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AI for Efficiency in Healthcare Operations | Will Hayes of Third Way Health | The Brainiac Blueprint Podcast

  • Acy Rodriguez
  • Nov 10
  • 35 min read

In this episode of The Brainiac Blueprint Podcast, we sit down with Will Hayes, Growth Manager at Third Way Health, to explore how AI is transforming healthcare operations.


From reducing patient no-shows with data insights, to AI-powered quality assurance that reviews 100% of calls, to balancing automation with the human touch, Will breaks down how Third Way helps clinics and health systems improve efficiency and patient experience.


He also shares his perspective on why AI adoption is exponential, what trends he’s seeing in enterprise healthcare, and how human trust and relationships remain central even in an AI-first world.


Full transcript below.


🎧 Watch or listen to The Brainiac Blueprint Podcast:

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⏱ In this episode, we discuss: 

00:00 | Intro 

01:06 | Meet Will Hayes and Third Way Health

02:40 | “I think AI is..” 

04:21 | What healthcare operations really means 

07:15 | Data insights on patient no-shows 

10:44 | Where AI is most impactful in healthcare operations 

13:30 | The Power of AI Plus Human vs. AI Alone 

16:49 | Overcoming pushback and building trust 

32:25 | Real-world success story: reducing costs + increasing visits 

35:03 | Why patient satisfaction (CSAT) matters most 

43:15 | Looking 5 years ahead in healthcare operations


🔗 Will Hayes

Third Way Health → https://thirdway.health/


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Episode Full Transcript:


Kyle: Welcome back, everyone, to another episode of the Brainiac Blueprint, where we discuss the intersection of AI and real-world applications with our esteemed guests. I am Kyle Lambert, founder of LeftBrain AI and Action Hero Marketing. Today's episode is another one as part of our healthcare series. Our discussion is going to be focused on scaling and improving efficiencies from a healthcare operations perspective. With that being said, today's Brainiac is Will Hayes. Will, welcome to the show.


Will: Thank you, Kyle. Brainiac. I think it's the first time I've ever been called that in an introduction, so I appreciate it.


Kyle: You've got a wealth of knowledge and insights to share with us. That's why you're here.


Will: Yeah. Excited to be here. Appreciate you reaching out and excited.


Kyle: Awesome. Well, Will, I know that your title is Growth Manager at Third Way Health. So if you wouldn't mind, share a little bit about yourself, what you're doing at Third Way, your experience - just to give our audience a little picture about who you are.


Will: Sure thing. So yes, Will Hayes. I'm a Growth Manager here at Third Way Health. Been with Third Way for two years. Moved me from the Midwest to Los Angeles, and it's been a great experience here at our headquarters. Joining a young company that I think is doing some really exciting things, and I'm excited to be a part of it.


Third Way Health - we are a healthcare operations partner. Sounds super broad. Essentially, you could think of us as: we serve two different types of organizations in the healthcare industry. You have your payers - your insurance companies - then your providers, medical practices, and health systems. And then as Growth Manager, I lead anything that has to do with us growing our organization and growing the name of Third Way Health, to get both sides to learn about Third Way, what we're doing, why this company was built, and the impact that we're having.


Kyle: Very cool. Thank you for that. I know we're going to be diving into Third Way a little bit more and all the cool stuff that's going on there. But before we do, as you know, all of our guests complete a prompt for me. It helps to set the stage. So, let everybody know: I think AI is…


Will: I think AI is exponential. By exponential, I think it is a very important framing for how people view AI. So let's take the internet, for example. People thought maybe it might be very linear how the internet was going to impact everyone's day-to-day lives and businesses. Looking back, we can all see it was very exponential. People were working on the internet, building the World Wide Web for a long time, and then it slowly gets deployed, and then it's like Amazon is everything, and you go up this. And I think the same will hold true. It might even be a sharper exponential curve for AI.


Kyle: Exponential is a great word. I think that perfectly paints the picture, and you're right. I definitely can see the acceleration curve becoming even more steep because it compounds on itself - it just gets better and learns more. Very interesting perspective. I appreciate that.


So let's jump into Third Way. We connected earlier, and you painted a picture about how Third Way partners and helps with different actions that are basically helping the operations perspective. Anything that's outside of the actual office, you guys help facilitate and make smoother. So can you elaborate on what healthcare operations means and what you’re really trying to accomplish?


Will: Yeah. I'll go with our core offering: being a medical practice’s front office partner. Let's first paint the current state of a medical practice’s front office. I think - I know I've experienced it, and I'm curious if you have too, Kyle - trying to call in to schedule a doctor's appointment. How has that experience been for you?


Kyle: It can be frustrating. I typically try to use an online scheduler if I can, but I just find that to be more efficient - healthcare or not. Just trying to get a booking. So yeah, I typically default to the calendar on the website if possible.


Will: Yeah. So there are many organizations that don't have online self-scheduling. Some may have it, but then you might get a call back that it wasn't actually accurately scheduled. And many people - even with all the online self-scheduling - surveys still show that in 2025, the majority of people still like to call in to schedule their appointment. And they call in for a variety of reasons: billing, insurance verification, they left their jacket at the doctor’s office.


