How Spry Is Cutting Prior Auth Work by 80% with Minal Patel and Brijraj Bhuptani

Will sat down with Minal and Brijraj from Spry live at APTA CSM to talk about the part of the physical therapy industry most clinicians never see: the technology quietly reshaping how clinics run.

Brijraj was the CTO of Ola, the ride-share company often called the Uber of India, at its $6 billion peak. He left that world to build Spry because the same problem kept showing up: people need to move, and mobility gives them purpose. Minal treated patients for 15 years in outpatient ortho before she and her husband moved to Portugal. She wasn't looking for a new job. Spry found her on LinkedIn, and three years later she's the clinical voice inside a tech company, pushing back when the product team drifts too far from what actually happens on a clinic floor.

The conversation gets into the real tension of building healthcare technology: a founder who thinks in outcomes and a clinician who thinks in patients, and what happens when those two things pull in different directions. They talk through Spry's insurance verification engine (95% accurate, down to the NPI level), the AI agent that now handles prior authorization and removes 80% of the manual work behind it, and why EMRs were never supposed to become billing tools in the first place.

In this episode:

• Why Brijraj left a $6 billion ride-share company to build an EMR for physical therapists
• The difference between "work" and "toil," and why toil is what's driving burnout in PT
• How Spry's insurance verification hits 95% accuracy at the NPI level
• Inside the AI agent that cuts prior authorization work by 80%
• Why most EMRs turned into billing tools when they were built for interoperability
• What's next for Spry: multi-specialty workflows, waitlist agents, and clinical decision support

Minal and Brijraj also get into what's next: a shared workflow for multi-specialty clinics where PT, OT, speech, and MD care actually talk to each other, an agent for canceling and waitlist management, and a clinical decision support tool built specifically for physical therapy.

Follow the Will Power Podcast for more conversations with the people building the future of physical therapy. 

Connect with Spry: www.sprypt.com 

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Transcript

Live From APTA CSM

SPEAKER_02 0:00

This is the Willpower Podcast, live at APTA CSM. We're here with physical therapy leaders and practice owners from across the country talking about where the industry is going and what it takes to grow in today's landscape. And today I'm joined by two of my favorite leaders in the industry from a new EMR called Spry. It's not so new, but it's newer. It's one of my favorite up-and-coming EMRs. They're discussing how technology is quietly transforming the PT industry and why clinic owners who embrace it now will have a serious edge in the future of healthcare. Let's get into it. We're so excited to be here at C CSM with Spry's amazing talent team. Thank you guys so much for being here on the Will Power Show. Thank you. Pleasure to be here.

SPEAKER_00 0:44

Pleasure to be here.

SPEAKER_02 0:45

Okay, guys. So we're talking about technology in physical therapy and how it's changing the industry. We are in this physical therapy world where we're so used to everything being tactile and like the patients I see as everything. But technology is expanding the way we operate. It's changing the way that the industry is functioning. And I don't, I think we were talking how most people aren't really aware of how it's changing and the opportunities it's creating for both PTs, OTs, SLPs, and those owners of those companies.

Why Tech Is Reshaping PT

SPEAKER_02 1:12

So let's let's get into that a little bit. Well, first of all, what are your thoughts on that, Minal?

SPEAKER_01 1:16

I 100% agree. It's it's one of those things that as a practicing physical therapist, you you, you know, you're in your world, you're doing your thing, and then all of a sudden you get out of that world and you're like, whoa, there's so much more out there. And I never learned about this, and I want to learn about it, I want to get into it. And you start talking to different companies, you're talking to different people, and you realize, wow, there is a a big opportunity, a big space where our industry still has a lot of room to go, you know? Yeah. It's not, it's not that it's not there, but it's it's still has a lot of room to go.

SPEAKER_02 1:42

Yeah, you said it earlier, like it's a silo, yeah, is how people see it, but it's not. It's this vast funnel of opportunity. And I'm so excited because Bridge, you're the CTO, you were the CTO of the Uber of India. So you lived in this technological space where you understand what's possible with technology and how it's shaped, and that was a multi-billion dollar company.

SPEAKER_00 2:00

Yes, it was. So what was a six billion dollar company at its peak.

SPEAKER_02 2:03

So, what brought you into physical therapy?

SPEAKER_00 2:06

I think business businesses which help people move better are the ones which have always excited me. I think my first business, as you said, was Ola Riddler, which helped people get from A to B better using public transport, using cabs, whatever it is, right? And I I've seen the impact of that. My mom, who could not drive, could just had so much mobility after Ola came along, right? She could open the app, book a cab. Using technology to get around. Exactly. She could get around. She was not she was not dependent on me. She could go around, she could meet with her friends, and she could build a life of her own, right? So mobility creates a lot of opportunity, it gives you purpose. And we all learned that during COVID, right? All of us loved the fact that we were at home spending time with family. Six months down the line, all of us were frustrated. All of us wanted to get out, right? All of us wanted to be out. So mobility is the core of a lot of things that we do. It gives us freedom, it gives us purpose. And I think a mobile body, a flexible body is actually a gateway to actually happiness. And that's what my belief is. And those businesses excite me, and that's how physical therapy happens.

