Healthcare turnover averaged around 22% across the industry in 2024, higher for administrative roles. Each departure costs somewhere between 50-200% of that employee's annual salary when you factor in recruiting, onboarding, and the productivity gap.
Most conversations about retention focus on compensation and culture. Both matter. But there's a third factor that comes up consistently when you talk to front desk staff and MAs who leave: they're buried in work that feels pointless.
Calling patients to confirm appointments that could be confirmed by text. Entering data that was collected digitally into a different system. Checking the same payer portal three times a day to see if a PA moved.
Automation doesn't fix compensation. But it changes the composition of the work.
The tasks worth targeting first
Appointment confirmation calls. A medical assistant spending two hours calling tomorrow's patients is doing work that automated SMS handles better — faster, with higher response rates, and without burning anyone's time.
Insurance verification. Logging into payer portals one patient at a time to verify coverage is automatable for most payers via clearinghouse APIs.
Post-visit follow-up calls that are really just "did you schedule the referral the provider recommended?" — automatable if your EHR tracks care gaps.
Phone messages for routine requests — prescription refills, appointment changes — that could be handled via a patient messaging platform instead.
What changes
When staff aren't spending their day on tasks that don't require a person, they have more bandwidth for work that does. Patient interactions, complex situations, the parts of healthcare administration that require actual judgment.
For people who went into healthcare to help patients rather than call voicemails, that shift matters. I've seen it affect retention at practices I've worked with. It doesn't fix everything. But it's not nothing.
