End the Wait: How AI Is Finally Fixing Patient Access | Executive Interview with Adnan Iqbal

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End the Wait: How AI Is Finally Fixing Patient Access | Executive Interview with Adnan Iqbal

[00:00:01] Health systems have been trying to automate operations for years. Luma was built for it from the start. AI native with 10 years of experience at over 1,000 organizations. Luma's platform runs from patient acquisition to the back office. And one of the largest specialty practices in the country cut referral times from weeks to hours. Find out more at Health, where our mission is to
[00:00:39] transform healthcare one connection at a time. This is an executive interview, quick, powerful conversations with leaders driving change. So, let's get started. All right, we have an executive interview today, and I'm excited to be joined by Adnan Iqbal, the co-founder and CEO of Luma Health. And Adnan, welcome welcome to the show.
[00:01:00] >> Thank you, Bill. Real pleasure. >> And we're going to talk about the problems which haven't changed in a in a long time, but the tools have changed. 11-minute hold times, 2.3 transfers per call, 14-day average for a PCP appointment, 18% no-show rates, referral leakage, call center staffing crisis, fax chaos. These problems I I I came into healthcare from other industries, and I was kind of surprised when I got
[00:01:25] into healthcare that these things weren't wrestled to the ground, but it is really complex. So, we're going to talk about we're going to talk about access. We're going to talk about getting people in in the front door. We're going to talk about making that a much better experience than it was. But, you guys started a long time ago, like before generative AI and before these you know, voice engines that now sit in in between our call centers and whatnot.
[00:01:51] Talk a little bit about the origin. Why this space? Why did you go after this >> You know, most of us can remember President Obama, right? And Obamacare and Affordable Care Act. And really it's wild to think that was the real catalyst to healthcare moving from paper-based records to real digital records, right? Like there was a tremendous amount of government money and stimulus that was essentially a forcing function for the vast majority
[00:02:16] of healthcare to move from paper to digital, right? So, it seems like that should have been in in in in the yesteryears, but it really wasn't that long ago. Um okay, so where we began, we launched the company back in February of 2015.
[00:02:28] And it started with a super simple problem, something we we've all lived either directly or through a a loved one. Uh and I lived it as a patient, the Shfeen who's our chief medical officer, he lived it as as a practicing radiologist. And it's just people are waiting weeks to months to get to care in an outpatient setting. You rattled off some stats at the opening here, but you know, your average American is waiting 2 and 1/2 to 12 weeks to get to
[00:02:48] >> They were very believable stats, weren't >> They're very believable stats, sadly, right? Like it's it's it's the realness. uh that's where we started in in in in we kind of dug into it and and we wanted to test what was unique to us in our own experience as in the imaging radiology space which was true across the spectrum. And just being good nerds uh on campus who were finishing up their respective academic programs, we played
[00:03:10] the student card and talked to providers. Like providers who worked at two-doctor clinics to providers who worked at 200,000 provider, you know, systems and everyone in between. Your academic medical centers, your county systems, your public systems, your specialty clinics.
