Most practices have the same 20 unsexy workflows that should be automated and aren’t. Below is the list, organized by department. Each entry has a one-line description, the trigger, and the key actions. Steal whichever ones map to your practice and build them in your platform of choice. Inside PatientCopilot they all live as templates in Agent Studio.
A note on scope: these are automations, not AI agents. Some involve an AI reasoning step (drafting a personalized message, classifying sentiment); most are simpler trigger-action chains. The point is operational, not technical.
Front Desk
1. New patient online booking → instant intake link. Trigger: New appointment booked online, patient is new to the practice. Actions: Send SMS + email with intake form link, calendar invite, parking/location info, what to bring. Reminder 24hrs before if intake not yet completed.
2. Same-day cancellation → rebook offer. Trigger: Appointment cancelled within 24 hours of original time. Actions: AI drafts personalized SMS offering 2 alternative slots based on patient preferences, sends with one-tap reschedule link 60 seconds after cancellation. Walked through in detail in How to Build Your First AI Agent.
3. No-show → recovery sequence. Trigger: Patient marked no-show. Actions: SMS at 1hr after missed start (“we missed you, here are 3 options to rebook”). If no response in 48hrs, automated voice call. If still no response in 7 days, route to front desk for personal outreach.
4. After-hours call → AI voice triage. Trigger: Inbound call outside business hours. Actions: AI voice agent answers, identifies request type (book / reschedule / question / urgent). Routine requests handled inline. Urgent routed to on-call protocol. Voicemail-style summary emailed to front desk for morning review.
5. New patient welcome series. Trigger: First-visit completed. Actions: Day 1 — thank-you SMS with care instructions. Day 3 — check-in (“how are you feeling?”). Day 7 — review request (if positive Day-3 response). Day 14 — educational content relevant to chief complaint.
Clinical Ops
6. Pre-visit prep checklist for provider. Trigger: 24 hours before appointment. Actions: Pull intake responses, last-visit notes, any flagged items. Send digest to provider’s morning huddle email or Slack.
7. Lab/imaging result follow-up. Trigger: External lab result received via integration or manual entry. Actions: Notify provider for review. Once provider clears, auto-draft patient-friendly summary message (provider approves before sending). Log communication in chart.
8. Care plan adherence check-in. Trigger: Patient on a multi-visit treatment plan, X days since last visit with appointments remaining on plan. Actions: SMS check-in: “How are you progressing? Ready to book your next visit?” with one-tap booking. Route replies to Conversation AI.
9. Internal referral handoff. Trigger: Provider tags chart with “refer to [other provider type] internal.” Actions: Create task for front desk with referral context, send patient SMS introducing the referral, offer to book.
Marketing
10. Lead from website form → speed-to-lead response. Trigger: New form submission. Actions: SMS to patient within 60 seconds acknowledging receipt with next-step CTA (book online, reply to schedule, etc.). Email to front desk. AI Conversation AI takes over the SMS thread for back-and-forth.
11. Google Business Profile question → AI response. Trigger: New question posted to GBP. Actions: AI drafts response based on KB. Suggestive mode → front desk approves before posting. Auto-Pilot mode → posts directly for low-risk question types.
12. Monthly newsletter draft. Trigger: First Monday of each month. Actions: AI pulls top 3 most-booked services from last month, drafts newsletter section about each, includes practice updates, hands to owner for approval and send.
13. Lapsed lead re-engagement. Trigger: Lead that submitted form 30+ days ago and never booked. Actions: AI-personalized SMS referencing their original interest area, offering a low-friction next step. One-touch follow-up at 60 days; remove from list at 90.
Reviews & Reputation
14. Post-visit review request. Trigger: Visit marked complete + payment processed. Actions: SMS 2 hours later with direct link to Google review page. If patient previously left a positive private survey response, skip the survey step.
15. Review received → AI response. Trigger: New Google/Yelp/Facebook review. Actions: AI drafts response matching practice voice, references specific feedback (no PHI). Suggestive or Auto-Pilot based on rating threshold. Full framework in Suggestive vs Auto-Pilot Review Responses.
16. Negative review alert → owner notification. Trigger: New review at 3 stars or below. Actions: Immediate SMS to practice owner with review text and patient context. Create task in CRM for offline follow-up. Do not auto-respond.
Recall
17. 90-day lapsed patient recall. Trigger: Patient hits 90 days since last visit, no future appointment booked. Actions: AI-personalized SMS referencing last chief complaint, offering relevant follow-up service. If no response in 7 days, second touch with different angle. If no response in 14 days, route to call list.
18. Annual checkup recall. Trigger: Anniversary of last annual exam. Actions: SMS with one-tap booking link. Email with same. Voice call from AI agent if no booking in 21 days.
19. Birthday touchpoint. Trigger: Patient’s birthday. Actions: Personalized SMS or email. Optional offer (a small credit, a free add-on at next visit). Do not over-engineer this — it is a relationship signal, not a sales channel.
Billing
20. Unpaid balance reminder sequence. Trigger: Balance outstanding 14 days post-visit. Actions: Day 14 — friendly SMS with pay link. Day 30 — email statement. Day 45 — voice call or human follow-up. All copy non-confrontational; payment plan link in every message.
Build your own
The 20 above are starting points, not a complete list. Every practice has 5-10 workflows specific to their operations that no template will cover — and those are usually the highest-ROI ones, because they automate work no off-the-shelf vendor knows you do.
The pattern is always the same: identify a repeating manual task → write down the trigger → write down the actions in order → identify where AI adds value (drafting, classification, reasoning) vs where deterministic logic is enough → build it, test it, watch it run for a week, refine.
Get started with Workflow Automation for Healthcare, browse the full Healthcare AI Templates library, or build your own from a blank canvas in Agent Studio.