Your front desk is where revenue is quietly won or lost. Missed calls, slow scheduling, eligibility errors, and manual paperwork all cost practices patients and money, and AI is starting to take that load off. If you are curious about using AI to increase revenue in a PT practice, this episode is a practical place to start.
In this episode of the Practice Marketing Podcast, host Neil Trickett, CEO of Practice Promotions, talks with Mansoor Ahmed, a serial entrepreneur and co-founder of Wiz Health, about the practical ways practices can use AI right now. Mansoor explains how his company aims to automate front desk operations, from reading referral faxes and verifying insurance eligibility to scheduling, and where he sees AI taking clinics over the next five years.
Want to learn more about Wiz Eligibility? Click here to watch a 1-minute video about Wiz Eligibility for your practice.
Episode Highlights
- → Why a non-clinician built an AI platform for the front desk
- → How AI reads a referral fax and checks eligibility in seconds
- → A Google Maps style approach to scheduling
- → What clients are seeing from automating the front desk
- → Where AI is headed for practices over the next five years
- → Mansoor’s advice for owners who are trying to do it all
Guest Bio
Mansoor Ahmed is a serial entrepreneur and co-founder of Wiz Health, the company behind Wiz Eligibility. Neil introduces him as having a track record in startups and exits. In 2018 he acquired a majority ownership in Spectrum Physical Therapy in the Southwest, where, according to Neil, he improved revenue by adding locations and automating processes, and in 2023 he founded Wiz Health, which builds AI tools aimed at automating the physical therapy front desk. Neil notes that Mansoor does not have a PT background of his own.
Key Takeaways for Practice Owners
- The front desk is a revenue center. Mansoor calls referrals “the lifeblood of any physical therapy clinic.” He says being able to answer “when can I come in?” and “how much is it going to cost me?” within seconds helps a practice keep them.
- Scheduling friction costs bookings. Neil points out that a patient who is told the clinic will check insurance and call back tomorrow may simply call Clinic B. Mansoor says Wiz’s scheduling tool weighs patient location, clinic rules, and patient preferences to offer a best slot and a backup.
- Eligibility errors cost cash. Mansoor says 67% of claims are denied on first pass because of simple errors like patient names, subscriber IDs, and dates of birth, and that Wiz fixes those automatically.
- Delegate what you can’t do well. Mansoor’s advice for overwhelmed owners is to decide what to outsource, what to delegate, and which processes to document, because “you can’t do it all.”
Automating the Front Desk: Why Mansoor Built Wiz Health
Neil opens by noting that Wiz Health is Mansoor’s second physical therapy related business, even though he is not a PT himself, and asks what drew him to the space. Mansoor says the fundamentals are attractive. People are living longer, so a larger share of the population is older but still active, and both factors lead to higher use of physical therapy, which is also an inexpensive option compared to surgery. He cites an estimate that over 90% of the people who really need PT do not get it, because of a lack of awareness and education, so he sees huge demand. The challenges he lists are staffing shortages, declining reimbursements, and administrative burden, and he says administrative burden is one he believes can be alleviated.
That belief came from running clinics. When Mansoor acquired Spectrum, he says, he gained deep insight into the end-to-end process and saw that some tasks need the human connection, like helping elderly patients, while others are burdensome and monotonous. His example is asking a physical therapist or the front desk to fax reports to payers or physicians when it can be completely automated. So his team started breaking jobs down into tasks and asking which ones could be automated.
Neil adds that the front desk is a hard role to fill. Owners often want a unicorn who can sell, verify insurance, schedule, coordinate, and manage data, while also being personable with patients. Mansoor agrees that front desk staff are multitasking, taking calls and payments and scheduling at once, so mistakes and missed steps are likely. His clinics also struggled with high turnover, and he says it takes several months to train a front desk person who then takes the knowledge away when they leave.
“What we decided to do was build the knowledge into the product.” — Mansoor Ahmed
His answer was to put that knowledge into software so new hires only need training on certain tasks. Patient-facing work still belongs to the front desk team, he says, and the rest can be done with software and automation. Neil notes that healthcare tends to lag other industries in how people interact with it. You can book a haircut online and get a text when it is time to walk in, he says, while healthcare is still relying on methods from 10 or 15 years ago.
AI Insurance Eligibility Verification and Instant Patient Estimates
Mansoor says some challenges are specific to healthcare. You need to verify insurance before the patient arrives, figure out whether an authorization is needed, and tell the patient their estimated responsibility. If the front desk cannot do that within two or three seconds, he says, someone has to call the patient back, and once you do that it is much harder to reach them, so it turns into a back-and-forth game. His goal is to let the front desk answer the two questions patients care about right away: when can I come in, and how much will it cost?