And for many people, they wait on hold for maybe 20 minutes to talk to someone. And even if they do get to talk to someone, they don’t get their question or request resolved. So the idea of Third Way Health is: if you work with us, your front office -  instead of having to handle all those phone calls and the long line of people waiting on the phone and the long line of people in front of you checking in - 


You only need to worry about the line of people in front of you that you need to interact with. Third Way will virtually handle all the calls, appointment scheduling, insurance verification, reminders, calling people who no-showed or canceled, getting them rescheduled. It makes it easy for the front desk to just worry about in-person interactions, and then Third Way can take care of the rest - hopefully making it a great experience for the patient.


Kyle: That's incredible. Healthcare in general is stressful - you’re going because something’s wrong. And having to figure out scheduling and make sure it's done right… you don’t want to be thinking about that. It's great to make that process easier.


For me, the picture really got painted from one of your LinkedIn posts. I shared it with you. I thought it was very interesting. You guys had analyzed different times of day and days of the week and how it was scheduled, and you saw some clear trends that can dictate how offices can better schedule and plan and things like that. I'm hoping you can elaborate with our audience, because I found it very useful.


Will: Yeah. So we handle millions of calls for medical practices. A really cool part of that is analyzing different trends. This one was specifically focused on no-shows. So we asked: can a practice plan on one in three patients no-showing?


Could we get away with double-booking because more than likely someone won't show and we'll be able to see both?


We also try to figure out when it makes sense for doctors to offer appointments versus when it doesn't.


We looked at the difference between in-person appointments and telehealth. Across both, everybody showed up to their early-morning ones. If you scheduled an appointment at the start of the day, you kicked that off  -  and your work understands if you arrive a bit later.


Lunchtime was interesting. For in-person appointments, people showed up consistently. But for telehealth, you'd have people no-show a lot. I don’t know if they just worked through lunch, or transportation plays a role for in-person, but it was a peculiar trend.


Then in the evening  -  late afternoon  -  there was a stark difference between offering 4 p.m. appointments and 5 p.m. Some doctors chose to stay a bit later, but at 5 p.m. something like 20% to close to 30% of people ended up not showing. So extending hours didn’t always work; people just couldn’t make it.

So yeah  -  very interesting aspects regarding when people show up and when they won’t.


Kyle: I think data like this is so cool from a storytelling aspect. It dives into the human element  -  you’re making assumptions like maybe it's transportation, maybe it’s end-of-day burnout  -  but it provides a clear action plan for efficiency or revenue growth through double-booking. It’s very cool.


And I assume there's a lot of data like that organizations will find useful tenfold  -  exponentially, to use your word.


Will: Right, right.


Kyle: Awesome. So I want to dive more into AI and healthcare operations. Obviously you guys are AI-based and improving systems. Where, in your opinion, is AI most impactful today from an operations standpoint  -  scheduling, documentation, intake?


Will: Great question. Healthcare operations is super broad, so I’ll speak more to our front-office operations.


And actually, this one, I think, is not maybe what catches people's eyes a lot, but the really big impact has been AI quality assurance. So instead of relying on humans to, you know, it's basically impossible to have an entire team listening to every call that's happening each day and making sure the script or making sure that questions are resolved and the right questions are being asked and then being able to train your team and make sure patients are being taken care of the right way. You'd have to completely double staff an entire organization if you had everybody listening to every call reviewing that. 


So for most organizations, it might be 5%, 10% you're able to review. But with AI, you can review 100% of calls and it can score them. You can create custom scorecards on specific checkpoints that you want to make sure, let's say a call center representative is making sure they ask a certain question or if they answer a certain way or a patient answered a certain way then they ask the next question. So that's been a very large impact.


And then I would say next would just be the accuracy of being able to schedule appointments. Again, I think a lot of AI that gets talked about is the voice AI. Even now, you can talk to ChatGPT back and forth.


And of course, that's an application that people can have. But for a lot of it is wanting to make sure that patients are accurately scheduled so that when they do show up to their appointment, they're not waiting in line, they have six people in front of them and they're upset and doctors are upset, and making sure that if they do get seen for an appointment, they don't get a surprise bill in the mail because AI was in the background making sure their insurance was verified before being seen.


So they're seeing a doctor, they know their insurance is covering and they're not surprised at the large out-of-pocket bill later.


Kyle: That's such great applications. Again, it's just making the patient experience simpler, easier. You're able to cater to them and provide solutions. It's such a no-brainer to me. It's probably not something that a lot of people think about, but it makes absolutely perfect sense. 


I'm curious though, so you guys are currently at a hybrid model, right? I was doing some research. Solve is something like 86% of organizations in healthcare are using AI today. Ninety-four percent see it as a core of their operations. So there's a lot that have already dove in and are using it.


You guys have this, it seems like an AI plus human approach. So I'm curious as to why not go full AI? Do you expect there to ever be a doctor's office that there's literally no staff other than the doctor and the whole thing is AI? I'm curious as to how you see it and maybe why Third Way is just leaning into this AI plus human approach right now.