SPEAKER_02 3:01

So you were helping people get around using this tech, and then you saw the actual industry that physically gets people moving around and thought, I want to help that space using the technology that you came from.

SPEAKER_00 3:10

Precisely.

SPEAKER_02 3:11

That's amazing. So let's talk about Minal's journey. I think this is a great metaphor for explaining to the audience what is possible from a physical therapist in this case perspective. So you were treating in the United States. Yep. And then tell us about that transition.

SPEAKER_01 3:24

Sure.

From Treating Patients To Building Tech

SPEAKER_01 3:25

Yeah. I was treating for about 15 years in an outpatient ortho physicianal clinic. I loved what I did. I absolutely enjoyed every single moment of seeing patients and making them mobile and getting them up and going, right? And then my husband and I decided, you know what? Let us be mobile. Let us pick up and go somewhere and do something exciting and be somewhere new. So we moved overseas. We moved to Europe. Um to Portugal. To Portugal. Yeah. And that mobility actually opened up a lot more doors for me because not that I was looking for anything, but I came across Spry and I saw what they were looking at and what they wanted to do and how they wanted to do it, and I thought, wow, this is another way for me to be part of the industry. I wasn't treating, of course, as as as part of that industry, but I was going to be able to affect it. And that was just super exciting to be able to do that.

SPEAKER_02 4:10

So that's an interesting comment I want to kind of beat for a little bit because you're you treated for how many years? Fifteen. Fifteen. And then how long were you in Portugal before you started looking for work?

SPEAKER_01 4:19

Maybe I wasn't looking, Will. Oh, okay. I was I literally just I was very happy. I was literally just wanting to stay part of the industry in terms of like knowing what was up still. So I was on LinkedIn. So it's kind of like so it sounds like you were just kind of like I was clicking around and then I clicked on Spry, and Spry saw that I clicked on them. And technology-wise, they contacted me and was like, hey. And then just we hit it off in terms of what their values are and why they why they wanted to do what they were doing.

SPEAKER_00 4:44

So we we were analytical from day one. We saw Minil Flickter. She's on the physical therapy space. She might be interested in using Spry, and we reached out to her. Oh, are you interested in Sprite? She said yes, but in a different context.

unknown 4:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 4:56

Well, it's so neat because what was that like for you to go from being a cleaning a treating provider into working for a tech company in the physical therapy space? Like, what does that feel like in terms of your I don't even know what I'm asking, as much as like, I want to know what that difference feels like. That journey, sure.

SPEAKER_01 5:10

Yeah. It was it's it's about bringing my systems thinking, which is what we do when we're in clinic, right? We're we are talking to patients, we're we're freak, we're working in a systems process. But it was about bringing that together with what they were thinking in their systems process together. And I don't have the words for it. I didn't know how how to speak about it, right? But I knew how to speak about it in my world. Um, and then bridging that with what they were doing, it was this vast like oper. I felt like I was a kid again, learning so quickly, so fast. And it was like soaking it in because it was making sense to me because it's the industry that I love to be in. And they were speaking the language, but in a different way. So as soon as he would say something, I'd be like, oh my god, yes, that's exactly what I've been trying to say, but I didn't have the words for it. Um since then, I have better words. It's been three years, so I have better words have better words for it. Um but the I'll tell you the most exciting thing, the the biggest reason why I've stuck around and I will continue to stick around is that I still get to talk to clinic owners every single day. And I get to not only hear about their frustrations, but I also get to help them out of those frustrations. That is the the difference maker for me.

SPEAKER_02 6:19

One of my favorite things about Sprite is the customization. And we'll get into that later, but it sounds like you're leveraging this technology in a way that Bridge did back with he was using that that mobile app to help create mobility within private practice owners' worlds. Before we move

Clinicians As Guardrails For Product

SPEAKER_02 6:35

on and talk more about like technology, I have to ask. I mean, Bridge, I want you to be 100% honest and don't hold back. What are the pros and the cons of hiring a physical therapist to work in a technology company?

SPEAKER_01 6:48

Don't hold back, Bridge. Don't hold back.

SPEAKER_00 6:51

I'll go with the pros first. I think that would be important. Yeah, I think it gives us guardrails, right? Uh VS technologists. Guardrails? Yeah, it gives us guardrails, and uh it's important to understand what's happening in the clinic, right? You can have a worldview, what we call as blue sky thinking. And technology people like me are guilty of that sometimes, right? We don't understand the ground realities and we have a point of view of how they should that should that should operate, right? How that thing should operate. And we try to impose that on our customers or on our stakeholders, right? Someone like Minal is the guardrain, right? As a guard wheel that this is okay, this is great, but there is a pathway to get there. And she will show us the path to get there, right? We can get there.

SPEAKER_02 7:32

Because she's from the industry, she knows when you guys are saying here's the end in mind, as you're traveling that journey, she'll prov provide that feedback that helps make decisions that keep you within the lane that's congruent with the physical therapy mindset.

