The highest clinic volumes in surgical medicine, the oldest patient population on the phone, and a handful of calls where hours matter to vision.
Ophthalmology runs the highest visit volumes of any surgical specialty, largely with elderly patients who call rather than click. Most calls are routine: cataract evaluations, post-op checks, refraction questions, drop instructions. A few are sight-threatening: the flashes-and-floaters call that is a retinal detachment until proven otherwise, or post-op pain with redness that cannot wait until Monday. Screening those apart, consistently, at any hour, is exactly what your phone coverage must do.
Caller I had cataract surgery on Tuesday and everything was fine, but tonight I'm seeing new floaters and little flashes of light off to the side.
ClinicFlow Thank you for calling about that tonight rather than waiting. Can I confirm your name and date of birth?
Caller Dorothy Ellison, 9/3/1949.
ClinicFlow Thank you, Dorothy. Two quick questions: is there any new curtain or shadow across your vision, and is the eye painful or increasingly red?
Caller No curtain, no pain. Just the flashes.
ClinicFlow New flashes and floaters after surgery are something Dr. Okafor's team evaluates urgently even without a curtain. I'm escalating your call to the on-call physician now, and you'll get a callback shortly at this number. If a shadow or curtain appears in your vision in the meantime, go to the emergency department.
Flashes, floaters, curtains, post-op pain with redness, and sudden vision loss are screened on every call against your physicians' criteria.
Cataract evaluations, diabetic eye exams, follow-ups, and refraction visits book to the right provider, location, and visit type.
An elderly-heavy panel gets a phone that answers instantly, speaks clearly, and repeats details patiently, in 28 languages.
Structured summaries land in the EMR, with escalation criteria noted when triggered.
| Scenario | Destination |
|---|---|
| Flashes/floaters, curtain, sudden vision loss, post-op pain with redness | On-call physician, immediately |
| Cataract evals, routine follow-ups, diabetic eye exams | Booked in the EMR |
| Drop instructions and routine post-op questions | Answered from your protocols, documented |
Injection-cycle scheduling at volume, and detachment-symptom screening on every call, because your callers already know the words flashes and floaters.
Evaluation pipelines, surgical counseling follow-ups, and post-op day-1 and week-1 call handling from your protocols.
Pressure-check cadences, drop-adherence questions routed to the clinical team, and acute-pain calls escalated.
Consult scheduling with photo and referral collection ahead of the visit.
This population phones instead of using portals, which is precisely why answered calls matter more here than anywhere. The agent answers instantly, speaks plainly, repeats information without impatience, and hands off to your team the moment a caller needs a human.
The AI screens it against your criteria: onset, curtain or shadow, pain, surgical history. Matching calls escalate to the on-call physician immediately with a structured summary. The AI never reassures anyone out of an urgent evaluation.
Yes, from the operating surgeon's own documented protocol, with a complication screen first and everything charted.
The demo line is the production agent. Describe a scenario from this page and judge for yourself.