Will: I'll never say never. Maybe there'll be some people that enjoy that. I think that's far off. And I think the majority of people still very much like interacting with humans. And I think AI still, as it is, it is still a tool right now. It's still a tool that is wielded by humans. And so it's a piece of the puzzle. So I'll kind of take it back to the inception of Third Way a few years back.


So our CEO, he had worked for healthcare consulting companies. And then he also worked for Salesforce and for Clara, a couple of big tech organizations as well. I basically saw, you know, these technology platforms could really be useful, could really help the team.


But if the companies that I'm then working with aren't adopting it or it's not being updated based on their doctor's preferences, it's not useful. It's still going to make mistakes. And so you need people to be able to make it right.


And then our COO, he came from a background of working at EY. We build these global shared service centers where you have people, these teams all centralized in one place focused on one aspect of being able to serve an organization. So I think being able to blend those together and say, hey, we will offer you this technology that is awesome and it can be tailored to your organization. But when it maybe not necessarily fails, but when it falls short or you need someone to be able to manage it, we have a team for that as well.


And then I'd say for a real life example of how that looks like for us is we have what we call our Dino AI. So that's our voice AI that you can talk to. So you may call into a practice and you want to change your appointment time from 9:00 AM to 3:00 PM. See if that's possible at your appointment three weeks out.


Well, you're first going to interact with Dino and Dino is likely to be able to make that change. But let's say you have a much more complicated question. You want to ask something that has to do with like, oh, I didn't mention something about my shoulder that I've come in to be seen, and I had a question about this. Well, then Dino escalates that to a human.


If you are implementing an AI point solution, you just kind of have that Dino. And then your Dino says, yeah, I'm going to escalate that to a human and a human will be there to be able to serve you. And then someone falls into waiting 20 minutes on the phone, just like before ever working with Third Way. It really doesn't solve anything.


But if you have Dino be able to talk to them, escalate to human, and then a human pick up that ball and resolve the complex cases, that's the ideal case where you can be adopting both technology and still have that human touch to be engaging with people.


Kyle: Human empowerment. You're singing my favorite tune here. That sounds incredible. And honestly, it sounds like it sells itself. 


So I'm curious, as the Growth Manager there, do you get a lot of pushback? What are some, like, grievances or worries that these people typically have when you're talking to them about how you can improve their operations? Or is it just like, you know, here's a document, look at these numbers, you're going to get exponential growth or whatever it is? What's that process look like for you?


Will: Yeah, I don't think it's too much of like, let me send an email and then in two weeks we're handling calls for their practices. That'd be nice. But also probably anybody could do my job in the company. 


No, of course you get some pushback because the reality is what we're doing is still interacting with their patients and we're scheduling for their doctors. That's like one of those high touch things and high trust things that an organization is doing.


So yeah, I think it's a pushback you first get. It's just like, who are you guys in general? Let's first get to know you. You need to know someone, you need to trust that you know what you're talking about before you would want to work with someone.


And then second, if you want to get down into the details of the AI versus outsourcing and being able to have someone handle your calls. Some people, they might be interested in AI. I want to see AI be able to take all the calls and be able to do everything. It looks like that's, look, AI is exponential, how much it's growing, how much it's able to do, read these other articles.


What's been very interesting is just in the past month or two, having several conversations with people who we talked to months back and go, oh, we want to try AI. We want to see what's going on with AI. And then they call back and go, oh, actually, AI is falling shorter.


It was a lot more internally that we're constantly having to update and manage the AI bot. We would rather just have someone be able to do that for ourselves when we have an AI partner, but also being able to solve the current problems we're having.


So it's been really interesting of recent. And then it's like, yeah, since we last talked, we've incorporated more AI into our service, but of course still have our human team. I think I'd be interested to, you know, I know this space, I know the healthcare front office space. I'd be interested in other spaces where people have tried AI, companies have been adopting AI and then find, wait, it's not perfect yet.


We still need to be working with a team that basically knows how to manage the AI, the service, and they can still take that burden. I can just check in on them and they can let me know what they're doing instead of me internally. Just like any other old software, I'm sold on the shiny object of the software, but then I have to try to manage it and make it work and it falls short of all the promises.


Kyle: You know, it's funny. I have a very similar experience just from a marketing standpoint. I'll talk to some people and then be like, OK, yeah, this makes sense. I'm going to run some ads myself. And it's like inevitably you're going to fail and you just burned five thousand dollars or whatever it is.


But unfortunately, you've got to let that happen sometimes for them to realize, OK, yeah, it is worth having an expert like you who's going to come in and handle this stuff. So interesting that you're running into similar situations there.


I'm curious if you've noticed from a kind of a sales standpoint that, if there's any trends that you've noticed kind of comparing different potential clients. So for example, maybe it's a small local clinic versus a large hospital system or something like that. Have you seen any trends that pop up or, you know, maybe this organization cares about X more than Y? I'm curious how that all shakes out.


Will: Yeah. So I think any organization and selling at all, referrals are always going to be kind of top dog. And I think healthcare specifically, referrals are so much. And that's because it comes down to being such a high trust industry. And then specifically what we're doing and interacting with the patients, even more high trust. So referrals, you know, have really reigned king.