“If you can answer those two questions within a couple of seconds, you can get that referral.” — Mansoor Ahmed
Here is how Mansoor describes the old process. A fax referral comes in from a physician, the front desk reads it, enters the data, checks eligibility on a website or by phone, manually calculates what the patient owes, and checks a cheat sheet to see whether an authorization is needed. He calls the whole thing “so broken.” In the Wiz approach, he says, AI automatically pulls the needed data from the referral, the system sends API calls to clearinghouses to get the data back, and it checks its databases to see whether authorizations are needed. It then applies automated patient responsibility rules to calculate an estimate. He says all of this can happen in two or three seconds.
Neil recaps it for listeners. A doctor sends the fax, AI reads it, determines eligibility, and within seconds the front desk can see whether authorization is needed, how many visits are allowed, and what the copay might be. Mansoor adds that this means the front desk does not have to depend on knowing the difference between coinsurance and copay, or out of pocket and deductible, because the information is presented simply. The software also creates a PDF of the estimated patient responsibility that staff can print for the patient or email right away.
Mansoor says AI also catches errors. His example is a patient who says their name is John Smith while the Medicare system has John Smith Jr. He says the software fixes that kind of mismatch automatically, so the claim goes out clean and is not rejected for it. Neil connects this to the pain of manual data entry across multiple systems: a mistake means waiting days or weeks to get paid, then starting the cycle again, with real labor cost and time behind it. For Neil, saving time on administrative work is where practices are headed, so the team’s attention can go to getting patients to show up, serving them well, and getting good results.
AI Patient Scheduling for Clinics: A Google Maps Approach
Neil says he got to see Wiz’s scheduling tool and found it pretty incredible. Mansoor compares it to Google Maps, which knows the shortest route and the traffic conditions, gives you the best option, and offers a backup route. In the same way, he says, when a patient wants an appointment the software offers the best slot and a backup. It considers the patient’s demographics and where they live relative to the clinic, along with the clinic’s own rules.
Mansoor gives an example of a clinic rule. A clinic might want to keep busy slots between 8 and 10 for people going to work, keep 4 to 6 for athletes or people coming from work, and place retired or elderly patients in the quieter times. A patient might also ask for a female therapist.
“How does the front desk remember all of this? It’s almost humanly impossible.” — Mansoor Ahmed
Mansoor says the software takes all of that into account and recommends a slot, with the goal of serving the patient well and also increasing profitability, since clinics can set rules inside the software. Neil likes that the approach gives patients choice, but less choice, which he says works better for the schedule and for running an efficient day.
Neil asks whether the tool can book a whole plan of care, such as two or three visits a week. Mansoor says it does, and that it also detects conflicts. If a therapist is out on one day of a 12-visit plan, he says, it flags the conflict and helps resolve it automatically. He adds that the tool can estimate a patient’s probability of arrival based on their profile. If that probability is very low, he says, a clinic may choose to double book the slot.
Neil also wonders whether patients could book their entire plan of care from home. Mansoor says the next version of the software is intended to allow that. So far, he says, the focus has been on making the front desk experience simple and efficient, but there is no reason it cannot move to the website or a patient portal. Neil adds that self-scheduling could also help clinics sell cash-based services such as massage, acupuncture, or laser treatments, especially for clinics that add personal training or a gym component.
Using AI to Increase Revenue in a PT Practice: What Clients Are Seeing
When Neil asks how Mansoor’s own practices have used the software to save time and money, he starts with referrals. When a patient calls and gets the information they need immediately, he says, the clinic has a chance to capture that referral.
“Referrals are the lifeblood of any physical therapy clinic.” — Mansoor Ahmed
Neil says this is also a marketing issue. Even when a doctor’s office hands a patient a list of preferred PT clinics, the patient will go on Google and call around, so you want to be at the top of Google. But if your front desk says they will check insurance and call back tomorrow, and Clinic B can answer on the spot, he says the patient is probably going with Clinic B.
Mansoor lists three benefits he has seen. Clients can schedule patients immediately on the phone. They have reduced training time for new front desk staff, which he says is savings in itself. And in some large groups that had a centralized team doing eligibility, he says fewer people were needed, so some staff were moved to other processes, which cuts overhead at a time of declining reimbursement. He adds that Wiz recently built a feature that automatically fixes front desk errors, noting his claim that 67% of claims are denied on first pass because of errors with names, subscriber IDs, and dates of birth. Neil’s takeaway is faster cash flow.
Neil also points to a hiring benefit. If administrative work is automated, he says, owners can look for a front desk person who is a great people person, which can help with patient retention and getting patients to arrive for their appointments, instead of someone who has to be both a people person and a data-entry specialist.
Asked how Wiz Eligibility differs from other software, Mansoor says he has not seen another product built specifically for PT, OT, and speech. He says his team customizes the tool for each clinic. By his estimate, about 20 to 25% of a clinic’s payers are local or have their own requirements, so during setup the team learns the clinic’s rules and how benefits are calculated for 90 to 95% of its volume. Clinics then go through a user acceptance testing period of a couple of weeks, and once one or two clinics are set up, it can be switched on for the rest.
