Cardiology · Tampa, FL · athenahealth
200 calls a day, one admin —
and 5 hours handed back every day.
Tampa Heart & Vascular ran a 200-call-a-day front desk on a single administrator. Caesar Health's AI Secretary now answers the phones, books patients, and files prescription refills straight into Athena — saving 5+ hours a day and the cost of two new hires.
“Right now I stand as I cannot live without AI.”
- 5+ hrs
- saved every day
- 2
- new hires avoided
- ~50%
- less refill workload
- ~200
- daily calls handled
The Challenge
One person. Two hundred calls. Endless phone tag.
Tampa Heart & Vascular is a three-physician invasive cardiology practice in the heart of Tampa, established in 1980. Its entire administrative operation — front desk, referral scheduling, payroll, insurance — ran through one person.
Roughly 200 calls came in each day. Most went to voicemail. By the time callbacks went out, patients were at work or unreachable — a constant game of phone tag. And with a large Spanish-speaking, mostly elderly population, a generic “press 1” menu was never an option.
“It was very overwhelming… mostly of them went to voicemail… it was like chasing my tail.”
- Practice
- Tampa Heart & Vascular — invasive cardiology, est. 1980
- Size
- 3 physicians, single location, Tampa, FL
- Admin team
- One office manager, front-to-back office
- EMR
- athenahealth (Athena)
- Call volume
- ~200 inbound calls/day
- Patients
- Largely elderly; many Spanish-speaking
The Solution
An AI Secretary modeled to Tampa Heart — live since November 2025.
Not an off-the-shelf phone tree. Caesar Health built and tuned an AI Secretary to behave like a member of the team and wired it directly into Athena.
- Answers the bulk of the ~200 daily calls — nothing dropped to voicemail
- Schedules new and established patients automatically
- Recognizes HMO patients needing PCP authorization and books two weeks out
- Handles prescription refills end to end, logged into the Athena chart and routed to the medical assistant
- Speaks natural English and Spanish — iterated until the Spanish sounded human
- Custom-tuned on request by the Caesar Health team
- Results land directly in Athena — no daily dashboard babysitting
- Adopted gradually, on the office manager's terms, widening toward 8-to-5
“What I love the most is that you guys have put AI to Tampa Heart. It's modeled to Tampa Heart… It's like talking to an employee at Tampa Heart.”
The Results
Five hours a day, back where they belong: patient care.
- 5+ hours saved every day, reinvested into patient care
- Two avoided hires — “I would have had to hire not one, I would hire two”
- ~50% less prescription-refill work, auto-filed in Athena
- New-patient scheduling automated, HMO authorization handled
- The afternoon phone storm is gone — “they hardly ring because AI is doing the job”
- Bilingual coverage with no ongoing issues
- Word of mouth — a colleague heard the AI and asked for the number
“It's saving at least five hours of work a day… and right now I stand as I cannot live without AI.”
“Ben, you have been superb… before I finish the email, you're already calling me. The support I get is superb.”
In her words
“I cannot think of not having AI in my life — as an administrator at a busy cardiologist's office.”
What's next
From inbound phones to the rest of the admin burden.
The partnership is expanding: outbound calling to schedule a backlog of 200–300 hospital-referred patients (another hire avoided), a cardiology-specific scribe template, and a voicemail feature — all in development.
“That's my next challenge — calling the patients to schedule appointments. We're talking about 200, maybe 300 patients.”
See what an AI Secretary would handle at your clinic.
Book a demo and we'll map your call volume, EMR, and patient mix — just like we did for Tampa Heart.