At 6 a.m., a nurse manager begins a shift at Wellstar Health System. She’s reviewing patient updates, coordinating with the care team, and preparing the unit for morning rounds.
If something breaks—like a printer connected to the electronic medical record (EMR) system—there’s no time to navigate portals or search for documentation. Reporting the issue needs to take seconds.
Wellstar serves more than a million patients each year across 300+ care locations. A small technology breakdown doesn’t stay small for long. Like most health systems, Wellstar was running on a patchwork of disconnected tools. Each system added cost, complexity, and friction.
“If clinicians have to stop and hunt for answers, that’s time away from patients,” says Dianne Kokotoff, Executive Director of Enterprise Solutions and Automation at Wellstar. “When we remove that friction, they can spend more time caring for people.”
To keep clinicians focused on patients, Wellstar modernized the employee experience and business execution on the ServiceNow AI Platform—where AI thinks and acts to get work done.
Meet Wali: AI that lives where clinicians already work
With ServiceNow as the operational backbone connecting work across IT, HR, and facilities, Wellstar could finally unify how employees ask for help and how service teams respond.
Enter Wali, Wellstar’s AI assistant.
Built on Moveworks and named for the Wellstar Automation Library, Wali lives inside the intranet, Microsoft Teams, and the EMR support environment, bringing help directly into the tools clinicians already use. Instead of navigating portals or switching systems, they ask Wali and get an answer instantly. For example, a clinician navigating a complex Epic workflow can now find tip sheets and training documentation instantly—no portal, no ticket, no wait.
That’s because behind the scenes, Wali handles all the steps. It interprets requests, connects systems, finds answers, and completes tasks so clinicians don’t have to. More complex issues are routed to the service desk, where agents use Now Assist to resolve them quickly.
“We want employees to get help where they already work,” says Larry Ross, Director of IT Automation at Wellstar.
AI-powered service cuts incident response time by 25% and handling time by 64%
Moveworks made it easy for employees to ask for help and that's why Wellstar implemented Now Assist for ITSM—putting generative AI directly into the workflows service desk agents use every day.
Now Assist for ITSM instantly summarizes incidents so agents can understand issues without reading long ticket histories. It generates resolution notes automatically, cutting time spent on documentation. Wellstar is also piloting Now Assist knowledge generation, using real case data to build a smarter, self-improving content base.
Incident response time dropped by 25%. Average service desk handling time fell from 25 minutes to nine, a 64% improvement. The team expects to reach seven minutes as Now Assist capabilities continue to mature.
For service desk agents, Now Assist removes repetitive tasks and lets them handle more complex issues. For clinicians, the result is better, faster support.
“Moveworks supports our clinicians,” says Ross. “Now Assist supports the people resolving those requests.”
Thousands of new employees and zero additional support staff
When a merger brought three hospitals and thousands of new employees into the system—including clinicians learning Epic for the first time—support demand surged. With hospital margins under pressure, adding headcount wasn't an option. Automation on the ServiceNow platform meant Wellstar could absorb that growth without adding headcount. The result: 300% ROI and the equivalent of 11 additional FTEs in capacity, with funds redirected toward patient care.
“ServiceNow automation allows us to expand capacity without adding headcount,” says Kokotoff. “It helps our teams keep pace with the growth of the health system and frees funds to be redirected to patient care and other vital operations.”
What’s next: voice, agents, and AI across every layer of employee service
Next up: Now Assist for HR Service Delivery will bring AI-generated chat summaries, email responses, and note generation to HR case workers. Wellstar is also piloting voice-enabled AI for employee onboarding—a significant capability for a workforce that often can’t stop to type—and deploying additional AI agents across IT and HR teams.
Underpinning all of it is a common service data model (CSDM) that gives Wellstar a unified view of the systems and services that support care. It’s the foundation for moving from reactive firefighting to proactive IT operations.
All these efforts will ultimately keep improving the quality of care providers deliver.
“Our goal is to make it easier for clinicians to get the support they need without slowing down patient care,” says Kokotoff. “ServiceNow and AI remove friction from our workflows, so our teams can stay focused on patients.”