Phone calls to insurers are the most automatable hour in healthcare admin
Physicians report about 13 hours a week on prior authorization, and much of the surrounding work still happens on hold. Voice agents are finally good enough to take those calls.
Ask anyone who works in a revenue-cycle team where the day goes, and the answer usually includes the word "hold".
Eligibility checks, prior authorization status, claim follow-ups: a large share of this work still happens over the phone, with a person navigating an insurer's phone menu, waiting, reading out identifiers and writing down a reference number. It is structured, repetitive and slow. In other words, it is a good job for an agent.
The scale of the problem
The AMA's latest prior authorization survey, reported by AJMC, found physicians complete an average of 39 prior authorizations per week, taking about 13 hours. 93% say prior authorization delays care. That is the physician view; the administrative staff behind those numbers carry much of the calling.
Policy is moving too. In June, HHS and CMS announced an industry pledge by insurers covering plans that serve nearly eight in ten Americans: standardize electronic prior authorization, reduce the services that require it, and move to real-time approvals for most requests by 2027. Welcome, but 2027 is a long time on hold.
The market has noticed
Voice agents built for exactly these calls are attracting serious money. SuperDial, which automates outbound calls from providers to insurers, raised a $15M Series A in June and reports handling tens of thousands of calls each week.
What a good voice agent for this work looks like
From our own work on calls like these, the agent itself is the smaller part. What matters:
- Phone-tree navigation that does not guess. Menus change. The agent must recognise where it is, and stop if it does not.
- Structured outcomes. The deliverable is not a transcript; it is a status, a reference number and a next date, written back to your system.
- Every call reviewed. An evaluator model scores each call against a checklist, and low scores go to a person.
- Compliance by design. Covered vendors only, encrypted calling, and no sensitive data in identifiers, logs or developer tooling.
Done this way, staff stop sitting on hold and start working the exceptions, which is where their judgment is actually needed.
Sources
- AMA Survey Highlights Growing Burden of Prior Authorization on Physicians, Patients, AJMC, February 24, 2025.
- HHS Secretary Kennedy, CMS Administrator Oz Secure Industry Pledge to Fix Broken Prior Authorization System, CMS, June 23, 2025.
- SuperDial Raises $15M to Automate Healthcare's Most Costly Pain Point: Administrative Phone Calls, Unite.AI, June 24, 2025.