How Northern Illinois Foot & Ankle Avoided $350K in Hiring Costs with Prosper AI
"I highly highly highly recommend Prosper AI. Everything is going right on plan. They’ve taken every step to make sure that we are happy. They put in the hard work and detail to make this successful.”
— Tammy Timm, COO, Northern Illinois Foot & Ankle
Customer Profile
Customer:
Northern Illinois Foot & Ankle
Type:
Podiatry Group
Locations:
EHR:
ModMed
Use Cases:
Appointment Scheduling (New & Existing Patients), Switchboard, After-Hours Coverage, Waitlist Management
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About Northern Illinois Foot & Ankle
Northern Illinois Foot & Ankle is a multi-location podiatry group serving patients across the Chicago metro area.
With a multi-location call center fielding the full volume of patient requests, including scheduling for new and existing patients, insurance inquiries, after-hours calls, and surgical referrals, the practice needed a scalable solution that could maintain consistent, high-quality patient interactions without continuing to grow its administrative headcount.
The Challenge: Rising Costs, Inconsistent Service, and a Call Center That Couldn't Keep Pace
Northern Illinois Foot & Ankle faced five compounding operational pressures:
- Cost squeeze: Staffing costs rising year-over-year while insurance reimbursements declined, squeezing margins with no relief in sight
- Service inconsistency: Staff turnover and bad days created uneven patient experiences across locations; a call that went poorly could mean a lost patient
- Competitive pressure: Patients won't wait more than two minutes on hold, and competitors with faster response times were a real risk
- Insurance complexity: Medicare Advantage plans were frequently misidentified, requiring manual network checks and creating errors that rippled into billing
- Offshore rejection: A prior attempt to supplement capacity with offshore agents failed because patients consistently refused to engage
The result: a 9-FTE call center that was expensive to run, difficult to staff, and still couldn't guarantee a consistent patient experience.
The Solution
Northern Illinois Foot & Ankle deployed Prosper AI to relieve its overburdened call center staff, operating as a 24/7 intelligent switchboard, handling inbound scheduling calls for both new and existing patients, and managing after-hours call coverage.
How it works:
- AI answers all inbound calls and schedules directly into Northern Illinois's EHR without staff involvement
- New patient intake: collect full registration details and complete insurance eligibility checks for first-time callers
- Provider-specific scheduling rules are enforced consistently — the right appointment type, the right provider, every time
- Intelligent switchboard routing connects callers directly to the correct department extension in a single transfer
- After-hours coverage routes calls to voicemail, an on-call line, or a next-day callback task depending on urgency, with no after-hours staff required
Implementation: From Pilot to 24/7 Coverage in 20 Days
Northern Illinois Foot & Ankle's COO Tammy Timm led the rollout with a cross-functional team that included representatives from every affected department: scheduling, billing, and insurance verification.
The Prosper AI team held daily 15-minute calls throughout the ramp to review calls in real time, adjust workflows, and iterate as the team learned. When Northern Illinois wanted to change routing decisions mid-rollout, the team adapted without rebuilding. When Prosper AI identified that a share of transferred calls were going unanswered, NIFA updated their phone system settings the same day.
"We held daily 15-minute calls with Prosper to refine every detail. This allowed us to adjust things as we went, even when we changed our minds about certain workflows. Any struggles were minimal because of the daily tweaking during the rollout."
Tammy Timm, COO, Northern Illinois Foot & Ankle
Implementation timeline:
- Week 1–4: SOP adaptation and internal testing
- Week 5 (Mar 19): 2 hours/day live with Prosper monitoring
- Week 6 (Mar 26): 8 hours/day live
- Week 7 (Apr 8): 24/7 fully deployed
- Week 9+ (May 1): Full ramp
Impact
What's Next: The AI solution for the entire patient journey
With Prosper AI, the full patient journey runs on one platform. Given the success of the program, Northern Illinois Foot & Ankle is already expanding into new workflows:
- Benefits verification: outbound verification calls to payors, allowing patients to update plan details without reaching a staff member
- Billing agent: launching in June 2026, starting with inbound billing calls with outbound to follow
"If I were starting over, I wouldn't change anything. Support has been excellent — it is refreshing to work with a company that doesn't ignore your needs after the contract is signed."
Tammy Timm, COO, Northern Illinois Foot & Ankle
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“Prosper has redefined how our call center runs by simplifying intricate processes, shortening patient wait times and boosting efficiency, all the while sounding very human. They have automated 50% of our scheduling calls. The team’s ability to deliver at speed, and customize to our needs has been incredible."
Nathan Woelfel
COO at Northeast OBGYN
"We’ve been impressed by how consistently Prosper’s AI Agents verify pharmacy and medical benefits for drugs. They navigate payor decision trees, speak with payors, and extract the information for us, all automatically with AI. Quality assurance is paramount for us, and Prosper’s accuracy has been outperforming humans in side-by-side reviews.”
Lucine King
President
"We evaluated multiple voice AI platforms, and Prosper AI was by far the strongest. Their speed of execution and ability to support multiple agent types across payor and patient workflows helped drive a 60%+ boost in Medicaid enrollment for our health system partners."
Michael Patrick
VP of Healthcare Provider Solutions
“We evaluated seven different vendors through an extensive RFP and live demonstration process and concluded that Prosper had the most comprehensive platform. The difference wasn't simply scheduling. Prosper AI was the only platform capable of handling insurance verification, patient financial responsibility, and the broader workflows required to support the entire patient journey.”
Jonathan Banta
CEO of The 44 Group, Co-founder of The Executive Roundtable, a provider consortium of 600+ physicians
“Out of the gate, Prosper AI was handling more than 50% of our patient conversations end-to-end, including complex cases involving real-time benefits verification. Many organizations using other AI solutions remain stuck at 20–30% automation because those systems stop at scheduling.”
Noah England
COO of Piedmont Plastic Surgery & Dermatology
“We reviewed multiple AI platforms, and Prosper AI consistently delivered the strongest performance, now handling thousands of conversations per day across multiple clients on our platform. In repeated side-by-side evaluations, Prosper AI achieved the highest accuracy and completion rates.”
Sam Khashman
CEO of Imagine Software
"We’ve been impressed by how consistently Prosper’s AI Agents verify pharmacy and medical benefits for drugs. They navigate payor decision trees, speak with payors, and extract the information for us, all automatically with AI. Quality assurance is paramount for us, and Prosper’s accuracy has been outperforming humans in side-by-side reviews.”
Michael Patrick
VP of Healthcare Provider Solutions
Meet more of our customers
Discover how healthcare leaders use Prosper AI to transform patient communication and operations.
Nathan Woelfel, COO at Northeast OBGYN
Nathan Woelfel, COO at Northeast OBGYN
Nathan Woelfel, COO at Northeast OBGYN