SPEAKER_00 7:45

Exactly. What's happening on the ground? The second, I think, most important thing which I have learned from her and where she plays a big role for me is someone is evangelizing for the therapists. I, as a businessman, as a founder, can get carried away by what the clinic owner wants, right? Because eventually he's the person, or he or she is the person I'm selling to. We can get carried away by the RCM revenue uplift that we're getting, right?

SPEAKER_02 8:06

Right.

SPEAKER_00 8:06

But all of that does not work until you have therapists who are happy with the background. So who's evangelizing for them? Like you look at the bigger picture, okay, the transition should be easy, the clinic owner should buy into the product. Once they implement the product, they should be making more revenue with the RCM processes. But the therapist, who's thinking about them, that can get lost in the radar, right? When you're looking at the bigger picture. She brings that to the fore. So this is what we should be doing to the therapist, right? And Bridge, if you're doing this, bypassing this step, then that's the wrong thing to her. We've had our differences, that's where the cons will come in. But that's we've learned to embrace that, we've learned to absorb that. We build a culture where the tech team, the product team listens to what the clinical team has to say. She's one of the clinicians. We have around eight clinicians in the team, right? So we understand the perspective, we bake it into the product. There are disagreements, but essentially we hit the middle ground, right?

SPEAKER_02 8:51

And that's that's it's in those disagreements where the resistance is is like sets the soil for growth, right? Like it's the stormy weather of that soil that actually makes the earth fertile for that growth. So for you guys, as you're going through that journey, I can see there'd be a natural resistance point of technology going, we want to do this, and the clinical side saying, Yeah, but we can't. And there's probably overcorrections on both sides, I'm sure, from time to time, where it's like, you know, maybe if we stick too much on that clinical mindset, we're not gonna actually hit the goals we need. And if we're too much on the tech side, then we're gonna lose the humanity of it all. So yeah, so what's what's challenging about it?

SPEAKER_00 9:27

The challenging part is obviously she comes the way Sprite has been built that we and we're not talking about mean all specific, I'm just talking about any clinical challenge, right? The way Sprite has been built is we are never going to impose what you want to do, right? You tell us what you want to do, how your workflow should be, how you should run your clinic, and uh we'll make it happen for you. Where sometimes it gets into a disagreement is where the clinical team has their own point of view, you know, the client is doing the wrong thing either, or they shouldn't be operating this way. I said that's not our business, like that's their business. Or this is a fuzzy area that we should not be getting into. And again, if it's fuzzy, there's no right answer for how to get about that, right? And that's some of the disagreements. Uh, if a client is too demanding, which does not agree with her thought process, I can see her getting passionate and personal about it. Okay, we'll not do this, or we should not work with this client. I said, no, it's a client, right? And as philosophical, we are happy to work with every client, and we cannot dictate how they are supposed to do their business. We are supposed to enable them doing the business. Those are some of the disagreements we've had, and we've learned, I'm glad she's learned to live with that, I've learned to live with that, and we've found a way forward.

SPEAKER_02 10:28

This was a really good answer. Yeah. I was surprised. I didn't know if it would really get an answer that had me, but that was true. I can totally see c clinicians providing that angle. And um, that was hard for me when I had my billing company when I started in the black five years ago, because I'm I had my billing team who was used to be my employees at my physical physical therapy practice. So they were trained on compliance, and now we're a billing company, not a compliance company, and you see their volume of work versus what they're billing. And at times they're doing things that are wrong.

SPEAKER_01 10:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 10:56

And like they're like, what do we do? I'm like, nothing. Yeah. We're we I don't want to confuse our relationship and become a compliance company. I said, oh, some of those clients I were co I was able to coach because I was coaching them as well. So that was I had some insight, but yeah, yeah, you it's really hard. There's a fine line. It's a fine line. It's a fine line. Ethics and growth.

SPEAKER_00 11:15

And what about passion, right? Passion reflects in what she says. And passion is a two-sided coin, right? I think it works many times and sometimes it doesn't, but it and it conflicts with the business. And um, that time you have to set her aside, take her aside, and say, well, uh, we as a platform have taken this choice that we are not going to be dictating these things, right? And let's figure out the middle path, let's figure out the middle grounds, let's go and talk to the customer together, let's not do this in isolation, right? And those are some of the difficult conversations we've had along the way.

SPEAKER_02 11:39

I'm having a fun time with this one for sure. This is this is one of those conversations where it's just like, yeah, I totally see the whole side of it.

SPEAKER_01 11:46

He's right in the fact that we've learned to, I've I've learned as to why that fine line exists. Yeah. And it's always gonna exist. It's not, it's not like it's gonna go away. I'm I am gonna still be passionate about it, but I've also learned to look at it from the other perspective. And that's the piece that I guess, you know, uh as you asked me earlier, like what's been the journey of it. I've learned to look at our profession more than just how I was looking at it. There's a whole other side to it, business, um, you know, growth, scaling, all of that. That I as a clinician, a treating clinician, yeah, I was I wasn't I wasn't aware of that side of the of the business or the industry, right? And so this is bringing it down because I'm seeing, you know, one PT provider clinic on board and 50 PT provider clinics on board, and that everything in between and how they run their businesses is vastly different. Um, and that perspective now I can go in with with when I see fine lines that I'm like, I'm not sure. Yeah, he's right. I don't wit mince on my passion about it, but I understand why it's there and what's coming from.