And because of that, especially the young organization, you put a lot of time and attention to if we're working with someone, then let's do an excellent job. And that takes priority first. And then, you know, getting your name out, getting marketing out is going to be a bit behind that because you're servicing your current customers and doing right by them is going to have a ripple effect.


And then, yeah, I would say some that are independently owned and smaller medical practices are going to be able to move faster than some larger health systems. Specifically on this sales side, there are different organizations you might work with. So some, they might have that picture of the front desk answering calls and trying to get things done and managing people. Or they might already have an internal call center set up and they kind of already have that model where the front desk is taking care of it.


But running their internal call center is really hard. We hear all the time, ever since COVID, it's been really hard to staff a call center and find people that reliably do a good job for whatever reason. Still kind of looking at the specific reason for that. Or they may say, we work with an external call center already and we're not happy with that service. So just kind of the different organizations, like where they currently are handling calls in front office, they're going to have different sales processes.


Kyle: One hundred percent. Yeah. I mean, there's always going to be some little customization or, you know, unique perspective that you have to have to address. I guess that's just part of the game, right?


Will: Yeah. 


Kyle: So, yeah, I want to jump in a little bit more in terms of your role and kind of marry that in with AI. When you and I originally spoke, you had discussed AI BDRs and making sure that you're incorporating the human touch still. So I'm curious as to what your outbound strategy looks like and how much of that you're automating and how you make sure you're still getting the message across that you want to.


Will: Yeah, so great question. And I would say a lot of the automation is done for equipping and enabling our BDRs. But I'm a big proponent, at least thus far, of the human BDR and the human touch there. Actually doing things that are very non-scalable first, finding what works and then doubling down on that. That's very much been our approach.


We worked with another vendor that can do things and automate, send with your alias and come up with custom messaging that gets AI attention. And I think for some people it can work. I found thus far it's as personal and even as conversational as you can get.


You grow up like, write a very professional email and especially if you're writing to somebody, like I'm writing to a COO, you would want to be very formal. When in reality, everybody's on their phone and they're just looking at their emails and they're looking at the quick.


So sometimes it's like a one or two line text message where you say, hey, I spoke with Tracy, she shared this, and we do this, thought it'd be interesting. And that might work. So it's interesting. But still, of course, there are success stories of people out there of adopting AI and I'm always kind of all ears to see, OK, we're going to keep doubling down on this, but we've left this percentage of room to try new channels and try new strategies.


And maybe, can we, let's send some automation and see if that might work, take some workload off from us.


Kyle: Yeah, it's so cool to kind of see certain things work that you just totally don't expect. But it makes sense from a C-suite person, like in the example that you gave, they don't have a lot of time, right? They're not going to be opening up a message from some person they've never met before and reading five paragraphs in an email.


That's just completely unrealistic to think about. So it's great how you can play around, adjust your prompts maybe, and get some output that's going to work or at least give you the same shot to work.


Will: Yeah, yeah, definitely.


Kyle: Very cool.


What is your kind of channel mix right now? Are you focusing mainly on outreach through email or is there a, you know, do you guys have ads and content going? I'm curious as to what's been working for you so far.


Will: Yeah. So we really haven't, not a lot of ads. We do some content like the one, the LinkedIn post that you shared. We do put out content. So I think we have some from analyzing our data or maybe talking about customer stories.


I personally like to do video series. So if we get out to a conference or interacting with other people, I like to do the interviews and just kind of see what people are doing. One, I think it's fun. People go on LinkedIn to be entertained, so try to provide some entertainment. And that necessarily hasn't brought in all of the intro calls, just kind of a way to be engaged with people. I think LinkedIn is a great place to be, share some content.


But to answer your question of channel-wise, it's still the tried-and-true emails, calls, maybe some LinkedIn messages that are going to get through. Anybody that says cold calling is dead, they haven't been doing it themselves or maybe haven't been doing it correctly.


Same with cold emails. Cold emails, they're tougher. Now Google summarizes all the emails and trying to figure out if you're even landing in spam is a whole job itself, getting software to make sure that your emails are getting to the primary inbox.


And then, yeah, creatively engaging people. I spoke about doing things that are not scalable and then doubling down on what works. I'm kind of sharing a little bit of a secret here, but I've shared with other sellers that can adopt it. I'm a big fan of the whiteboard and incorporating some pictures. So, funny enough, just writing somebody's logo on a whiteboard, taking a picture of yourself, and sending it either in an email or on LinkedIn can really work.


So here we go. This would be me. I might send you a follow-up. You know, “Hey, thanks for the podcast, Kyle.” So big advocate for this. And even like me, you called out to me, you know, cold email's not dead. If you need to kind of get somebody's attention, especially if they're like, “Yeah, I would love to meet,” and then they kind of go see it for a week or two, try the old whiteboard. Let me know if it works for you.


Kyle: I like that. I like that. That's an easy way to kind of personalize, show you did some work and things like that. That's very cool. Very cool. Great drawing. I didn't know you had such some artistic abilities like that.