[00:03:25] Your Mayos, your Clevelands, your Kaisers. Like everyone, right? And what we found is like people are waiting just forever to just get to care. And the reality for most, you know, for for for me where I experienced it, like I tore my ACL, uh I needed to get surgery to have my ACL repaired. I put a crutch around for 3 weeks and I would have been fine. I would have gone to the same health outcome just 3 weeks later. The reality
[00:03:47] for most people is every single day that goes by your likelihood for a health outcomes is deteriorating, right? And so, that was really what spoke to us. Uh and and and it was validated and as we spent time with with with providers and clinics and hospital and health systems, they said, "Yeah, we see about a 25 to 30% unused capacity on any given and we know we have people waiting to fill those slots, there's just no easy
[00:04:08] way for us to make that connection happen." And so, that was the very first, you know, problem statement or product we launched was a smart waitlist. And the goal is the same as it is today. It's like, how do we get more to the right care with the right doctor quickly? And then how do we make sure they keep coming back for the care they need, right? And so, we've been lucky in that that North Star hasn't shifted for us. It passes the mom test, right? Like
[00:04:29] everyone everyone understands what that means and has lived it in some shape, way, and form. Uh but but that's really been our our our guiding North Star. And as we kind of step back, we said, "Okay, the waitlist was a real example of it, but this is really back then a communication problem, but ultimately it's an it's an orchestration operational problem, right? It's how do really enable people to get to the right care with the right doctor quickly, keep
[00:04:51] coming back? That requires so many workflows behind the scenes that, you know, you touched upon the fax machine, right? The fax machine often triggers many of those workflows. It's super manual and requires a healthcare staff to really do a significant amount of coordinating, working through multiple systems of record, working through multiple systems of action, and that's kind of meet the moment where we are today. It's AI
[00:05:12] really allows for us to solve that in a way that just hasn't been possible, right? You don't have to have a one-to-one conversation about an appointment or a bill or a upcoming procedure. You can actually have a conversation across all of that and know a lot about the patient and the workflow and the different systems to really drive, you know, ideally what we all want is a magical experience. And magic
[00:05:37] means you get to the desired health outcome, right? And and and you do it in the way that's best for you, which could mean it was fast, I understood how much it was going to cost me, and I'm able to pay it, and it got done. Right? Or it could mean I actually want to see the best breast cancer surgeon in Naples, Florida, and this is what I want, and this is what my treatment plan looks like, right? So, people what what
[00:05:58] success means for people is very different, and now we have the tools, the technology to just make that real, which is awesome. >> Wow. You know, I heard a podcast with Pete McCanna, the from Baylor Scott & White. And one one of the things he he was asked the question It was on the Hospitalogy podcast. I forget the name of it now, but the Hospitalogy guy does it. It was a great podcast. And he asked him, you
[00:06:20] know, "Where are you focusing your AI And this is the space. He said, "Access. We're focusing on access." He goes, you know, "A lot of people are focusing on efficiency and and those kinds of things and and focusing on administrative and maybe billing and and that kind of stuff. But he said, "This this is the area that where we we touch patients, where their experience is impacted, and we believe if we do the right things,
[00:06:44] we're actually going to impact revenue." >> And that was That was a very interesting podcast. And the other thing to keep in mind is Baylor Scott & White is growing in this time where a lot of health systems are struggling, they chose this specific area and have have made a lot of strides.
[00:07:02] Now, you know, obviously we've a we've a technical crowd that's listening to this. One of their first questions is, you know, "How deep is the integration with the EHR?" Because because you if you're going to take a phone call and somebody says, "Hey, I I'd like an appointment next Tuesday." Obviously, you got to be able to see the schedules, but you also have to be able to uh people you're scheduling and and the block windows and those
[00:07:24] kinds of things. So, talk a little bit about that. >> I'll go back to what you said about BSW. I think the best advice we got early on was like, "Whatever you do in health care, drive revenue." Right? And and access is the most important way to do that. And then that allows you to solve a variety of other problems. And you know, pre- and post-Luma, a typical Luma customer will see about a 50% increase in their top line revenue growth. And
[00:07:43] that's just a function of more patients getting in and those patients who keep coming back, right? And then that leads to being able to automate workflow to make sure we capture the right data from the patient, so they don't have to fill out a clipboard somewhere. That because we have information, we're actually nudging them well before. We know Cara Cara only fills out three quarters of a form normally. So, what can we do to
[00:08:02] make sure she gets to 100% of a form, right? There's all these other things you can do just not from a consumer delight or patient delight simply, but that have real operational payoff behind the scenes. Um okay, integration integration is brass tax, right? I think Look, if you can't integrate into electronic health record, you're DOA, right? And I think the market I think large health systems, you know, hospitals, clinical works, that's a
[00:08:24] must-have. What I'd say is equally important we hear now is, "Hey, I have my core health IT stack, right? Which the EHR is a critical component of, but it's not the only thing I use. I also have a call center, right? People have moved to centralized call centers. I also have a a CRM often, right? That helps me manage referrals and my marketing team does outreach and creates landing pages and builds personas for our providers. We want to We want people
[00:08:47] to be able to find us, right? When especially when they're looking for and thinking about care. And then I have all my revenue cycle capabilities, which is the key to us running a business is have to make sure that like we turn those appointments into into revenue for for us as a business. So, those are pieces of like systems of record that are not going away. And so, our view's always been, "Okay, you have to integrate deeply into the EHR as well
[00:09:06] as other systems of record." And I think if we look at kind of you know, meet the moment. I obviously like tech nerds across the across the globe are love the word headless AI, right? But in look in healthcare, that's real and critical.
