A lot of healthcare conversation revolves around fancy tech and diagnostics, but a big gap exists between your primary care doctor referring you to a specialist and actually seeing that specialist. This lag is huge, manual, and increasingly catching the eye of venture capitalists.

The issue hits home for Kaled Alhanafi and Chetan Patel, who co-founded Basata after facing their own struggles with the administrative nightmare. Their father was diagnosed but only one out of three cardiology groups called within a couple weeks, another waited until surgery had occurred, and yet another hasn’t bothered to contact them.

Basata aims to streamline this process by automatically processing referrals via AI voice agents, which call patients directly to schedule appointments. The founders argue that this gap in care isn’t because practices don’t want to see you, but rather due to the overwhelming administrative backlog they face.

The company has processed referrals for around 500,000 patients and recently closed a $21 million Series A round. Despite competition from well-funded startups like Tennr, Basata is optimistic about its unique end-to-end workflow tailored to specific specialties.