Stephens AI
CASE STUDY · WICHITA FAMILY VISION · WICHITA, KANSASIn daily use since August 2026

Every front desk question used to land on the office manager. Now the answer is one search away.

"Which doctor can see this patient?" "Do we collect for this or bill it?" Whoever was on the phone, first week or tenth year, ended up at her desk. We put the whole front desk playbook into one searchable app that the managers update themselves. Anyone at the desk looks it up. New hires learn the job in weeks, and experienced staff stop guessing at the rare cases.

~200hours a year
Front desk time back. Estimated from the clinic's own numbers; a measured figure is coming.
~$15,000a year
Fewer interruptions for everyone, and new hires trained months sooner. How we got there is at the bottom.
The front desk knowledge base home screen: a search box, six common situations, and four decision tools
The home screen. Type the situation, get the protocol. The four tools answer the questions that used to get guessed: which doctor can see this patient, what it costs, whether to collect from the patient or bill insurance, how urgent the call is.
01 · BEFORE AND AFTER

What changed at the front desk

Same clinic, same staff, same rules. A different place to look.

Before

Scattered
Where the answers lived15 spreadsheet tabs, a scheduling document, a per-doctor rulebook, and the office manager's memory
A question on a live callDig through tabs for 10 minutes, interrupt a coworker, or put the patient on hold
Training a new hireAbout 6 months before the questions stop
The rare casesHidden in a side note. Ten years of experience did not help; the rule was easy to miss and expensive to get wrong
Keeping it current4 price lists stacked in one sheet. Nobody sure which one was live

After

One place
Where the answers liveOne app, open on every front desk screen: 35 pages, 7 sections, one live price list
A question on a live callOne search, one answer, in seconds. No more hold music while someone goes to ask
Training a new hireLooks up the answer instead of interrupting someone. Weeks, not months
The rare cases4 tools ask the questions and show the rule. Two clicks, no guessing, whoever is on the desk
Keeping it currentTwo managers edit any page in the app. Every change saved, with one-click restore
02 · WHAT WE BUILT

A front desk playbook the clinic owns

Built from their own documents, not a template.
  • 35 protocol pages rewritten from the clinic's own files: scheduling, insurance, charges, recall, triage, the daily checklist. We read every tab, pulled the rules out of side notes and stale copies, and checked each one with the front office manager before it went in.
  • 4 decision tools for the questions anyone at the desk can get wrong, new or experienced: which doctor can see this patient, this year's price, collect or bill, how urgent the call is. Not a chatbot. Each tool asks the questions in order and cannot skip the exception, and each one was tested against real situations before the desk saw it.
  • The managers edit it themselves. Two named people can change any page in the app, with history and restore, built so an edit can never break a page. No developer needed.
  • Locked to clinic accounts. Staff sign in with their clinic email. No patient information inside, by design.
  • Report a gap from any page. Staff tell us what is missing or wrong, and we fix it, usually by the next business morning.
The clinic's part

Their existing documents, shared as they were.

A few short calls with the office manager to check the rules.

Nothing to install: it runs on a free hosting tier in the clinic’s own account. The clinic owns the app and every page in it. After launch, support and updates run on a monthly plan, which is how the clinic keeps it current.

Our part

About two weeks of work between a clinic’s files and a live app: reading all of it, sorting what is current from what is stale, writing pages a new hire can follow on a live call, and deciding which four questions deserve a tool. The first one took longer, because the structure underneath had to be built; that part is done.

The pages are the clinic's own. The structure underneath is the one we perfected on a working front desk, and it is what we build for every clinic. Used every day since August 2026.

How we got the numbers. Hours: about 4 questions a day that used to take 10 minutes of digging or someone else's time now take one search. That is about 200 hours a year, roughly $4,500 in pay. Dollars: add shorter training. The clinic said a new hire takes about 6 months to learn the job; cut that in half for 2 or 3 new hires a year and that is another $8,000 to $12,000. Both are estimates from the clinic's own numbers, kept on the low side.
In their words THE OFFICE SAID

"This is highly valuable, both in the short term and long term. It's already saving a lot of time."

Jill Romines, Front Office Manager, Wichita Family Vision. The front desk uses it every day and reports the gaps it finds; we fix them, usually by the next business morning.

Stephens AI builds custom software for independent healthcare practices. If your front desk has one person everyone interrupts, we can build this for your clinic from your own documents. Every build is a fixed price, quoted after one call, with the scope on one page before we start. Your part is a few calls. Ours is the rest. Two founders, custom to your practice, yours to keep.

alec@stephensai.co jusheen@stephensai.co