Client: Leading Mental Health Transportation Provider
Industry: Healthcare Transportation | HIPAA-Compliant Operations
Problem Solved: Manual Email Processing Causing 80% Time Waste
When 125 daily emails arrive in different formats from multiple sources, manual processing becomes unsustainable. Here’s how we built AI automation that handles the chaos – cutting processing time from 20 hours to 4 hours daily with zero errors.
At a Glance
The Challenge: A leading mental health transportation provider was drowning in email intake. Every day, 125+ emails arrived from multiple sources – case managers, facilities, coordinators – each using different formats, templates, and terminology. Staff spent 10-20 hours daily on manual data entry, creating a bottleneck that limited growth and risked errors in HIPAA-compliant patient transport coordination.
The Solution: We designed and implemented an AI-powered email intake system built on FlowRunner that monitors inboxes continuously, extracts data from any format using intelligent parsing, validates information against business rules, and automatically populates the client’s operational database. The system handles exceptions with human-in-the-loop review for edge cases.
Key Results:
- 80% reduction in processing time – From 5-10 minutes per email to 1-2 minutes
- 20 hours saved daily – Manual processing dropped from 10-20 hours to 2-4 hours
- 125+ emails automated – Daily volume handled without additional staff
- Zero data entry errors – AI validation eliminated manual entry mistakes
- Scaled without hiring – Team freed to focus on coordination and customer service
- HIPAA compliance maintained – Secure, auditable processing throughout
About the Client
Our client is a leading provider of non-emergency medical transportation (NEMT) specializing in mental health patient transport across multiple states. They coordinate rides for vulnerable populations between treatment facilities, hospitals, and residential care centers – work that requires meticulous attention to detail and strict HIPAA compliance.
As their business grew, so did their email volume. Case managers, social workers, facility coordinators, and healthcare providers all submitted transportation requests via email, each using their own format and terminology. What started as a manageable process became an operational bottleneck threatening their ability to scale.
The Challenge
The company received approximately 125 emails per day from third-party sources, each containing transportation requests, patient information, and scheduling details in varying formats. Staff members manually reviewed each email and transferred information into their custom application – a process that took 5-10 minutes per email.
The Email Processing Bottleneck
The pain points were mounting:
- 10-20 hours daily spent on repetitive data entry
- High risk of errors when manually transcribing critical information
- Inability to scale operations without hiring more administrative staff
- Inconsistent formats across different email sources made standardization impossible
- HIPAA compliance requirements added complexity to any automation solution. (Learn more about HIPAA compliance automation)
As operations grew, the manual process became unsustainable. The team needed a way to automate email intake while maintaining accuracy and compliance.
The Solution
Midnight Flow designed and implemented an AI-powered system to automate email intake. The system automatically ingests, parses, and extracts data from incoming emails regardless of format variations.
How Email Intake Automation Works:
- Email Monitoring: The system monitors designated email inboxes for incoming transportation requests
- AI Parsing: AI assistants use natural language processing to analyze email content and extract relevant data fields (patient info, pickup/dropoff locations, times, special requirements)
- Data Validation: Extracted information is validated against business rules and data quality checks
- Automatic Entry: Validated data is automatically populated into the company’s Backendless application
- Exception Handling: Emails requiring human review are flagged and routed appropriately
AI-Human Workflow Design:
Our design philosophy: AI should handle predictable patterns at scale; humans should handle judgment calls and exceptions.
For this implementation, we architected the system to:
Automatic Processing (approximately 80% of emails):
- Standard format emails with complete, unambiguous information
- All required fields are clearly presented and validated
- Patient identifiers matching known records
- Standard pickup/dropoff locations and time windows
These process fully automatically from receipt to system entry with no human intervention.
Intelligent Escalation (approximately 20% of emails):
- Ambiguous or incomplete patient information requiring verification
- Unusual locations or special requirements needing confirmation
- After-hours or urgent requests requiring the coordinator’s judgment
- Format variations that require human interpretation
These are automatically flagged, specific issues are identified, and designated coordinators receive targeted notifications enabling quick resolution.
This intelligent triage – knowing when to proceed autonomously and when to request human input – is what enables the company to scale operations without proportionally increasing staff.
The solution was built entirely on the FlowRunner platform, allowing for rapid development and easy future modifications as business needs evolve.
The Results
Transforming Email Processing Operations
Time Savings:
- Before: 5-10 minutes per email × 125 emails = 10-20 hours daily
- After: 1-2 minutes per email × 125 emails = 2-4 hours daily
- Reduction: 80% decrease in processing time
Business Impact:
- Scaled operations without hiring additional administrative staff
- Eliminated data entry errors that previously required time-consuming corrections
- Freed up staff to focus on coordination and customer service rather than data entry
- Improved data quality through consistent AI extraction and validation
- Approximately 80% of emails are processed fully automatically
- Remaining 20% intelligently flagged for human review – enabling coordinators to focus on cases requiring judgment
- Staff now focus on complex transportation coordination rather than routine data entry
- Complete HIPAA-compliant audit trail for all processing and human interventions
By choosing to automate email intake rather than hiring additional staff, the company achieved sustainable scalability while maintaining HIPAA compliance.
Team Response:
The automation became so integral to operations that staff told the development team, “We’ll be upset if you take this away from us now.” The system handles the high-volume, repetitive work while staff focus on exception handling and value-added activities.
This implementation demonstrates how business process automation can transform operations when applied strategically to high-volume, format-variable workflows.
Client Perspective
The client noted that Midnight Flow’s team provided exceptional support throughout the implementation, even during the beta phase, and delivered a solution that exceeded expectations for reliability and impact.