🎙️This post shares highlights from our Healthcare Ops Wave podcast, where Third Way Health CEO Frederik Mueller sat down with Robb Munson, former SVP of Operations at Astrana Health and longtime Kaiser Permanente executive.

Listen to the full episode here

Robb Munson has led healthcare operations at every scale—from being employee #10 at a startup to overseeing 20,000+ agents across global call centers at Centene.

In this episode, Robb shares how great operations come down to simple truths: communicate clearly, build people up, and stay aligned—even as complexity grows.

Here’s are 5 lessons we learned from Robb:

1. Organizational size changes everything, but people still matter most

At Canopy Health, Robb could talk to every employee every day. At Kaiser and Centene, he had to lead massive teams from a distance.

His solution? Clear goals, distributed leadership, and a monthly newsletter that reached 5,000+ employees. Each note told a personal story and ended with a challenge to help people reflect, grow, and reconnect with their work.

“Whether they were a W-2 employee or a partner employee, everyone was reading my newsletters and oftentimes responding back directly to me. (This) was to encourage them to become the best version of themselves and to use their present job as the vehicle to their dreams.”

2. The best operators balance metrics and mentorship

Call centers are measured down to the second. But Robb didn’t let KPIs overshadow his role as a leader.
He met regularly with partner teams, wrote personalized development plans, and stayed closely involved with frontline staff.

Robb shared a heartwarming story with us. While standing in line at a deli, a former call center agent spotted him and pulled a tattered timeline out of her purse. She shared that Robb had written this with her a decade ago to help her map out her future. She’d followed it, earned a degree, and become a manager.

“It was just remarkable that I’m across the country and talking to this lady that I clearly hadn’t talked to in nearly a decade.”

3. Great vendor partnerships aren’t built on blame

Robb made a point to spend time at partner sites. He traveled the world putting his feet on the ground and shaking hands with his teams delivering the same messages, metrics, and motivation as internal staff.

Instead of viewing vendors as expendable, he saw them as extensions of the organization. One of his go-to methods? Sharing the same motivational newsletters with BPO teams to build culture and alignment.

“We’re not separate teams. If we want to serve patients well, we all need to feel like we’re in it together.”

4. Inflection points require new operating models

Robb emphasized how important it is to evolve your systems as you grow:

• At 10 people: You can walk around and align everyone personally.
• At 100+: You need clear goals, written communication, and strong middle management.
• At 10,000: You’re managing leaders of leaders. Alignment happens through scalable systems and trust.

“Even at scale, the job is the same: set the vision, reinforce it constantly, and make sure every team knows how they contribute.”

5. In a world of AI, people still run healthcare

Robb’s stories serve as a powerful reminder: data matters, but people are still at the heart of healthcare operations. The best metrics mean nothing without the teams behind them—and those teams thrive when they’re trusted, challenged, and inspired.

Final Thoughts

Robb’s leadership offers a blueprint for scaling healthcare operations without losing sight of what matters most: trust, clarity, and people.

At Third Way Health, we couldn’t agree more. Great operations are built on aligned teams, whether in-house or outsourced. That’s why we work as a true extension of your organization, bringing together trained professionals and purpose-built technology to deliver measurable results without sacrificing culture or control.

Operations’ partners should feel like a natural part of your team. Our goal is to help medical groups run more efficiently while making every patient interaction feel more human.

Listen to the full episode of Healthcare Ops Wave