Yale New Haven Health ensures stress-free care with Health CX, Integrated with Epic

Reimagining patient access as the front door to care

For Yale New Haven Health (YNHH), patient access is the front door to care — shaping how quickly patients get answers, how confidently employees can guide them and how effectively the organization can grow while maintaining trust.

As Connecticut’s leading healthcare system, YNHH includes seven hospitals, more than 1,500 physicians and a broad network of specialty practices. Across the organization, patient access is a strategic priority directly tied to growth; patient satisfaction; and the mission of delivering compassionate, coordinated care.

Improving access is not just about efficiency, it is about supporting people during some of the most important and often stressful moments of their lives. Every patient interaction begins with a need for help, guidance, and reassurance.

Patients expect a simple, seamless experience when accessing care. They shouldn’t have to repeat information, navigate complex systems, or spend unnecessary time on hold to schedule an appointment or resolve concerns.

“Patients want someone to guide them to the right care with the least effort possible,” said Bryan Cofrin, Chief Technology Officer for YNHH. “They don’t want to worry about insurance or claims or retelling their story to multiple people.”

Those expectations have become the guiding principle behind the organization’s patient access strategy. The goal at YNHH is to make it easy for patients to connect with the right care by removing barriers and reducing uncertainty, so they can focus on what matters most: getting the care they need, feeling better and moving forward with confidence.

Meeting that goal required YNHH to rethink how patients connect with the organization and how employees support those interactions behind the scenes.

Removing obstacles to innovation and agility

YNHH had already begun centralizing patient access operations, but its technology environment was making it difficult to evolve quickly. The organization relied on multiple disconnected customer experience (CX) systems that required extensive customization and IT intervention for routine changes.

Reporting was limited, routing adjustments were cumbersome and even simple changes often required lengthy ticketing processes and coding-level work across multiple systems and environments.

“Every change within the previous system was coding-level work dependent on IT teams,” said Cofrin.

The limitations of legacy systems impacted both patient and employee experiences, making it difficult to respond effectively to changing needs. Supervisors lacked real-time operational visibility, managers had limited ability to adapt to fluctuations in demand, and agents were required to navigate multiple systems while assisting patients.

By modernizing technology and workflows, organizations can shift from designing processes around system constraints to leveraging technology that enables more efficient, flexible, and patient-centered operations.

“As an organization, we deemed access a top strategic priority,” said Cofrin. “We knew our current system couldn’t evolve fast enough to accomplish what we needed with the resources we had.”

Building a unified, cloud-based experience platform

 When evaluating new solutions, YNHH wanted a modern cloud platform that could unify experiences across patients, agents and care teams while integrating seamlessly with Epic, the electronic health record system its teams rely on every day. The Genesys Cloud™ platform, powered by Amazon Web Services, quickly emerged as the leading choice.

“Genesys has always been a reliable top contender in the industry,” said Cofrin. “We did our research, talked to other organizations, saw the demos and immediately recognized the potential. Ultimately, being cloud-hosted was a big driver in why we chose Genesys. It aligned perfectly with our strategic direction.”

The implementation began with an aggressive pilot rollout completed with implementation partner Amplix. What would normally take months was condensed into a significantly shorter timeline.

“When you tell a partner, ‘It usually takes 16 weeks’ and you want to do it in eight, and they don’t run away — that’s a good sign,” said Cofrin. “Then they got it done in seven.”

The initial deployment consolidated six complex customer experience (CX) systems into a single unified platform, dramatically reducing technical debt and simplifying operations. It also created a more agile foundation for innovation.

With implementation partner Amplix, YNHH also focused on long-term operational readiness, assessing workflows, routing logic and patient journeys before activating new capabilities.

Rather than simply enabling new features and hoping for the best, the focus was on a thoughtful and strategic implementation approach. The goal was to ensure that each capability was introduced in a way that delivered immediate value, aligned with operational needs, and supported meaningful improvements for both patients and staff.

Creating connected journeys from first contact to the right care team

With Genesys Cloud, YNHH began creating a more connected patient access experience, one where patients could be identified earlier, routed more intelligently, and connected to the right team with less repetition.

