Frederik Mueller’s Post

Healthcare is different - it's more important and patients are still different from consumers for services in other industries. Research on phone wait times tells you that - After 20 seconds on hold, most callers begin to feel frustrated. - After 30 seconds, many begin to feel angry. - After 60 seconds, 30 percent of callers will hang up. - After 90 seconds or longer, more than 50 percent will hang up. - After 120 seconds, more than 80 percent of customers will have hung up, and many will never call back. We compared this with a dataset of about 177,000 calls handled by our team over the last few weeks to understand the behavior of healthcare callers. What we found: - After 60 seconds on hold, 28% of callers hang up (this aligns with the above stat) - But after 120 seconds on hold, 47% of callers hang up, which is much less in than the above quote Why is that? I think it's probably a combination of patients needing care, and thus being more willing to wait, in addition to the fact that many patients expect healthcare to be a lower quality experience to begin with. But - every lost call is a patient who doesn't get care, and revenue that's lost for healthcare leaders. So it's important to track these metrics religiously, understand seasonality and patterns, and find the right balance between cost, quality, and access. #patientaccess #healthcare #callcenter

So many great lessons about leadership in my conversation with Julie Gessin - check out this clip where Julie describes how seeing patients twice per month, while managing a company of 2,000 employers with 300+ providers, helps her really understand what's going on at Schweiger Dermatology Group. From delegating decision-making, to her sibling relationship with vendors, and some core principles about outsourcing - it was really a great conversation. Thanks again for the time Julie! Listen to the full conversation here: https://lnkd.in/gEnuqvAN

Very excited to share our first episode of Third Way Health's Healthcare Ops Wave podcast with Julie Gessin, COO of Schweiger Dermatology Group. Why the name? Operations and waves actually have a lot in common - both are cyclical with the odd storm inbetween 😉 More importantly though, we want to use this platform to highlight some of people behind healthcare operations, starting with Julie, who started as a physician assistant and employee #7 and now oversees a group of 2,000 employees with over 380 providers (a journey any startup can be envious of!) It was a great conversation about Julie's perspective on inflection points across Schweiger's growth path, her perspectives on outsourcing, and the sibling relationship she builds with close vendors. Listen to the episode here or wherever you find your podcast: https://lnkd.in/gU8VRT7b Thanks again, for joining us!

Excited, tired, proud, nervous, hopeful - coming out of our Third Way Health leadership offsite is always a lot. Spending 2 days in a room with Timm Schneider, Royce Cheng, Lauren Leslie, Sebastian Ramirez, MPH, CPXP, PMP, Juan Felipe Bohorquez, Jack Johnson, and Natalia Iregui Parra means a lot of really interesting discussions with exchanges of lots of strong viewpoints. So what do we take away? - We don't take things personally: You know you have a great team when we can all passionately stand for our viewpoints, but still share laughs and enjoy each other's time over dinner afterwards. - We push each other: Diamonds are created under pressure, and so are really good strategies and ideas. - Some tension is constructive: We are ambitious with our goals, while recognizing the day is 24 hours for everyone. This creates really interesting discussions about resourcing, which themselves serve as a check on our goal setting. - Diversity and inclusion is important: We're 8 people, with many different backgrounds, styles, and viewpoints. We have to continue to work to create structures that get inputs from everyone evenly.

Timm Schneider so well said! And love the new spaces!

We're proud that over 50% of our clients have never worked with an external vendor prior to partnering with Third Way Health - so we work every day to demonstrate that our technology, healthcare-only focus, and team will deliver our clients better access and experience outcomes at a better value. Actions speak louder than words: Nearly every client has substantially grown with us since launching their partnership. I had the great pleasure to be speaking about our approach to changing healthcare access and experience with Kat Ketter, CDP, PCHA and Vivek Nanda on The Uprising Show. Thanks for letting me talk about it! Full episode is here: https://lnkd.in/g_haVG3S

We’re still energized after attending AHIP last month in #LasVegas. We put our heads together, shared our learnings, and came out of it with a stronger conviction on how we can provide value to our partners. #HealthEquity was a prominent theme across all sessions, and by our count, there were 16 sessions on health equity. The keynote session on day 1 with LaShawn McIver, MD, MPH, Chief Health Equity Officer of AHIP, reminded us of the statistical disparities in minority health outcomes. For example, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported in 2023 that 27.6% of Hispanic adults ages 18-64 lacked health insurance, compared to 13.3% of Black, non-Hispanic adults, 7.4% of White, non-Hispanic adults, and 7.1% of Asian, non-Hispanic adults. Additionally, only 1 in 4 Hispanic patients report feeling comfortable with their provider and understanding their care plan. Various factors contribute to the high rate of uninsured Hispanic adults, including language barriers, immigration status concerns, difficulties understanding the insurance process, and cost. In many conversations with executives from all healthcare stakeholders, especially payers and providers, we mainly worked through 3 essential questions that organizations need to answer for themselves: 1. Are our patient/member-facing teams natively or sufficiently bilingual, so we can better connect and accommodate patients and members who prefer to engage in Spanish? 2. How do we over-invest in training so that our patient/member-facing teams understand the latest research and strategies to provide empathetic, culturally competent support? 3. In times of doing more with less, how do we resource our patient/member-facing teams appropriately and effectively so we can work to close gaps in health equity while protecting the financial health of our organization? How are others thinking about addressing these disparities? We’d love to hear from you.

Just heading back from a great few days in our #Medellin office, where was conducted a slightly overdue Black Jacket session for a cohort of our team members that have completed their one year anniversary with Third Way Health. Working at Third Way Health is not always easy -- we set the bar very high for ourselves and grow pretty rapidly -- which is why the Black Jacket symbolizes all the symbolic grit and dirt that accumulates after a year of daily hard work. What I am most proud of is that 11 of the 15 individuals with me in the photo started as entry-level patient concierge representatives or product analysts and have since been promoted to Team Leads, Assistant Team Leads, Quality Analysts, or Software Engineers. And I'm sure the growth does not end there! One of our core values is providing a great place to work and grow for our team members, and this statistic truly underscores our commitment. Excited to for next month's Black Jacket club.