# The Admin Cost Is $960 Billion, How To Start Shrinking Yours ft. Justin Ith

Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/productive-therapist-podcast-922208/the-admin-cost-is-960-billion-how-to-start-shrinking-yours-ft-justin-ith
Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/productive-therapist-podcast-922208/the-admin-cost-is-960-billion-how-to-start-shrinking-yours-ft-justin-ith.md
Podcast: [Productive Therapist Podcast](https://stenobird.com/podcast/productive-therapist-podcast-922208)
Published: 2026-07-24T13:00:33+00:00
Episode link: https://productivetherapist.com/
Audio file: https://downloads.pod.co/d91d7a4d-ad82-4c3a-8d47-f2c23f626eca/ac0dfae6-ece0-4df2-82d2-18acf88a7449.mp3
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Duration seconds: 2090

## Resource

Your admin team is about to get superpowers. 🦸 Here's a fun fact that'll make your jaw drop: in 2024, more people went to a behavioral health appointment than a primary care one. That's never happened before. Therapists, you are in demand. Here's a less fun fact: Americans spend something like $960 billion a year just on healthcare admin. Not clinicians. Not care. Just the paperwork behind the paperwork. So what happens when someone builds a practice automation platform specifically to close that gap? Listen to this episode to find out. Justin Ith, co-founder and CEO of Aria, joins Uriah to talk AI, automation, and why "human in the loop" isn't going anywhere anytime soon — even as the tools get scary good. Top 3 things you'll learn: Not all AI is created equal. There's generic AI (your Claude, your ChatGPT, your Gemini) and there's purpose-built AI for practice-specific problems. Knowing which tool solves which problem is half the battle. The "big hospital" advantage is shrinking. Deep benefits verification used to take a human several minutes of digging through portals. Aria does it in 11 seconds — the kind of automation that used to be exclusive to billion-dollar health systems, now available to a 10-clinician group practice. AI won't replace your team — it'll supercharge them. The future isn't fewer people, it's fewer openings as your existing staff's capacity grows. You still need someone to "drive the car," as Justin puts it — these systems aren't perfect, and they're not fully autonomous. A few quotes: "You have to not just love the problem — you really have to love who you're trying to help. That's the one consistent through line." "The average person would take a couple minutes. We do it in 11 seconds." "These tools are not intentionally designed to replace yo…

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