Maximize Patient Volume with the Right Audience

Chris Hemphill (00:00:00):
Hello, healthcare and welcome to the webinar. We’re excited to have you on this conversation about, Maximizing Patient Volume with the Right Audience. The basic idea here is to understand like… Well, you’re going to be exposed to a lot of different perspectives and conversations, but the basic idea of is that, with more and more organizations that are expert at healthcare consumerism and identifying people, establishing these relationships, the idea here is, what’s the impact? We understand the impact of the right content, the right messaging and everything like that, but this is about making sure that the right message is getting to the right people.

Chris Hemphill (00:00:45):
Each of those, we’ve all heard the phrase, the right message to the right person at the right place and at the right time, if I was to break down that sentence, each of those little components could be their own webinars or class series or what have you. But here will be focusing on, the various things to say, well, how do I know that I’m reaching out to the right people in the first place? Because there’s a giant lever of impact in making sure that we’re just reaching out to the right person in the first place.

Chris Hemphill (00:01:13):
To help us through that conversation, you see the names on the board, the logos on the board. There’s a good variety of people that will be introduced to in just a second. And just overall with that’s a mixture of bolts from healthcare systems like Virtua Health and Baylor Scott & White and health tech like myself and Tom Hileman, who leads the Hileman Group, which does agency services and intelligent services for organizations like Baylor Scott & White, Cleveland Clinic, et cetera.

Chris Hemphill (00:01:46):
How do we want to do this? By agenda, this is what we’re focused on helping you come away with for the day. So basically the opportunity to meet these folks from these various health systems, and really, when I say meet the speakers, I really mean it. I like the opportunity for folks to have conversation, the reason that we do this in a webinar format, we have the questions open, the chat is open. This is a time to virtually meet people, communicate, and ask us questions. We are happy to get questions and stories, address those. That’s why we have this panel here, is so that, if you’re in the manager level, VP director, or what have you, you have a good network of answers to help you take some insights that you can start using today from this conversation.

Chris Hemphill (00:02:36):
So we’ll open it up with the impact of audience selection, then a major topic, being in a health tech, sometimes we can get carried away talking about artificial intelligence and all these different high end mighty things that the organizations are doing that might not seem attainable given our own political scenarios or given the challenges that we’re facing in our own organizations. So we’re excited… Again, Tom, the perspective he brings to the table is working with many organizations, Jordis and Bridget, they can talk to you about the concepts of what it to actually put the building blocks in place, to move in some of the directions that we’re going to be talking about today.

Chris Hemphill (00:03:25):
This is a theme that we harp on a lot too, you’ve seen it in our Data Storytelling Webinar before that we did with Virtua in the past, you’ll continue seeing it to where, it doesn’t matter, we selected the right audience, we’ve done all the right things and put the right ingredients in place for our campaigns, our outreach, our programs, et cetera, but it can all go to not, if we don’t have a collaboration with the other folks who are going to be accepting these campaigns and making business decisions and investments based on these. So that’s a major part of the conversation as well, and then we’ll wrap it up.

Chris Hemphill (00:04:02):
So very quickly to start on, just thinking through the impact here, I’m starting at the very end here with the concept of using machine learning approaches, using data driven approaches to identify audiences. Basically, what this is saying here is that, if we’re contemplating, what’s the impact? Like, okay, so we put all these different things in place, what are we expecting to gain from our audience selection methods? The overall concept is to, like a machine learning model or any kind of model, anything that you put in place to select audiences, a fantastic way to measure that is the lift score. How well, how accurate does that audience perform? Be it across whichever service line, we have breast cancer screening on the screen, cardiovascular surgery example. How well does the criteria that you put in place perform versus like traditional methods or just sending the outreach with no segmentation?

Chris Hemphill (00:05:07):
This is kind of the end game where we can explore the possibilities of what kind of outreach we do when we know that outreach for cardiology, for example, is going to be… Like the people that are selected in that audience are going to be 10 times more likely than the people in the broader audience. So we’ll be exploring questions and concepts like that, but more importantly, I think, more importantly, how to get started with these kinds of things, how to align other business units outside of marketing and population health, and ultimately how to make sure that we’re correctly understanding the impact and communicating that with our fellow leaders.

