While some healthcare companies are testing agent AI tools, CCS is betting big on the technology by developing an enterprise-wide multi-agent network across its chronic care operations.
The chronic care management and home health supplies provider has deployed an agent AI solution called CeeCee designed to streamline the patient experience, improve medical supply workflows and increase operational efficiency, executives said.
CeeCee can autonomously resolve routine patient interactions, expedite access to chronic care supplies, and support personalized patient experiences.
“We see a huge opportunity and great promise in using agent AI at an enterprise scale, and over the past 12 to 15 months we have embarked on a program to look at different ways that generative and agent AI can be brought into our operations, particularly within the labor-intensive parts of our business,” said Richard McKee, chief technology officer at CCS. Richard McKee, chief technology officer at Fierce Healthcare, spoke to Fierce Healthcare for a first look at the new technology.
“We saw an opportunity to modernize and upgrade our patient operations, streamline the way we serve our patients, and do it in a way that allows us to provide a higher level of service while also increasing efficiency,” McKee said.
The new agent AI platform builds on CCS’ work over the past few years, including the launch of an AI-powered predictive analytics model and intervention platform called PropheSee in June 2024. PropheSee is designed to improve continuous glucose monitoring device adherence and outcomes for people living with diabetes. The company says its predictive technology can accurately flag patients who are at risk of discontinuing CGM therapy within 90 days.
The company touts its AI capabilities as delivering tangible results, using AI-powered predictive analytics to proactively address CGM defaults for thousands of diabetic Medicare patients, saving Medicare more than $10 million.
The company’s agent AI solution is expected to reduce annual operating costs by more than 30%, executives said.
Agent AI technology was designed to simplify the complex patient experience for chronic care patients. This is being implemented for high-volume patient interactions that take place between clinic visits and has a direct impact on adherence. And unlike many current AI models, CeeCee is trained on CCS’ proprietary knowledge and data to provide empathetic and personalized support.
In CCS’ call center operations, AI agents answer incoming patient calls, resolve routine requests and questions, and route those individuals to human agents when necessary, McKee said.
“We are also using the power of generative AI and agent AI in phone interactions between human agents and patients. We are enabling agents to better serve patients by providing answers faster and allowing them to summarize information about the patient at the beginning and end of the call,” he said.
When patient needs exceed the autonomous capabilities of a CCS, AI presents a unified patient profile, call history, and clinical status for a human agent, reducing the need to navigate between disconnected systems. The company says this integration will reduce average customer service call handling time by up to 20%.
Mackey pointed out that CeeCee and CCS’ broad agent AI platform is not a pilot or proof of concept. “This is enterprise-level, large-scale, comprehensive agent AI,” he said.
He further added, “More than 90% of incoming calls related to our current customers are now managed by this AI agent.”
The CeeCee platform is projected to autonomously accommodate 25% of relevant incoming calls in the first four months, reducing call handling time across all interactions, thereby improving the patient experience while supporting the real-time needs of frontline teams.
CCS is taking an innovative approach to AI in healthcare, said Bill Ferra, MD, Deloitte’s GenAI Health & Life Sciences Lead, who worked with CCS on building the agenttic AI technology platform.
“In terms of building this functionality that’s extensible, they’re platform-based, so rather than enabling single-agent functionality within an application, they’re building the functionality with this cross-application in mind. It’s also multi-agent. I think a lot of organizations that we see tend to be more of a single-agent type of workflow because most people are deploying it within a specific application. CCS What they’re doing is more ambitious and more future-oriented. Playing on a multi-agent, cross-application platform is what we see is the difference and what gives them an edge over others,” Fera told Fierce Healthcare.
CCS also uses agent AI to address operational bottlenecks such as documentation gaps. AI agents can autonomously identify and fill gaps in documentation that delay referrals and reorders for patients waiting for continuous glucose monitors or insulin pump supplies. By the end of 2026, the feature will automatically process 70% to 80% of the more than 100,000 incoming documents each month, accelerating order fulfillment and allowing patients to receive treatment weeks earlier, company executives said.
“CCS’s platform demonstrates how AI can deliver tangible results at scale today, a new level of integration and patient-centric design that is rare today even amidst the rapid AI advancements happening today, especially in healthcare,” said Jean-Claude Saghbini, president of Lumeris Technology Solutions and technical advisor to CCS.
Future features of the Agentic AI platform include collections and balance payments, and patient onboarding.
“We see CeeCee as a platform that will help with patient interactions, ultimately with payer and provider interactions, and a variety of other opportunities,” McKee said.