Will: Oh, it's just tracing. I can't come up with a bunch on my own and make it look straight.


Kyle: That's awesome. I think we got the perfect thumbnail right there for our - 


Will: Yeah, nice.


Kyle: Awesome. Awesome. Well, cool. So I want to keep going on some AI topics here for us to discuss. So, with AI, there's always a little bit of fear and doubt that comes with it, especially from certain people who aren't as involved or up to date in how it can be used. But of course, there's an extra level of it when it comes to healthcare, making sure that we're staying HIPAA compliant and we're not sharing personally identifiable… PII. There we go. Couldn't get that out for a second.


So I'm curious as to, you know, how you think about it, how you try to balance innovation with safety and trust. I'm sure Third Way has a million built-in things to either anonymize or delete data and things like that. So I'm just curious as to how that all fits into your ecosystem.


Will: Yeah, I think that has to be number one for anybody in healthcare. So of course, we have a product team, security team, IT team that handles all that. I put my trust in them. A lot of trialing and building things and testing it internally or testing it in a test environment before going live with it, I think, are the primary ways to ensure HIPAA compliant.


And I touched earlier on the AI quality assurance. That's very much driving why it's something we're most excited about. And I think maybe it doesn't get a lot of the attention of the shiny object, like talk to an AI, but it's like, this is actually a huge impact.


We can make sure we can score everything. We can make sure that each quality is HIPAA compliant and really flag it if something pops up that shouldn't have occurred.


Kyle: It's such an interesting balance. If I take my marketing hat off, I think about this all the time. Personalization is a good thing when it's done right, when you're receiving content that's specific to you. So if you got a message, a routine AI message that says, “Hey, you're due for a colonoscopy,” or “You have an office, you're due to reach out to this person.” In theory, that's a good thing, right?


It's so tricky to find that line. You don't want to go to that person and say their specific condition. So I love hearing how everybody is, well, A, remaining compliant, but B, just trying to find ways to provide value while not, you know, breaking any laws or, you know, whatever you want to call it. So that's interesting.


Will: Yeah, I think it even goes to, you know, a lot of times we talk about, like, if we do talk to somebody about AI, you know, we talk to a leader, and really the first question we have is, you know, why are you interested in AI? What are you looking for AI to solve? It's not just that. And then sometimes you get people to kind of take a step back and go, well, let me think about it. 


Kyle: “Oh, I've just heard it a million times.”


Will: Yeah. It's like sometimes, “Oh, well, I hear that's where the puck is headed, so it seems like we should.” I'm just like, OK, yeah, it's headed, it's exponential, it's growing. At the end of the day, what is the problem that's being solved? Whether we use AI or not, if you go from patients are waiting 20 minutes on hold or you're describing people inaccurately, people are not having their insurance verified, and we can solve that without AI or with AI, whoever can get it done, whichever way, just solving the problem is the number one thing.


Same with like, yeah, you can use AI, I think, but if it's not, you don't have security, you don't have process set up the right way, it doesn't matter. It's just about solving the problem. And that's in our specific healthcare front office operations, and I think it's for everything, wherever there are problems or wherever we're innovating.


I think it's very important to always think, is it that we're just adopting AI because it's very exciting? Or do we have a clear understanding what the problem is or what challenges that we're trying to solve and the way we're wanting to solve it?


Kyle: AI for AI's sake is a lose-lose situation, right? You're just going to spend time and waste money. So it's great to have that North Star before implementing something like that. 


I'm curious if you have any wins or success stories that you could share. Obviously, don't drop names if you can or organizations, but I'm curious if you saw a clinic or something that was struggling really, really bad and after implementing Third Way, maybe they saw some growth or efficiencies. Just curious if there's anything that stands out like that from a win standpoint.


Will: Yeah. So I'll put a shameless plug. We have a couple of case studies on the website. One of them is, you know, a little over 30 doctors at an organization in multiple locations. And they had an internal call center and then also an external call center, that medical records vendor they had worked with.


And they were having a lot of errors with the current ones they work with, and it's caused a lot of administrative burden on their in-house team. They were having a lot of difficulty trying to keep people in their internal call center.


They piloted with us, which I would advocate anyone to be able to do. So you start with one or two locations that could maybe really use some help with getting calls answered. And then eventually we've become their centralized call center and virtual front office.


So in working with us, they've been able to reduce the amount that they are spending on these patient access operations by 35%. And they've seen 11% more visits total. So they filled up their calendar, being able to see more patients.


So I think the ideal state for anybody in operations is, hey, I want to do more for less. And so to be able to kind of put a stamp that we've been able to do that while improving the patient experience, scheduling more people to get their annual wellness visits, we've been ecstatic about it and happy to be able to share.

And yeah, one thing that whenever I first joined the company, I remember our Chief Product Officer told me, “Yeah, I've worked for a couple of different healthcare organizations and this one my wife had shared with me. I can really understand what you're doing.” So it's kind of cool. It's not just like this very specific tech thing. You can just plainly share.


And I feel that same way when I am able to share case studies. It's pretty clear what we're able to do and kind of points to the impact.