Chris Hemphill (00:05:50):
So again, to help with that, Tom Hileman, president of the Hileman Group, Jordis Rosenquest, who is VP of Brand Development over at Baylor Scott & White Health in Texas, appreciate you being on with us. Bridget Reuter, we actually work with her at Actium Health. She’s Manager of Service Line Marketing at Virtua Health, and myself at the host. We thought that this will be a good diverse group to where, if you have questions about how these different things operate and what kinds of things we should be thinking about and putting in place, this is where we can all get started. And big hello to you, Danny, thank you for reaching out.

Chris Hemphill (00:06:32):
And again, feel free to let us know your thoughts or stories or anything that you’d like to share on this discussion, we are happy to hear it. So what I’m about to do now is I’m going to jump off this screen sharing mode, and we are just going to have a conversation. So if the panelists would shine a light on yourselves, thank you. And I thought that a good introduction pattern would really just be to understand what your background is here and what you’re excited about this year. We had a great conversation last week around the table about what each of us are excited about. And I think that that shines some light on the types of things that you might be able to get out of this conversation. And Hey, David, thank you for saying hi. Let’s get started with, Hey, my background and what I’m excited about for the year. And Bridget, I’m going to put you on the spot for that.

Bridget Reuter (00:07:33):
Sure. No, thank you. I’m excited to be here. So my role as a manager for service line marketing at Virtua Health. Virtua Health is the largest health system in Southern New Jersey. We’re five hospitals, 30 ambulatory surgery centers, more than 300 locations and care centers outside of the hospital setting. We’re also in a very competitive market, we’re just 30 minutes from Philadelphia, 45 it’s to the nearest beach, which we call the Jersey Shore, but not the Jersey Shore that you may be thinking of. We blame that on New York and North Jersey. Virtua Health, recently signed an academic affiliation with Rowan University for medical school and nursing school collaboration. So very excited about that. And we are about to open a proton therapy center with our cancer partner, Penn Medicine, and that will be opened in about six months. So that’s also a very exciting initiative. And in my role, for service line marketing, I most recently have been focused on volume growth and consumer reference for oncology surgery and also digestive health.

Chris Hemphill (00:08:45):
Fantastic. So everybody write that down, if you’re in a competitive market, or if there’s some massive change or investment happening at the health system, you’ve got somebody who is fresh in the process that you can partner, go and add her on LinkedIn right now. Jordis, I’m going jump it over to you.

Jordis Rosenquest (00:09:01):
Okay. Thank you. Good to see everyone or at least see your comments. I’m Jordis Rosenquest. I am with Baylor Scott & White Health, and like Bridget, we are in an extremely competitive market. We are the largest, not for profit healthcare system, in Texas, primarily in the Dallas-Fort Worth Area, Austin Round Rock and then in Central Texas. Very similar, we’ve got a lot of stuff, a lot of confusing areas. We’ve got like 51 hospitals and 700 clinics, and we’ve got ambulatory care centers, and we’ve got a lot of joint ventures. So we are a complex system, but a very old system, between Baylor and Scott and White, together, each of us has been here for about over a 100.

Jordis Rosenquest (00:09:52):
What’s interesting, I think is the fact that they hired someone like me, because I’ve been at Baylor Scott & White for four years, almost four years exactly now. And I came to this position without any healthcare background or any healthcare marketing background, I have a strong background in consumer marketing and consumer package goods and across number of consumer industries, but it was… As Baylor was recognizing and realizing the consumerization of healthcare is a real thing, and consumers are getting into an area where healthcare is shoppable, that’s when I was brought on board and very much like we can teach you the healthcare part of that, but we need to change our thinking around consumers. And so, Chris, you asked the thing that’s most exciting, to me, isn’t for this year I’ll say, it is probably over the next five years, we… And a lot of this was spurred by our friend COVID, but right before COVID hit, we saw some research studies that indicated that, 71% of Americans actually were extremely disappointed in the experiences they received through their healthcare providers, which is danger.

Jordis Rosenquest (00:11:13):
When we are looking at 71%, and at the same time, we’re looking at just the amount of investment pouring into healthcare from disruptors right now, that tells us, as a 100 year old brand, we probably need to make some changes pretty quickly and substantial changes to stay relevant and healthy in the space. At the same time, that study was done, which was in February 2020, there was another study done that told us that, out of all of healthcare providers, 64% of employees, healthcare employees, agree that there are unnecessary efforts and processes that actually prevent high quality experiences for patients and consumers. What I’m most excited about is, we are focusing on the customer experience, which opens the door for changing our culture, changing our processes, changing what we do, changing our relevance, all of those things coming about. And it is, I mean, it’s a big apple. We are taking a big, big bite out of something that I’m sure will not be an easy road to plow over the next several years, but it feels like it’s the right thing to do. So that has me excited.