SPEAKER_00 12:48

So as a workaround, we we create two channels for every customer. One is where the customers are there, and the other is an internal channel. And whenever Minel has to speak her mind, she can use the internal channel. Not the customer channel.

SPEAKER_02 13:00

I speak it. I say it. As you need to, and I guarantee it moves the needle in the right direction when it needs to. It's so fun because the bigger discussion that we're having here is about the industry. The industry as a whole, we see it from this microscopic lens of hands-on a patient. But you're saying, Nina, that from beginning, the hands-on is like the way we even treat is vastly different from five to fifty, much less the industry's impact on the world. The industry's impact is so much more than the care that is provided. It's the technology that's being adapted. It is the business lessons that are learned. I heard a coach tell me this once. He said, Will, after you've learned to run a physical therapy practice successfully, you literally can do any other business a lot easier. Yeah. I've had four other companies and they are so much easier. Really? Because the business like aptitude that's required to be a successful owner is so much more than people even realize because they're just in their side level. And then there's things like just this example of you, where you found a job at Spry just because you want you loved the industry and you wanted to evolve into a new direction. So, you know, what other what other aspects of the industry or technology do you guys see that are shape taking shape and and forming the physical therapy industry?

Gen AI And The Work Vs Toil

SPEAKER_02 14:16

Obviously, there's EHRs and EMRs. What other technologies are you guys seeing that are starting to work their way in?

SPEAKER_01 14:22

I'll let Bridge answer that one first.

SPEAKER_00 14:24

I think from the clinical perspective, um obviously you cannot not talk about technology and think about generation Gen A, right? Which is AI actually and and not just AI. AI has been announced since the 1950s. AI which creates content, right? AI which generates on the behalf on behalf of humans, is is a game changer, right? I think the nature of industry, when I think about it, uh you become a PT to treat patients, agree with them, communicate with them, right? But the way the reimbursement model works and etc. You end up spending so much time on the administrative point of it. I think of it as two parts, right? I think I think of it as two parts. Any job that you do has two parts to what you do. There is a work part of it, and there is a toil part of it.

SPEAKER_02 15:10

So what's the work part?

SPEAKER_00 15:11

Toil.

SPEAKER_02 15:12

Toil. So work and toil.

SPEAKER_00 15:13

Yeah. What's the difference? You love your work, you like doing that. And toil is which is important for the work, it's a necessary evil of that work. But that is the one which frustrates you, that is the one which does that, right?

SPEAKER_02 15:22

Like take a look at it's a labor of love and the toil.

SPEAKER_00 15:24

Exactly. And um, unfortunately, the toil has increased in the industry, is what I see because of the way the industry goes. Example of a toil. I love treating patients, right? I love talking to them, listening to them. That's work. But applying for my prayer or checking the eligibility before I can even talk to them is toil. Why should I have to do that, right? So I think and this has been the case, and the toil has been increasing, and that's why we see the burnout. With Genius specifically, there is an ability to actually reduce the toil. It's the first time you have a technology which will do the work for your work. Uh to the work for your work. Exactly. Right? So you can focus on the work and not the work for your work. That's what I call toil. Right? And that's I think that's going to be a paramount shift because now clinicians can be good at what they're doing and they can treat more complex cases, not worry about whether this person will get the right coverage, whether I have to worry about the documentation. I can actually focus on doing this. Why is Gen AI more applicable to physical therapy? Healthcare again. Healthcare is unstructured data, it's messy. There are no standardized rules. Like, as I said, the clinical workflow of one therapist could be very different from another therapist in the same team. Yeah. It's all unstructured data, it's all messy data. That's exactly what LLMs and Gen AI does, right? It structures unstructured data. The second thing about physical therapy is you want speed. You're not treating one patient a day. You're treating seven, eight, nine patients a day. You want something which works for you at speed. Like if you had to do only one patient which is paying you $1,000, $10,000, yeah, you could spend all the time on all the other things that you have to do. And I think that is a paramount shift, right, in my view, which can essentially help the profession move very, very forward because now people can work on their work. Think about when you go to the gym and you have a personal trainer. Personal trainer doesn't document all of that. They love, they do the they do it with passion because they only focus on getting you to work, work, do your work out, cry. They like the fashion, so you break technical. But all of it is with the patient or with the trainee, right? Not with the not with other things, not with the desktop, not with the insurance company, not on the phone path. And with this technology, you can get to a point where you're only focused on care. Right? You can communicate with the patients, even be on your clinic, because all that information is there. So there is so much more that can be done with GNAI, unstructured data, how volume data. These are traits of a physical therapy profession which many other professions don't have. And this technology, in my view, can actually make a paramount shift to how you operate.

SPEAKER_02 17:35

That's exciting. Let's get right into Spry. Let's get right into how you guys are leveraging your technology

Outcomes First EMR And RCM

SPEAKER_02 17:40

to help shape the future of physical therapy. I met you guys when you were relatively brand stinking new and you have scaled aggressively. Haven't heard a single negative comment in the industry about it, which is so unusual. Talk to me about what Spry is doing with technology to help reduce toil.