[00:09:19] Like cuz you can automate say you're, you know, and we're super deeply integrated into Epic, into Oracle, Cerner, into Meditech, into clinical works, into Athena, and then the list goes on and on and on. And that allows us to deliver real magic for our customers and real automation where their staff isn't clicking around windows. Okay, but if you can do that across different systems of record and really have like, you know, MCEP
[00:09:40] capabilities and understand the consumer and be able to automate workflows that touch so many different systems, that's where the power is. And I think that's the ability to integrate deeply is separating, like, you know, people who have good technology versus who are going to be the real winners. And then equally important, along with the depth of integration, is the breadth of capabilities, right? Like, we you you I'm sure, Billy, you hear this all the
[00:10:01] time as people don't want point solutions, right? They're like, "Hey, like, I can't manage like eight different vendors. Like, I need to have platforms." And then you layer on AI and they're like, "I'm getting bombarded by 100 or one different AI companies, all promising me, you know, something. They're going automate my my coding and billing.
[00:10:18] They're going to allow me to have an agentic voice offering. They're going to allow me to automate facts referrals." Okay, but I don't want an AI and AI and AI and AI. I need to have a platform. I need to have someone who can offer me essentially endless workflows, a library of workflows for me to be able to solve the problems that I have to solve today and the problems that I'm going to have to solve tomorrow. And then I can grow
[00:10:37] with it to solve the problems of the future. But I need to have that that that orchestration partner, right? That integrates even with the HR, into my CRM, into my call center, into my rev cycle to make this not just resource efficient, but really impactful for the consumer and the organization.
[00:10:53] >> I'm making this like I'm buying your product here, but how do you handle edge cases and escalations in your product? >> Yeah, the human is a critical component of of of of how we of how we ensure that everyone gets to the outcome, right? An outcome doesn't just mean a scheduled appointment. It can mean an answer to a question they have, right? And so, that's where the power of having truly omnichannel, right? True AI native
[00:11:18] capabilities that can meet the consumer where they are. You can start, like, if you're thinking about a mammogram and you're you're just doing some search. And look, search is shifting now from I used to Google it to now I'm putting it in the GPT, right? So, it's LLM based search. I'm thinking about that mammogram. I can start a I can start a conversation directly from Banner Health's website, right? But then I can switch to text. Oh, I want to I actually
[00:11:41] want this to switch to a call. Like all those That's how we interact with Delta Airlines or or you know, any other kind of thing that we look to in our lives. That same expectation is there for for for for the consumer in health care. And so that's where we give the consumer options, right? It's like, "Hey, if you want to just automate this conversation, just do it over text. Do it over text." And then doing it over text, they can
[00:12:00] schedule appointment, they can get a prescription refill, they can provide some information, they can answer question about like, "How do I pay for this?" And then when they want to actually up-level and talk to someone in detail about the preparation they need to do for an upcoming procedure, cuz they've already read all the things we've sent that sent to them, then they can up-level to a real person. And and and that's an edge case that's super
[00:12:18] real, right? Sometimes before you have, say, you know, breast cancer surgery, like you could be the best patient, have done all the homework, read everything we've sent you, filled out all the things, but you still want to have that conversation. You're able to have that conversation. And on the flip side, what the staff will hear is, "This is awesome, right? Like instead of me spending 90 seconds with 100 people, I'm able to spend 10 minutes with that
[00:12:41] grandma who really needs me to walk her through all the steps to make sure that she can pay for her care, right? That she understands what to expect when she gets here. And I now have that as a staff member, a call center operator, I have the time to do that. As before, I'm just like trying to get through as many different calls as possible." So, where we can automate any inbounds coming in, where we can automate the outbounds that are
[00:13:01] routine around preventative screening, you know, making sure you do nudging nudging care, cuz care is terrible at like, you know, following through, that's super welcome, cuz it allows you to spend time with people who really need the attention, the hand-holding, or just the depth of conversation and allow them to get to the preferred health >> A lot of the conversations with CIOs these days and CISOs and others
[00:13:23] revolves around AI governance. So, we're having a lot of those conversations. And they they want to know, you know, how can I see these interactions? How can I audit these interactions? And how do these interactions feed back into the system to make it better, smarter, if you will.
