for protecting growth and strengthening the provider relationships that sustain specialty practices.

"Before Assort, our referral team was overwhelmed by the volume of incoming referrals. Every referral required multiple manual steps—creating or updating patient charts, verifying insurance information, and reaching out to the patient," said Jensine Joseph, Call Center Manager at the Center for Sports Medicine & Orthopaedics. "With roughly 75 referrals coming in each day, it could take three or four business days before a patient received their first outreach. Follow-up attempts sometimes didn't happen for a week or more. Today, Assort automatically processes referrals, verifies key information, and proactively reaches out to patients within hours of receiving the referral. That speed has made a tremendous difference. Patients hear from us before they start looking for other options, and we're now automating about 90% of referrals end-to-end and seeing a 77% conversion rate."

Assort Referrals enables healthcare organizations to:

• Get more qualified patients to the right provider: Ingest referrals from EHR feeds, e-fax, and manual uploads; convert unstructured documents into usable referral data; and apply specialty-specific business rules, chief-complaint criteria, payer requirements, and provider qualifications, including to a physician assistant when needed.
• Reach patients faster and convert more referrals into appointments: Once a referral is processed, automatically launch multi-step outreach by voice, text, or email, resolving missing information directly with the patient, and book the appointment directly in the EHR. Patient Journey Memory carries the patient's referral context into each interaction, so the agent can pick up where the conversation left off if the patient responds later or switches channels.
• Give staff back time by escalating only the referrals that need them: Route referrals according to specialty and organizational rules, while escalating only cases that require clinical judgment or manual review, with the relevant source information attached so staff can focus on the cases that require intervention.
• Reduce referral leakage and protect relationships that drive patient volume: Track conversion, payer mix, sources, and provider distribution, while automatically updating referring providers when a referral is received, scheduled, or determined to be ineligible.

"Healthcare organizations do not need another inbox or dashboard that asks their staff to manage the same work in a different place," said Jeffery Liu, Founder and Co-CEO of Assort Health. "Assort's Referrals agent does the work itself: it reads the referral, applies the practice's rules and carries the patient into a scheduling conversation. That helps organizations convert more referral demand into scheduled care, protect a critical source of patient volume, and allow staff to focus on the cases that truly require their attention."

"A fax getting read isn't the same as a patient getting care," said Jon Wang, Founder and Co-CEO of Assort Health. "A stalled referral rarely announces itself. The patient just doesn't show, and the practice never learns why. Most tools read a fax, drop it in a queue, and call that referral management. Our agent tracks every referral, follows up automatically, and flags staff the moment one stalls. We don't count a referral done until the patient is actually sitting with the specialist."

This launch builds on a year of product and company expansion, including the introduction of Activate for proactive patient outreach and the company's expansion into health systems. Assort also announced a $120 million Series C financing and appointed several strategic leaders, including Dr. Sunny Eappen as the company's first Chief Medical Officer. As healthcare organizations consolidate around unified AI platforms rather than point solutions, Assort continues to expand its capabilities to support the entire patient journey.

See Assort Referrals in action. Join Assort Health on September 22 for a live webinar featuring the Center for Sports Medicine & Orthopaedics (CSMO) and Marie D'Aiuto, Patient Access Consultant at Assort Health, to hear how CSMO transformed its referral workflow by automating referral processing, reaching patients faster, improving referral-to-appointment conversion, and freeing staff to focus on higher-value patient care. Register at: https://www.assorthealth.com/webinar/automate-referral-workflows 

For more information, visit assorthealth.com.

About Assort Health
Assort Health is the most widely used 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 225 million specialty patient interactions and a model that updates in real time to handle the complexity of healthcare that general-purpose AI can't. That foundation now powers patient access across multi-site practices, multi-specialty groups, and health systems. Customers see results like a 5% lift in appointment volume, a 115% increase in labor capacity, up to $4.3 million per 100 providers in new revenue capture, 97% resolution rates, and 79% referral-to-appointment conversion rate. 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.

Media Contact: Kara Spak, 120/80 MKTG, [email protected]

SOURCE Assort Health