The Heart of Healthcare | A Digital Health Podcast

Why Intractable Healthcare Problems Might Finally Be Solvable | Solv Co-founder & CEO Heather Fernandez

Aug 11, 2025

Heather Fernandez, co-founder and CEO of Solv Health, discusses groundbreaking strategies to enhance healthcare access and transparency. She explains how AI is set to demystify price transparency, transforming the front desk staff into healthcare heroes. The conversation reveals the significance of empathy in designing patient experiences and the emergence of innovative solutions that address age-old frustrations in healthcare. Fernandez emphasizes that intractable problems may now be within reach of resolution, thanks to a culture of AI-driven collaboration and creativity.

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INSIGHT

Solve's North Star: Three Simple Questions

Solve's mission centers on removing stress from everyday healthcare by answering three simple questions for patients.
Heather Fernandez frames Solve's product strategy around where to go, when to be seen, and how much it will cost.

INSIGHT

Win-Win Provider-Paid Model

Solve charges providers while designing for consumers to create a win-win that drives revenue through better patient experiences.
Heather Fernandez says improved consumer experience yields loyalty and growth for providers, which motivates provider adoption.

INSIGHT

AI Finally Cracks Price Transparency

Heather Fernandez says AI finally enables reliable patient cost estimates by untangling payer and contract complexity.
ClearPay surfaces the out-of-pocket price patients actually owe and reduces payment friction for providers.

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Three simple questions plague every American seeking healthcare: Where should I go? When can I be seen? And how much will it cost me? Despite seeming basic, these questions have remained largely unanswerable—until now.

In this episode, we explore how Heather Fernandez, co-founder and CEO of Solv, is building the infrastructure behind same-day care for 210 million Americans. We discuss how AI is finally cracking the code on price transparency and why workflow complexity can be a competitive moat in healthcare.

We cover:

💰 Why price transparency has been so elusive and how AI tools are positioned to finally solve it

🤖 How AI is eliminating "garbage work" and turning front desk staff into healthcare superheroes

⚡ Why workflow expertise is a durable advantage for healthcare startups

🚀 How to build a culture of AI at your startup

💡 Why "intractable" problems may now be solvable

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About our guest:

Heather Fernandez is the CEO and co-founder of Solv Health, a leading platform redefining access to everyday healthcare. Solv connects consumers with a national network of providers, enabling same-day appointment availability and price transparency for patients across the country. For providers, the Solv platform acts as a growth copilot, leveraging AI to eliminate unnecessary administrative work, optimize existing capacity, and modernize the patient experience through our voice agent Maya and ClearPay price transparency. Solv integrates with EHR systems to streamline scheduling, intake, messaging, patient payments, and insights. To date, Solv has powered over 100 million visits nationwide with providers like Yale New Haven Health, GoHealth and ZoomCare.

Heather has built her career around intuitive, transparent consumer experiences, previously helping scale Trulia through its acquisition by Zillow. She serves on Atlassian’s Board of Directors and is a graduate of UC Berkeley and Stanford GSB.

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