It's now easier for this organization that we work with for their patients to call in and talk to someone on the phone, get their question answered, and for the organization to see a business case comes to life. 


Kyle: It's a very tangible result. You can clearly see, yes, more people are getting booked or it's a better experience just because there's less delays, whatever it may be. It's very tangible. You can feel it almost immediately, I would assume, or at least once it's dialed in. Of course, there's always tweaks and stuff like that.


One of the things that I found interesting is I was, again, doing some research. I believe you guys talk a lot about patient experience and use that as a metric. And I think it was, well, you guys have a 4.8 out of 5 in patient satisfaction scores, something along those lines. So I'm curious how involved that metric or that discussion is in your guys' operations and in your product development.


Is that something that's kind of always talked about in the ether at Third Way? Because, again, that's just a very clear metric, tangible result that you can measure that I think everybody's going to be like, “Oh, my experience, me, was a 4.8 out of five. I'll take that every time,” right?


Will: Right, yeah. Yeah, like your patient satisfaction or your customer satisfaction survey, CSAT. So that's always going to be at the top of our analytics page of the technology platform. Or if you're looking at the account management team and looking at our current accounts, then you're looking at their CSAT score over the last month or whatever it may be, quarter, month, week.


So that's often going to be tracked at the end of a conversation. Someone stays on the line and they answer a survey about their experience. Pretty straightforward. You're getting the results straight from the patients who had the experience. It's something that's always talked about.


And then even in SLAs, like when you're talking with a current client, they are able to see in the weekly status reports what the CSAT score is. So something that we're able to be transparent about, have data about, and not just be word of mouth about. It's like, “Oh, it seems like patients are having a good time,” or, I quote, “What do you hear from your patients?” You can have real data on how someone's patients are saying, “This is what my experience was.”


Kyle: Can't fight the data. That's always great to have in your back pocket. Very, very, very cool.


All right. So I want to do a quick pivot here and just kind of talk about the future, what AI-driven growth looks like, how you build for scale and things like that. So I'm curious how you and Third Way are scaling the adoption of these AI tools and what it looks like for a large system or somebody with multiple clinics. What do these conversations sound like at the enterprise level?


Will: Yeah, great question. Sometimes it's interesting as to how in the weeds enterprise-level are. They can pinpoint specific locations or specific specialties within a large multi-specialty group that are struggling. Even at the enterprise level, I think that statement I referenced earlier of “Ever since COVID, we haven't been able to staff” seriously, probably twice a week, we hear that at the enterprise level.


Kyle: I'm sure. Yeah.


Will: Which means it's getting relayed from the clinic managers to your regional operations directors to your VP of operations all the way to the COO going, “Yeah, something happened after COVID.” I don't know if people want to work remotely a lot more or if they're able to just drop off more, but getting a team that you're in there and they've worked many years, and it's not an easy job answering the phones and working a front desk.


So that's often the case. And then also just trying to figure out the different priorities and where people are. For healthcare specifically, your EHR, so your electronic health record system, is fast, is extremely important. So you catch somebody that's going through an EHR migration, you know, it's like, “Hey, hats off to you, good luck here as you go through that.” It's a really huge adjustment.


Often you're not going to be making other changes as that's a massive change. And, you know, we'll talk in a few weeks. Or no, that's usually for maybe like a few months.


And then, yeah, at the enterprise you're going to talk to somebody, “Oh yeah, this is interesting, solves a problem. OK, talk to our director of patient access, learn a lot more about currently our internal call center, external call center, maybe the AI tools we've adopted.”


The larger you get, the more complex you're going to get with different pilots that they are trialing, other tech vendors or maybe other third-party partners they're working with. And then you're going to have a much larger IT team that you're going to need to speak with.


So I think, you know, with anything, you're going to have longer sales cycles with enterprise, you're going to have more in-depth conversations. But it's been very interesting to still hear the on-the-ground pains of turnovers or even like, “Hey, we've been hearing our doctors want to see more patients, specifically for specialty practices, orthopedics or dermatologists. They want to see as many patients as they can.”


And something that could get all the way up to the enterprise level. “Yeah, I got a couple of clinics. We've got some unhappy doctors that are saying, ‘What happened? I was seeing 12 patients a day last year. Now I'm only seeing six. What can I do? What's going on here? Why isn't my schedule being filled up?’”


Kyle: Cool. Good stuff. 


So along those same lines of scaling adoption, I'm curious from your perspective in your role, is there a mindset or even like a mantra or anything like that that you kind of use to harness yourself and your North Star when you're going into these conversations? You know, is it, again, the data that you have behind you?


Is it something that you hear them talk about? Or is it just like you kind of psych yourself up, you know, like before a game or something like that? What is your mindset? How do you approach these and get the most out of them?


Will: Really good question. I think in general, you always want to say, “Oh, how can I put myself in someone else's shoes?” And so the further along you get speaking with somebody, the more you can imagine what would it be like to be in their shoes. But at the very beginning of a conversation, I think it's, hey, tell me about how things are currently going on and let me have a very clear understanding.


