Kern Family's AI 'Angelica' made 800,000 calls to Medi-Cal members since 2025

Key Takeaways

Kern Family Health Care uses an AI phone agent named "Angelica" to drive Medi-Cal renewals.
The plan reports 800,000 calls to 387,000 members since late 2025.
Kern Family says it spent about $370,000 on Careforce’s software.
April’s renewal rate hit 94.9%, according to the plan.
State officials say AI use must comply with privacy and consumer rules.

Vanessa Barahona thought a bilingual staffer named Angelica was helping her book a Medi-Cal renewal appointment in Bakersfield. Kern Family Health Care, the county’s largest Medi-Cal plan, later confirmed it was an AI system doing the talking. The tool has become a key contact point as plans try to keep eligible Central Valley families covered under tighter federal timelines.

She definitely wasn't.

How the calls work

Kern Family deployed the "Angelica" phone agent late last year through Careforce, a San Francisco startup. Officials said the plan spent about $370,000 on the software, which they credit with more than 800,000 reminder and scheduling calls to their 387,000 members. The goal is simple, they said, get people who received renewal packets to finish them on time and avoid a lapse.

Leaders at Kern Family said the AI does routine outreach in more than 30 languages, then routes members to human staff for paperwork checks and county processing. A spokesperson said matching Angelica’s call volume would take about 40 full-time employees. The plan reported a 94.9% renewal rate in April, a figure they feared would fall as automatic, pandemic-era renewals ended and the new federal calendar sped up. A plastic pump of sanitizer sat by the sign-in tablet.

What’s changing in Medi-Cal

Under the federal One Big Beautiful Bill Act signed in 2025, work documentation rules start nationally in 2027, and many enrollees will need to confirm eligibility twice a year. That adds phone-tag and paperwork risk for families with shifting hours, frequent address changes, or limited internet access. Plans like Kern Family are allowed to contact members about renewals, but not to solicit new sign-ups, and counties still make the final eligibility calls.

California’s Department of Health Care Services said Medi-Cal plans can choose their own outreach tools, including AI, but must follow privacy, data security, and consumer protection laws. The attorney general’s office has also reminded health entities about compliance. Researchers and unions have questioned whether AI outreach and triage tools in health settings could lead to surveillance creep, biased outcomes, or people getting dropped incorrectly, which officials here dispute.

"When you have a new technology like this, you need to police it," said Mark Duggan, a Stanford economist who studies Medicaid.

Where else this could show up

Careforce’s CEO said Central California Alliance for Health is also working with the software, which could put similar AI calls in front of Medi-Cal members in Merced County. Kern County Human Services leaders said they are coordinating data and staffing with Kern Family to smooth handoffs, including county workers stationed inside the plan’s Bakersfield office to answer walk-in questions.

Kern Family executives said staff have accepted the tool after seeing it lighten the call load and keep after-hours lines moving. And the calls keep coming. "We need this functionality to be much more effective and augment our efforts," said Emily Duran, who leads Kern Health Services, which administers Kern Family.

Barahona said she realized partway through that a bot was on the line. "It was easy," she said. "It felt like I was talking to a real person."

Central Valley AI is produced by the CVAI Newsdesk team and developed by Kaweah Tech, a regional firm that builds, deploys, and integrates AI solutions for businesses across California's Central Valley.

Source

https://themercedfocus.org/ai-is-being-used-to-boost-medicaid-enrollment-but-not-without-concerns/