Faster care, fewer misses: Emitrr is changing the patient journey

When it started, Emitrr didn’t set out to build another patient engagement tool. It was chasing a far more stubborn problem in healthcare: the massive gap between patient demand and provider capacity.

Says Anmol Oberoi, Co-founder and CEO of Emitrr. “There’s a big gap in the capacity utilization. And our mission is to make healthcare access faster and much easier.” 

Emitrr does that through automated outreach, AI‑assisted scheduling workflows, and—at its core—text messaging at scale. Oberoi explains: “We asked customers and found that people just don’t prefer picking up phone calls for many healthcare cases. They are way more comfortable answering a text message.”

“SMS is where people actually hang out,” says Oberoi about patients.  “If you identify the channel where customers spend their time, you can get anything done on that channel.”

To power SMS in healthcare in a support-first, reliable, secure, and compliant way, Emitrr needed a communications partner that was just as invested and could move as quickly as it does. It chose Bandwidth.

The hidden crisis of capacity utilization in clinics

In its earliest days, Emitrr spent hundreds of hours interviewing healthcare practices across the US, trying to understand what was broken beneath the surface of patient engagement.

A large dental group with more than 40 offices in the central U.S. gave them the wake‑up call: “We miss 100,000 phone calls every month.”

That number hit hard. If a clinic misses 100,000 calls, how many potential patients disappear? And how many more went underserved because of underutilized staff?

The practice told them plainly, “If you can build an automated way to get us even a few hundred appointments out of this, it makes complete sense for us to invest.”

Adding more staff wasn’t the answer. Staff turnover within two years is over 50% for medical practices.^[1]  Every weekend brought on a new pile of after‑hours voicemails and unreturned texts. The backlog never stopped growing.

Patients noticed. “Back then, the most common review you’d read about a dental practice was that they never answered the phone or text messages.” 

It was clear that phone calls alone couldn’t keep up with demand. “A team member can only answer one phone call at a time,” Oberoi said. “But they can probably answer ten text messages simultaneously.”

Missed calls were only at the top of the funnel. The real problem went deeper: capacity utilization

Most scheduling systems lock providers into rigid 20‑ or 30‑minute blocks, whether the visit needs that much time or not. Doctors rarely adjust these settings if they’re not tech-savvy, and the templates feel immovable.

Emitrr’s solution changes that. 

Oberoi explains: “AI looks at appointment data and says: from the last hundred appointments of this type, most only needed ten minutes. But the system still blocks 20 or 30, which means you’re losing time on every single visit.” 

The technology doesn’t stop at shrinking time slots. It also identifies openings and matches patients based on past visit length and urgency. 

“Let’s say there’s an open slot on Friday,” he said. “We can look at next week’s schedule and automatically move the right patient into that slot. The clinic recognizes revenue faster. And they’re able to book another person next week.”
Emitrr recognized what practices missed: Healthcare didn’t need more phone calls. It needed to rethink scheduling and patient engagement. And it needed to meet patients at their convenience.

This has shaped Emitrr’s mission and led it to center its platform on SMS as the primary channel, supported by hands‑on guidance to drive real adoption.

Why SMS wins: Behavior beats technology

A customer use case ultimately turned Emitrr into a strong messaging proponent. “We kept encouraging a customer to use voice AI to call patients, and they said, ‘My call center already does that. Patients don’t pick up the phone.’ We tried SMS instead and patients responded. Now they want to automate that.” 

From that point on, Emitrr built a full‑funnel solution around SMS, one that converts missed calls into new-found revenue. Messaging became core to everything it delivered, including:

• Missed‑call follow‑ups 
• Appointment confirmations 
• AI‑driven scheduling 
• Post‑visit care coordination 
• Payments

The impact was immediate. In one case, when a practice switched from checks and postcards for payment recovery to SMS payment links, they saw 40% of payments collected the same day.

Oberoi sees SMS as a utility player across the healthcare landscape, “We strongly believe messaging will power care coordination moving forward.” Emitrr isn’t just using messaging to simplify front desk jobs or reclaim lost revenue, including building a full AI receptionist. It’s also using SMS for proactive outreach, reactivation, and deeper patient touchpoints that grow revenue over time. 

