While some healthcare companies are testing out agentic AI tools, CCS is betting big on the technology as it developed an enterprise-wide, multi-agent network across its chronic care operations.
The company, a provider of chronic care management and home-delivered medical supplies, has rolled out an agentic AI solution, dubbed CeeCee, that's designed to streamline the patient experience, improve medical supply workflows and boost operational efficiency, executives said.
CeeCee can autonomously resolve routine patient interactions, speed up access to chronic care supplies and support personalized patient experiences.
"We see great opportunity and big promise in using agentic AI at an enterprise scale, and we embarked on an on a program over the past 12 to 15 months where we looked at a variety of ways that we could deploy generative and agentic AI specifically into our operations, and specifically those things that were more labor-intensive," Richard Mackey, chief technology officer of CCS, told Fierce Healthcare, giving a first look at the new technology.
"We saw that there is an opportunity to modernize and upgrade our patient operations and be able to streamline the way that we serve patients and be able to provide them with an increased level of service, but be able to do that in a way that also drives efficiencies," Mackey said.
The new agentic AI platform builds on CCS' work in the past several 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 monitor device adherence and outcomes for people living with diabetes. The predictive tech can accurately flag patients at risk of discontinuing CGM therapy within 90 days, according to the company.
The company touts that its AI capabilities are delivering tangible, results as its AI-enabled predictive analytics have generated more than $10 million in Medicare savings by proactively addressing CGM nonadherence in thousands of Medicare patients with diabetes.
The company's agentic AI solution is projected to is projected to save more than 30% in annual operating costs, according to executives.
The agentic AI tech was designed to simplify the complex patient experience for chronic care patients. It's being deployed for high-volume patient interactions that sit between clinical visits but directly impact adherence. And, unlike many current AI models, CeeCee is trained on CCS’s own proprietary knowledge and data to deliver empathetic, personalized support.
Within CCS' call center operations, the AI agents now answer patient inbound calls and resolve routine requests and questions, or, when needed, transfer those individuals to a human agent, Mackey said.
"We're also using generative AI and agentic AI capabilities in the interaction between the human agent and the patient over the phone. We're enabling them to better serve the patient by providing them with the answers more quickly, helping to summarize information about the patient at the start of the call and then also at the conclusion of the call," he said.
When patient needs exceed CCS’s autonomous capabilities, the AI surfaces consolidated patient profiles, call history and clinical context for human agents, reducing the need to navigate across disconnected systems. This consolidation reduces average customer service call handle time by up to 20%, according to the company.
Mackey noted that CeeCee and CCS' broader agentic AI platform aren’t pilots or proof of concepts. "This is agentic AI that is comprehensive, at scale and at an enterprise level," he noted.
He added, "More than 90% of our inbound calls related to current customers are being managed now by this AI agent."
The CeeCee platform is projected to autonomously contain 25% of relevant incoming calls in the initial four months, while reducing call handling times across all interactions, resulting in improved patient experience while supporting the real-time needs of frontline teams.
CCS has taken an innovative approach to AI in healthcare, noted Bill Fera, M.D., GenAI Health and Life Sciences Lead at Deloitte, which collaborated with CCS on building the agentic AI tech platform.
"They have been platform-based in terms of building this capability that's extensible, so rather than turning on single agent functionality within an application, they're building a capability with this cross-application in mind. It's also multi-agent. A lot of organizations that we see, I think, because most people are deploying within specific applications, they tend to be single agent types of workflows. What CCS is endeavored upon is much more ambitious and much more future-leaning in terms of their multi-agent, cross-application platform play. Those are the differences that we're seeing that put them out in front of the pack," Fera told Fierce Healthcare.
CCS is also using agentic AI to tackle operational bottlenecks such as documentation gaps. The AI agents can autonomously identify and close documentation gaps that delay referrals or reorders for patients waiting for continuous glucose monitor or insulin pump supplies. By the end of 2026, the company expects this capability to automatically process 70% to 80% of the more than 100,000 monthly intake documents, accelerating order fulfillment and getting patients on therapy weeks sooner, executives said.
“CCS’s platform shows how AI can deliver tangible results at scale today. This is a new level of integration and patient-centric design that is rare, even amid rapid AI advancements happening today, especially in healthcare,” said Jean-Claude Saghbini, president at Lumeris Technology Solutions and technology advisor for CCS.
Future capabilities for the agentic AI platform include collections and payment balances and patient onboarding.
"We see that CeeCee is a platform that can help in interactions with patients, ultimately with payers and providers as well down the line and a variety of other opportunities," Mackey said.