SPEAKER_00 17:59

Right from the early days, um, Spry focused not on being a tool in the toolbox, but being a partner in the outcomes. Right. Um historically, how technology companies have started, they've made a small tool, got in the way in the door, and they have they expanded, right? Sprite from day one was saying that we are a company which will ensure that you get your financial outcomes in a clinical outcast. So even the first clinic that we went with, we had an end-to-end solution, right? From scheduling all the way to making sure that you get your RCM reimbursements going, right? And if you didn't have the right billing company, we will be a billing company. So we focused on outcomes from day one. When you are so focused on the outcomes to not just being a tool, you are you will stumble upon some of the difficult problems that come along the way. Right? And we have been not happy, but we've taken the punt on solving them. I'll give you the first one was insurance verification. Not many people did that and did that accurately in the early days of Spring. And I was very surprised companies which have been around for 12, 14, 15 years for did not have the right insurance verification process. And we solved it. And today we are at 95% accuracy. It was not easy for us.

SPEAKER_02 19:02

Hold on, let's pause on that one. So insurance verification would be a great toil to reduce because annoying, it's a needless experience created by our insurance companies to make it harder for us to get our money as owners. So talk to me about that. So how are you saying AI does the insurance verification through your software, or what does that what is that?

SPEAKER_00 19:20

So when I was in clinics, I saw that you got the insurance data from the patients and you still had to go to Availity or you still had to make the phone call of the patient to do that, right? But so now you're doing the twice the work. You've entered all that information into the EMR on your schedule. You have to enter the same information on Availity because obviously the two don't talk to each other, right? Or you have to wait. From Sprite, when you create a patient schedule, there's a button there which is check insurance verification.

Insurance Verification Done Inside EMR

SPEAKER_00 19:45

You just click on that and it gives you the insurance data. And it's just not about getting the data and showing it to you, right? It's showing you PT-specific data. It's showing you accurate data, right? So it's we don't just rely on one source of information, which is one clearing house, right? We actually look at multiple sources of information. We also go back and we're happy to correct ourselves. When the ERA comes back, we see whether the information was correct or not, and we put a correction loop in it. So it takes a cycle to actually get there. And it's a gray area. There's no right answer for insurance. And today, even if you go on our website, we say we are 95% accurate. We are not it's impossible to get that to 100% accuracy, right?

SPEAKER_02 20:16

Because we're because they they don't give out accurate information.

SPEAKER_00 20:19

And for per for a reason, right? And I don't want to be fighting the reason or cribbing about a reason, I want to give the best pathway to solve that reason. So that was one of the difficult problems we started off, and that's what got people excited. Of late prior authorization, right? I I we were a billing company, our same company from day one, and while we did a great job of billing, we saw that we did not control the denials when there was no prior auth because the prior auth is always the clinic's responsibility. You run a billing company. Yeah, very few billing companies do prioroth, take the responsibility prior auth. Because you have to lean on the physical therapy practices to do the top of it. Exactly. That's what we

AI Agents For Prior Authorization

SPEAKER_00 20:50

solved. We wrote agents. So we have an agent frame platform which looks into your calendar. Oh, you said you have an agent? AI agent.

SPEAKER_02 20:57

You have an AI agent that does authorizations. Yeah, we look into your calendar. I'm gonna I'm gonna encourage you to punch that a little bit louder next time you mention that because you just kind of like mentioned it. Like, so you have an AI agent. Customized agent that you've created specifically for Spry that does prior offs for how much of it does it, how much of the human element does it reduce?

SPEAKER_00 21:15

It reduces 80% of the human element.

SPEAKER_02 21:17

That's amazing.

SPEAKER_00 21:18

And 100% for the clinic. For spray humans, it reduces 80% of the human element.

SPEAKER_02 21:21

I fear that Spry, I mean, this isn't meant to be promotional at all, but just like friends to friends. I fear that you guys aren't messaging your AI forwardness enough because I had no idea, guys. That's insane. I don't know if anyone else has anything quite as awesome out there. That's amazing.

SPEAKER_01 21:35

They're too busy working on it, that's why.

SPEAKER_02 21:37

Really, we don't talk about it enough because they're literally too busy working on the body. I want both of you to listen to Neil Trickett's episode from earlier this morning. We did a marketing, the whole thing was about marketing, and the whole time I just felt shamed because I'm like, oh, I could be doing all these other things to tell the public about who I am, right? So anyway, just I love that though that you have the agent. That's amazing. It eighty percent of the workload reduced is incredible. Yeah, more importantly.

SPEAKER_00 22:00

Uh we did a webinar with a few of our clients a few weeks back, and it's not only got us prior authorized, what it's done, the second order effect of that, it's made the clinic so much more hospitable, friendlier. Now the front office and the therapist don't have to fight each other.

SPEAKER_02 22:11

Because it's always in the gaps where the confusions and the drops occur, and that's where the frustrations happen. So the front desk does get the off the right way, or the therapists aren't like doing their piece and it slows it down.

