How Case Specific Nutrition Fills Cancellations

"At Case Specific Nutrition, our team of 20 registered dietitians supports clients through every stage of life, from childhood through their senior years. We offer in-person and virtual appointments based on each client's insurance coverage and manage scheduling through Healthie.

Making it easier for clients to get the care they need is a priority for us. Between May and September 2026, Recupra's AI waitlist agent helped fill 76 cancelled appointments by calling clients on our waitlist and booking them directly into Healthie. That meant more clients getting in sooner, without our staff having to make those calls."

"Before Recupra, all of these tasks were manual. Now they're automated." Kristy DiFeo, Operations & Partnerships Manager, Case Specific Nutrition

Before Recupra: cancellations with short notice were difficult to fill

At Case Specific Nutrition, clients typically attend four to five visits, with additional appointments for those who need ongoing support. Follow-ups make up most of our schedule and were also the appointments most affected by cancellations.

Filling those openings depended on who had time. "Our front office worked to fill initial consultations alongside their other responsibilities, while dietitians managed openings for their own follow-up visits. We were doing what we could with the time we had, but we didn't have a consistent process for filling those openings," says Kristy DiFeo, Case Specific Nutrition's Operations & Partnerships Manager.

By Kristy's estimate, 10 to 12 cancelled appointments a week went unfilled, on top of the slots that were never booked in the first place. Each slot that went unfilled has a financial value, but it also represents a slot another client could have had to be seen sooner, and a benchmark for the dietitian who takes pride in maintaining a full schedule. When patients asked to be seen sooner, it fell on the dietitian to keep a list and try to notify those on the list that a slot had opened. This was inefficient and also a distraction to some extent, because we'd really prefer the dietitians be able to focus on their visits and clients and not have to worry about appointment coordination between sessions.

Why Recupra

"We weren't looking for a backfill solution, but when we met Recupra's team and learned more about the product it became obvious their solution would be a great fit for us."

The key aspects being:

• Healthie integration: The Healthie integration was a requirement. "We wouldn't have really been able to do it if there wasn't an integration," Kristy says. Recupra connects with an API key issued in Healthie, hears about cancellations as they happen through Healthie's appointment events, and books patients directly into the calendar, so Healthie stays the system of record.
• Pay for results: Reimbursement for nutrition services varies greatly, and CSN has a mix of self-pay, Medicare, Medicaid, and commercial reimbursement. Recupra's payment model meant CSN would only pay if a slot was filled, and this made a world of difference.
• Endless configurations: All tools are not created equal. Sometimes you're excited about a product and then learn it has to be applied in a certain way and cannot accommodate nuance or business-specific use cases. Recupra has demonstrated again and again that workflows can be adjusted to meet Case Specific's needs and the range of clients we support.
• Security and transparency: AI used intentionally and with the right securities in place can be used to improve access and increase efficiency. That's what this AI tool has done for CSN: it enabled increased access for clients who wanted to participate in the backfill tool, and it does this in a secure and tightly managed environment with a predefined role and set of permissions.

Rollout: two dietitians first, then everyone

CSN started with two dietitians and kept adding providers until every one was covered. "We didn't want to overwhelm any of our dietitians, or make anyone on the staff nervous," Kristy says. "We like to do things slowly."

Each dietitian filled out a short questionnaire from the Recupra team on how they wanted their openings filled and their patients called, so the rules are set per provider rather than once for the whole clinic. That kept each dietitian in control of their own schedule. On CSN's side there was little else to do: "There really wasn't any work on our end. It was very easy."

Over the following months the setup was tuned together with CSN: the hours the agent calls, the caller ID patients see, and Healthie tags that tell the agent which patients to call and which have opted out. Kristy says the tags made the biggest difference, because the clinic decides who gets called from inside Healthie. More on how that works: using Healthie patient tags for outreach.

What surprised her most was the response time. "I've worked on other projects with other groups and it took days to get a response when I had a question." With Recupra, answers came quickly, "and it made us want to continue."

What clients said

CSN introduces the waitlist at each client's initial consultation, explains how the calls work, and lets the patient choose whether to join. That conversation, before the first call ever happens, is a big part of why clients have taken to it.

Clients like being offered an earlier slot. "Everyone seems to love it," Kristy says. One client whose appointment was booked far out loved getting an earlier time, something the clinic would never have known to offer by hand. The agent reaches clients by call or by text. Two clients told Kristy they preferred the text to a call, and she expects many more feel the same: "People like to have options. Having the ability to offer a phone call and a text just increased the likelihood someone responds if they're interested in an earlier appointment."

Results

Kristy is candid that Recupra didn't free up a big block of staff hours, because before Recupra most of this was done when a dietitian had the bandwidth, or if a client was vocal about wanting a sooner appointment and the admin team was able to assist. What changed is that it gets done now. Dietitians no longer search through their client list for someone to move into a gap, and they don't call or email clients themselves. When a slot opens, it doesn't sit empty.

CSN tracks each dietitian's appointment hours by month rather than revenue by day, and with fewer gaps those hours are higher. With 76 filled appointments, CSN has been able to turn open time into compensated time and increase access for their clients.

From Recupra's records for CSN, May to September 2026:

• 76 openings filled from the waitlist.
• 24% fill rate (76 of 316) on the openings the agent could work. The others were taken off the agent's list (filled by the clinic itself, blocked on the calendar or cancelled) or were not valid openings.

Kristy's figures (weekly cancellations before Recupra) are her own estimates, shared in an interview in October 2026. Agent figures come from Recupra's records for CSN.

If your practice has cancelled slots that go unfilled, see how Recupra's waitlist automation works, or book a demo.