[00:13:37] >> Yeah, good question. Yeah, governance is critical, right? Now, I think to healthcare's credit, healthcare's moving fast here, right? I mean, healthcare was is is industry-wise one of the earliest adopters of AI, right? And I think if you look at back in 2024, it was AI adoption revenue cycle, right? It was like it was a no-brainer to apply it to very reg like routine manual coding review, right? I think last year, 2025 2025 was the year
[00:14:00] of the ambient listeners, right? And ambient listeners are magic for providers. Providers, 95% of providers rate whatever ambient listening capability they have, describing capability as a real change and and a positive change in their work, right? They they they like it. Now, they have concerns about it, they have issues with it, but they like it, right? And that's, you know, doctors don't love technology. I mean, we know this, right? They don't. But
[00:14:22] when So, when they love something, that's great. And now it's like, how do we tune it in? And I think this year, 2026, right? The focus is really on the gen tech voice. Okay. So, we've kind of been looking at things like byte-size, the governance is there.
[00:14:34] Really, it's critical, I think, is how do you ensure that one, there's the appropriate way to up-level, to escalate, to hand off to a human where needed, right? And then the second is really around just visibility, right?
[00:14:47] Like this stuff shouldn't just you you have to provide the right reporting, analytics, the visibility to allow people to continue to make good decisions. And you can We we see this with our customers all the time. It's like they're like, "Hey, I'm going to start with my highest pain point." So, I'm the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, right?
[00:15:03] And I know that I have this weekend cancellation, Ryan, that people leave, they call in, they leave hours of voicemails, my staff comes in on Monday, listens to the voicemails, marks the patient as canceled in Epic, right? And then then they start calling those people back saying, "Hey, Bill, you canceled your appointment. Can we get you rescheduled?" That's a very well-defined use case and allowed us to immediately apply our
[00:15:25] Argentic voice capabilities to it, right? So, gone are gone are 4 hours of voicemails. Staff comes in on Monday, all those appointments are already marked as canceled, and Bill, Cara, and Nan have already been reached out to to reschedule and have already rescheduled.
[00:15:39] That's great, right? And if that allowed that visibility and the success rates and where it did what it was supposed to do, where it fell off the rails, where it was having trouble, it allowed us from us you know, just people who are like product managers to go deeper and deeper and deeper in how do you handle edge cases? How do you ensure that you can understand different languages, right? Different different ways people respond to things even if
[00:15:58] you ask them what seems like a pretty straightforward question. Who asked for more information or like, "Hey, actually I'm not feeling well." as opposed to just saying, "I cancel." hang up, right? And then that internally we we put back into the systems of record, right? Into their Epic EHR, into their Salesforce CRM, into their revenue cycle capabilities, and I think that allows everyone, not just us, but everyone to
[00:16:19] have that data to build better and smarter. I think folks who are investing in deeply into their own LLMs and their their their own, you know, data lakes, I think it's a waste of effort, candidly, because one, we should make sure that the data flows as freely across systems so you can truly organize and orchestrate and automate more and more work, but also at the end of the day, that Drapet and OpenAIs, they will have the most data. They will have the
[00:16:45] best data, right? And so, like trying to compete with them on some slice of data, I think it's a waste of effort cuz we already know that's where people are going to go. They're already I should say this, but they're already going to get diagnoses, to schedule appointments, to ask questions. That data set is just going to grow and grow and grow and grow. And then good news for all of us is we can benefit from it and leverage
[00:17:05] >> As a CIO, I just want the ROI of of this project, and it should be a real messy like yeah, we're going to sign a contract, we're going to go through legal and all the things that entails. I don't really want to talk about that.
