Healthcare Call Center Cost: Build, Outsource or Automate

What You Need to Know

• A healthcare call center costs about $4 to $26 per answered call, by our estimate from published figures¹,². We found no national per-call benchmark.
• Neither outsourcing nor an in-house center was clearly cheaper in the one measured comparison we found¹. One urology practice averaged $3.59 per call outsourced against $4.02 in-house¹.
• A fair comparison prices build, outsource and automate on the same cost lines, then divides each total by the same call count.

What does a healthcare call center cost per call?

Healthcare call center cost runs about $4 to $26 per answered call, by our estimate from published figures¹,². The range is wide, partly because centers count calls differently. The same budget divided by answered calls, rather than all calls offered, gives a higher cost per call².

Staff pay, benefits, supervision, training, technology and after-hours coverage make up the total. We found no national benchmark. Your own cost lines give a better base than any published figure.

Why do published cost-per-call figures vary?

The low end comes from a single practice. One 43-provider urology practice averaged $3.59 per call with an outsourced center and $4.02 with its own over matched six-month periods¹. The difference wasn't statistically significant¹.

The call count you divide by changes the result. Virginia's Medicaid call center reported $24.4 million in total costs for fiscal 2025, when it took about 1.4 million calls². By our estimate, Virginia's cost comes to about $17 per call offered but about $26 per answered call².

Neither source comes from a health system with a central patient access call center. Virginia's agents also helped submit Medicaid applications and renewals².

Which cost lines make up healthcare call center cost?

Healthcare call center cost is staffed hours with benefits, plus supervision, training, replacement, technology, facilities, language assistance, and after-hours and peak coverage. Staff costs are the largest line, at 60 to 70% of call center operating expense across industries in a 2003 review³.

Start with the loaded hourly rate, which is wages plus benefits. In June 2026, private-industry employers paid $34.59 per hour worked for all office and administrative support staff in health care and social assistance⁵. Benefits added about 47% to wages for the whole group, not call center agents alone⁵.

Turnover is its own cost line because training starts over with every departure. Our guides to medical receptionist cost and medical receptionist turnover cover one role's replacement cost in detail.

An illustrative healthcare call center cost per call

Handle time and occupancy, the share of logged-in time staff spend handling calls, turn the $34.59 hourly rate into agent labor per call⁵. You set occupancy as an assumption.

Calls per hour equal 3,600 seconds times occupancy, divided by handle time in seconds. Labor per call is $34.59 divided by calls per hour.

Agent labor alone comes to about $3 to $5 per call in this illustration, before supervision, technology and coverage. Breaks, meetings and training off the phone also raise labor per call.

Why can after-hours and peak coverage raise cost, and what do missed calls cost?

After-hours and peak coverage can raise cost per call because each interval is staffed on its own. VA sets contact center staffing with the Erlang-C calculator⁷, a queueing model that staffs each interval for its own calls and handle time³. Quiet hours still need staff.

After hours. Overtime rules apply when current staff cover after-hours shifts:

• Non-exempt staff generally earn at least time and one-half their regular rate past 40 hours in a workweek under federal law¹⁰.
• A hospital employer may instead agree with staff in advance on a 14-day period¹¹. Overtime then starts past 8 hours in a day and 80 hours in the 14 days¹¹.
• Some states, such as California, also require daily overtime¹².
• Paid night-shift differentials count in the regular rate used to figure overtime pay¹³.

Check with counsel which rules apply to your staff.

Peaks. A queue staffed near capacity has little room for more calls³. One review warns that "even small increases in load" can have "an overwhelming, negative effect on highly utilized systems"³.

Longer queues lose more callers. On one health system's imaging lines, queue time was the strongest predictor of abandoned calls⁹. Average queue time on those lines fell from 279 seconds to about 50, while abandonment fell from 8.7% to 2.8% over the same period⁹. The drop came with a reorganization of skills and staffing, which the authors say adds some confounding⁹.

Unanswered calls. We found no dollar value for an abandoned or unanswered call. The closest figure is the cost of a missed visit¹⁴. At one VA medical center and its clinics, no-shows cost an estimated $196 per patient on average in 2008¹⁴. To estimate what unanswered calls cost your own access center, try the access center revenue calculator.

Build, outsource or automate: which cost lines does each option change?

Each option, or a mix, changes which healthcare call center cost lines you pay and how those lines grow with volume and coverage hours.