Chris Hemphill (00:12:30):
You got me excited too. Last week when you brought it up up, and now again, excitement is restored. Also excited to hear from Brenda, thanks for saying hi. Anybody who wants to say hi to your friends, we’re all friends here, so feel free. Jordis, you brought up some major points that we like to harp on, especially… Maybe my question was not the best question because I asked like, what are you excited about for the next year? Well, a year is very small, a year is very close to now. So I do like the fact that you brought up the five year horizon, and it just made me think about the 10 year horizon. We recently did a presentation with Chris Bevelo who back in 2011 wrote Joe Public Doesn’t Care About Your Hospital and has followed that up this year with, Joe Public 2030, which is a 10 year look at healthcare strategy at, how healthcare strategy among things like consumerism, healthcare disparities, healthcare sectarianism, all these different things.

Chris Hemphill (00:13:34):
How all these different things playing out right now are going to evolve over the next 10 years. That’s really fun if anybody wants to watch a webinar on the subject, you can look up Joe Public 2030 on our webinar page and also get the book. So where is it? Do I have… No, I thought I had the book lying around here and that would’ve been awesome, but fail. Either way, Tom, you, what has got you excited this year and some of your background?

Tom Hileman (00:14:03):
Sure. Thanks. It’s a pleasure to be here. Well, I’m excited for a lot of reasons, one is, I can’t imagine a better time to be in healthcare marketing than right now. When could we have more change and opportunities in front of us, and by the way, all the tools and technology that we need to help solve them. I think, it’s a great time to be a healthcare marketer. So that’s, I think, my first thing gets me excited.

Tom Hileman (00:14:27):
My firm, we’re a healthcare agency, we work with folks like Jordis, Baylor Scott & White, Cleveland Clinic, Vanderbilt, and other health systems across the US. So I get to spend a lot out of my time working with health systems, connecting with patients and physicians, which is really, I think what I enjoy most about my job, of getting to work with everybody and trying to solve these remarkably complex problems, a bite at a time of the apple as Jordis said. So we really look forward to the conversation today.

Chris Hemphill (00:14:56):
Great. Well, let’s take it one bite at a time. Let’s get it started. Bridget, one of the things that you mentioned while you were doing your intro was, some of the initiatives that you’re working onto to impact volume, can you give some background on some of the ways that you’re focused on increasing volume right now, or if there any campaigns that are-

Bridget Reuter (00:15:17):
Sure. Well, I mean, Actium has been a phenomenal partner for us in really shifting our marketing strategy. I know this is something you want to get into a little bit later, but I think that the ability to reach a patient who is in need of a service that they may not realize that they’re in need of, and to be able to bring them along on their health journey, and then, to be able to actually really track that and see that they’ve actually converted, not just to a lead, but to a patient appointment or to a surgical appointment. I mean, that’s really just changed the way that we plan our marketing strategy and the way we can justify our marketing dollars. It’s really just… I can’t get more excited about how that is impacting my job every day.

Bridget Reuter (00:16:05):
So some of the campaigns that I’m working closely on, we have worked with Actium on mammogram campaigns, using the propensity model to reach patients with an increased risk for developing breast cancer and to encourage them to get their mammogram, and being able to really use that patient data and have a conversation, encourage someone to be part of our nurturing campaign. We really can just… It speaks to some of that lifetime value and developing that relationship with your patient. But the difference in doing just an acquisition campaign for mammogram and being able to send those targeted emails has just changed the game for us, and being able to convert patients to scheduling appointments.

Bridget Reuter (00:16:56):
Another campaign, which is really one of my favorites is our bariatric surgery outreach, and so… We’re also using the propensity model with Actium to be able to send this outreach emails, but of course that’s a much softer CTA. I’m not talking to patients about weight loss surgery, because they didn’t raise their hand and say that they wanted it, but we know that they’ve fallen into a category that they can potentially benefit from this. Our outreach email is about small steps to healthy success and to sign up for our nurture series. And from there, then we can use that nudge strategy to remind patients about taking steps to improve their health and talk about some of those other related healthcare areas, they are snoring, heart disease, diabetes, that we know all fall into that same area of concern if someone is dealing with obesity. We’ve seen a huge amount of patients who convert to attending not only the information session for bariatric surgery, but also electing to have the procedure and they’re converting throughout that.

