This article is sponsored by Anonymous Health. Every day, thousands of people summon the courage to pick up the phone and ask for help. What happens in the next sixty seconds can determine whether they enter treatment — or disappear back into the struggle. In this Voices interview, Behavioral Health Business sits down with Geoff Nudd, CEO of Anonymous Health, to explore how AI is changing that moment.
The impact is undeniable: Anonymous Health drove attendance for Medicaid outpatient SUD patients roughly 40% above typical averages, while extending the duration of care by 30%. Furthermore, recovery success at the half-year mark outpaced industry benchmarks by a staggering 50 to 100%. Nudd explains what it took to get there, what the industry still needs to do and poses a question to providers: What does one additional admission per week mean for your organization?
Behavioral Health Business: What were the earliest signs and outcomes for you that AI could make a real impact in behavioral health?
Geoff Nudd: I have friends and family who have been touched by addiction over many years. I’m also the father of three kids, and I see all of these addiction “traps”: from technology, both legal and illegal drugs, sports gambling and other addictions. There are huge industries that make money by tapping into people’s dopamine rewards pathways at all stages of life. My family also has very close personal friends whose families have been impacted by autism.
And so, after I sold my first company in 2022, I decided to spend the next decade in behavioral health. That decision came from somewhere personal.
I partnered with both my longtime collaborator Dave Cristman and Dr. Angie Chen, Clinical Professor of Addiction Medicine at Stanford University, to explore how AI can support people struggling with addiction. Early on, our focus was simple: how do we get patients to show up?
Medicaid SUD patients often face social determinants and other barriers that make it hard to stay engaged in treatment. We started using AI to engage with patients between appointments — personalized communication driven by data. The hypothesis: if we could meet each patient where they were, we could get them to come back.
It worked. We increased show-up rates for Medicaid outpatient SUD by about 40% over Medicaid averages. That translated to more than simply better attendance — it extended length of service by 30% over Medicaid averages, while recovery outcomes at the six-month mark ran anywhere from 50 to 100% above average.
That was our first clear signal that AI could genuinely complement clinical care. We worked with Angie for a couple of years before bringing these capabilities to other providers.
Why is the first admissions call one of the most difficult — and most important — moments in behavioral health?
Nudd: When a patient calls a behavioral health organization, they have usually crossed a threshold most of us never have to cross: they have decided to ask for help. That makes the first conversation one of the most important moments in the entire patient journey — and one of the hardest.
The caller is often ambivalent, overwhelmed or in crisis. They may be carrying fear, shame, denial, family pressure, financial uncertainty and co-occurring complexity all at once. The person answering the phone is not just handling an inquiry. They are carrying a high-stakes human moment.
Our internal data shows that approximately 20% of inbound phone calls go unanswered, and nearly 80% of web inquiries fail to reach a live contact. Studies suggest 60 to 70% of calls to behavioral health facilities never convert to admission. In other words, the first-touch conversation is where access, growth and mission either come together or break down.
When someone finally reaches out for help, that is often the highest-intent moment they will ever have. If the organization responds with delay, inconsistency or uncertainty, it is not just a lost conversion. It is a lost chance at care.
This is why we built Anonymous Health. That moment cannot be wasted.
Why can’t hiring, onboarding and traditional training alone consistently solve for the variability of that first-touch conversation?
Nudd: Because behavioral health admissions is not just a knowledge problem. It is a live-performance problem.
Organizations can hire talented people, invest in onboarding and train staff in Motivational Interviewing, AIDET, the Stages of Change and other evidence-based frameworks. These are the right frameworks, validated over decades, trusted by clinicians. But the admissions environment moves fast, and turnover is high.
Traditional training, however good, is episodic. It fades under call pressure and staff churn. Training happens before the call. Performance happens during the call.
An admissions specialist in their first month may understand the framework in theory but still struggle in the moment — such as when a parent is resistant or when a high-acuity caller needs safety language and a clear next step. Our real-time coaching program, Heads Up: AI Intake, puts evidence-based guidance into the live conversation. A newer counselor gets access to the same patterns a seasoned veteran has internalized over years.
Hiring and training matter. They are necessary. They are just not sufficient. Behavioral health leaders need a system that reinforces best practice on every call, every day, for every counselor.
Once a lead reaches admissions, where is the biggest opportunity for AI to improve conversion, consistency and speed to care?