“Think of Wiz Eligibility as an app for automation of the front desk.” — Mansoor Ahmed
He compares this to buying a new iPhone: it comes with some apps, but you download a specific one for banking. Wiz works alongside EMRs, he says, because most EMRs do not have this functionality built in. Neil confirms that was his next question, and Mansoor says that is exactly how it works: a specialized app for a specific function that improves the overall experience.
Where AI Is Headed for Practices
Neil asks what clinics’ use of AI will look like five years from now. Mansoor thinks AI documentation will be used by almost every PT. Neil had earlier noted that many practices first think of AI for documentation, and that it can also be used on the administration side. Mansoor expects patient scheduling to become seamless.
“It’s almost like booking a dinner reservation at a restaurant using OpenTable.” — Mansoor Ahmed
He also expects the front desk process of eligibility, authorizations, and patient estimates to be automated, and the back end revenue cycle management work to follow, since he sees a lot of manual work that there is no reason to keep doing by hand.
Neil adds context for owners. The cost of doing business keeps rising while reimbursements stay flat or decline, so you can’t count on what payers will do, and you need efficiency inside the clinic and extra value per patient, for example from cash-based services.
On the near-term roadmap, Mansoor says, is automated authorizations. He says he built an automated authorization system for imaging in the past, handling MRIs and CTs, and has looked at doing the same for physical therapy. At the time of the recording in late 2024, he said Wiz expected to release it within the next few months. He says it would take another burden off the front desk. Neil’s view is that the clinics that embrace AI and technology and look for ways to automate and improve efficiency are the ones that will thrive in today’s economy.
Delegate to Grow: Mansoor’s Advice for Overwhelmed Owners
Asked for one simple step an overwhelmed PT owner can take to regain control, Mansoor says PTs are entrepreneurs who try to do too many things themselves. He saw this when he acquired Spectrum with his partner Sandra, a very good PT with about 25 years of experience who was trying to run seven clinics. They sat down and went through what could be outsourced, what could be delegated, and what could be turned into processes that are easier to manage. Along the way he realized she was handling digital marketing on her own and, frankly, did not have the time to do it well.
Mansoor says that is when he started working with Neil, and that putting Practice Promotions’ systems in place delivered a good return on their investment. He adds that during due diligence in the sale process, every company wanted to see what digital marketing processes the practice had in place, and he says that having them in order helped speed up the sale. His first step for any entrepreneur is to think through what is important, what can be delegated or outsourced, and which processes to document.
“You can’t do it all, so you need to find the right partners to work with.” — Mansoor Ahmed
Neil agrees, saying owners eventually realize they are the bottleneck and need to bring in outside expertise, then collaborate and delegate. That frees up the bandwidth to go bigger and be more visionary. As Neil puts it, a business will grow at the speed of what you can delegate.
About Wiz Health
Wiz Health builds software for physical, occupational, and speech therapy clinics. According to its website, every Wiz subscription includes eligibility verification and patient estimates, and clinics can add reverification, prior authorization, or both inside their existing EMR workflow. Mansoor Ahmed and Narayan Sathya are listed there as co-founders.
FAQs
What is Wiz Eligibility? Mansoor describes it as an app for automation of the front desk. It works alongside a clinic’s EMR to handle tasks like verifying insurance eligibility, checking whether an authorization is needed, and producing a patient estimate, which he says most EMRs do not do on their own.
How does AI insurance eligibility verification work? Mansoor says that when a referral fax comes in, AI pulls the needed data, the system checks with clearinghouses and its authorization databases, and automated rules calculate the patient’s estimated responsibility, all in two or three seconds. The front desk can then print or email a PDF estimate to the patient.
How does Wiz say its AI scheduling works? Mansoor compares it to Google Maps. It recommends a best slot and a backup slot using the patient’s location and demographics and the clinic’s own rules, can book a whole plan of care, flags conflicts, and can estimate a patient’s probability of arrival so a clinic can decide whether to double book.
How can automating the front desk help a PT practice increase revenue? According to Mansoor, answering eligibility and cost questions immediately helps a clinic capture referrals, shorter training time reduces cost, and cleaner claims mean fewer first-pass denials. He says some large groups also needed fewer people in a centralized eligibility team.
What is Mansoor’s advice for an overwhelmed practice owner? He says to decide what you can outsource or delegate and which processes to document, because you can’t do it all. Neil adds that a business grows at the speed of what you can delegate.
Where does Mansoor see AI in PT in five years? He expects AI documentation to be used by almost every PT, seamless patient scheduling, automated eligibility, authorizations, and patient estimates at the front desk, and more automation of the revenue cycle on the back end.