Bridget Reuter (00:18:07):
We started out with a week nurture series, we extended that to 18 weeks, because people were converting at email 12 to elect to have the surgery. Those are just two of the strategies that we’re partnering with Actium on to really be able to use that propensity modeling and our CRM strategy, which is different than what we used to do in healthcare. Jordis is looking at really trying to use more of that consumer strategy to look at the way people shop for care. It changed the way I do my job and I love it.

Chris Hemphill (00:18:48):
Well, I got to say that’s awesome to hear. And I think some of the things that you said, granted there’s the active impact, but then there’s just the thinking on like what it means to nurture a relationship over time. The fact that people are converting at email number 12, kind of… I like the way that you’re using this as a way to establish, not necessarily that each email is expected to drive some number of appointments immediately, but that there’s a relationship being built over time with the people that you’re doing outreach to. So that’s a great way to elevate the thinking from just like direct email conversion over and over. Yeah. Jordis, we’re talking about key initiatives overall, and we brought up a kind of a lofty subject, but wondering if you’d like to respond to that or talk about some initiatives that you’re focused on.

Jordis Rosenquest (00:19:43):
Well, I think I want to build a little bit on what Bridget was talking about, because we have… Everything that Bridget said is amazing and exactly right and dead on. We have an interesting, and I’m sure everybody does, our challenge is, is marketing. We don’t have enough money to do what we should be doing for all of our prospects of patients. Just there isn’t enough funding and it makes sense funding goes to where it should go, which is providing care. One of the issues we have is, how do you prioritize? How do we actually figure out? There are some prospects and current patients that we do want to optimize our relationships with, some that maybe we don’t have to, others that, frankly, will use us regardless, and for a variety of reasons, we don’t necessarily actively want to market to them.

Jordis Rosenquest (00:20:47):
We have an issue with access in some of our areas in that, I shouldn’t market strongly in some areas because I don’t necessarily have acceptable access for the consumer experience. So in weighing all of those, I think… The things that I am excited about this year is probably our analytic work, and diving into our patients and our prospects and understanding who are the ones who I’ll say are most valuable to us. I don’t mean that in terms of revenue, I don’t necessarily mean that at all, but the people with whom we want to have the longest relationships and people for whom we can offer the most benefit and services, and that will help us as marketers define these are the people we’re targeting, these are the people we will focus our marketing dollars against.

Jordis Rosenquest (00:21:46):
Now, I also have brand dollars and brand is at the highest level, it reaches the marketplace, so hopefully we’re reaching everybody. But when we get to the areas that Bridget was talking about and are targeting, how can I actually be very specific and driven to just key segments that really matter? And for us, that may change market by market because, in North Texas we have five or six, honestly, really good healthcare systems. So there is a lot of good consumer choice up here which is challenging, but exciting as a marketer, but very challenging. In Austin, I have at least three really good at healthcare systems. Another part of the state, I might be the primary system and the leader, and that means I can be different down there and speak differently and market differently. I think the deep dive on the analytic understanding and the strategy is the part that, we are most excited about this year.

Chris Hemphill (00:22:51):
Fantastic. And honestly, I have two follow up questions just based on that, because when you bring up analytics, that brings into a core of what we’re discussing is, the couple of things that I’m curious about are, when it comes to the analytics, what are the characteristics or criteria that you’re looking at that are influential, but then you made another point a little bit earlier, just with regards to, it’s not anticipated revenue that determines where we want these relationships to come from. So I’m just curious about the types of metrics or what you are focused on as far as like the types of the metrics to use that say that this is where the best relationships are going to come from.

Jordis Rosenquest (00:23:40):
Excellent question, and I will say-

Bridget Reuter (00:23:42):
I’m curious about that too. [inaudible 00:23:44].

Jordis Rosenquest (00:23:44):
[inaudible 00:23:44] me too, but… Because I’m like, I don’t know yet, but what I will say is the past year, year and a half, during COVID has been spent actually getting our data into a place that it is aligned around a unique customer, because previously the data in our organization had been, either episodic or just service line or practice, it wasn’t linked to person A uses us for all of these services or doesn’t use us for these services. This is their behavior, this is when they’ve come in, this is when they haven’t come in, they have our app, et cetera, et cetera. So it’s recent that our data is now aligned in a way that we can begin to start analyzing, that individual consumer and understanding how that works.

