Referral coordination across 20+ locations.
Aunt Martha’s Chicago-area network of 100+ providers runs referral coordination, care gap closure and voice AI in athenahealth.
Operational AI for healthcare
Referral coordination,
automated inside your EHR.
Referral automation for specialty practices, FQHCs, and PE-backed groups. From PCP order to consult note, from fax to appointment booked.
Book a demo
Read customer storiesFirst workflow live in 4 weeks.
HIPAA compliantSOC 2BAA available
Trusted by care teams
Customer stories
“Linear Health completely transformed how we operate. They replaced five disconnected tools we were using to manage referrals, scheduling, and patient outreach.”
Dr. Ashwin GowdaFounder & CEO“We were losing thousands in revenue to no-shows and delayed scheduling. Linear Health contacted our patients faster than we ever could and our show rates improved dramatically.”
Anuradha JairamDirector of OperationsAcross our customers, Linear Health coordinates tens of thousands of referrals per month.
All customer storiesThe full lifecycle
Two directions.
One closed loop.
Why referrals stall
A referral sent is only the start.
Specialist matching, coverage checks, patient outreach, scheduling, and consult-note follow-up all sit between the initial order and a closed referral.
How does Linear Health automate referral coordination?
Routine work, automated. Exceptions, escalated. Your team, focused on patients.
Linear handles routine referral coordination. Your coordinators manage escalations and patient-facing work.
Referral benchmarks and manual work
Specialty referral leakage
Up to 50% of specialty referrals are not completed.
IHI/NPSF, Closing the Loop, 2017.Manual work and referral completion
34.8% Referral completion rate in the studied health system.
Patel et al., J Gen Intern Med, 2018.Where the loop breaks
Illustrative referral month
- Referrals startRemaining: 100Start
- In-network matchRemaining: 88Lost at this stage: -12%
- Eligibility verifiedRemaining: 70Lost at this stage: -18%
- Patient reachedRemaining: 48Lost at this stage: -22%
- Appointment bookedRemaining: 40Lost at this stage: -8%
- Consult note returnedRemaining: 35%Lost at this stage: -5%
Referral completion benchmark: Patel et al., J Gen Intern Med, 2018. Stage-by-stage values are illustrative.
How a referral moves
Seven steps from order to closed loop.
Follow an order out of primary care or a referral into a specialty practice.
Inbound · Specialty practices
- MULTI-CHANNEL
Fax arrives
Or web form, email, or phone.
- OCR + LLM
Extract PDF
Demographics, insurance, referral.
- ATHENA EHR
Create chart
Create or verify patient.
- PAYER API
Eligibility
Real-time payer verification.
- VOICE + SMS
Patient outreach
SMS, email, voice AI (EN / ES).
- ATHENA SCHEDULE
Appointment booked
Directly in the EHR.
- ATHENA WRITE-BACK
Loop closed
Referring provider notified.
Outbound · Primary care · FQHCs
- ATHENA EHR
PCP order
Generated in the EHR.
- DIRECTORY API
Specialist match
In network, availability, proximity.
- PAYER PORTAL
Eligibility & prior auth
Submission and status tracking.
- EFAX + HL7
Fax sent
Structured packet to the specialist.
- VOICE AI · EN/ES
Appointment booked
Voice AI or clinic schedules.
- VOICE AI
Chase consult note
Voice AI calls until the note is in.
- ATHENA WRITE-BACK
Loop closed
Consult note received and filed.
Native EHR write-back
Inside the chart, in real time.
Booked appointments and status updates are written back into your chart. athenahealth specialist. Four established EHR integrations.
What changes for your team
- Manual referral coordination
- 45 to 90 minutes per manual referral (Linear Health analysis)
- First patient contact
- ~5 min
- Automation with Linear
- Up to 80% of coordination work automated. Your team stays in the loop on the other 20%. Calculator assumptions
No CSV exports. No coordinator copy-paste.
Book a demo03 Connected to your workflow
Works inside your EHR.
Linear runs on top of your existing EHR rather than replacing it. athenahealth, NextGen, eClinicalWorks, and Greenway Health are established integrations, connected through standard health-data interfaces, and booked appointments and status updates are written back into your chart.
4 established integrations
Built for healthcare operations.
HIPAA compliant
SOC 2BAA availableFirst workflow live in 4 weeks.
Book a demoWho we serve
Your operations.
Your kind of care.
Built for FQHCs, primary care groups, specialty practices, behavioral health groups, and PE-backed portfolios on Athena, with identifiable coordination teams and meaningful referral volume.
Built here. Built for you.
FQHCs
Built alongside FQHC operators at Aunt Martha's.
FQHC customer example
Community health organization in the Chicago area, more than 100 providers across more than 20 locations, on athenahealth. Referral coordination, care gap closure and voice AI running across the network.