Related Episodes & Resources
- Real AI Tools for Real PT Clinics w/ Rob Helton, DPT: the closest match for AI in clinic operations.
- Should I Outsource My PT Billing? w/ Motaz Ebeido, DPT: the eligibility and billing overlap.
- AI Search for PTs: The 5-Pillar Blueprint to Stay Visible When Patients Search Google, ChatGPT & Siri: AI on the marketing side, and how patients find you before they ever call your front desk.
- Physical Therapy Marketing Services: how Practice Promotions helps clinics get found online and turn those calls into booked patients.
View Full Episode Transcript (click to expand)
[0:17] Neil: Hello and welcome to the Practice Marketing Podcast, highlighting successful strategies from North America’s fastest growing clinics and experts so you can learn from their wins and power your practice growth. I am your host, Neil Trickett, CEO of Practice Promotions, and today we’re going to talk about increasing revenue and seeing more patients with artificial intelligence. Our guest today is Mansoor Ahmed. Mansoor is a serial entrepreneur and has a great, successful track record in startups and exits. In 2018 he acquired a majority ownership in Spectrum Physical Therapy Consultants in the Southwest, where he improved revenue by adding multiple locations and automating processes. And in 2023 he founded Wiz Health, which has developed an AI platform with a suite of different solutions for the physical therapy industry, aiming to make that front desk more automated and the patient experience elevated. So Mansoor is going to talk to us today about how his company is using AI to help PT owners streamline their processes and their practice. So welcome, Mansoor.
[1:17] Mansoor: Thank you, Neil.
[1:20] Neil: Great to have you here. So let’s dive right in. There’s a lot to unpack here with AI, and I believe Wiz Health is your second physical therapy related business, but you don’t personally have a background as a PT. So what attracted you to this space as a place to start and grow businesses?
[1:44] Mansoor: Yeah, the fundamentals of the physical therapy space are very attractive. People are living longer, so you have a larger portion of the population which is older but also very active, and both these factors lead to higher utilization of physical therapy. And physical therapy is also an inexpensive solution compared to surgery. It’s estimated that over 90% of the population that really needs PT does not get PT because of lack of awareness and education, so there’s a huge demand, and that’s why this industry is so attractive. But we also have some challenges. You can think about staffing shortages, declining reimbursements, and administrative burden. Even though some of these challenges are harder to solve, there are others, like administrative burden, which I believe we can alleviate.
[2:40] Neil: Yeah, absolutely. And so why did you start Wiz Health?
[2:49] Mansoor: Yeah, my… I think my background was in developing solutions in healthcare, and so when I acquired Spectrum Therapy I really gained deep insight into the end-to-end process. I realized that there were some processes which required the human connection, you know, helping elderly patients for example, but there were other tasks which were just burdensome and monotonous. So for example, why do you need a physical therapist or the front desk to fax reports to payers or physicians? I mean, it can be completely automated. So that’s why we started breaking down the jobs into tasks and seeing which of these tasks can be automated, and that’s why I started Wiz Health, because we wanted to provide tools which alleviated the administrative burden.
[3:41] Neil: Excellent. Yeah, I know, running a clinic and having friends that run clinics, and obviously lots of clients that we help that run clinics, the front desk is a challenging area. It requires a lot of skill for the pay rate that it’s at, right? They need to be able to sell, they need to be able to verify insurance, they need to be able to schedule properly, they need to coordinate all these kinds of things that are happening, right? So you’re asking for, a lot of times, a unicorn at that front desk, to be able to do all these things, and it can be a real headache trying to find someone to come in. You have to find someone who’s very good at being personable, right, to relate with patients as they come through, but then also good analytically so that they can do data entry and manage schedules. That’s a hard thing to find, someone who’s both very analytical and able to manage data, and then someone who’s very good with people and very personable. So for you, what gap does Wiz Health fill in that industry, especially at the front desk?
[4:49] Mansoor: If you think about the challenges at the front desk, these folks are multitasking, and it’s not easy: taking phone calls, taking a patient payment, scheduling. When you do so many tasks at one time, the chances are that you might make mistakes or you might forget some critical piece of the task. So the way we look at it is, if there’s a certain task that can be completely automated and that burden is removed from the front desk, that streamlines the process, and it makes the job of the front desk so much easier. One of the biggest challenges we had at our clinics was high turnover, and it takes several months to train a front desk person, and once they leave they take the knowledge away. So what we decided to do was build the knowledge into the product, so that when you have to train a front desk person, you don’t need to go through every single piece of the process. You just need to train them on certain tasks. Most of the patient-facing tasks can be done by the front desk, but the rest of the tasks can be done using software and automation.
