Why agentic AI matters for healthcare

What agentic AI means for the people delivering care

In 2024, visit volumes didn’t simply return to pre-pandemic levels, they blew past them. Industry data shows that 46% of U.S. medical groups are now seeing more patients than the year before.¹ That’s a clear sign of regained momentum in care delivery.

On the surface, that sounds like progress. More patients are getting care. Access is up. But there’s a tradeoff.

An increase in patients leads to more follow-ups, more documentation, more portal messages, more everything. For many practices, the pressure is unsustainable. Burnout remains high, and staff are stretched thin, draining time from patient care.

Even with advanced technology designed to optimize efficiency, healthcare IT systems can still feel burdensome when they introduce new logins, extra clicks, or yet another workflow to manage.

That’s why healthcare leaders are turning their attention to something new: agentic AI.

What is agentic AI?

Let’s break it down. The idea of AI in healthcare isn’t new, but agentic AI is continuing to gain momentum and marks an important shift. A lot of AI tools today are reactive; they wait for a user to prompt them to surface information or help fill in a field. Helpful? Definitely. But it's not always enough.

Agentic AI is built to go a step further. It doesn’t just react, it acts.

It’s not another rule-based automation that sits on top of your EHR or a clunky chatbot or phone tree with a few pre-programmed choices.

Agentic AI refers to intelligent systems that can observe, decide, and act, often autonomously. In the healthcare IT setting, that might mean responding directly to a patient, summarizing a visit note, routing a refill request, or escalating a message that truly needs a clinician’s attention.

Think of these tools as digital teammates that can step in even when you're busy, or not in the office. They’re always available, never overwhelmed, and designed to take on the routine administrative burden that’s become too familiar in healthcare.

Here’s a few examples of what that might look like in practice:

• Sorting and prioritizing patient messages from the portal
• Answering FAQs from portal or website visitors automatically and accurately
• Managing appointment logistics, reschedules, reminders, and follow-ups
• Helping patients evaluate their symptoms and navigate to the right level of care
• Continuously monitoring, flagging, and sending reminders for chronic care gaps or urgent follow-ups for timely action
• Streamlining handoffs among care team members so tasks don’t bounce between inboxes
• Routing refill requests through the EHR with minimal friction
• Nudging patients to take wellness actions such as vaccinations, screenings, and annual exams via behavioral science-based messaging

Rather than replacing human expertise, Al agents work alongside healthcare professionals, amplifying their abilities and supporting their decisions — especially for routine, repetitive, and administrative tasks. This frees up clinicians, so they can focus on providing compassionate care.

Because that’s what drives outcomes and what patients remember. When teams aren’t bogged down by busywork, they can show up as more present, effective, and less burned out.

Why agentic AI, and why is this happening now?

A few years ago, this kind of AI autonomy would’ve been unthinkable. The technology wasn’t there, and healthcare systems were too siloed, too fragmented, and weighed down by manual processes. In many cases, they still are. But now, with smarter tools and better integration, AI is stepping in to lighten the administrative load.

Here’s how things are changing to make agentic AI tools possible:

• EHRs are becoming more open and cloud-based, with modern architectures and improved interoperability
• Vendors are offering real-time, standards-based APIs, making it possible for the AI agents to connect to existing systems
• AI models are more capable, handling nuanced, clinical data and real-world complexity

Put simply, the environment is finally ready for technology that helps, not hinders. And care teams are ready too. For context: 57% of physicians now say the top opportunity for AI is addressing administrative burden.²

As Stacy Simpson, athenahealth CMO, shared in Fast Company’s recent spotlight on AI in healthcare, the agentic AI moment is about "alleviating administrative burdens and improving the quality of interactions."

That’s exactly where this technology delivers on the promise by supporting clinicians and enhancing patient care.

Technology that serves physicians

Too many patient engagement tools promise to ease inefficiency but end up adding more to the clinician’s task list — pop-ups, alerts, and overflowing inboxes. That’s not streamlining; that’s distraction. AI agents help reduce this cognitive load that has long been a side effect of healthcare tech.

One of the core strengths of agentic AI is its ability to offload repetitive tasks, allowing care teams to focus on patients. These tools don’t replace decision-making. They clear the runway so decisions can happen faster and with less noise. This offers a way to get ahead of the work before it hits the inbox. Instead of alerts that need triage, it routes. Instead of surfacing every message, it filters. Instead of people having to babysit tech, it runs quietly in the background.

But the big difference between AI-enabled and agentic AI is that it acts, not just analyzes.

Traditional AI says, “Here’s a patient at risk.”

Agentic AI says, “Here’s a patient at risk, I messaged them, booked a follow-up, and flagged the practice.”

The result? Clinicians can stay present, reduce pajama time charting, and increase the time spent on the moments that require clinical skill and human presence.

Working together to integrate AI in care

AI isn’t something that sits outside of care delivery. It’s integrated directly where healthcare work already happens. That’s why athenahealth is partnering with Salesforce to bring AgentForce for Health into its network.

With this integration, simple yet essential tasks like summarizing patient histories or processing refill requests can be handled effortlessly. Take a human call center, for example. When a patient calls in for a refill or to follow up on a missed appointment, Agentforce has already scanned relevant records, identified care gaps, and prepared a visit summary. Instead of digging through patient records, the staff member can simply click a button to see everything in one place — pulled directly from athenaOne® and enhanced by Salesforce’s automation. In some cases, even the prescription order is prepped and queued for approval based on the patient’s preferences.

What once took six or seven minutes now happens in under one. And this isn’t just about speed. It’s about freeing up staff to focus on the patient experience.

As Amit Khanna, SVP and GM of Salesforce, told MobiHealthNews, Agentforce is set to “improve efficiencies in healthcare” by adding automatic actions directly into existing workflows.

This is what agentic AI looks like when truly embedded in care delivery: less manual work, fewer delays, and more opportunities for meaningful interactions.

What comes next with AI agents in healthcare

As agentic AI becomes more embedded in healthcare solutions like athenaOne, the experience of delivering and receiving care will also change. Tasks that once required multiple systems, manual reviews, or delayed responses can now happen automatically.

Agentic AI won’t replace the care team, but it may finally eliminate the inefficiencies that have long slowed them down.

The next chapter isn’t just about smarter tools. It’s about better systems that are connected, coordinated, and built to take action. But agentic technology isn’t just a better assistant. It’s a proactive, integrated force that moves healthcare software from smart to strategic.

This isn’t some far-off future. These tools are already live across the athenahealth Marketplace, reducing complexity and reclaiming time.

Learn how our partners can put AI to work in your workflow

We’ve pulled together a few real-world examples from the Marketplace where agentic AI is helping to cure complexity and reclaim time for care.

Explore the use cases or get in touch to learn how agentic AI can work inside your existing workflow, not on top of it.