Primary care groups
Outbound leakage is the wedge. Specialist match plus consult-note follow up, end to end.
Primary care
Specialty practices
Inbound intake, prior auth, and patient scheduling. First workflow live in 4 weeks.
Specialty
Behavioral health
Voice AI in EN and ES, intake automation, scheduling.
Behavioral health
PE-backed clinics
Standardize coordination across portfolio. Same platform across acquisitions.
PE-backed
Telehealth companies
Downstream referral coordination and local follow-up after virtual visits, with status returned to the source workflow.
Telehealth companies
04 Operational workflows
More use cases.
Same automation engine.
Extend your referral workflow, or start with the work your team needs most.
Explore a workflow
The complete workflow
One platform. Every referral step connected.
Manage the full referral lifecycle across intake, scheduling, prior authorization, outreach, follow-up, and closed-loop status.
Specialist consultationIllustrative example
Elena Ramirez · Loop closed. Consult note returned.
Referral delivery: Delivered · Appointment: Booked · Consult note: Returned
From fax to referral
Turn referral faxes into booked appointments.
Automate inbound referral intake, chart creation, patient outreach, and appointment scheduling for specialty clinics.
Referral intakeIllustrative example
Elena Ramirez · Referral created. Original document attached.
Incoming fax: Received · Patient details: Extracted · EHR record: Created
From order to follow-up
Close the loop on every outbound referral.
Automate outbound referrals, specialist matching, referral delivery, and closed-loop tracking at scale.
Outbound referralIllustrative example
Elena Ramirez · Chart updated. Consult note returned.
Specialist: Matched · Referral: Delivered · Consult note: Returned
Across payer portals
Submitted, tracked, written back.
Submission and status tracking on the payer portals your team uses today.
Prior authorizationIllustrative example
Elena Ramirez · In review. Tracking the payer response.
Submission: Received · Review: In progress · Payer response: Pending
Calls to appointments
Voice AI that books and writes back.
Voice agents that answer calls, book appointments, and write back to the EHR. Patients never hit a dead line, your front desk never falls behind.
Patient outreachIllustrative example
Elena Ramirez · Appointment booked. Written back to the EHR.
Patient call: Complete · Appointment: Booked · EHR record: Updated
Follow-through on preventive care
Identify, route, and close every open gap.
Identify open gaps (mammograms, colonoscopies, diabetic eye exams, chronic disease). Risk-stratify, route, and close them with the same loop-closing engine. Same workflow logic, applied to a different unit of care.
Care-gap worklistIllustrative example
Preventive care · 2 gaps closed. 1 gap still needs follow-up.
Mammogram: Closed · Colonoscopy: Closed · Diabetic eye exam: Pending
Built into the workflow
The work behind
the work.
The lifecycle above only works because four modular services run underneath. Turn them on per practice, per payer, per language.
Voice AI
01EN / ESLANGUAGES IN PRODUCTION
Bilingual outreach, 24/7.
Calls patients in English and Spanish, schedules in the EHR, chases consult notes from specialists until the loop closes.
Explore capabilityDirectory correction
02NPI-verifiedSPECIALIST DIRECTORY
Specialist match that keeps up.
Auto-corrects directory drift across NPI, fax, address, and availability. Match accuracy stays current without coordinator scrubs.
Explore capabilityPayer integration
03Real-timeELIGIBILITY CHECKS
Eligibility and prior auth, automatic.
Real-time eligibility on every referral. Submission and status tracking on the payer portals your team uses today.
Explore capabilityCustom scheduling rules
041:1CONFIGURED PER CLINIC
Configured to your clinic, not a template.
Every clinic has its own scheduling complexity. W-2 and 1099 providers, telehealth and in-person mix, multiple payers, custom rules across multiple systems. Most EHRs cannot handle all of it. We build scheduling logic configured to your clinic, not a template.
Explore capabilityThe bar for serious referral automation
Four questions to ask any vendor.
Do they have deep, end-to-end expertise in referral workflows?
Bidirectional referrals are not a feature, they are a craft. The complexity sits in eligibility, payer rules, specialist matching, and consult-note write-back. Ask vendors to walk you through the loop, not the platform.
Closed-loop bidirectional referral coordination workflow
- Inbound intake
- Outbound orders
Unified inside athenahealth via real-time EHR write-back.
Does it work inside your EHR, both reads and writes?
Linear runs on top of your existing EHR rather than replacing it. athenahealth, NextGen, eClinicalWorks, and Greenway Health are established integrations, connected through standard health-data interfaces, and booked appointments and status updates are written back into your chart.
Bidirectional EHR integration
- Reads referral orders
- Writes back the closed loop
Into the patient chart in athenahealth.
Is it configured to your clinic, or a generic deployment?
No two clinics are the same. These have to be wired to your operations, not flattened into a template.