[00:17:17] What I do want to talk about how are you going to get me from contract to the first and second and third use case that's actually delivering for the organization. What is it What does that that project look like and how do you help me to to get to the the ROI that I'm looking for?
[00:17:34] >> So, I think what CIOs love is we'll we'll very clearly show them like pre and post Luma what the revenue lift will be, right? Kind of mentioned that 50% increase in top line revenue growth. That's apparently important for them to show. And the CIOs now, the ones who are most effective, are the ones who are partnering very closely with the CFO and the CFO's office to build that business case, not just relying on us, you know,
[00:17:53] as Luma to build it, but we're building it with them with their CFO and their team. That's part one. Part two is people also want to see, okay, is this really automating work or is this just creating uh more silos of automated work? I.e., okay, did really good in operate in automating all my facts workflows, but then someone still has to take that and then go do something with it. So, they want to see real staff hours saved and not just in
[00:18:16] one silo, but like across the different types of work that have to happen. And of course, they're going to focus on the work that is the most expensive, right? Where you have very highly paid nurses doing detailed reviews of things that that AI can actually do really really well and free up that staff to do more of the value added work. So, that one-two punch from from a business case standpoint is is clearly important. It's
[00:18:36] is this going to increase top line revenue? Is this really going to automate work and in a meaningful way that I can quantify it? And then speed to impact, speed to impact, speed to impact, right? Like, technology is technology. Technology is not real until I can actually become a solution, right? And if that takes forever, then like like what's the point, right? And I think everyone has battle scars from EHR implementations
[00:18:57] and EHR migrations and Salesforce implementations. And so, what our focus is on like help me understand what your highest priority use cases and workflows are today. All right? Like, if you're telling me I just I just acquired three, you know, I I just acquired three new uh cancer hospitals and I want to drive volume to those and get the word out and make sure the community knows that these are new new offerings we have. Like that's where
[00:19:21] we're going to start and we're going to get you live in 90 days, right? In those 90 days you're going to start seeing not just activity, but you'll start to see you'll tell us what your outcomes are. It's like I want 90% capacity rates. I want to ensure that our awareness rates go up. I want to be able to take my marketing dollars and track not just who clicked on a landing page, how many how visits were there? No, I want to see who
[00:19:43] scheduled, who completed, and who's now scheduled for follow-up procedures so I can understand the lifetime value of that customer, right? And so that's where the power is and I think that's what we get really excited about is it's that ability to look at work across the spectrum and be able to quantify the impact and starting with the stuff that matters to you most and then expanding and expanding and expanding and the
[00:20:05] things you want to do next and next and next. And and and we've seen that work really really well over the you know, the past 11 years at Luma. And in today's world where technology is moving really really fast, right? What was cool 6 months ago is now just is stale. That focus and like just having that DNA internally allows us to make sure that we deliver the right solutions and outcomes, not just technology to our >> And we'll close with this. As a
[00:20:26] co-founder, you know, the the space is interesting cuz it there's a lot of things that go into what you're talking about and people define different spaces. So there's conversational AI for health >> There's mhm.