SPEAKER_00 22:20

And it's improved the environment. We never thought of that. We just thought we were helping reduce denials. But the second order impact, which was far more impactful, which is far more important to a clinic, which is in the people business, that makes the clinic more friendly.

SPEAKER_02 22:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 22:31

The relationship across borders improves, right? And that's something that I was fascinating. Today, more than 50 clinics, I'm not promoting SPY, but more than 50 clinics use prioroth. And uh we've not had any major issues with that. And that's phenomenal.

SPEAKER_01 22:42

It's the human side of it that it actually helps with, right? So yeah, they're fixed the tech part of it by putting this AI agent in there to do that. Yeah. But the outcome is the human side of it, where the patient and the clinic have this relationship that is not

Better Culture At The Front Desk

SPEAKER_01 22:55

going to be affected by the business side. Keep seeing each other, you know, interacting with it.

SPEAKER_02 23:00

It just makes it more fluid and automatic. But from your perspective as a clinician, what do you see technology? That was a great segue into this. How do you see technology making the life of the therapist easier, like through Sprite in your case?

SPEAKER_01 23:11

So it if it starts from if I'm a business owner, if it starts from the fact that I need to have my operations working so that I can actually be doing what I'm supposed to be doing as a business owner and maybe as a treating clinician still, um it sets the it sets the baseline for that, right? That baseline I shouldn't I shouldn't be um my bar shouldn't be very low. My bar should be really high on what my baseline is. And that should be, I should be efficient with my operations from the front end all the way to the back end, so that everything that I'm supposed to be doing as a business owner, as a treating clinician is fruitful. It there's an outcome to it. But if there's not that you know smooth process, then I am stuck and then I am no longer able to focus on what I need to be focusing on, which is maybe patient marketing myself or getting patients in the door or whatever it is, right? Because I'm just stuck with this problem of insurance verification. I can never get insurance benefits correct. So now I have to hire two people to get this done, and then if that, if they ask the right questions on the phone or not. But if with a click of a button, I'm getting accurate information. There are companies out there, of course, that are doing insurance eligibility, but it's not to the NPI level. We're gonna we're going down to the NPI level. So whether you want to get PT benefits, you want to get Cairo benefits, you want to get massage benefits, OT, it it's it's at that NPI level. So if I'm a multidisciplinary clinic, yes, what I need to understand from my PT side of things, the OT side of things, the speech side of things, is very different when it comes to insurance verification, right? I can get that with a click of a button. I don't need to hire two different people to get PT benefits and speech benefits.

SPEAKER_02 24:48

Which are more people to hire, more benefits, more transition.

SPEAKER_01 24:51

And more layers, more layers that you're you're having to blow through before you even get that outcome that you're looking for. 95% accuracy for something like that then leaves me only a little bit of room for that one person in my clinic to maybe have to, you know, kind of go back and forth or have a discussion with the patient or whatever the case may be. Beyond that, it's not there. And then I can focus on okay, my hiring clinicians and getting them trained clinically so that they can use a platform that is going to help them be very, very efficient and not go home annoyed all the time. Totally.

SPEAKER_00 25:22

And again, the second order effect of that, right? I think it um helps improve collections in the front because both the patient and the front office have the confidence of saying this will be your co-pay, this will be a co-insurance, right? And the patient's confident on it because they've been through their journey, they see the insurance UBs, and the clinic's confident and asking for their money. And it improves collections. Definitely helps the beginning of the year when the deductibles are so high, your co-pays are so high, right? And it helps collect with the cash flow. And I understand the 5% is a gap, but uh what do you do? You institute an easy-to-manage refund process. It's easy to refund. On a click of a button, if you've collected additional money, if you've collected less money, it's not a problem. If you've collected additional one, just click a button and the refund happens, right? And the patient guts it. It's easy, right? So uh you have to think of there's so much gray in overall healthcare that you can't have one way of following. It has always a multi-dimensional problem. And you look at it from two, three dimensions, and then when you solve a problem, and as I said, you have first-order effects, second order effect, third order effect, actually surprises us as well many times.

SPEAKER_02 26:16

That's amazing. It's so fun to think this. I mean, again, I've known you guys for years and I love your brand. I didn't know how you guys are so s how so founded in tech. Like, I think that's significant. I think there's a lot of companies that have come up, and there's a lot of good companies are out there in the EMR space. I think from a tech's perspective, you come in from a different angle. I really see this like high level of technology forward integration. It's exciting to see what you guys are bringing to the table. And I wonder what's next. What's next for Spry in the future? Is there anything you can share that's coming down the road or anything you're excited about? We're going to bridge on this one as the CEO.