Jordis Rosenquest (00:24:35):
What we are looking at is the importance of, I’ll call, some gateway products, so primary care, may be a huge gateway product if you use us for primary care, can I see who I have it and who then translates to one specialty or two specialties or something along those ways and understanding where I need to move people. So we have done some rudimentary, we have some early in of where people fall out in that kind of a matrix and understanding who looks like our most loyal customer, meaning they’ve returned to us and they use us for a variety of things, and their health outcomes look to be stronger. So that’s important too. So I have that group kind of identified, again, we’re at the early stages. So there will be a lot of pressure testing we need to do, but then understanding how I can move people up there, it’s kind of, many of you may remember the old Boston Consulting Group segmentation, where you have stars and cash cows and…

Jordis Rosenquest (00:25:46):
Well, it’s sort of a loose approximation of that that’s helping us figure out where we want people to go. We also did a segmentation to understand, in our marketplace, so patients and prospects, attitudes and behavior towards healthcare. And who are the best segments for us and what are the pitfalls on some, and interestingly, we have a few that are the best for us, even in terms of operating income, but those would be… It’s a wide variety of people who are unhealth involved, people who are very health involved, and then people who may be health involved because of [inaudible 00:26:29] chronic illness. So it’s interesting looking at those segments of people we may want to bring into the system and then how we speak to them and move them along. We have done some rudimentary work, again, because we just have our data looking at retention and churn rates, but overall to the system, a little bit within specific practices.

Jordis Rosenquest (00:26:53):
Not sure we understand completely what that means yet, because some churn is probably good, there are some patients maybe speaking to a team of healthcare people, you all understand this, people who are ER frequent flyers, maybe I don’t want to keep them as long as other groups. So understanding who do I need to keep and who is going to be important to us and where we can be of the most importance to them. We are just beginning to get that information, just beginning to link a potential lifetime value to those groups and understanding, realistically, what should we be looking at. So we’re just starting, but that’s the exciting part is, we’re just starting, and hopefully by 12 months from now, we’ll be able to say, oh, this is what we’ve learned.

Chris Hemphill (00:27:46):
Well, that’s interesting to hear, the approaches and thoughts, the introduction of lifetime value, which we’re starting to see a lot more interest in that in healthcare. It’s a very well studied concept in other industries, but of course those in other industries have different constraints and different scenarios such as, well, a high loyalty score is extremely good in any other industry except for if they’re frequently showing up at the ed that is indicative that there might not be accessing the right care at the right time, might not have access to the right primary care or preventive services.

Chris Hemphill (00:28:23):
So very cool to hear that you all are embarking on that. And Tom, not to leave you out of this question or anything like that, but we’ve just heard two really big stories, as far as what to focus on growth and where it’s coming from. How does this vibe with a lot of what you’re seeing in the market? Does this represent a turning point or anything in terms of the way that you see outreach progressing?

Tom Hileman (00:28:55):
No, it’s interesting, I love hearing. I guess I could talk about this all day, but I think one of the main tensions that I’m seeing is acquisition versus retention, right now. We talked about a couple of programs, I think Bridget and Jordis talking about a couple sides of that same coin. That’s one of the questions we get a lot is, well, where do we make our investments at? Because it comes to, how much do we spend in retention versus acquisition, and the answer is, yes, you have to allocate your… You have to do both to be really effective. Right now, it seems the pendulum is swinging a bit towards retention, just because there’s a lot of interest in understanding loyalty. And as Jordis mentioned, there’s a lot of data that we’re now we can piece together to understand what that is.

Tom Hileman (00:29:37):
And if we were to define what loyalty means that might take the rest of the podcast here or the webinar, I should say. So that’s one of the main tensions, Chris, that we see is between, well, where do we make our bets? Versus retention and acquisition… Historically, most folks focus on that new acquisition just because it’s easier to measure the ROI on that. And there’s a lot of great ways to do that and we’ve been working on that for a long time. I think acquisition is obviously here to stay in the net news side, but the retention and the modeling that we can now do, as Jordis mentioned, we need your data house in order, you can do some really fabulous things when you look at doing machine learning or AI with them.

Tom Hileman (00:30:18):
And for me, the future is going to be more marketing where we’re going to have a lot more dynamic marketing programs that we create the loose programs and then let the data drive us to where the end results are going to be. I think that’s what’s really exciting to me is, as Jordis says, we’re rudimentary, we’re starting that journey. But if you think about, if we can successfully put all this data together and build our patient journeys and have the right models, we can be really effective and do mass personalization at scale, so that… And making customer journeys in healthcare, what people expect from other industries. We’ve not really been there, we’ve never really answered the call that other industries have been farther ahead in that consumerization, that personalization. So I really think that’s where we’re headed.

