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Scaling to 40+ locations should have meant twenty new hires and a longer hold queue. Instead, Elite DNA answered every patient who reached out — and planned its next stage of growth around AI capacity, not headcount.
The Results at a Glance
After deploying Sarah, mdhub's AI Admissions Coordinator, here's what changed for patients, the team, and the bottom line.
The Front Door Was Broken
Elite DNA is one of the fastest-growing mental health providers in the Southeast, delivering psychiatry, therapy, and integrated care across more than 40 locations. Its mission is simple: make high-quality mental healthcare accessible throughout the communities it serves. But as demand surged, the systems meant to welcome new patients couldn't keep pace with the growth.
The admissions team was working hard. The problem wasn't effort — it was volume and complexity beyond what any human team could sustainably absorb. At peak times, the answer rate dropped as low as 60%, and patients waited up to 20 minutes to reach a coordinator. An estimated 25–30% of callers gave up entirely before getting through. Some tried again later. Many didn't. For someone gathering the courage to ask for mental health support, a busy signal isn't a minor inconvenience — it's often the end of the journey.
Each call was its own puzzle. A coordinator had to understand a patient's clinical needs, verify insurance, match the patient to a provider by credentialing and availability, and handle referrals arriving by phone, email, and fax — often all at once.
A Generic Fix for a Specialized Problem
Elite DNA had already tested a traditional call-center solution. Despite extensive training, manuals, and mock scenarios, it fell short — the nuances of behavioral health intake proved too complex for generalist agents to handle reliably. An offshore team of roughly ten never made it out of training; language and complexity barriers meant they could schedule basic intakes but not evaluations, and the team was ultimately redirected to outbound and data-entry work.
That left one conventional path: hire. The plan called for at least 20 additional corporate-level staff — a significant, recurring cost, with no guarantee it would solve the underlying complexity. Elite DNA wanted a better answer: a solution that could handle real behavioral health complexity, feel human to every patient, and protect the patient-first experience the team had spent years building.
Meet Sarah, the AI Admissions Coordinator
mdhub deployed Sarah directly into Elite DNA's intake workflow — trained on Elite DNA's own SOPs, credentialing rules, provider preferences, and payer nuances, so she could handle end-to-end intake with the precision of a seasoned coordinator.
Sarah — AI Admissions Coordinator
The front door that never closesSarah works 24/7, handles unlimited simultaneous calls with zero wait time, and escalates to human staff the moment a patient asks for a live agent or a case falls outside her defined parameters. Rather than replacing the patient-experience team, she takes on the high-volume, first-contact work. With Sarah handling first contact, Elite DNA now:
- Answers 100% of patient inquiries — by phone or web, the moment they arrive, with no hold time
- Schedules roughly 2,260 appointments a month, with web-initiated inquiries converting 50% more often
- Cut inbound calls needing staff response by 42.5%, freeing coordinators for complex cases that need human judgment
- Avoided 20 planned hires, planning AI capacity for growth instead of headcount — at roughly half the cost
That reception wasn't a given. Bree came to the project from a marketing and customer-experience background, and she was candid about her initial skepticism — she worried an AI solution would feel robotic and chip away at the patient-first brand the team had built.
"I didn't want it to be robotic in nature. But I've been pleasantly surprised at all of the changes in growth from the AI tool that we've been able to put in place, and the success we've seen."
— Bree Rondina, Chief Performance Officer, Elite DNA Behavioral Health
Beyond Intake: Lighter Documentation with Emma
Emma — AI Clinical Assistant
A head start on every noteWith the front door working, Elite DNA began extending mdhub further into the clinic. Emma helps providers complete their documentation faster, turning a time-consuming task into a lighter one. Adoption is still growing — clinicians are trained and given the tool, and they choose when to lean on it. Around half the clinical team uses Emma today, and the early signal is encouraging: Elite DNA reports passing more internal audits than ever.
It's an honest snapshot of a rollout in motion — and a preview of what a fully connected clinic looks like, where the context Sarah captures at intake flows into the record so documentation starts with a head start rather than a blank page.
The Team Was Elevated, Not Displaced
Change management was a deliberate priority from day one. Coordinators were told plainly that AI was being brought in to expand their capacity, not to replace them — and that promise was kept. Reps no longer field routine first-contact calls under time pressure; they take the complex escalations, have deeper conversations, and do higher-value work. Sarah also surfaced call and scheduling insights Elite DNA simply didn't have before — now informing marketing and operations decisions.
"AI for us has been an additive to the organization. It didn't change who we are as an entity or our mission. It just enabled us to serve the community more largely, and at the growth rate that we continue to press on ourselves — without breaking teams, structures, or our patient experience."
— Bree Rondina, Chief Performance Officer, Elite DNA Behavioral HealthWhy It Worked
Built for behavioral health complexity. Sarah was trained on Elite DNA's own SOPs, credentialing logic, payer mix, and triage pathways — not a generic call script.
Process first, then AI. Elite DNA redesigned its intake workflows before deploying Sarah, building on a solid foundation rather than papering over a broken one.
Transparent change management. The team was brought along with clear context on what Sarah would and wouldn't handle — capacity, not replacement — which is why adoption went smoothly.
Humans always in reach. Sarah escalates to live staff on request or for any edge case, so the patient-first experience stays intact.
Built for the Next Stage of Growth
With intake handled, Elite DNA's roadmap keeps expanding: more of Sarah's capabilities — including outbound and concierge workflows — and deeper use of the analytics layer that now shapes how the organization grows. The throughline stays the same: technology in service to people, helping a mission-driven team reach more patients without losing what makes their care human.
Results reflect Elite DNA Behavioral Health's experience with mdhub's AI Admissions Coordinator and may vary by practice. Figures and quotes are shared with Elite DNA's permission. mdhub — better operations, elevated care.
