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

Will sat down with Minal and Brijraj from Spry live at APTA CSM to talk about the part of the physical therapy industry most clinicians never see: the technology quietly reshaping how clinics run.Brijraj was the CTO of Ola, the ride-share company often called the Uber of India, at its $6 billion peak. He left that world to build Spry because the same problem kept showing up: people need to move, and mobility gives them purpose. Minal treated patients for 15 years in outpatient ortho before she and her husband moved to Portugal. She wasn't looking for a new job. Spry found her on LinkedIn, and three years later she's the clinical voice inside a tech company, pushing back when the product team drifts too far from what actually happens on a clinic floor.The conversation gets into the real tension of building healthcare technology: a founder who thinks in outcomes and a clinician who thinks in patients, and what happens when those two things pull in different directions. They talk through Spry's insurance verification engine (95% accurate, down to the NPI level), the AI agent that now handles prior authorization and removes 80% of the manual work behind it, and why EMRs were never supposed to become billing tools in the first place.In this episode:Why Brijraj left a $6 billion ride-share company to build an EMR for physical therapistsThe difference between "work" and "toil," and why toil is what's driving burnout in PTHow Spry's insurance verification hits 95% accuracy at the NPI levelInside the AI agent that cuts prior authorization work by 80%Why most EMRs turned into billing tools when they were built for interoperabilityWhat's next for Spry: multi-specialty workflows, waitlist agents, and clinical decision supportMinal and Brijraj also get into what's next: a shared workflow for multi-specialty clinics where PT, OT, speech, and MD care actually talk to each other, an agent for canceling and waitlist management, and a clinical decision support tool built specifically for physical therapy.Follow the Will Power Podcast for more conversations with the people building the future of physical therapy. Connect with Spry: www.sprypt.com Send us Fan MailRockstars specialize in helping support or replace all non-clinical roles.Learn how a Rockstar can help scale your physical therapy practice.Subscribe here to our completely free Stress-Free PT Newsletter for your weekly dose of joy.