Hello Patient, an Austin, Texas company that builds AI agents to handle phone calls, texts and web chats for medical practices, said on September 14, 2026 that it had acquired Converse Health, a startup that automates administrative work in outpatient clinics. Hello Patient's announcement gave September 15 as the date of the acquisition.
Financial terms were not disclosed. Converse Health had raised $1.3 million, according to HIT Consultant.
Converse Health's chief executive and co-founder, Louis Sallerson, is joining Hello Patient as head of back-office and specialty products. Hello Patient said nothing would change for practices that already use its phone and messaging agents; the Converse Health tools will be added to the same system.
What Converse Health built
Converse Health was founded in 2023 by Sallerson, chief technology officer Val Zinchenko and chief revenue officer Adam Teitelman. Trenton Williams joined as vice president of sales in early 2024. The company built custom administrative workflows for small and mid-sized practices in specialties including dermatology, women's health, pain medicine and orthopedics.
Its software sits on top of a practice's electronic health record, reading from and writing to it. Hello Patient said the acquisition brings four capabilities. The first is referral and fax intake: an agent opens an incoming fax, works out what kind of document it is, matches it to an existing patient or creates a new record, and files it in the chart. The second is chart-driven follow-up, in which the agent reads clinical notes and lab results, finds patients whose recommended follow-up window has passed without an appointment, and contacts them to book one.
The third is prior authorization paperwork. The agent pulls patient and procedure details from the chart and drafts the request, but does not send it to the insurer; a member of staff reviews and submits it. The fourth covers records and registration, including completing registration from a phone call, retrieving imaging and fulfilling medical records requests.
“Operations leaders are being forced to bolt AI onto existing systems and buy solutions one task at a time, which is unmanageable. Practices want to redesign their workflows and decision-making around AI agents.”
Why Hello Patient is buying
Hello Patient's existing agents work on the front office. They answer calls, book appointments, run intake, field insurance questions, take prescription refill requests, run recall and follow-up campaigns, convert referrals and handle billing and collections, by voice, text and web chat. Converse Health's tools work on the documents and chart tasks that surround a visit, so the combined product covers both sides of a practice's administrative work.
Alex Cohen, Hello Patient's founder and chief executive, said operations leaders were being forced to bolt AI onto existing systems and buy tools one task at a time, which he called unmanageable. He said practices wanted to redesign their workflows around AI agents.
The company pitched the deal as a way for practices to deal with one vendor for both phones and paperwork, with one security review and one connection to the health record system. Hello Patient says it is HIPAA-compliant, holds SOC 2 Type 2 certification and signs a business associate agreement with each client.
Hello Patient's customers
Hello Patient cited several clients in its announcement. At Pulse-MD, an urgent care group with several locations in New York, the share of calls answered rose from 73% to 100% in the first 30 days. At Piedmont Urgent Care in Georgia, an agent on the billing line handles more than 20,000 calls a month and resolves about half without a person. At Ortho1 Medical Group, an orthopedic practice in San Diego, an outbound agent booked 190 referral visits in its first two months.
Across its clients, Hello Patient said practices booked 27% more visits with its agent answering the phones, based on August 2026 data. The company is also an approved partner of Privia Health.
Neither company disclosed headcount, and Hello Patient did not say how much funding it has raised.
What happens to Converse Health customers
Hello Patient did not say whether Converse Health's product would continue under its own name. Its announcement describes the startup's agents as part of the Hello Patient platform, so that a referral that arrives by fax overnight can be filed by one agent and then turned into a booked visit by Hello Patient's outbound agent, which texts the referred patient.
Cohen framed the purchase as a response to practices that have had to buy call answering, fax handling and follow-up tools separately and connect them themselves. The combined company will now sell all of those functions as one product.