And as Emitrr scales the use of SMS in healthcare, it looks to Bandwidth as its partner for flawless delivery, fast and efficient compliance, and instant support.

Deliverability that makes healthcare trust Emitrr

The Emitrr team has evaluated multiple providers. For CEO Anmol Oberoi, the litmus test comes down to two things: an equal, empathetic partnership and rock‑solid support.

“We tried other platforms, some self‑serve, some with great websites, but when we talked to them, it didn’t feel like a partnership,” Oberoi said. “It was their way or the highway. We needed a partner that cared enough about our business to grow with us.”

Working deep in the 10DLC territory, Emitrr also ran into compliance challenges. Oberoi recalls, “One day we onboarded a big customer. We were new to 10DLC and texting, and the messaging went down. And internally we were all guessing why did the messaging stop working? Bandwidth came in and said that yes, it is 10DLC–it’s not registered”

Oberoi explains how this has played out: 

“10DLC compliance is so subjective, but Bandwidth’s self‑serve tools which made things much easier. If we had to build everything ourselves from a compliance standpoint, I don’t think we would have come where we have come today.”

Anmol Oberoi, CEO and Co-founder

“The Bandwidth team sat down with us to create a template approach to get 10DLC use cases approved and approved accurately. I don’t think any company can build that internally. And that’s where Bandwidth helped us a lot.”

For a start-up founder, the impact has been phenomenal. Oberoi mentions, “I used to jump on resolving support tickets myself. But now that I see we’re getting 10DLC approved much faster, I’ve completely filtered out all Bandwidth tickets out of my inbox. I know they’re handled. I can actually focus on growing the company rather than focusing on carrier requirements.”

Beyond compliance support, Emitrr’s own sales process stands out backed by Bandwidth’s reliability and real‑time visibility.

Message deliverability failures is one of healthcare providers’ biggest fears. Oberoi said. “Bandwidth  gave us reporting, industry benchmarks, and best practices so we could show customers exactly how we keep their messages compliant and delivered.”

One example: simply adding opt‑out language to signatures in specific industries improved delivery rates. “These things seem small, but they move the needle. And Bandwidth tells us upfront, so we don’t have to A/B test for months.”

Rallying around support for healthcare

Looking back at how the Emitrr team chose Bandwidth, Oberoi shared a moment that sparked the partnership: “We started off with a competing provider and then moved to Bandwidth. They told us we’d need to pay $2,000 a month just to sign a BAA. Our text volume was under $100 at the time, so how could we pay $2,000? I reached out to Bandwidth and they said, ‘We’ll do this. You don’t need to pay anything extra.’ It’s not about the price, it’s about the timing. You have to make it easy for a startup to get started.”

Years later, the reason they’ve stayed is the same reason they came. 

“We came to Bandwidth and we stayed for one single reason, and that is the support,” 

He points to reliable responses, real escalation paths, and a team that operates like true partners. “In healthcare, support has to be 24/7, and Bandwidth gets that. A product only works if the support is there, and Bandwidth’s team is always on top of things.” 

Scaling from startup to industry leader 

Today, Emitrr is onboarding 20–25 new customers a month. Its next goal? 250 per month. To do that, it needs a communications backbone that scales without requiring an infusion of new hires. “Compliance support and deliverability are key areas where Bandwidth is helping us. If not, like I said, I’d probably have to hire two or three more support people,” Oberoi said.

He also sees Bandwidth’s roadmap, particularly around AI, as an accelerator. “Now Bandwidth has AI products too. That means we don’t need to build everything ourselves. We can layer on top of Bandwidth and move faster.”

Speed is everything in a startup. “The only advantage a startup has over a billion‑dollar company is speed. Bandwidth baked so many things into the product. Compared to building everything ourselves and thinking that we would deliver this in timelines of six months, ten months, we deliver things in weeks. And that’s the competitive advantage that we have because of Bandwidth.”

The future? Even more automation powered by AI, messaging, and Bandwidth. “Voice will always have a place, but SMS and AI together are transformative. They reduce response times, prioritize urgent messages, and help clinics operate like modern tech companies.” And Bandwidth will continue being a key enabler of the mission. “With Bandwidth, I never worry. It feels like an extended team.”