How Preferred Dermatology Scaled to 54% More Appointments Without Adding Staff

About Preferred Dermatology

Preferred Dermatology is a multi-location ModMed dermatology practice in North Texas, serving patients across medical dermatology, cosmetic dermatology, and skincare services. With high patient demand and a front desk team managing both inbound and outbound workflows on top of the ModMed EHR, the practice needed to scale patient access without scaling headcount.

Challenges Managing High Call Volume at a Multi-Location Dermatology Practice

On any given Monday, Preferred Dermatology's front desk could see 600+ inbound patient calls land in the queue. With agents juggling appointment scheduling, confirmations, insurance eligibility checks, and new patient intake simultaneously, calls inevitably went unanswered. Patients hung up, appointments slipped, and the backlog rolled into the next day. 

Insurance complexity made matters worse. Preferred Dermatology's HMO patient base requires referral verification before any appointment can be confirmed, and new HMO authorization requirements that took effect in May 2026 raised the cost of any verification gap. Every miss meant a cancellation and rework downstream. The team needed a smarter way to route and handle inbound patient calls without overwhelming their call center staff.

Beyond raw volume, the practice was likely leaving appointments on the table: patient demand existed but calls went unanswered, and there was no way to know how much revenue was walking out the door.

The Solution: AI-Powered Patient Access for a ModMed Practice with HMO Complexity

Preferred Dermatology deployed Prosper AI’s voice agent as the first point of contact for every inbound patient call, handling the full spectrum of routine scheduling work and routing complex calls to front-desk staff.

How it works:

• AI handles routine scheduling end-to-end: new appointments, confirmations, reschedules, cancellations, and general inquiries, are booked directly into ModMed without staff involvement
• Complex calls are routed: new patients, HMO patients, and referral-required visits transfer to a live agent
• HMO vs. PPO logic is enforced automatically: PPO patients are booked directly; HMO patients are transferred for referral verification
• Multilingual scheduling expands patient access without bilingual staffing requirements 
• Same-day and next-day openings are filled proactively from cancellations and gaps that staff typically overlook
• 24/7 coverage captures appointment requests outside business hours with no added headcount
• Outbound confirmation agent proactively confirms upcoming appointments to reduce no-shows
• Eliminates call abandonment by instantly scaling during peak volumes
• Captures previously missed demand: Prosper AI absorbs call volume that previously went unanswered, converting patients who would have hung up into booked appointments

Implementation at a ModMed Dermatology Practice

Prosper AI's team worked closely with Preferred Dermatology's operations team to configure scheduling rules, SOP triggers, and routing logic specific to a dermatology practice with a mixed HMO/PPO patient base.

• Prosper AI mapped granular scheduling rules across every appointment type and ran quality checks to validate AI performance before go-live
• Routing logic was built to distinguish PPO patients from HMO patients 
• Pre-transfer messaging sets patient expectations on wait time (up to 3 minutes), reducing abandoned transfers
• An outbound appointment confirmation agent was deployed in parallel to reduce no-shows
• Weekly performance reviews keep accuracy and routing logic tuned as call patterns evolve

"Their professionalism and response far exceed any experience I've had. The service is working great — and I would stand behind that all day long, on both the growth side and on the expense side."

‍- John Macke

Impact

Prosper AI didn't just make Preferred Dermatology's front desk more efficient; it unlocked growth the practice couldn't previously capture. Prosper AI has enabled the call center to book 54.5% more appointments since go-live with Prosper AI now driving 35% of all bookings. The call center now operates with 47% spare capacity, and has sustained performance at 97% patient sentiment through normal attrition without adding headcount."

"We're handling inbound and outbound — scheduling, confirmations, eligibility, new patients — all at once. The volume just keeps growing. Managing it without Prosper would be very difficult."

— Kim Coatney, Patient Access Director, Preferred Dermatology

What's Next for Preferred Dermatology and Prosper AI

Preferred Dermatology's deployment illustrates how Prosper AI is designed to grow inside a practice: starting at the front of the patient journey with inbound scheduling, and extending across every touchpoint — confirmations, eligibility, new patient intake, and billing — so the same platform handles what previously required multiple tools and multiple staff. 

With inbound scheduling stabilized and the front-desk team operating at higher leverage, Preferred Dermatology is expanding its use of Prosper AI across additional patient access workflows. The roadmap reflects how Prosper AI's platform is designed to grow inside a single ModMed practice, starting with one battle-tested use case and extending across the full patient journey as the operations team identifies the next bottleneck.

Active focus areas include:

• New patient intake flows. Extending Prosper AI's voice agent to handle new patient calls end-to-end, including intake questions, insurance setup, and appointment booking, for workflows currently transferred to live agents
• Outbound patient billing agent. Deploying Prosper AI's outbound billing capability to follow up on patient balances, collect payments over the phone, and reduce A/R workload on the front-desk team.
• HMO routing logic refinements. Continuing to tune routing under the new May 2026 HMO authorization requirements that took effect mid-year
• Provider-level booking analytics. Surfacing provider-by-provider booking visibility on top of the ModMed scheduling system, so the operations team can identify capacity gaps and rebalance scheduling across the multi-location practice.