Can you picture yourself at the summit? We built a company with a mission to simplify health care payments using modern cloud based software. And we're not just here to be ordinary. We left that a long ways away. We're on our way to the summit. AI is purpose built to solve real pain points in healthcare, allowing you to focus on the things that matter, your patients, your goals, your communities. That's part of the power of a cloud based software platform. So we are just getting started. You'll see that people's creativity is on full display. We've created a world, a universe on what's possible. So put your futurist hats on for just a second. We can be creative, we can reimagine, we can lean into what's possible. This is a great place to do that kind of thing. We choose for really, really high things. The fanatical focus on producing amazing results for our clients. We can together transform the healthcare landscape. We're going places.

Joining me now in an exclusive interview is Waystar CEO, Matt Hawkins. His company is hosting its True North Conference in Nashville this week to spotlight potential new AI solutions in healthcare software. Matt, welcome. Setting the table here a bit, it's interesting to me. United Health, for example, has been having so much trouble lately, in part because of higher utilization and costs. I guess that's transactions, and that that hunger for transactions is part of why you've been doing well? Well, we're we're doing well. Thank you, John. It's great to be with you. I'm here at the, Waystar Innovation Lab. We're beginning to welcome a sold out True North client conference here in Nashville, and we're showing our clients how to utilize the power of AI to address higher utilization and do it with more efficiency than they've ever done before while helping them get paid accurately, get paid efficiently, and get paid fully. So this is a very exciting time for us at Waystar as we have this sense of momentum. Joe, tell me about that higher utilization though. I'm trying to understand for the whole sector how that's playing out differently for different players. I mean, I guess if you're a hospital, you want to be able to move things through quickly, get paid more quickly, more efficiently, but how is AI going to help with that? Well, it's a fact that patient visits have increased, which is a major factor in utilization. Patient visits have increased an average of one to two percent a year for the last forty years or so. It just so happens to be the case that in the last two years, utilization has been higher than that. It's been about a four percent increase, and so hospitals are having to do more with the same resources or less. AI is perfect in that case where we can help automate low complexity, high volume tasks. We can help return more time to providers and give them more accuracy and efficiency as they work to address patient visits, and then account for those as they interact with payers, and then also with patients to get paid. And then Matt, is it potentially bigger than literal patient physical visits? How does telehealth, which had a bit of a spike, and is now perhaps normalized, and things like Hinge Health, outpatient care that's still getting billed though, how does that affect what you're seeing at Waysar? You're exactly right, John. Absolutely includes more than just physical patient visits. It does include telehealth interactions as well as other virtual type Zoom interactions like the one we're having today. A provider can be very effective in interacting with a patient. Our software helps accurately account for that, helps the provider understand who the patient is financially, and then what we help assemble automatically using AI, create a very accurate, perfect, undeniable claim that can then be rapidly submitted on our platform. We are creating incredible results for the clients that we work with and real ROI. We're in a situation where we're moving from AI hype and smoke, so to speak, to ROI based reality as we help these providers interact with patients. So Matt, can your customers use this AI technology to explain to patients what they're paying for? Yes. In fact, we we are able, given that we process over six billion insurance transactions annually that constitute more than one point eight trillion dollars of insurance gross claim charges. We take all of that information and algorithmically can help patients understand often pre care what their financial responsibility will be. That's a very consumer friendly, far more transparency than the patient has had historically, and we're enabling providers to use Waystar software platform that's powered with AI to interact with a patient, help them understand their financial responsibility before they receive care in many cases, Then they can plan for their care. They can put a card on file in an integrated, elegant experience, then they can plan for and account for their care. Does patient We're helping to reduce I'm sorry. No, does the patient, regulatorily have enough access to enough data to be able to do that without, the the provider's kind of permission? Understand the charges? Well, in some cases, yes. There is a mandate for providers to publish their prices for certain health care services. That being said, each health plan is a little different, and Waystar is here to help bring simplicity and a common understanding to providers and create price transparency for patients as well. So we are really advocating for providers and patients, again, using powerful AI that is first to market, that is creating a real ROI for the providers that we work with.