SPEAKER_00 26:54

Yeah, yeah. I think I'll I think what Minal mentioned, right? I think one

Interoperability For Complex Multidisciplinary Care

SPEAKER_00 26:58

is the whole multi-dis on the care side, I'll talk about two aspects of this, right? I don't think we we are a good we are a company which has always married the care part and the technology part together. So I'll tell you what what are we doing on the care side, which makes me excited, right? Uh a lot of easy care, easy care and musculoskeletal will go to the likes of Hinge, Sword, maybe people will go to YouTube. But a lot of complex care will still remain in clinics where there are two, three specialities working on a patient, right? Now we are working with trauma clinics, right? Where there's a PT, OT, CPH therapist working on the same patient, there is an MD working on the brain part of it. Historically, because the EMRs have been different, the workflows have been different, they've all operated in silos. The information has not been passed to each other, you've not been able to group booking, and everyone has had their own workflow for that patient. Combining all of that into a single workflow and making it seamless for the clinic, for the patient, for these complex cases is something I'm very, very excited about, right? I think one of my peeves with the EMR industry has been that all EMRs have become a billing module. EMRs were not meant to be billing modules. EMRs were meant to encourage interoperability of data. So say that again slower. Yeah. So all one of our peeves with the entire EMR industry, EMRs have become more or less a billing module.

SPEAKER_02 28:05

A billing module. And that is so true. It's more like this like aggregate of like, okay, now let's just become a billing company. Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 28:13

That's what scientific don't like them. The reason EMRs were started, because you could have data which could be exchanged with other specialities, with other doctors, and you could work on the patient together, right? It was to encourage interoperability, to encourage patients to have access to the records. But that's not happening. I think I'm very excited by the fact that I'm working with a lot of multi-speciality clinics personally, and how I can make the data which is entered by one specialty, making available to the other one so they can actually act on it better, how to make it all available to the patients so they can act on it, they can understand how their treatment's progressing, rather than so many segment islands of different information, right? So on the clinical side, I'm very, very excited about that. On the technology side, obviously, um, as I said, Gen AI, agent data, very, very excited, right? I think there is still so much toil in the industry. Yes. There is still so much toil, there is still so much like

Smart Waitlists And Decision Support

SPEAKER_00 29:00

a simple thing like a wait list, right? You have patients dropping. Every clinic would have a 10 to 20% cancellation. Now, today you have to go look at who's cancelling out, who's likely to cancel, human has to go do that, see who's in the wait list, who from the wait list is likely to come in. Use so much discretion, right? Mental discretion, and while treating 10, 15, 22 agents a day, an agent can very well do that, right? And that's what we did at CAPS. When we allocate, like people think when they're booking a cab, it's the nearest cab which comes to you. No, that's not the case, right? It's the cab which has the likeliest chance of picking you up. Because what if the cab wants to go in direction A and you want to go in direction B? Right. What if the cab likes shorter distance, right, versus long distance? So there was a lot of algorithmic matching which goes into making sure that you get the right cab. Because you want to avoid cancellation. It's not the nearest cab always, right? Because every cab, the cab driver is a human at the end of the, it's not a Waymo, right? There are Vamos now, but it's not it's not a Waymo. So cab drivers have their own preferences, have their own nuances. And you can't just override that because you're the platform, right? So you have to factor that into when allocating the cab. Similarly, when you're doing a wait list, you can't just say, okay, this person has been on the wait list longest enough, and this person needs to be in the schedule. What if it's not matching their schedule? What if they have a different preference? So a lot of this can be done by the AGU, right? Um, the next thing we are excited about, all of us have heard about open evidence, right? Which has the which is the open AI for clinical data. Doing something like that for physical therapy, so integrating clinical procedure guidelines, clinical decision support systems. So therapists have, I'm not saying we'll write the note for you, but we give them these are the different options that you have, and this is what you pick from them, and the notes written by itself, right? So some of these things with again, with Gen AI, how you can reduce the toil further and further. I imagine a world where okay, I I I grew up uh seeing a lot of old movies where I would see a doctor coming in with a duffel bag, writing the prescription, leaving. That is how doctors should operate.

unknown 30:42

Right?

SPEAKER_00 30:43

Sprite can actually make that available for a therapist. That's that's the future I'm building with them. They come, they do, they leave. Exactly. That's what we should be doing, and everything else is taken care of, and money hits your bank account.

SPEAKER_02 30:51

Well, guys, this has been such a great conversation. If they wanted to get a hold of Spry, I mean I'll tell us tell everybody how they can get a hold of you

How To Reach Spry

SPEAKER_02 30:58

guys.

SPEAKER_01 30:58

Sprypt.com is um definitely a place you can go and check out us, check us out at. Uh, we've got all our contact information on there. I believe all the leadership information is on there, email addresses and phone numbers and things like that as well. I'm mean all. I am I don't live in the US anymore, but I'm in Portugal. I work US hours. Yeah. I work US hours and I am always available meanl p at sprayhealth.care.

SPEAKER_02 31:20

All right. Well, guys, thank you so much for being on the show. We're gonna wrap things up with a rapid fire set

Rapid Fire Favorites And Influences

SPEAKER_02 31:24

of questions. You guys ready? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 31:25

Sure.

SPEAKER_02 31:26

Okay. What is what's what's one of your favorite tech companies outside of yours, outside of the EHR space that you're that you like in the physical therapy space?

SPEAKER_01 31:35

Oh. Um as a clinician, I won't give a company, but I will say anything scribe. Anything scribe? Anything scribe. Anything that's as helping us as clinicians just get our notes. That works, a tool or a company. Anything or anything scribe.

