How Fabian House cut enrollment time from weeks to hours with a HIPAA-compliant pipeline.
We replaced a 15-page paper packet with an AI-augmented reception and a fully digital intake pipeline, built so a second campus can enroll families from day one.
A school like few others, about to become two campuses.
Fabian House is one of only a few education centers in the nation that blends early childhood education with applied behavior analysis (ABA) therapy. They offer programs from Pre-Kindergarten through 5th grade, and every program includes children actively receiving ABA therapy alongside their classmates.
That blend is the whole point, and it is also the operational challenge: the school must run smooth early-education workflows while conforming to rigorous HIPAA compliance, because the ABA side of the house handles protected health information every single day.
With a second campus on the way, Fabian House engaged 23Peaks to make enrollment simple, reliable, compliant, and repeatable before the expansion, not after.
A 15-page packet stood between families and a classroom.
Families hoping to enroll were handed a 15-page paper packet to take home: upload insurance, gather medical records, sign 8 different forms. For families pursuing the ABA track, that meant assembling diagnoses, treatment information, and insurance paperwork on their own time, with no guide.
Once the packet left the building, nobody could see where a family was in the process, or whether they had quietly given up. Enrollment took 2 to 3 weeks when it went well, and many packets simply never came back.
Sent home on paper
Every prospective family took home the same packet regardless of program: insurance uploads, medical records, and 8 separate forms to sign.
Families went dark
Once a packet left the building there was no reliable way to know where a family was stuck, or whether they were stuck at all.
The director absorbed it
Chasing packets and re-explaining requirements meant the director did admin work constantly, and hiring someone to take it over was next to impossible.
Every stalled packet was a family in limbo and a seat unfilled. And this was the process about to be copied to a second campus.
Two systems of record. Neither owns enrollment.
Fabian House already ran on two capable platforms: CentralReach for the ABA practice and Brightwheel for early childhood education. The obvious move was to push enrollment into one of them.
But CentralReach speaks ABA and Brightwheel speaks ECE, and Fabian House does both. Every blended enrollment has to satisfy both worlds at once, with different requirements and procedures per program. The journey lives in the seam between the two tools, and neither one can model it.
The other obvious move, stitching together an e-sign tool, a form builder, and a generic CRM, fails differently: nothing holds the journey together, and because enrollment carries diagnoses, treatment records, and insurance details, every vendor in the chain would need its own business associate agreement and its own compliance review.
Our approach: redesign the process with the COO first, then build one HIPAA-compliant pipeline that owns the journey from first inquiry to enrolled, running alongside the systems of record.
An enrollment pipeline with a human still at the front desk.
We started with the process, not the software. Working with the COO and director, we redesigned the front desk around dedicated roles and SOPs, then architected the tools around the new process. Everything from tour scheduling to paperwork filing and fee collection now happens digitally, in one place.
AI-augmented reception
We didn't replace the front desk. We gave it an agentic AI coworker that answers the questions most families open with: pricing, availability, and eligibility. First responses now arrive within seconds, so interested families never fall through the cracks.
Program-aware digital intake
Blended ECE and ABA programs mean different requirements and procedures per program. The intake flow knows which is which, collecting diagnoses, treatment information, medical records, and insurance only when a program calls for them.
Pipeline visibility for everyone
A simple staff interface handles inquiries, tour scheduling, and the enrollment pipeline, and families always know where they are in the process. No more packets disappearing into kitchen drawers.
Paperwork and fees, one boundary
Document uploads, digital signatures, and fee collection all live inside a single HIPAA-compliant system, running alongside Brightwheel and CentralReach rather than fighting them.
Weeks became 48 hours.
A family can now go from touring the school to waitlisted within 48 hours, even in the most complex cases involving insurance and complicated family situations. Under the paper process, the same journey took 2 to 3 weeks, and the completion rate of the enrollment process has roughly doubled.
Tour to waitlisted in 48 hours
Down from 2 to 3 weeks under the paper process, even in the most complex cases involving insurance and complicated family situations.
Completion rate doubled
Roughly twice as many families who start the enrollment process now finish it, because nobody gets lost between a tour and a signed form.
First response in seconds
The AI-augmented reception answers new inquiries about pricing, availability, and eligibility immediately, at any hour, with staff in the loop.
Ready for campus two
The entire engagement existed to make enrollment repeatable before the second campus opens. The pipeline is built to run both campuses from day one.
Measurement note: cycle time compares the prior paper process to pipeline data after launch. The completion rate is reported as an approximate doubling rather than a precise figure to protect client specifics.
Three choices made the difference.
Process first, software second
We worked with the COO and director to redesign the front desk around dedicated roles and SOPs, then architected the tools around that process. Automating the old packet would have just made a broken process faster.
AI augmentation, not automation
Families want instant answers, and they also want to talk to a human being. The reception agent meets the need for speed without removing the person in the middle. The front desk got a coworker, not a replacement.
One pipeline across the seam
CentralReach speaks ABA. Brightwheel speaks ECE. Fabian House's enrollment lives in the seam between them, and a pile of point tools would have meant a BAA and a compliance review for every vendor touching PHI. One custom system holds the whole journey inside one boundary.