Nudd: At Anonymous Health, we build intelligent systems grounded in the evidence-based frameworks clinicians already trust — designed to improve performance in the moments that matter most. The live admissions conversation is one of those moments.
Most organizations already have tools for documentation, referral tracking, scheduling and CRM workflow. What has historically been missing is support inside the live interaction itself. EHRs and CRMs capture the record after the fact. Heads Up: AI Intake improves the human conversation while it is happening.
That opportunity shows up in a handful of critical areas: real-time guidance during live calls; immediate engagement across channels so no inquiry goes dark overnight; standardization that does not strip out the human element; smoother handoffs and better orchestration across the care pathway; and integrated data capture that informs future conversations.
The biggest opportunity is not generic automation. It is AI built specifically for behavioral health — intelligent enough to improve the live admissions moment, coordinated enough to manage the workflow around it and fast enough to reach people before the window closes.
How does real-time AI guidance help teams perform at a higher level without simply adding more headcount?
Nudd: It raises the performance floor and the performance ceiling at the same time.
In most behavioral health organizations, admissions performance depends too heavily on who happened to answer the call. The most experienced counselors can navigate ambivalence, family dynamics, objections and clinical nuance. Less experienced team members often cannot. Real-time AI changes that equation. It puts evidence-based guidance into the workflow with sub-second latency, so counselors know what to say next while the conversation is unfolding.
That drives leverage in three ways. It reduces dependence on tenure — Heads Up: AI Intake is effective from a counselor’s first day on the floor. It extends best practice across every shift, because real-time guidance is continuous where training is only intermittent. And it helps organizations grow without linearly scaling labor, building admissions capacity without forcing leaders to hire faster than the market can supply talent.
AI is not a labor substitute. It is a performance multiplier for the team you already have.
What should leaders measure to understand the true ROI of AI at the front door?
Nudd: The ROI question comes down to one operational truth: small conversion gains at the front door compound quickly. A two- or three-point lift in call-to-admission conversion is not merely a funnel optimization. For a provider with meaningful inbound volume, it is material revenue growth, more patients entering treatment and reduced pressure to scale headcount.
The more useful question for executives is this: What does one lost admission per week cost your organization?
Leaders evaluating AI at the front door should think across three dimensions. The first is access: is the front door actually opening wider? That means tracking inquiry-to-live-contact rate, speed to first response, after-hours capture, scheduled intake rate and time from first outreach to assessment.
The second is operating performance: is the team executing better? Conversion rate, call duration, counselor confidence, time-to-proficiency for new hires and caller satisfaction all tell part of that story.
The third is financial yield: what is the business impact? Incremental admissions from improved conversion, revenue per incremental admission, avoided hiring costs and margin lift from fixed-cost leverage at existing sites.
The mission point matters as much as the financial one. In behavioral health, a two- or three-point conversion improvement is not just a performance metric. It is more people entering treatment, earlier intervention and fewer motivated patients falling through the cracks at the moment they finally asked for help. The numbers are real. So is the human work behind them.
What excites you most about AI in behavioral health over the next decade?
Nudd: Behavioral health is a hard industry. Payer pressure. Compressed rates. A patient population with complex, chronic needs. As Bob Poznanovich often says, in addiction treatment, we are often asking the very mind affected by the illness to suddenly be healthy enough to make the decision that leads out of it. That is why the front door to care has to meet people where they are, with speed, support and consistency.
These pressures are real, and they can drive an organization out of business. When that happens, it is not an abstract loss. It impacts dozens, hundreds, thousands of patients who lose access to care.
But here is what gives me genuine optimism: AI is on track to deliver 20 to 30% improvements to operating leverage for behavioral health organizations across every function. That means organizations can survive, thrive and stay in the fight for their patients.
Beyond the numbers, we are there at that front door overnight, on weekends, at the moments when someone picks up the phone and nobody can answer. We are supporting admissions and intake staff in one of the hardest jobs in behavioral health — that first call that gets someone into care
Those are life-saving calls. That is why this work matters. And that is why I am excited about the next ten years. Behavioral health does not need generic AI. It needs intelligent systems built for the moments where care is won or lost.
Editor’s note: This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
This Voices article is sponsored by Anonymous Health. To learn more about Anonymous Health, visit anonymoushealth.com.
The Voices Series is a sponsored content program featuring leading executives discussing trends, topics and more shaping their industry in a question-and-answer format. For more information on Voices, please contact [email protected].