[6:13] Neil: Yeah. And if we look at other industries, healthcare tends to lag behind a lot of other industries in how people are interfacing with that company or that particular industry. If you think about even going for a haircut appointment, you can pretty much just book it all online yourself, and then it tells you, hey, time to come in, come walk in now, and boom, you’re there getting your haircut. In the healthcare industry we’re still kind of reliant on the methodologies that we had, say, 10 or 15 years ago. We’re starting to put a little bit more automation into that, but it’s nowhere near where these other industries are today.
[6:57] Mansoor: Absolutely right. And some of the challenges which are specific to healthcare are that you need to be able to verify the insurance before the patient comes in, you need to figure out whether an authorization is needed or not, and you need to be able to tell the patient, this is what your estimated responsibility is. If you can’t do that within two or three seconds, you have to then call the patient back, and once you call the patient back, it’s much harder to get a hold of the patient. They might be at work, they might be driving, and so this becomes a back and forth game. So the way to solve it is really to figure out a way to enable the front desk to immediately provide the answers that the patient wants: when can I come in, and how much is it going to cost me? If you can answer those two questions within a couple of seconds, you can get that referral, and it’s a much better patient experience.
[7:56] Neil: Right, so there’s not this frustration of going back and forth on phone calls, and, oh, let me check with your insurance, and it might take them a day to get back to you. If they’ve done eligibility, then even then it might not be, you know, sometimes it’s not 100% accurate. And then there’s a misunderstanding in terms of what was said, there could be some data entry problems, mistakes that were made by the front desk when they took down information. So there are layers upon layers of frustration that can build with the patient experience, which is ultimately what we’re trying to make sure is an amazing patient experience for them. And I do like the way that you’ve approached things, and how can we make that easier on the front desk and also a much easier patient experience for patients. Absolutely. So let’s chat a little bit here about AI and using AI, because there’s a lot of talk about AI. We’re thinking about using it in the clinic a lot of times for documentation purposes, but there are new ways of thinking, and we can start to leverage AI in some other areas, especially on the administration side of things. Can you talk a little bit about that?
[9:07] Mansoor: Sure. So let’s say you get a fax referral from a physician. Well, in today’s process the front desk has to look at the fax, input the data into the system, and then go into websites to check eligibility or make a phone call, and then manually calculate whether the patient owes a certain amount of money for the visit, the estimated patient responsibility. And they usually check a cheat sheet to find out whether an auth is needed or not. I mean, this whole process is so broken. So the way we are using AI is, when a referral comes in, we automatically extract all the data needed, because all the data is available right there.
[9:55] Neil: So you use Gen AI.
[9:57] Mansoor: Yeah, we use Gen AI to extract the data out, and then we immediately send API calls to clearinghouses, etc., to get the data back. We have very sophisticated databases which tell us whether auths are needed or not, and then we have automated estimated patient responsibility rules, and those rules help us calculate the patient responsibility. All this can be done within two or three seconds, literally. So now what you’re doing is eliminating the burden on the front desk, because they don’t have to do all of this in order to get a patient estimate, in order to figure out whether the patient is eligible, what the benefits are, and if an auth is needed or not. So that is how we’re using AI.
[10:51] Neil: So let’s come back to that, because there’s a lot of incredible information coming in here. So the process is that a doctor sends over the fax, AI reads the fax and gets all the data out of it, it then determines the eligibility of the patient from their information, and then within a few seconds the front desk has that information from that referral: depending on the insurance they have, whether they need authorization or not, how many visits they’re allowed, what would be their copay or anything like that, all done within seconds, right? That’s pretty amazing.
[11:29] Mansoor: Yeah. And so when you provide that kind of feedback to the front desk, you don’t have to depend upon their skill sets or them knowing the difference between coinsurance and copay, or the difference between out of pocket and deductible. All that information is provided to them in a very simple manner. We also automatically create a PDF, which is an estimated patient responsibility, which they can print and give to the patient or email to the patient immediately. So what we have done is really streamlined the front desk process and made life for them a whole lot easier. The other thing that AI does for us is it detects any errors. I’ll give you a small example, Neil. The patient might say, hey, my name is John Smith, but in the Medicare system it’s John Smith Jr. So when they send a claim, they’re sending it for John Smith, and Medicare is expecting John Smith Jr., right? What our software does is automatically fix that error, and so when the claim is sent, it’s clean. You don’t have rejection because of that. So that’s why we are using these tools, to help the front desk minimize errors.
[12:47] Neil: Yeah, because there are so many points of data entry, right? You have to enter things in multiple times on different systems, and it becomes a headache, and just those simple things can cause mistakes to happen. And then you send a bill out and you’re waiting to get paid. You might not know for a few days, a week, a couple of weeks, whatever it may be, and now you have to start the cycle all over again and fix the mistake. So there’s a lot of labor, and labor cost, and labor time, just to handle all this administrative work, right? So that’s fantastic. Whatever you can do to save time and automate things, I mean, that’s going to be the practice of the future, where we’ve got to play within this broken healthcare system, and how can we make it as easy as possible, as automated as possible, on these silly administrative tasks just to get paid at the end of the day, so we can put our attention on making sure the patients show up for PT, making sure that we’re servicing them well, that they’re getting good results, and then we’re able to keep that relationship going with them.