And then the second time we talk, I think instead of psyching yourself up, it's often just the very first slide is very simple: “Here's what we heard from you.” Bullet out what we had heard. “Did we miss anything? Did we get anything wrong? Is there anything else we should add to this before we show you a demo of our product?”


And then it's like, why should we show you a demo of appointment reminders or online self-scheduling if that's something that you are interested about? Let's just demo the aspects that you do care about. So let's all ground ourselves here in what's your actual challenge?


Another really cool analysis that my CEO, he posted about on LinkedIn, analyzed the 65 conversations we had with enterprise-level COOs, CEOs, about what we've heard that are actually the top challenges that they're looking to solve. And so it was broken out. Number one was staff turnover. Number two is cost pressures. And then number three, service quality.


So even me, let's say the first conversation I have with somebody is, “Hey, typically these are the first three we've been hearing. Which one resonates for you?” And to kind of have this evolution of analyzing conversations we really did have, “Oh, these are the top three,” and then using that to say, “This is what we're hearing from other leaders. Has this been your experience?” It just made us, I feel like, speak their language.


And the more you can be in the mindset of how a leader is thinking and, “OK, what are all the different priorities that they have and where does patient access operations actually land for them?” it helps you have meaningful conversations and meetings that are worth the 30 to 60 minutes and not just a waste of people's time.


Kyle: I'm going to have to check out that post. That sounds very interesting. It's great when you can go into it and say, “I know most people are going through this. What about you? What resonates with you?” I think that leads to a great conversation. That's great.


All right. Last question, just kind of to wrap things up. Let's look ahead. What does healthcare operations look like five years from now? I know you didn't want to say “never say never” in terms of a fully AI office, but I'm curious as to what you think will be different five years from now versus what you're seeing today.


Will: Yeah. I mean, yeah, I have a friend in Los Angeles here. He's built a company and it's like, you know, a therapist in your pocket, essentially. And it's been interesting. It's like you speak to some mental health professionals like, “Oh, that would be awesome. I can continue to stay engaged. Could I customize it for each patient? They are able to ask questions and then we still meet.” But then I talk to some that are, they kind of hate what I'm doing. They don't like it. “It's going to completely take their job.”


You know, it'll be interesting how much patients adopt tools like that. There are only going to become more of them. It will be interesting to see truly exponential. Something I've thought about is, gosh, let's say 50 years from now, is it going to be funny if I, or 60, I don't know when it should be, but let's say I talk to my grandkids and it's like, “Yeah, back in my day, I had to call, we had to talk to a human on the other line. And then we had to wait a long time.”


Like, “What? Oh no, we always just talk to the AI,” or, “Yeah, I had to drive into the doctor's office and we had to have a human check stuff.” “Oh, what? I just step into the scanner and then it tells me everything that you need.” Who knows? Who knows where it'll go?


I think I could confidently say we're always going to need humans. There's a human touch that's going to need to be there. I talked to a buddy just yesterday and he simultaneously showed me a song that he created fully with AI. But then he told me, “I think the way AI is going to develop, though, all it's going to do is really define what exactly the human touch is,” because everybody talks about the human touch.


But we're going to get a clear definition of what that means when there's going to be all these things that AI can do that we thought only humans could do. I think only time will tell.


Kyle: You're 100% right. I think all of our BS meters are going to be dialed in into “This is AI, this is human.” It's going to be super, super refined. And I think it already is, but it's just going to get even more so.


Will: Yeah. And, you know, I think it's like one of those things where sometimes people, like, even if someone gave you the right answer, you kind of want to hear it from maybe the right person. Or it's like, sure, maybe I can go and I can search and I can give you the answer, but I'd rather just go in and talk to somebody. Even now, if I have a bot that might be our chatbot that can get me my answer, I'm going to go chat with a human, because I know still in 2025, I'd rather just chat with another human on the other line.


Kyle: I do that all the time still too. It's case dependent, but sometimes it's like I'm frustrated. Just give me someone who's going to tell me my answer right away.


Will: Yeah. And I think with marketing, or we talk about sales, things like that, I only think in-person events will become more important. I think with COVID, it was really interesting to think about big consulting firms. Used to be, you know, consultants are all around Monday through Thursday.


They're in person. They're working at their client site. And then after COVID, everyone was told, these companies saw, “Look how much money we can save. We're not paying for these hotels and flights. Let's just have ways to talk remotely.”


And now you're seeing people are going back in person because they can't tell if it's an AI or what. You're going to have these back - going back to if you need to sell or you need to really, you know, “I need to just kind of vet if I trust this person” - it's going to be back into having the dinners, having the coming and closing the door and standing at a whiteboard, problem solving together more. 


Kyle: There's never going to be a replacement for a good old handshake and looking someone in the eye, you know, that's never going to be replaced.

Yeah. Very cool. All right. So we're getting towards the end here. Will, I want to throw five rapid fire questions for you for a little fun.


So genie in a bottle grants you a no-cost, fully implemented, automated system. What is that system? What does it look like?


Will: Laundry.


Kyle: I like that.


Will: I'm just going to stick with that. It's rapid fire. First thing that came to mind.


