How One Elation Practice Uses Talkie to Answer 100+ Patient Calls a Day – In English and Korean

Primary care clinics are under intense pressure to do more with less. Patients expect convenient, always-on access to their care team, while front desk staff juggle overflowing phone lines, schedule changes, and complex clinical workflows. For small independent practices, it can feel impossible to keep up.

At Family Medicine Clinic in Washington, Elation customer Dr. Vuthy Leng faced exactly this challenge. With a large and diverse patient panel — including about 40% Korean-speaking patients — and more than 100 inbound calls a day, his small team was stretched to the limit.

Today, that same clinic reliably answers every call, 24/7, in both English and Korean — without adding staff. The key: combining Elation’s clinical-first EHR with Talkie’s AI front desk assistant, deeply integrated into Elation’s platform.

The access challenge: high volume, limited staff, multilingual patients

Before implementing Talkie’s AI agent, the Family Medicine Clinic team was doing everything they could to keep up with demand. But like many independent primary care practices, they hit real operational limits.

Key challenges included:

• Simultaneous calls. Multiple patients calling at once meant long hold times, missed calls, and frustrating callbacks.

• Not enough staff. As a small practice, there simply weren’t enough people to manage high daily phone volume and deliver in-person care.

• Language access. Roughly 40% of the clinic’s patients speak Korean, and traditional phone trees or voicemail made it even harder to provide a seamless experience for them.

As Dr. Leng put it:

“Before using Talkie we had difficulty keeping up pace with multiple calls coming at the same time. I just don’t have enough staff to be able to answer the phone calls and serve all my patients appropriately.”

He needed a solution that could scale to his patients’ needs, support multiple languages, and plug directly into his existing Elation workflows — without sacrificing the high-touch, relationship-based care his patients value.

Meet “Rachel”: an AI front desk assistant that works inside Elation

To solve this, the clinic brought on “Rachel,” a multilingual AI front desk assistant from Talkie, and connected her directly to Elation through Talkie’s native integration.

From day one, Rachel was designed to act like a true member of the front office team:

• Handles 100+ calls per day. At peak, the clinic saw 3,200 calls per month — more than 118 calls per day — with Rachel helping to carry that load.

• Manages many calls at once. The AI can carry unlimited simultaneous conversations - at Dr. Leng’s practice that can be up to 10 or more - eliminating the bottlenecks that come with a single phone line and a small front desk team.

• Available 24/7. Patients can call any time — after hours, over lunch, or during busy clinic days — and still connect with the practice.

• Works in English and Korean. Rachel speaks both languages fluently, matching the clinic’s diverse patient population and removing language as a barrier to access.

Dr. Leng highlights multilingual support as one of the most important benefits:

“My favorite thing about Talkie is the ability to speak multiple different languages. We are a very diverse clinic. We love the fact that our Korean patient is able to call and is able to get Rachel to speak in Korean.”

Because Talkie is a native partner integrated with Elation, Rachel doesn’t just answer the phone — she documents and routes information directly in the EHR in ways that are actionable for the care team.

Deep Elation integration: from patient call to structured EHR data

Talkie’s Elation integration is what turns a patient conversation into meaningful, structured information clinicians and staff can actually use.

For practices like Family Medicine Clinic, that means:

• Creating and updating patient records in Elation. When a new patient calls, the AI collects demographics and key intake information and can create new charts in Elation in real time, so the team doesn’t need to re-enter data later.

• Scheduling, rescheduling, and cancelling appointments. Rachel can complete core scheduling workflows end to end, helping patients book or change visits without waiting on hold.

• Capturing structured messages for clinicians. When a patient needs to “leave a message for the doctor,” the AI gathers the details, produces a concise summary, and routes it as a message or case in Elation for timely follow-up.

• Supporting prescription refills. Rachel can collect the key information needed for Rx refill requests and push it into Elation, so clinicians can review and act quickly.