[14:00] [Mid-roll ad for the Practice Promotions free practice marketing sample kit (practicepromotions.net/kit), about 14:00 to 14:36. Not transcribed.]
[14:36] Neil: Absolutely. And so what are some of the ways that you’ve obviously incorporated this software in your practice to help you save time and money, right?
[14:46] Mansoor: Yeah. So, like I described before, when a patient calls, if they get all the information they need immediately, then you get a chance to capture that referral. And that’s very, very important, because referrals are the lifeblood of any physical therapy clinic. So the ability to immediately provide information back to the patient and schedule the patient immediately makes sure that you don’t lose the referral. That’s one way that our product has helped our clinics.
[15:30] Neil: Yeah, I think that’s a great thing from a marketing perspective. If we look at this from a marketing perspective, even if the patient has had a referral from the physician’s office, typically in the doctor’s office these days what they’re doing is giving them a list of places, like, hey, these are preferred PT clinics, go check them out. They’re going to go on Google. This is where the marketing comes in: you want to be at the top of Google, right, so that they’re going to choose you first. But if they call the clinic and it takes a while to get the front desk, and then asking this information, they’re like, okay, well, I’m going to check your insurance information and I’ll get back to you tomorrow, now they call another clinic, and that Clinic B can give them the information immediately over the phone. I mean, who are you going to choose? I’m probably going to go with Clinic B, right?
[16:18] Mansoor: Absolutely. And that is the way that our clients are utilizing our tool. The other thing that we have seen is that they have reduced the training time for any new front desk folks, and that in itself is savings. And the third way we’ve seen it is that we’ve seen some large groups where they had a centralized team doing eligibility, and you don’t need that many folks there when the system is automated. They were able to move some of the folks to different processes, so that again is an overhead reduction, and in a time when we have declining reimbursement, that becomes very important.
[17:05] Neil: Yeah, absolutely. And again, I think too, it allows you to find the right fit for the front desk, right? So instead of trying to have someone that does all these different kinds of tasks and interactions, what if you could find someone that was really a great people person, and then they have a lot of the administrative stuff being more automated? You’re going to have much better patient retention because you’ve got someone at the front desk that’s well trained on being a great people person and getting them to arrive for their appointments and things like that. And maybe that kind of person may make a few more errors with data entry, right, but if they don’t have to do the data entry because it’s automated, then that allows you to find that right person for the front desk.
[17:46] Mansoor: Absolutely. Good point.
[17:48] Neil: And so I know you have a variety of different solutions here, but talk to us a little bit about Wiz Eligibility, and enabling PT clinics to obviously schedule and get more of those referrals. How does that differ from other software that’s out there on the market?
[18:07] Mansoor: Yeah, so there are no specific products that we’ve seen which are specific to PT, OT, and speech. What we do is customize the tools so that it fits that particular clinic. Usually what we have seen, Neil, is that about 20 to 25% of payers for any given clinic may be local payers or specific to them, where they have their own requirements. So what we do is take the time during the setup to understand all the rules, understand how the benefits are calculated for 90 to 95% of their entire volume, and then we go ahead and test it. We have a user acceptance testing period for a couple of weeks so that they are very confident about what they’re getting, and once that is done for one or two clinics, we can then switch it on for the rest of the clinics. So there’s nothing that I have seen so far which does all of this for PT, and that’s why we believe we have an app which is different. The way I think about Wiz is that when you buy a new iPhone, you have several apps which come with the phone, but then you need maybe a specific app for your banking, so you go download Wells Fargo, Bank of America, whatever, and that helps you do your banking. So think of Wiz Eligibility as an app for automation of the front desk. Wiz works in conjunction with EMRs by providing this unique functionality to increase efficiency, because most EMRs don’t have that functionality built in.
[19:57] Neil: Yeah, that was going to be my next question: how does that differ from what happens with the EMR?
[20:05] Mansoor: Correct. And that’s exactly how it works. You have a specialized app, you’re using it for a specific function, and it enhances the overall experience.
[20:16] Neil: Excellent. Now I know you’re testing this now in different clients’ practices, so I’m curious, what results are you seeing with Wiz Eligibility?
[20:27] Mansoor: Yeah, so the first and foremost thing is that our clients are able to schedule patients immediately, right on the phone. So that’s one huge benefit, like you said, from a marketing perspective, from a patient satisfaction perspective. That’s huge. Then cost reductions, because you don’t need that many folks in a centralized office doing eligibility, so reducing overhead costs is another benefit. And we just built this feature where we automatically fix the front desk errors. I don’t know if you know this, but 67% of claims on first pass get denied because of errors: errors with patient names, subscriber IDs, date of birth. Those are simple errors which cause major headaches for the billing side of the business, and all those are now being eliminated, because we’re automatically fixing what the payer expects.