Per-clinic configuration layer
- Provider models (W-2 and 1099)
- Payer mix
- In-person vs telehealth
- Custom scheduling rules
Are they a partner or a vendor?
Honest communication. Flexibility. Willingness to adapt as your operations change.
Healthcare operational AI deployment
First workflow live in 4 weeks.
A closer look
Explore the operational detail.
Why LinearExpertise, configuration, partnership and ROI
What other platforms can't do.
Deep referral expertise
Bidirectional referrals are our wedge, not a side feature. We have processed millions of referral steps across specialty, FQHC, and behavioral health operations. Nobody else goes this deep on the loop.
Configured to your clinic
Provider model, payer mix, scheduling rules, telehealth vs in-person. We wire the workflow to your operations, not a templated deployment. Every clinic ships with its own configuration.
Partner operating model
We shadow your staff. We own the workflow end-to-end. No implementation tax on an already under-resourced team. We act as an extension of your operations, not a vendor across a desk.
Return built around your numbers
Every proposal shows your return against your own numbers. We build to 3x or better. Up to 80% of coordination work automated. Your team stays in the loop on the other 20%.
Payer operations: eligibility and prior authorizationThe workflow between payer portals and your EHR
Payer operations / Eligibility + prior auth
Payer work. Without the portal chase.
Linear identifies the payer and plan, verifies eligibility, submits and tracks prior authorization when required, and writes the outcome back to the EHR.
Real-timeeligibility checks
3,400payer endpoints
/Payer operationsExample workflowEligibility & authorization Complete
- 01Identify payer + planRoute the right workflowFound
- 02Verify eligibilityCoverage and networkVerified
- 03Handle prior authSubmit and track when requiredTracked
- 04Update the EHRKeep the outcome with the referralWritten
Objections, handledEHR compatibility, pricing and your workflow
- Will it work with my EHR?
- Linear runs on top of your existing EHR rather than replacing it. athenahealth, NextGen, eClinicalWorks, and Greenway Health are established integrations, connected through standard health-data interfaces, and booked appointments and status updates are written back into your chart.
- Worried about pricing.
- Transparent pricing tied to the workflows you automate, not generic enterprise rates. Real-time ROI dashboard so the value is visible from week one.
- Want something built for our workflow, not generic software.
- We map your specific requirements end to end and configure to your operating model. You get the workflow your clinic runs, not a templated deployment.
Measurable impactCustomer measures and operational outcomes
Live today
- Coordination work automated. Your team stays in the loop on the other 20%.
- Up to 80%
- Throughput in 60 days
- 3x
- Specialty practice customer
- Backlog cleared in 90 days
- 10,000
- Specialty practice customer
Linear Health customer data, 2025. Names available under NDA.
Pricing & return
Talk to us. Or run the numbers.
How are you priced?
From $2,000 a month.
Flat monthly fee per workflow, sized to your volume.
You pay nothing monthly until the workflow is live and processing real work.
Proposal return target
3x or better
Every proposal shows your return against your own numbers. We build to 3x or better.
Up to 80%
of coordination work automated. Your team stays in the loop on the other 20%.
First workflow live in 4 weeks.Book a demo
ROI calculator Estimate your referral or care-gap return
Your operation today
Run your numbers.
Your inputs
Enter your monthly volume and minutes per referral.
orders
From 0 to 15000, in steps of 50.
faxes
From 0 to 15000, in steps of 50.
min
From 5 to 90, in steps of 1.
Your estimate
Capacity reclaimed
1,400 hours
per month
| Monthly | Today | Reclaimed |
|---|---|---|
| Staff hours | 1,750 | 1,400 |
80% automation of referral coordination. Your team stays in the loop on the other 20%.
Book a demoFrequently asked
The details behind the decision.
Is Linear Health HIPAA compliant?
Yes. Linear Health is HIPAA compliant and SOC 2 Type 2 audited. We execute a Business Associate Agreement with every customer.
Will it work with my EHR?
Linear runs on top of your existing EHR rather than replacing it. athenahealth, NextGen, eClinicalWorks, and Greenway Health are established integrations, connected through standard health-data interfaces, and booked appointments and status updates are written back into your chart.
What happens to our coordinators when AI handles the volume?
Up to 80% of coordination work automated. Your team stays in the loop on the other 20%.
How are you priced?
From $2,000 a month. Flat monthly fee per workflow, sized to your volume. You pay nothing monthly until the workflow is live and processing real work.
What is the implementation cadence?
First workflow live in 4 weeks. For more complex workflows, we provide a detailed plan including staff training and on-site work after scoping.
Do you handle prior authorizations?
Yes. Submission and status tracking on the payer portals your team uses today.
First workflow live in 4 weeks.
See a referral close end to end in your EHR.
Bring your hardest referral. We will walk it through outbound, inbound, and write-back live in our environment, against the same payer portals you fight with every day.
BAA available