How Southwest Cardiovascular Associates Increased New Patient Bookings by 18% with Basata

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• 18% increase in new patient bookings by reducing referral leakage
• 4-8 weeks backlog to same-day referral processing
• 50% provider growth absorbed without adding admin headcount for faxes and referrals

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“If you’re a medical office that wants to take in patients fast and increase the quality of care, you need Basata. Their AI agents gave our team time back by handling their admin work. We can’t imagine the practice without them.”

— Dawn Lanay, Team Lead, Medical Records, Referrals, and Communications at Southwest Cardiovascular Associates

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About

Southwest Cardiovascular Associates is a leading cardiology practice in Arizona. Their board-certified cardiologists offer comprehensive cardiovascular care, including general cardiology, interventional procedures, and diagnostic testing. Through advanced technology, minimally invasive care, and an in-house outpatient surgery center, Southwest provides high-quality treatment with shorter hospital stays and a focus on long-term well-being.

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Challenge

Manual Document Processing Delayed Patient Care

Southwest Cardiovascular Associates was expanding fast, with four new clinics and an ambulatory surgery center under construction. Each new location expanded access to compassionate, high-quality cardiac care in another corner of the East Valley—but their administrative operations couldn’t keep pace.

To coordinate care, Southwest balanced constant prescription refill calls with four fax lines receiving thousands of patient referrals, lab results, and records requests. The team worked through faxes in sequence to ensure nothing urgent went unnoticed, knowing that missing a time‑sensitive record carried real clinical risk.

“We’re not clinicians, we can’t look at a lab result and know if it’s urgent. So we treat everything as if it could be,” shares Dawn Lanay, Team Lead of Medical Records, Referrals, and Communications.

In practice, that meant reviewing the fax cover sheet, reading through every page, and checking if the patient was already registered. From there, they’d either create a new chart, upload clinical notes into an existing one, or collect documents from the EHR to fulfill a Release of Information (ROI) request in their dedicated platform.

Because this process was entirely manual, it took at least 20 minutes per fax—and at Southwest’s volume, that created a growing backlog.

New patients waiting for their first appointment felt it most. “A referral might arrive on a Monday, but with clinical notes stacked ahead of it, the new patient might not be scheduled until Wednesday,” says Paige Barnes, Patient Engagement Manager.

Every day of delay weighed on the quality of patients’ outcomes and their peace of mind. And the longer a referral sat in the queue, the higher the risk they would seek care elsewhere.

The impact wasn’t limited to the patient side, as the repetitive nature of the work wore on the internal team. Southwest considered hiring to absorb the volume, but as Laura Barnes, Clerical Operations Director and EHR Systems Manager, explains, “It’s not a people problem, it’s a process problem. You could have a couple of full-time people working on faxes, and they still wouldn’t be able to catch up doing everything manually.”

What Southwest needed was a scalable solution to handle referrals, results, records requests, and inbound calls end to end, so growth in patient volume didn’t come at the cost of delayed appointments, missed information, or burned‑out staff.

In healthcare operations, that was rarely a simple ask. Compliance requirements and EHR dependencies alone could disqualify most vendors, and a mandatory approval process from Cardiovascular Associates of America, Southwest’s operational partner, narrowed the options further.

The only solution that fulfilled every requirement was Basata. When the Southwest team learned about Basata’s clinical operations platform and customizable AI agents, they knew they’d found exactly what they needed to take on more patients and grow their practice.

“Before Basata, we had a backlog of 500+ unprocessed referrals, some waiting for months. We couldn’t keep up. Once Basata came in, the backlog went to zero. Now every referral is processed in minutes. We’ve seen an 18% boost in new patient conversions because patients get in right away. Basata transformed our patient care.”

— Rich Bondi, CEO at Southwest Cardiovascular Associates

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Solution

Tailored AI Agents That Handle Admin Work End-to-End

After integrating with Southwest’s EHR, Basata worked with Laura, Paige, and Dawn to configure the platform based on Southwest’s admin workflows. From there, Basata built a structured rollout plan to ensure smooth adoption for the Southwest team and its patients.

With that foundation, Southwest fully offloaded its admin work to Basata. The platform’s AI agents are connected directly to Southwest’s fax lines, so they scan every fax the moment it lands, tag it by type, and route it through one of three dedicated workflows:

• New patient intake: Basata handles end-to-end referral management, including detail extraction and EHR chart creation, so the team goes straight to scheduling appointments. Through this process, the platform collects and surfaces referral analytics, such as volume by provider and drop-off reasons, giving Southwest the visibility to help reduce leakage.
• Chart indexing: For existing patients, Basata’s AI agents automatically index incoming lab results and clinical notes into the correct patient chart. Patient records stay current, ready for staff handling follow-up calls and providers heading into appointments.
• ROI requests: When a records request arrives, Basata assembles relevant documents from the EHR and organizes them for faxing. Staff approves the selected records with a single click, fulfilling the request without toggling between systems.

Once a task is complete, Basata sends a notification to the Southwest team to review the output, keeping the Southwest team in control of every patient record while Basata handles the heavy lifting.

Patients felt the impact immediately. Rather than waiting days for an appointment, they now hear from Southwest the same day their referral is sent. This timely care fosters trust and confidence in the practice.

On the team side, that speed translates to greater capacity. Because the team now spends more time with their patients, they also find more meaning in day-to-day work, increasing satisfaction and morale.

This shift encouraged Southwest to lean even further into Basata’s capabilities, so they integrated its AI voice agent. Tailored to Southwest’s communication standards, the AI voice agent handles patient calls with the same care as a human team member, answering general questions and routing clinical inquiries to the right person. Every call is transcribed and supported with an AI-generated summary, so the team steps in fully informed.

This capability transformed Southwest’s prescription refill request workflow, one of the highest-volume call types. For every request, the AI voice agent now confirms the medication, prescription date, and refill due date during the call, then routes it for provider sign-off if the patient is eligible.

Throughout the partnership, Basata’s team has stayed available through “phone calls, text, and email,” as Laura notes. This hands-on support gives Southwest peace of mind that, if a workflow behaves unexpectedly or a question comes up, a real person is there to help before it affects a patient.

By pairing AI agents with a responsive partner team, Southwest gained a true extension of its front office. The result is a practice that moves at the speed of its patients’ needs, without burning out the people who make that care possible.

“We don’t even notice our fax volume now because everything works so seamlessly. While Basata handles the heavy lifting, we spend our time where it matters most: with our patients.”

— Paige Barnes, Patient Engagement Manager at Southwest Cardiovascular Associates

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Results

Southwest Cardiology Processes Referrals Same-Day with Basata

With Basata, Southwest transformed admin operations from a bottleneck into a growth enabler. As AI agents handle the full document intake workflow, the Southwest team moves faster and dedicates its full attention to expanding quality cardiovascular care across Arizona.

• 18% increase in new patient bookings by reducing referral leakage
• 4-8 weeks to same-day referral processing
• 50% provider growth absorbed without adding admin headcount for faxes and referrals

As Southwest opens new locations and brings on new providers, Basata keeps operations ahead of growth. Southwest’s team is already working with Basata to bring their AI voice agent into scheduling workflows, so patients get an appointment as soon as their referral is processed.

Basata has also been building an integration for the newest physician group in Southwest’s referral network, ensuring those referrals land in their system ready to schedule.

“I have worked with so many different vendors, and none of them match the responsiveness and attention that Basata delivers. Their team listens and works with you. They’re a wonderful partner.”

— Laura Barnes, Clerical Operations Director and EHR Systems Manager at Southwest Cardiovascular Associates