Are you ready to go on a journey? It can be exhilarating. At times, a bit challenging. But always full of limitless possibilities. That is exactly how it felt when the Waystar team embarked on the journey to simplify health care payments. We knew the health care industry was facing unprecedented obstacles. The clinical world had been evolving rapidly, but the payment process had not. Revenue cycle technology struggled to keep up, resulting in antiquated systems, increased labor costs, frustrated patients, burned out health care workers, and billions in lost revenue. In two thousand seventeen, two well established health care payment platforms joined forces to create a simpler, smarter way forward. We were determined to modernize what historically been a frustrating and confusing experience for providers and patients. And transforming payments for the heroes of healthcare and their patients began with lighting the way to the summit. The concept of guiding health care heroes along their journeys resonated with me. And in those early days of our company, I recall the time when I depended on a guide. Years before, I'd been part of a small group that summited a mountain with the help of a guide. Our hike began at twilight, so we would reach the top of the summit in time to see the sunrise. Even with the headlamp, my vision was limited to just a few feet ahead. I listened and trusted our guide as he coached us through the obstacles in our path. Eventually, we reached a point just above the tree line. As we leaned against the surface of the mountain, we turned our headlamps and our flashlights off. At first, I was blinded by that sudden all consuming darkness. But as my eyes adjusted, I began to see just how brightly the stars and the moon shone on our surroundings. I could see it all. Every treetop in the valley below, the peaks above us and ahead of us, all illuminated by the most magnificent starry night sky. And I could see the way forward. The Waystar shown above us, guiding us along our journey. The Waystar team began our new adventure together, trekking toward the destination of a single, modern health care payments platform. Our technology is intentionally designed to illuminate the path to better outcomes and empower providers of every kind to see their health care payments with greater clarity. Clarity. We are constantly innovating the latest cutting edge technology to pave a better, bolder way of managing health care payments. The way to a smart platform that creates a better experience that yields powerful results for our clients. The way to make health care payments more human for providers and for patients. And that journey, it's never over. We may reach the peak of a mountain and then look past that horizon and guess what? There's already another mountain to climb, another obstacle to surpass, and another problem to solve for our providers and patients. Because this industry, it's never stagnant. Healthcare is ever changing. Technology evolves at lightning speed. We will never reach a point where there's nowhere further to go, and we're here for that. We will always find more innovative ways to simplify health care payments. Because we are Waystar. And we're here to help us all discover the way forward.

At Waystar, our mission to simplify health care payments has never been more important. We passionately believe that our software platform has the power to transform health care in the United States for providers and their patients, and we're not finished. Waystar is purpose built for this moment, and Waystar is the future of health care payments. Now we look to the horizon and we see the way forward.

February twenty first, we actually get a call from my billing manager who says, Our claims files did not go out last night. We think there's something wrong either on our end or on the clearinghouse end. Two o'clock that afternoon we got confirmation that there had been a cyber event with our clearinghouse vendor. Our claims and cash had been affected. In the midst of also trying to determine how long is this event going to happen and what's the long term effects. From a finance perspective, how long could this cash be delayed? Do we need to open a line of credit? What are our options to leverage cash? February twenty second, I actually met with my CFO and I said, Hey, what's our appetite for kind of waiting this out? We've had very little information, but we were getting indication that this is probably going to be quite a long wait. We're a Catholic run organization. Friday morning, we actually got all senior staff together with the sisters that run our organization, and we actually asked for prayer through how to get through this. We reached out to Waystar. The Waystar team and our Christus IT team and Christus rev cycle leadership team put together a call for five pm on Friday night. The way Star team worked around the clock with our team, we sent claims Monday night. So you're looking at three days in a process that normally could take three weeks to three months for full implementation. So very, very quick timeline. I'm happy to say with ten days from that Monday, we were already receiving payments via the payment portal within Waystar. And I think you see a transition from finding niche vendors to work with those specific gaps to now looking at is there someone that has a platform revenue cycle management type operation that can help in multiple ways within the revenue cycle. And that's what we have found with Waystar is that they have multiple solutions using the same information from your organization and use it in multiple ways. So I think that's been very helpful to us and that's the synergies that I was looking to gain. Waystar has really helped our team become more efficient. It's been helpful for us to work with a partner to help streamline a lot of the revenue cycle from end to end. I had previous relationship with Waystar at another organization I worked with. I've always found Waystar to be very trustworthy, very open minded, and truly wanting to be a partner, not just your RCM vendor. Looking for ways to help solve problems that maybe you don't even know you have yet. I often say that everything we do in the revenue cycle is with and through people. With Waystar is that they've hired people that are not just software development, but they're also revenue cycle experts, as well as people that have been in care delivery and understand the whole facet of health care delivery. I can tell the culture of the company, your willingness to think outside the box, to do some things that we've never done before. I really appreciate the effort that this organization has put in to help Christa's health. Thank you, Waystar.