In the last decade, teleradiology has successfully scaled clinical capacity through technology. Cloud PACS, AI-assisted triage, and distributed reading worklists have allowed practices to read millions of studies remotely.

But there is a hidden ceiling to this growth: The Manual Bottleneck.

While you can scale your radiologists and your servers, your operational throughput is currently capped by the number of humans available to pick up a phone. Support staff currently spend up to 40% of their day navigating hospital switchboards, sitting on hold, and playing phone tag just to convey simple status updates or request missing paperwork.

This friction directly increases Turnaround Time (TAT) and delays patient care.

At Contour, we believe the solution isn't to hire more people to sit on hold. The solution is Voice AI purpose-built for clinical logistics. Here is how automating the last mile of communication changes the economics of teleradiology.

The Problem: Operations Can't Keep Up with Volume

As reading volumes scale, facility communication tends to break down. The relationship between volume and friction is linear: more studies lead to more delays, more requests for missing information, and more repetitive callback requests.

Currently, teleradiology groups are forced to choose between two flawed models to handle this load:

1. The In-House Model: High quality, but incredibly expensive. Scaling requires hiring full-time employees (FTEs) who are difficult to staff during nights and weekends, leading to burnout.
2. The Offshore BPO Model: Cheaper, but often lacks clinical context. Accent and clarity issues can lead to repeat calls, frustrating hospital technologists and risking contracts.

Both models fail during volume surges. When an Emergency Department spikes or a multi-vehicle accident occurs, human call centers get overwhelmed. Critical results sit waiting to be communicated, and TAT metrics slide into the red.

Enter Contour: The "Deep Integration" Approach

Contour is not a generic AI call center. We deploy specialized AI agents that integrate directly with your healthcare record systems (EHR/PACS/RIS), to execute complex communication tasks.

Unlike a human agent who needs to look up a number, dial, wait, and manually log a note, Contour works in the background:

• Ingest: The AI detects a workflow trigger to place the call.
• Execute: The agent immediately calls the external facility, navigates the phone tree to reach the specific technologist, and exchanges the necessary information using natural, US-English voice profiles.
• Write-Back: Crucially, the AI writes the outcome of the call back into your core system.

This allows your operations staff to focus on other critical administrative tasks rather than manual, repetitive calls.

3 Key Use Cases for Automation

Based on data from over 1.2 million annual studies, we have identified the three most effective areas to deploy Voice AI immediately.

1. TAT Delay Updates (The "Hold Time" Killer)

Hospitals constantly call to ask, "When will this report be ready?" Conversely, you need to proactively notify facilities of delays to manage expectations.

• The Contour Fix: Our agents handle 90.5% of high-volume delay updates automatically. This keeps your referring physicians informed without tying up your support staff.

2. Missing Information Requests

Radiologists often cannot finalize a report because of missing clinical history or prior images.

• The Contour Fix: Instead of a radiologist waiting or a support admin drafting an email, Contour triggers an immediate outbound call to the technologist to request the specific data needed, reducing the "pending" list instantly.

3. Critical Value Reporting & Compliance

This is the highest stakes workflow. "Closed-Loop Communication" is a liability standard; you must prove the message was delivered.

• The Contour Fix: Contour agents perform "read-back" verifications to ensure accuracy. Every call is recorded, transcribed, and logged for auditability, satisfying rigorous healthcare compliance standards.

Proven Results: Scaling Operations, Not Overhead

The promise of AI is often vague, but the results of Voice AI in teleradiology are measurable.

In a recent deployment for a large teleradiology operation, Contour executed thousands of calls in the first couple of weeks. The impact was immediate:

• Staffing coverage was completely resolved during peak load times (nights/weekends).
• Operational throughput increased as support teams stopped acting as "human routers."
• Turnaround Time (TAT) became more consistent as friction was removed from the reporting process.

Conclusion

The future of healthcare logistics is not about hiring more people to make phone calls. It is about building an infrastructure layer that ensures critical clinical data moves instantly between clinics, labs, and doctors.

Contour allows you to scale your facility calls without adding headcount, ensuring that your operational capacity finally matches your clinical capability.

Stop losing TAT to phone tag.

Schedule a demo with Contour to see how our AI agents integrate with your PACS/RIS in under 30 minutes.