How technology can inject humanity into the billing process
Artificial intelligence, particularly agentic AI, is making the most opaque piece of healthcare much more human.
It wasn’t all that long ago that you’d head to Google if you needed help with a recipe, a home repair or even your kid’s science project. Today, we’re much more likely to ask ChatGPT or Claude – or rely on whatever Gemini summarizes for us. The exchange is much more dynamic, and the answers are far more personalized.
As consumers, we’ve entered the age of truly instantaneous knowledge. We now expect any question we have, no matter how profound or trivial, to be answered clearly, instantly and in plain language. This shift isn’t just changing how we find information. It’s transforming how we live, work and interact with everything around us.
It’s only natural that those same expectations should find their way into healthcare, especially in areas that have long been frustrating, opaque and impersonal. That particularly sounds like healthcare billing.
Wading through the billing experience
Think of your most recent healthcare billing experience, and it’s likely to surface feelings of confusion, frustration and anxiety. A cryptic bill might have arrived in your mailbox months after a visit that you’ve already forgot about. It didn’t say much, and the dollar amounts felt arbitrary. There was a number to call, but you didn’t call it because you just got home from work, and dinner was top of mind. By the time you were ready to make the call, the doctor’s office was closed. So you set the bill aside with a mental note to follow up during business hours, bracing yourself for long hold times and spending, at minimum, an hour on the phone that may or may not end with a satisfactory resolution.
This is a typical expectation for healthcare consumers. It’s why 50 percent, according to a recent survey, have considered switching physicians over a billing issue. The whole exchange feels more like a customer service failure than a satisfying healthcare experience.
I’ve seen that failure firsthand. In the early years after founding Inbox Health in 2014, we didn’t have a support team, so for the first four years, I personally answered every patient call. I spoke with people who were confused, frustrated and often just trying to make sense of a bill they didn’t understand. We wanted to help every person fully, to walk them through the process and get them the clarity they deserved, but there simply wasn’t enough time. In a support environment, even with the best intentions, you’re always racing the clock. The system wasn’t built to give patients the time or attention they really need.
That’s how success in every call center is measured, even in healthcare, arguably the most human industry. It’s all about time to resolution, calls-per-agent and deflection rates. These are systems optimized for volume, not human conversation. As a result, the exchanges can often feel like rote transactions.
This is the paradox. Today’s billing systems are operated by people, but the experience of dealing with them is far from human.
Agentic AI’s potential impact
Agentic AI is changing that because it operates on completely different measures. An AI agent doesn’t have quotas to hit or limited hours of operation. It doesn’t rush to get off the phone or put you on hold or transfer you five times. It just listens and responds with the information it has access to, immediately, and at any time. And most importantly, it makes the experience personal.
In the healthcare space, we’re starting to see AI do what provider billing teams have been wanting to do for a long, long time – be as accessible as possible for every patient. That might mean helping them understand the confusing numbers on their bill, checking their insurance coverage or enrolling them in a payment plan that works for them. These are small but meaningful actions, and they’re often the pain points where the patient billing experience breaks down today.
When your family doctor has an agentic-enabled billing system, you can text a billing question after dinner and get a clear answer within seconds. You can speak to a voice agent on the phone and get responses in language that makes sense to you. You can get a step-by-step walkthrough of your bill, with relevant context based on the visit for which you’re being billed. No waiting on hold, no templated mail notice.
It’s the same helpful, understandable exchange you’d have if you asked your favorite chatbot what to do about your kitchen remodel.
Excitement over AI’s role
Healthcare, like every other industry, is brimming with excitement over the possibilities of agentic AI. Much of that excitement is over clinical applications like diagnosis, imaging and drug discovery. Simpler as it may be, the patient financial experience is where millions of people feel the pain of the system most acutely. It’s where trust is either built or broken – and it’s where AI, when designed and deployed responsibly, can deliver immediate value for both patients and front office staff.
In this era of interactive knowledge and dynamic experiences, it’s no longer enough for healthcare providers to mail a bill and hope it gets paid in time. Patients expect and deserve something far more human. It just so happens that what they’ll be getting is powered by AI.
Blake Walker is the founder and CEO of Inbox Health.