• Automating FAQs and after-hours coverage. Common questions — directions, hours, basic clinical FAQs — can be answered instantly, and patients calling after hours can still leave structured requests instead of a generic voicemail box.

As Talkie’s Elation integration overview emphasizes, this “from patient call to EHR summary” pipeline is core to the value:

“When a patient calls your practice, Talkie instantly documents the interaction in your EHR. The conversation is summarized and saved — no manual entry needed.”

This is what allows small practices like Dr. Leng’s to protect clinician time, reduce administrative overhead, and still have a complete picture of patient needs inside Elation.

Impact for Dr. Leng’s team: more access, less burnout

Since bringing Rachel on board in August 2025, Family Medicine Clinic has seen measurable improvements in both operations and patient experience:

1. Every call gets answered

With Talkie:

• The clinic can reliably handle ~100 calls per day, even at peak volume.

• The AI can manage an unlimited number of simultaneous conversations, preventing missed calls and long hold times.

In Dr. Leng’s words:

“For all of my staff to be able to handle 100 calls a day, it’s impossible. But with Talkie.ai — not a problem at all.”

2. True 24/7 patient access

Patients no longer have to time their calls to clinic hours. Instead, they get:

• 24/7 ability to schedule, reschedule, or cancel visits, leave a detailed message, or request a refill.

• Consistent, high-quality service in either English or Korean — whether they call at 10 a.m. or 10 p.m.

As Dr. Leng notes:

“It allowed our patients to be able to reach us 24 hours a day. We love the fact that our Korean patient is able to call and is able to get [AI] Rachel to speak in Korean.”

3. Better adoption than expected — even among older adults

One common concern with AI and automation in primary care is whether older adults will be comfortable using it.

At Family Medicine Clinic, the opposite turned out to be true:

“Talkie also surprised me because I did not anticipate that my older patients, the ones in their 60s and mid 60s, would actually use the AI to schedule appointments. I started to see a lot more on the schedule saying Talkie.ai is scheduling patients that are in their mid 60s.”

Because the experience is conversational and patient-friendly, older adults have adopted Rachel as readily as younger patients, and the clinic sees those appointments reflected directly in Elation.

4. Front desk staff can focus on higher-value work

By automating up to 85% of repetitive phone interactions like scheduling, Rx refills, FAQs, and reminders, Talkie frees staff to focus on the kinds of patient interactions that truly require a human touch — in-person support, care coordination, and complex situations.

Dr. Leng sums it up this way:

“Talkie had made a great impact on our practice. I find that the value is only getting better as we go along.”

Why this matters for independent primary care

Elation’s mission is to power the success of independent primary care. That means not only delivering a clinical-first EHR, but also partnering with solutions that extend what physicians and care teams can do — without burning them out.

Talkie’s deep integration with Elation is a strong example of this approach in action:

• Clinician-centered workflows. Information captured by the AI lands where it belongs: in Elation, as structured data, message threads, and documentation that supports better care.

• Patient access without limits. Small practices can offer big-system access — 24/7 phone coverage, multilingual support, automated outreach — while maintaining the continuity and relationships that define great primary care.

• Sustainable operations. By offloading repetitive tasks and high-volume call handling to AI, clinics can reduce staff burnout and call center costs by up to 60%, while keeping their focus on complex, high-value patient needs.

As one Elation customer, Dr. Brian Clow of Black Bear Primary Care, notes about Talkie’s integration:

“The solution provides clear operational value, especially in streamlining workflows and capturing patient information within our EHR… Their collaborative, flexible, and proactive approach has made them a strong partner in adapting the solution to our practice’s needs.”

For Dr. Leng and Family Medicine Clinic, that partnership has translated into reliable access for patients, less pressure on staff, and more room to focus on what matters most: delivering high-quality primary care.

Ready to see how Talkie’s AI front desk, deeply integrated with Elation, could support your practice? Visit Talkie’s listing in the Elation Marketplace to book a demo and get started.