[21:34] Neil: That’s great. You have to wait for your money, right? Faster cash flow.
[21:38] Mansoor: Correct, exactly.
[21:40] Neil: Yeah, that’s awesome. And so what do you see five years from now, with how clinics are using AI in their businesses? What is that going to look like?
[21:50] Mansoor: Yeah, I think AI documentation will be used by almost every PT. You’ll see that the patient scheduling process will be seamless. It’s almost like booking a dinner reservation at a restaurant using OpenTable: you just go, select, and bing, that’s it. The front desk process of eligibility, authorizations, patient estimates, all that will be automated, and then on the back end we expect a lot of the RCM processes to be automated. I mean, right now there is a lot of manual work which goes on, but there’s no reason why it can’t be further automated on the back end.
[22:29] Neil: That’s amazing. Yeah, things are coming fast, right? And we all know that the cost of doing business keeps going up, and reimbursements are flat or declining, so we can’t think about relying on what payers are going to do. They’re always going to be trying to cut costs, right? So we need to be able to look at efficiency within the clinic. We also need to be able to look at how we can add additional value, cash value services into our business, whether that’s massage, acupuncture, whatever other services you can add to bring the value per patient up on each visit. And I think for those additional services, again, that’s where AI scheduling can be very handy. If the patient can just schedule themselves in for, let’s say, an acupuncture treatment, or they can schedule themselves in for a laser treatment, or whatever you may be offering. And we do see that with some of our clients that bring in, say, personal training, or they have a gym component. There are gym softwares that have a lot of that functionality, but the EMRs and those kinds of things don’t have as much functionality with the automations. But you do see that with those clinics that add those other cash value services, those types of softwares are a bit more ahead of the curve in terms of some automations and that patient experience.
[24:00] Mansoor: Absolutely.
[24:02] Neil: And so, you know, we’ve got Wiz Eligibility, but I believe there’s also scheduling right now. I got to see some of this, and it was pretty incredible. So can you talk a little bit about how that works?
[24:15] Mansoor: Yeah. So the way the scheduling works is very similar to Google Maps. In Google Maps, when you put in a destination, it knows the shortest distance, it knows the traffic conditions, and it tells you, this is the best route. It also gives you a backup route. And so the way our scheduling works is, when a patient wants to make an appointment, it gives them the best slot, because it knows the patient, it knows the demographics of the patient, it knows the location of the patient with respect to where they are, the distance from their house to the clinic, and so it does all those calculations. It also takes in the clinic’s rules. So, for example, a clinic may have a preference, they might say, look, we would like to keep our busy slots between 8 and 10 for folks who are going to work, and slots between 4 and 6 for athletes or people coming back from work, so maybe we should schedule patients who are retired or elderly during the time when the clinic is not that busy. That rule, that preference, can be taken into account, and the software can take every single thing into account to actually schedule a patient. A patient may also want to say, well, I would like to see a female therapist. How does the front desk remember all of this? It’s almost humanly impossible. So what our software does is take everything into account and then make a recommendation and say, this is the best slot, but here is a backup slot. And so with scheduling we believe that we can actually optimize scheduling to serve the patient and provide a great experience, but also to increase profitability, because you can set rules within the software.
[26:07] Neil: I love that, because it’s taken scheduling to a whole new level. And the thing with scheduling is, sometimes if you give too much choice, then there’s too much freedom and it can interfere with things. I love what you said there about keeping certain slots, certain times, available for different demographics and different groups, and what can be done there. If you give them choice, but less choice, then it works better for your schedule and how you can run your day and be more efficient, and then you’re also giving choice and selection to your patients.
[26:49] Mansoor: Absolutely.
[26:50] Neil: Yeah. And I’m curious, have you done anything with, if the therapist recommends two times a week or three times a week, does it do anything to help book out that range of treatments, the entire plan of care?
[27:03] Mansoor: Of course it does all of that. It books out the plan of care. Also, what it does is it detects conflicts. Most of the software right now, you know, a PT may be out for a certain day, and the patient wants to be seen only with that PT. Well, it automatically detects conflicts and tells you, look, we’re booking out the entire plan of care, we’ve got 12 visits on these days, but on that particular day you may have a conflict, and it helps you resolve that conflict automatically. So what we’re doing is really simplifying the job of the front desk by building in all this automation. It also takes into account, for example, probability of arrival. It calculates, based on the patient’s profile, whether they will show up for the next visit or not, and it’s possible to actually predict a patient’s probability of arrival. There are several factors which go into that, and if you know that a patient’s probability of arrival is very low, you may want to double book that slot.