Build. Your health system pays every cost line. Staffing rises with each added coverage hour and peak, although pooling clinic lines into one center gains scale³. For the same service, one central line needs proportionally fewer staff than several small ones³.

Outsource. Vendor fees can replace staffed hours and some technology. Our guides to healthcare call center outsourcing and medical answering service pricing cover pricing models and contract terms.

Outsourcing savings depend on call mix and performance terms. The urology practice in the one measured comparison we found had left its vendor over poor performance¹. Its own center answered in 14 seconds on average, against 1 minute 42 seconds for the vendor¹. The urology comparison covers one practice and one vendor¹.

Automate. AI voice agents take routine, after-hours and overflow calls while staff handle escalations and complex calls. Because the agents absorb growth in those calls, staffed hours, overtime and coverage can grow without proportional hiring. Vendor fees and implementation become new cost lines. Our post on how AI agents are transforming the healthcare call center covers the operational side.

Because we found no independent per-call prices for outsourcing or AI agents, get vendor quotes on the same call count.

Three legal rules can apply to any mix. Confirm your obligations under each with counsel.

• Business associate agreement. You may let a vendor handle protected health information for you only after you obtain satisfactory assurance under HIPAA¹⁵. HIPAA requires you to document that assurance in a business associate agreement, a written contract or other written arrangement that meets 45 CFR 164.504(e)¹⁵.
• Language assistance. Language assistance is a cost line in every option. Section 1557 rules may require free language assistance from a health system that receives federal financial assistance⁸.
• Call recording. Some state laws, such as California's, may require every caller's consent to record calls¹⁶.

How do Commure AI Call Center Agents fit a call center cost model?

Commure AI Call Center Agents are the automate option in a call center cost model. They answer 24/7/365 in English and Spanish, taking routine, after-hours and overflow calls alongside your staff and any answering service.

Commure reports typical results of a 30%+ reduction in inbound calls handled by your team. Volume and coverage hours can then grow without proportional hiring. Commure also reports typical results of a 50%+ reduction in support labor cost and a $40K+ revenue increase per provider.

Because the agents take many calls at once without queueing or busy signals, calls they handle after hours and at peaks are answered on arrival.

Commure Agents complete scheduling, rescheduling, cancellations, confirmations and intake on the call. Calls that need a person reach your staff by warm transfer under configured intent rules, which can also send calls to an answering service or a follow-up workflow. Messages become structured tasks for staff follow-up.

Calls route through your existing telephony, with no number change and no telephony integration required. Deployments operate under a signed BAA and use HIPAA-aligned infrastructure, security controls and audit logging.

Every call is recorded, transcribed and scored. Because the real-time dashboard tracks resolution rate, scheduling success, abandonment and patient sentiment, you can set those call outcomes against cost.

To build the model on your own numbers, request a complimentary call center health analysis. It breaks down your call volume by type, length, category and outcome, then models your automation opportunity.

How should a health system build its own call center cost?

Build your healthcare call center cost from your own call counts, handle times and payroll rather than from published averages. Then price build, outsource and automate on the same lines and call count.

1. Count calls three ways. Pull calls offered, calls answered by staff and calls handled in the phone menu, by hour and call type.
2. Measure handle time by call type. Include talk time, hold time and after-call work, then write down which parts you counted.
3. State your assumptions. Set your occupancy rate and supervisor span, then show both on the model. Size staff for each hour's peak with an Erlang-C calculator, the tool VA uses for contact center staffing⁷.
4. Apply a loaded rate. Use your payroll's own rate or, without one, multiply wages by about 1.47, our estimate from BLS data⁵.
5. Add technology and the other cost-table lines. Include yearly and one-time costs for licenses per employee, telephony and scheduling software. Add supervision, new-hire training time for each departure and any facilities cost.
6. Price the costliest hours. Cost after-hours, weekend and overtime hours at their actual rates, with any night differentials included in the regular rate¹³.
7. Track what goes unanswered. Report abandonment and voicemail by hour next to speed of answer.
8. Add language assistance. Budget qualified interpreters, qualified translators or qualified bilingual staff for every language your callers need, in every option⁸.
9. Compare on one call count. Price each option on the same cost lines, then divide each total by the same call count, such as total calls offered. Report calls answered by staff, by a vendor, by AI agents and in the phone menu as separate lines. Use calls handled by staff only in the staff labor model.

A complimentary call center health analysis can supply call counts by type, length and outcome for steps 1 and 2.