The integration between Health CX and Epic quickly became one of the organization’s most valuable capabilities. It saves YNHH between 15 and 30 seconds on every call — creating substantial operational capacity across approximately 15,000 daily interactions without adding headcount.

And now context from the patient’s medical record can follow the individual seamlessly throughout the care journey — from the automated phone system to a live representative and ultimately to the appropriate care team. This continuity reduces the need for patients to repeat information, streamline interactions, and creates a more connected and personalized experience from the very first point of contact.

With authentication completed early in the process, transitions between channels and care teams are smoother, enabling faster, more efficient service and allowing staff to focus on addressing patient needs.

YNHH also began redesigning call flows to better match patient intent and improve first-contact resolution. Patients returning calls from nurses, pharmacy teams or physician offices can now bypass the broader contact center and route directly back to the originating department.

Previously, customers were often required to navigate multiple transfers before reaching the appropriate resource, creating unnecessary delays and frustration. Enhanced routing capabilities now direct individuals more efficiently based on location, needs, and staff expertise, connecting them with the right team from the start. This streamlined approach reduces handoffs, improves operational efficiency, and delivers faster, more seamless customer experience.

Managers now have the tools and flexibility to make operational adjustments in real time without relying on technical support. They can dynamically reassign agents, monitor interactions, and respond immediately to changing demand and service needs. This increased autonomy improves agility, enhances workforce management, and enables teams to deliver more responsive and efficient customer experience.

Reducing patient effort while scaling access

The organization quickly began realizing measurable improvements in both patient experience and operational performance.

YNHH reduced repeat calls from approximately 2.2 calls per patient to 1.1, a 50% improvement driven by better routing, reduced transfers and faster issue resolution. For patients, that means fewer unnecessary handoffs and less effort to get the help they need.

Monday morning call spikes — historically one of the organization’s most difficult operational challenges — also became far more manageable through improved IVR capabilities and operational flexibility.

The health system improved ease of contacting and ease of scheduling, even as contact volumes increased. Average speed of answer improved to under one minute across most programs, with the organization now targeting a best-in-class average of 45 seconds. That improvement is especially meaningful in healthcare, where faster access can reduce uncertainty during moments when patients may already be anxious or unwell.

YNHH has significantly enhanced its operational responsiveness, enabling supervisors and managers to identify issues, analyze interactions, and implement improvements in minutes rather than days. Investigation times also have been reduced dramatically, allowing teams to address challenges more quickly and effectively. Managers can now respond to changing demand in real time by adjusting staffing levels, accelerating service recovery efforts, and reducing abandonment rates, resulting in more resilient operation and a better experience for both patients and employees.

“The difference in data reporting and dashboard is like a completely different world,” said Cofrin. “Now we have real-time reporting, real-time analytics and the ability to drill directly into interactions.”

Together, these improvements are helping YNHH expand access capacity, reduce avoidable patient effort and support growth without adding unnecessary complexity or headcount.

Advancing AI where it can reduce friction and preserve trust

With patient access now unified on an AI-ready cloud platform, YNHH is positioned to expand automation and intelligence in ways that are practical, responsible and deeply human. The organization is working with Amplix and Genesys to identify where AI can remove administrative burden, guide employees in real time and simplify routine patient needs while keeping trust and empathy at the center of care.

Rather than rushing into patient-facing AI, YNHH is prioritizing targeted use cases that enhance employee effectiveness and streamline routine processes while preserving the human element of healthcare.

YNHH is already using AI-driven analysis to better understand why patients are calling, where friction exists in journeys and where automation opportunities could improve experiences. The organization also sees significant long-term opportunities in conversational AI, automated demographic validation and intelligent self-service for simpler workflows, such as appointment preparation or video visit assistance.

YNHH also expects that the use of quality management and sentiment analysis will allow it to evaluate interactions at scale, rather than being able to review only a handful of calls per month. This will strengthen coaching opportunities, improve consistency and help employees continuously develop their skills.

By connecting patient context, operational agility and human-centered service on Genesys Cloud, YNHH is building the foundation for a new model of patient access, one where technology removes friction so care teams can focus on what matters most: helping patients feel guided, supported and understood.

To learn more about the solutions featured in this case study, visit www.genesys.com.