🎙️ This post shares highlights from our Healthcare Ops Wave podcast, where Third Way Health CEO Frederik Mueller spoke with Brandon Sim, President and CEO of Astrana Health.

Listen to the full episode here

When Brandon Sim joined Astrana Health, he wasn’t the CEO. He didn’t start in strategy or growth.

He started by fixing broken processes.

As a project manager, his first mandate was simple: figure out how to streamline workflows. From referral management to claims processing, his team built the systems that would eventually power one of the fastest-scaling value-based care organizations in the country.

Today, as CEO, he’s applying the same lens focused on system design, operational clarity, and a relentless drive for improvement, at scale.

This is how a next-gen healthcare leader thinks about operations.

A CEO with a systems mindset

Brandon didn’t arrive with a background in healthcare. His early years in finance and machine learning gave him a different orientation: think in systems, optimize with data, and never accept “that’s how it’s always been done.”

He still reviews operational dashboards daily. He asks why metrics are trending the way they are. And he pushes his teams to identify patterns early, before they escalate into patient issues or margin erosion.

Vendors as extensions of the team

Brandon believes great operations aren’t built in isolation. They require aligned partners who act with urgency, share accountability, and don’t need to be micromanaged.

The vendors who make the biggest impact, in his view, are the ones who show up with a “can-do” attitude, deliver immediate value, and become indistinguishable from internal teams.

“There are few to no vendors with whom we have built such a close and trusting relationship as TWH. Their speed and impact on our operations have been transformative.”

Cutting through the AI hype

When asked what every healthcare operator should be paying attention to over the next year, Brandon didn’t hesitate—AI.

Though, Brandon made a clear distinction: most of the hype around generative AI misses the real point. Yes, the noise is loud. But underneath it, there are genuine opportunities to drive change.

There is near-term potential in areas like administrative automation (claims, eligibility, credentialing, grievances), as well as patient engagement and customer service.

His advice: ignore the noise, but don’t ignore the signal. There’s a ton of hype, and it’s likely there are needles in the hype haystack that actually deliver value. Importantly, the value AI will deliver will be bigger than expected.

With AI adoption, it’s about intelligently applying technology to improve the patient and provider experience.

Operational discipline is what enables innovation

As Astrana has grown, internal alignment has become even more important.

Brandon described how structured meeting cadences and consistent feedback loops allow teams to move quickly without falling into chaos. Weekly reviews, recurring ops check-ins, and data-informed decision-making ensure that innovation is always grounded in reality.

It’s not about bureaucracy. It’s about building infrastructure that scales with speed.

Why this matters to us at Third Way Health

Brandon’s approach validates our belief that operations should be both measurable and flexible. Disciplined and dynamic. It’s why we obsess over implementation, why we build our Ascend technology customized for each client, and why we show up as an operations partner.

Final Thoughts

At Third Way Health, we believe operational excellence is foundational to delivering value-based care at scale.

It’s why we focus on blending human expertise with AI to help organizations like Astrana grow without compromising performance, experience, or trust.

Listen to the full episode of Healthcare Ops Wave