SPEAKER_02 31:49

That's exciting. What about you?

SPEAKER_00 31:51

Open evidence.

SPEAKER_02 31:52

Open evidence. Okay. Or somewhere in the world that you've been that you love, or somewhere you're excited to go. Bridge, we'll start with you.

SPEAKER_00 31:58

Yeah, can you repeat that?

SPEAKER_02 31:59

Or somewhere in the world that you've been that you just love, or somewhere you're excited to go.

SPEAKER_00 32:05

The location?

SPEAKER_02 32:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 32:07

San Diego. That's where I live. That's where I learned all my trade.

SPEAKER_02 32:09

It's my it's one of my favorite cities on the planet. I love that. What about you?

SPEAKER_01 32:13

Uh gosh, so many. How can I how can I you've been around? I want to I want to go back. I want to go back to Zambia. Zambia. I was born there, so I want to go back to Zambia.

SPEAKER_02 32:23

Did you know I was in Zambia? Yeah, we talked about that. We did. I thought so. We bonded over the we had a whole like okay, so very cool. What's a book, a movie, a band, a podcast, something that you've consumed. It can be entertainment only or it can be educational. What's something you consumed that you enjoyed recently? You would have thought these would be the hardest.

SPEAKER_01 32:46

I consume a lot of spry lately, so that's you know, that's the that was the first thing that came into my head. No. Um I've lit I've listened to a lot of co-play lately. I don't know why. I don't know why it's been just on repeat. I've I went to their concert a year ago. Yes. It's the best thing I ever did in my life, I feel like. But that concert was one of my favorite concerts ever. It was mind-blowing, but for some reason it's been on the radar again, and it's just been nonstop. Love that answer. Yeah. How about you?

SPEAKER_00 33:11

Um the book Psychology of Money by Morgan Hausen.

SPEAKER_02 33:14

That's the second time someone's mentioned that book on this podcast, this CSM.

SPEAKER_00 33:18

It's phenomenal, right? In the world so obsessed with capitalism, money being thrown, million dollars, billion dollars, trillion dollars, right? It just gives you the right perspective. I'm not saying money is important. That's what the book tells you. Money is very important. But how do you think about money and how that everything we do at Sprite, everything I do in a personal life actually comes down from there? Right? I think.

SPEAKER_02 33:34

Interesting. How you relate to money and that can that connection. All right. Well, guys, one last question. I would love to know is there someone in your family that has had a significant impact on you? A parent, a child, a grandparent? Is there someone who believed in you? And uh, I just want to hear if there's someone that comes to mind.

SPEAKER_01 33:53

Mom.

SPEAKER_02 33:53

Your mom? What how so?

SPEAKER_01 33:56

She's she's a um she's she's just an even keel. Anything can be done. Whenever you want to get it done, just go for it. Don't stop. Just do it. Don't think about it, don't put too much logic into it, don't overthink it, just go and get it done. And if you succeed, great. And if you don't, that's also great. Where does she live? Toronto. Oh, that's amazing.

SPEAKER_02 34:17

All right, Bridge, what about you, bud?

SPEAKER_00 34:18

Uh, my late maternal grandmother, I think I call her my nanny. Um my parents separated when I was one year old, and my mom moved in with my her parents, right? And uh I think she protected me. My mom had to play a dual role, mom and dad. So but my grandmother, maternal grandmother, she protected me, she cared for me, she safeguarded me, she believed in me, right? And uh I've seen other kids in a similar situation not do the right things, uh veg astray. I think she kept me grounded. I think more importantly, she believed in what I was, she backed me, right? And I think that plays a big role in what I was. She's no longer there, but yeah, I think a lot of what she told us, what we how she nurtured me, plays a big role in how I think about life.

SPEAKER_02 34:54

It's amazing. I love that question. I always finish with that because I always love to see the real human heart of the people I'm with, and you see the impact of the love of a grandmother and mother and how it turns into this company that is now solving problems, and they just there's no way to to determine or predict the impact and ripples of our our love for each other. So I'm so grateful for both of you.

SPEAKER_00 35:14

I'd just like to end that. I think she she could have used this the most. Uh, as a kid, she had a bad

Final Reflections And Closing

SPEAKER_00 35:20

fall and she had a history of fractures. Right? We had to eventually replace her tibia. And I've seen on the bed a long time. I don't know if that's made an impact on me putting a physical therapy, but I've seen a bed written with a fracture with a cast in a leg for months and months of things.

SPEAKER_02 35:33

Well, you've got personal reasons for doing what you need.

SPEAKER_00 35:35

Maybe maybe I I just it just occurred to me right now when you talked about it.

SPEAKER_02 35:38

Wow. Well, guys, thank you so much for being on the show. It's been such a treat. Thank you. It's been a pleasure.

SPEAKER_00 35:41

Thank you, Will. It's been great here.

SPEAKER_02 35:42

All right, and thank you guys so much for tuning into the Will Power Podcast. As always, my name is Will Humphreys. Remember to leave with love and to never give up. Until next time.