[00:20:40] >> Patient financial engagement as well player would really define themselves you know, there's intelligent intake and I think you guys would fall into that category. There's scheduling, there's I mean, but you talked about platform earlier. Why is why is the platform so important? When people hear these other categories, how should they think about >> Yeah, look, I mean, uh Luma's customers, to it
[00:21:06] large integrated delivery systems networks like a Banner Health, right? And academic medical centers like University of Arkansas, uh specialty clinic networks like a Gastro Health, um federally qualified health centers like a Sun River or Ryan Or rural rural hospitals like a Every What the What's common across all of them is we need to adopt more AI, right? It's the way we are going to work internally and it's the way we want to
[00:21:31] customer or patient-facing. Two is I can't manage 101 point solutions, right? Like I can't I cannot have the the compliance, governance, security risk of a bunch of fragmented systems. And then I just don't have the human resources to be able to manage all these disparate disparate disconnected systems. And so that leads to platform, platform, platform. And fortunately for us, like that was always the North Star, right?
[00:21:55] It was like we want to be able to own and automate and help a health system or clinic orchestrate every single touchpoint along that consumer journey. So the the the categories you you you rattled off, like we do all those categories, right?
[00:22:05] Like we do scheduling. Like that's our superpower. We've been doing scheduling since the day we were created. We do intake, right? We capture patient under data, not just limited to an intake form, but any patient under data needs that needs to be collected and then thought that kicks off thoughtful follow-up action items. The financial experience, right? How do you make sure that someone has a true shop, click, pay experience? And then before they
[00:22:25] schedule, they don't just schedule blindly, they schedule knowing what my extra data pocket cost is and what my payment options are. And oh, you know, boop boop like double click, I can Apple Pay right then and there in terms of my copay, right? So that's that's a LumaPay solution. Uh and then of course there's um the ongoing activation of a consumer given on whatever clinical journey they're on. So that's like access,
[00:22:47] um intake, patient financial experience, right? And then engagement, like things that are distinct categories, our focus is like how do we own auto all of those and go super deep into all those. Now some things we shouldn't do. Like we're not going to become a a an EHR. We're not going to become a clinical note taker and ambient scribe.
[00:23:07] But anything that requires operational work and that touches the patient, that's our superpower and that's where we like to focus. And so that's the pull we get from CIOs across the spectrum, right? Regardless of shapes, sizes, budget, growing, holding on for dear life. It's like they're like, I can't have another point solution. I have to invest in a platform that's going to be useful and beneficial to me today and help me solve for the problems of
[00:23:30] >> Exciting. Exciting space. Lot going on. As you said, you know, 6 months ago to today, things just keep keep moving extremely fast. Having a platform that is going to be able to grow and apply that across this is pretty important.
[00:23:43] >> Yeah. And but the only thing I'll add there is, you know, I think we talked about the CIO. The CIO is obviously an incredibly important stakeholder. But we're seeing other stakeholders really say, we want to be part of the platform decision. Like, I'm the access and analytics or the contact center leader.
[00:23:54] I'm the chief marketing officer. I'm the CMIO and I'm looking at all these perioperative workflows. They're all the ones the systems who are I think adopting AI well and really delivering outcome and solutions, I don't know if those people are like talking and and are attached at the hip. And the CIO ultimately of course like, you know, has a lot of power and and and and I think the CIO role has become one of the most
[00:24:15] a health care CIO role role has become one of the most strategic roles, you know, and that's been a a fast shift since the pandemic. But those people are actually attached at the hip and are looking at how do we solve these problems together? That's where real change is happening and change is happening at a very very fast pace.
[00:24:30] >> Fantastic. And Anand, I want to thank you. Thanks for your time. Thank you for the work that you're doing. I'm sure it's improving the experience both on the provider side and on the patient side, which is fantastic.
[00:24:42] >> Awesome. Bill, this is a lot of fun. I can go on and on about this all day every day. Thank you for having me. >> We'll have to do Well, we'll we'll do it again. Thanks. >> Thanks for joining us for this executive interview with me, Bill Russell.
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