Cadence Cuts Patient Alert Response Time to 3.5 Minutes Using ElevenLabs Agents

• Cadence reduced the median time to reach patients with out-of-range vitals from 1 hour and 48 minutes to 3.5 minutes using ElevenAgents.
• Patient answer rates for critical calls rose from 41% to 60%, with patients answering the agent 47% more often than human callers.
• The system is designed to over-escalate to nurses when uncertain, treating "not sure" responses as unresolved alerts to ensure patient safety.
• Real-world examples include a patient with a heart rate above 150 who was directed to the emergency department and diagnosed with atrial flutter, and a mid-seventies patient whose medication was adjusted by a nurse practitioner.

Implementation and Safety

• Agents require evidence before closing alerts, confirming every symptom question was asked and answers were clear "no"s, with a second judge checking conclusions against transcripts.
• Access to protected health information is bounded to immediate goals, and authorization checks are enforced in code.
• The team deploys with a clinician in the loop early to capture nuances like pause timing and patient speech patterns that test plans miss.

Operational Best Practices

• Every agent miss is converted into a test case, including varied voicemail scenarios, to prevent regressions as the agent evolves.
• Success is defined before testing using specific nurse feedback criteria to build ground truth datasets and set rollout gates.
• Expansion to new workflows prioritizes repeatable, constrained processes where clinical teams spend the most time.