Kyle: All right, perfect. What is a pitch in your career that you've been a part of that you'll never forget?


Will: A pitch that I've been a part of that I'll never forget. I think going on-site and meeting a client for the first time. Definitely will never forget that. And you have both this experience where I got to interact with some doctors and then at the end getting to go interact with the C-suite all in one day. So getting to have the on-the-ground feedback and then getting to have where executive decisions are made.


And also walking in and, like, your patients are around and just kind of being from that external vendor and getting people to see, “Yeah, I'm the name that was on the emails from the first time,” and then getting to be in person. And again, kind of have that sitting in the boardroom, talking face to face with people and being zoomed out from all the emails and being able to answer questions.


I think the biggest learning from that was how much you can have a printed-out material, but when it comes down to it, it's the data to be able to make decisions. And that's where we spent a bunch of our time. And it felt good to have stayed up late making sure you get the data correct. And that led to not just, like, you flip over it. Actually, all of that, that graph we put in there and what we were talking about, led to a large chunk of the discussion and, you know, ultimately the deal working. Kind of felt good that your time wasn't wasted.


Kyle: Nice. Sounds like a fully immersive experience. And you come out with a W and some learnings. That sounds like a good one for sure.


Awesome. Cool. When we originally connected, you told me you have, I think it was, a degree in mechanical engineering, right? So I'm curious, what's one thing that you would love to just get your hands on, peek under the hood, meddle around with, whatever it might be?


Will: I want to talk to someone who designs roller coasters and engineers that are in roller coasters. If I had a day at a big theme park and you could tell me how they built a - oh gosh, not the Millennium Cup. What is it? The Millennium Force at Cedar Point. I think probably the greatest roller coaster I've been on.


Yeah, just talk me through the initial idea and then you're making the CAD and then you talk to other engineers. Like an immersive day and then you get to ride at the end. That'd be an awesome day.


Kyle: I like that. That would be very cool to see, especially with how sophisticated they're getting nowadays. There's a lot to them. Very cool.

All right. Missouri barbecue or LA tacos?


Will: Yeah. I like to - 


Kyle: Going to get you in trouble with the people - 


Will: KC BBQ. I'm just thinking of ribs falling off the bone and brisket. Post-game, getting to just have that BBQ, I think that's it. More than the tacos. It's nice, but the top satisfaction level is the KC BBQ.


Kyle: All right. Nice, nice. All right. And also, you told me you're a baseball guy. So if you're in the majors right now, what would your walk-up song be?


Will: “Hindsight” by Audion. It's probably not a well-known artist. There's no lyrics in the song, but anybody who goes and listens to that, send me a message on LinkedIn. It's a favorite song. 


Kyle: Just walk up, get the vibes right, and then go hit a home run.


Will: That's right. That's right. 


Kyle: Awesome. Well, Will, that was awesome. I appreciate all that. We're at the open forum spot here, so just want to see if there's anything that maybe you're passionate about that you want to share that we didn't discuss or anything like that. Just anything cool you want to call out?


Will: Oh, no, I don't. It's not like Hot Ones where I have a camera to look into and pitch anything for myself. I just want to say, thanks, Kyle. I think what you're doing is very cool. And I love the “under the hood” question. So I'll just throw it back to you. What would you, maybe if you're not an engineer yourself, but what would you love to have, like, an immersive day, look under the hood, how it's made or how it works?


Kyle: You know that I’ve got to start preparing answers to my own questions here. 

I'm a guy who loves the details of anything. So it doesn't matter the topic that you bring up to me. If you're going to tell me how something is made or why it works and things like that, I'm going to be all in because I think there's so much that we take for granted, that just, it all happens scientifically and we just don't know about it.


So I don't have a great answer, but I am a sports guy. So I would love to - this isn't necessarily get my hands under the hood - but just kind of be a part of, like, team practice for a week, just to see how an organization is run. You know what I'm saying?


Like, there's always the themes and there's the coaching and there's so much. You can get under the hood of an organization and just understand how they operate and what leads to wins. So I think that would be the cool thing for me, to see how they operate. I'm a big Eagles fan so.


Will: You’re part of the tush push then. Are you the QB? I’m assuming you’re getting the touchdown. Actually, I don’t know if they practice it though. They’re probably colliding heads. They just do it. Walkthrough. 


Kyle: They definitely practice it. They definitely practice it. They go to make sure they’re getting that leverage. So, I wish I could say I’m part of it. I’ll get two hands in there if I got it if it leads to a touchdown. 


Will: There we go. There we go. 


Kyle: Well awesome. Will, I really appreciate you taking the time to join me today.


So, everybody can check you out on Linkedin. You’re Will Hayes on there. Everybody can find you pretty easily. Third Way Health is also on Linkedin or you can just check them out at thirdway.health. They have their website up there. 


Will, thank you again for joining me on The Brainiac Blueprint. This has been awesome. 


Do me a favor and look at the camera and say “Stay brilliant, brainiacs”


Will: Stay brilliant, brainiacs.


Kyle: Awesome. Thanks so much, Will. 


Will: Yeah. Thanks, Kyle. Was a ton of fun.

 
 
 

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