[28:16] Neil: So if you have a frequent offender who doesn’t show…
[28:20] Mansoor: Exactly.
[28:21] Neil: You’ll double book, right? I love it. That’s great. And I was just thinking, one thing was, you want them to book up for that plan of care, and a lot of times you’d hear, oh yeah, I maybe can get these couple of days in here, but then I’ve got to look at my calendar and everything, and then maybe have to go home and talk with their spouse or whatever. But what’s great is they could do all that from home, too, booking out their plan of care, their treatment, right?
[28:51] Mansoor: Yeah, so the next version of our software will allow them to do it. Right now our goal has been focused more on the front desk experience, to make it so simple and more efficient for them, but clearly there’s no reason why this can’t be moved to the website, to the portal, so that they can then do it themselves.
[29:15] Neil: Absolutely. And I’m curious, is there a way that they’re talking to each other? Probably, because it’s all integrated in the system, but let’s say they have an authorization for six visits, and then it would know when the authorization is coming up and give notice or something.
[29:28] Mansoor: Correct.
[29:30] Neil: And could it alert the front desk upfront?
[29:33] Mansoor: So next, on the product roadmap, we have automated authorizations. And Neil, I’ve done this in the past for imaging. We developed an automated system which handled authorizations: submitted auths, brought back auths for MRIs, CTs. And so we’ve looked at that for physical therapy, and within the next few months we’ll be releasing that. We’re very excited about that, because it really then takes away another burden from the front desk.
[30:08] Neil: Wow, that’s amazing. Yeah, things are happening so fast here in the space. As I said before, I think those clinics that really embrace AI, embrace technologies, and how can they automate, how can they increase efficiency, those are going to be the ones that thrive in today’s economy, right?
[30:30] Mansoor: Yeah.
[30:32] Neil: And so, for you, kind of looking here at final advice: let’s say you’re talking to a PT owner that’s overwhelmed in the business. What would you say is one simple step that they can take to regain their stability, control, and freedom in their practice?
[30:49] Mansoor: Yeah. PTs are entrepreneurs, and they try to do too many things themselves. When I acquired Spectrum, I saw that with my partner Sandra. Sandra is a very good PT, she had 25 years of experience, but she was trying to run seven clinics, and it was very hard. So we sat down and we started talking about what things can you outsource, what things can you delegate, what things can we build processes around so that it’s much easier to manage. And during one of our sessions I realized that she was trying to do digital marketing all by herself, and frankly she didn’t have the time and couldn’t do a good job there. So I met you at Ascend, and that’s when we started working together. And Neil, you were the experts. I mean, you really knew what was needed, and when we put in your systems in place and started partnering with you, we really saw a good ROI on our investment. One of the things that happened during our sale process, during due diligence, was that every single company wanted to see what kind of digital marketing processes we had in place, and when we showed them what we had, clearly they were impressed and the whole sale process was expedited. If you have all the right things in place, the sale process goes a whole lot faster. So I think thinking through what’s important, what can be delegated, what can be outsourced, and which processes to document, I think that’s an important first step for any entrepreneur. And you can’t do it all, so you need to find the right partners to work with.
[32:41] Neil: Yeah, 100% agree. And I’ve definitely learned my lessons over the years. It’s not just one time in business, it’s continual growth in business. You get to a point where you realize you’re the bottleneck in your business, right? And so then you need to bring in an outside source, hire someone with that expertise, whatever it may be, and then delegate, right? And obviously collaborate, but delegate, and that allows you the bandwidth to be able to go bigger, and look bigger, and be more visionary.
[33:20] Mansoor: Yeah, I see, in any small business, that’s the thing: as a business grows, the demands on the owner grow, and then they need the team that they have to build to allow them to grow the business, which…
[33:36] Neil: Yeah, it’ll grow at the speed of what you can delegate.
[33:40] Mansoor: You’re absolutely right.
[33:42] Neil: Yeah. Awesome. Well, Mansoor, thank you so much for sharing your insights on this really innovative technology. I know your business is going to be super successful because it’s filling such a demand in the industry, and I would really encourage everybody out there to check out Wiz Health. Is it wizhealth.com?
[33:58] Mansoor: Yeah, wizhealth.com.
[34:00] Neil: Wizhealth.com. They’ve got some amazing stuff here, again really on that forefront of AI technologies in practice here. So go check that out. And for our listeners out there, thank you for being on the podcast here. Don’t forget to subscribe to us, check us out on YouTube, check us out on our social channels, go to practicepromotions.net, because you’ve got tons of great advice to help you launch your clinic forward. So, Neil Trickett here from Practice Promotions and the Practice Marketing Podcast, wishing you much success in your practice.
[34:38] [Outro for the Practice Promotions free practice marketing sample kit (practicepromotions.net/kit), about 34:38 to the end. Not transcribed.]
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