AI for Orthopedic Practices: Fixing Scheduling Bottlenecks, Referral Leakage, and Patient Access Friction

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Orthopedic groups today are dealing with more demand than ever before. Patient volumes keep rising, expectations are getting higher, and finding enough staff is becoming harder. But here's the thing: the real challenge isn't the clinical care itself. It's about access. Getting patients into the system quickly, scheduling them efficiently, processing referrals smoothly, and helping them move through imaging, consultations, and surgery without delays.

Most orthopedic access centers were never designed to cope with today's complexity. The result? Overwhelmed staff members, patients waiting longer than ever, falling through the cracks, and frustration all around that grows every day.

AI is now becoming the only scalable solution to streamline processes, reduce manual work, and manage patient journeys more consistently and accurately.

Below are the six access challenges orthopedic groups face today and how orthopedic-trained AI, like Comet, resolves them end to end.

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1. Patients Want Immediate Access, yet Access Centers Cannot Provide 24/7 Staff

The Challenge:

Patients want answers right away, not in days. They expect after-hours availability, self-scheduling options, and immediate answers on imaging needs or the next available surgeon. Yet, orthopedic practices cannot staff an access center 24/7, nor can they manually manage surges in calls, messages, and requests coming in via different channels.

The AI Solution:

Omnichannel AI agents give patients immediate responses through phone calls, web chat, and text messages. They schedule appointments, answer common orthopedic questions, complete insurance and eligibility checks, guide patients on imaging requirements, and re-engage patients who missed appointments. Regardless of the channel selected, patients enjoy exactly the same accurate and timely experience.

The Impact:

Shorter call wait times, more appointments booked online, and less pressure on your staff.

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2. Human Agents Are Overloaded With Information They Can't Process Fast Enough

The Challenge:

The access agents handle very complex orthopedic workflows each day. Every subspecialist has different rules, different prerequisites, and different imaging requirements. During the live call, agents have to look in the EHR, the scheduling system, and the guidelines internally while talking with the patient; this often results in mistakes, long call times, or scheduling patients inappropriately.

The AI Solution:

AI copilots support live agents in real time, providing suggested next best actions, real-time guidance on imaging or referral requirements, automated documentation and summaries, insurance verification, bidirectional EHR updates, and faster triage with correct subspecialty routing. This allows agents to act immediately rather than having to guess or search multiple systems for instant clarity on what to do next.

The Impact:

Shorter calls, fewer mistakes, more confident staff, and faster routing of the patient to the right specialist.

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3. Access Centers Operate Across Too Many Disconnected Systems

The Challenge:

Orthopedic agents jump between phone systems, EHRs, scheduling platforms, knowledge bases, insurance portals, and referral queues. Every click creates friction, and every system adds to mental strain. It's this kind of fragmentation that slows everything down and increases staff burnout.

The AI Solution:

A Unified Agent Interface brings everything together in one place. Agents can handle incoming calls, scheduling, patient verification, knowledge lookup, referral intake, and messaging, all from one intuitive desktop integrated into the EHR.

The Impact:

Faster staff training, fewer clicks per call, more precise scheduling, and higher productivity.

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4. Too many access workflows rely on manual steps that require automation.

The Challenge:

Appointment reminders, imaging instructions, pre-op prep, post-visit follow-ups, and no-show re-engagement are repetitive and time-consuming. Orthopedic practices often depend on their staff to handle these workflows manually, which can be very hard to scale with increasing demand.

The AI Solution:

Automation and pre-built workflows take care of repetitive tasks. AI automatically handles appointment reminders, pre-imaging instructions, post-procedure check-ins, waitlist management, referral tracking, and no-show outreach. Practices can handle more patients without adding to their team.

The Impact:

Greater throughput, fewer manual errors, and more predictable patient flow through the journey of care.

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5. Referral Leakage & Intake Bottlenecks Remain Top Revenue Risks

The Challenge:

Orthopedic referrals often arrive incomplete or scattered across different channels. In a manual process, staff gather missing information, verify insurance, and assign the right subspecialty. The process does not stop there; it takes days to schedule the patient. This leads to lost referrals and delayed care.

The AI Solution:

Referral and intake automation digitizes, organizes, and routes referrals instantly. AI can extract and categorize referral data, identify missing documentation, verify insurance, assign urgency levels, route to the right specialist or imaging location, and initiate scheduling right away.

The Impact:

Faster scheduling, less leakage, and higher conversion rates from referral to actual appointment.

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6. No clear visibility into access performance by leaders

The Challenge:

Orthopedic executives lack clear insights into scheduling conversion, referral conversion, abandonment rates, no-show trends, automation percentage, call handling times, cost per interaction, agent performance, and access bottlenecks. Without good visibility, it's impossible to scale or optimize operations.

The AI Solution:

Real-time analytics across every channel, agent group, and workflow are provided for the leaders through the ROI and performance dashboards. They simply make it easier to spot bottlenecks, measure the ROI on automations, track referral leakage, improve scheduling accuracy, and optimize staffing and capacity.

The Impact:

Better decision-making based on real data, improving outcomes while reducing costs.

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Comet Brings All These Capabilities Together for Orthopedic Practices

While most tools focus on just one part of the access journey, Comet unifies the whole workflow. Comet delivers omnichannel AI agents, real-time copilot support for human staff, a unified agent desktop, automated referral and scheduling workflows, end-to-end intake automation, and analytics for both ROI and operational performance. This means that with Comet, orthopedic practices get faster patient access, lower leakage, higher satisfaction, better utilization of imaging and surgical slots, reduced staff burnout, and scalable operations without increasing headcount. Accordingly, orthopedic access becomes predictable, rather than chaotic; proactive, rather than reactive; and intelligent, rather than manual. 

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The AI-Orchestrated Future of Orthopedic Access

As demand continues to rise and workforce strain gets worse, AI will become the core operating system for orthopedic access and scheduling. Practices that adopt AI now will set the standard for throughput, efficiency, and patient experience for the next decade. Comet gives orthopedic organizations much more than the ability to catch up: it enables them to lead.

Ready to Transform Your Orthopedic Access Center With AI?

Request a Comet demo today and see how AI can streamline scheduling, referrals, and patient access across every step of the MSK care journey. Request a Demo.

Also Read: How AI Copilots Give Time Back to Your Hospital Call Center Agents