Chris Hemphill (00:31:04):
Well, so I’ve heard lifetime value mentioned, I’ve heard turn rates being mentioned, I’ve heard acquisition versus retention. I told you all that we got to talk about on the next webinar, this one is about audience, I’m just kidding. But yeah, just hearing all these subjects, it kind bubbles up the importance of having this conversation, which we can go deeper on that at a later time, but overall we’re…

Chris Hemphill (00:31:33):
If this is the way that the ship is going, then we’re going to start seeing the question of, Hey, if our goal is to maximize volume, do we maximize volume by focusing on the net new that has hit or two been easier to measure? Or is there a possibility that we might get more volume by focusing on building out those long term relationships, sending the 12 emails that it takes to drive conversion to, and the audience that we know that needs it? So those are the types of questions that… Those are answerable questions. Those are things that you can look at on mass, but would love to have a deeper discussion on that at a later time.

Chris Hemphill (00:32:15):
But to reiterate though, there was major growth initiatives discussed, across the board, across the table here, and… One thing that I think people are curious about, Jordis, you mentioned the effort in getting all the data together to even be able to answer the types of questions that it takes to be effective during this shift to consumerism.

Chris Hemphill (00:32:39):
Could you talk about, with the major initiatives that you have going on, who you’re working with in your organization and what kind of hurdles you’re seeing? One thing I’m hoping that people can get out of this is, a lot of these are fraught, people have different and very valid opinions on the way things should operate and on the way this whole complex ship should run. So just curious about how you’re maintaining the relationships and driving this and helping to drive this change.

Jordis Rosenquest (00:33:08):
So, yes, that’s a lot of how I spend my day, but what I will say, in getting the data together, we work with, we have an enterprise analytics team. Now, kudos to them, they have changed dramatically over the last several years, to switch from analytics that was either based on episodic care or fragmented analytics or patient experience, Press Ganey types of analytics to understanding the consumer… Or, not even consumer analytics, because they’re not quite there yet, but organizing data around unique patients and unique customers. There’s a question coming on later, we also happen to have a health plan. So we have those unique customers and how they work together and how to organize that data, honestly, probably took us a year and a half to get that in line. So I’ve got the data team.

Jordis Rosenquest (00:34:12):
We also work with our technology team in making sure that we are setting up the right tools. So as Tom knows this, this has been someone at PayPal. We are putting in an enterprise CRM system that’s… COVID has not been our friend here has probably taken us longer than we desired, that will link our marketing team and our enterprise call center team and our health plan and our operations team into the same backbone, so we can all see the same patient. That will help radically on the experience. Which means that we have to work with each of those individual groups. Operations is probably our key area because what we’re uncovering is, there has to be different ways to do some things, and different processes and different approaches, both in extending care, but and also getting the information back and forth.

Jordis Rosenquest (00:35:14):
We have a digital help organization, we work extremely closely with. So we’re, in fact, we’re pretty much commingled, it’s harder to tell where one begins and the other stops. But I think one of the things that you touched on a little bit, when we go at our five year goal of improving and changing and impacting customer experience, the number one thing that’s going to happen is a cultural shift. And that’s probably the hardest thing, is to, as a traditional healthcare provider, and who hand on heart, we could always say that we have been focused on patient and focused on the consumer. That’s why we do what we do, but we have never put ourselves in their shoes and looked at care from their point of view, we’ve only looked at care from our point of view and how we provide it.

Jordis Rosenquest (00:36:09):
So getting that shift, sort of that outside in shift is going to be our largest cultural hurdle. But each of the groups I mentioned before, actively, we have teams working together to try to start setting that up. So we’ll have a number of pilot tests going, a number of new products that are born out of this that are going to be driving towards that. And probably one of the most successful criteria that we can look at and figure out did it work is, did I change the culture? And did I change how people look at things now? I mean, it’s a big-

Bridget Reuter (00:36:49):
A big job, Jordis.

Jordis Rosenquest (00:36:50):
Is a big hill.

Bridget Reuter (00:36:52):
It sounds awesome [inaudible 00:36:56].

Jordis Rosenquest (00:36:57):
Yeah. I’m crossing every kind of appendage I have, but yeah.

Bridget Reuter (00:37:08):
Oh, Chris, you’re on mute.

Jordis Rosenquest (00:37:08):
I think you’re on mute.

Chris Hemphill (00:37:10):
I was testing you. But let’s hope… Well, I don’t think it’s going to be just like that gets you over that hill. So really excited to hear how that progresses and… One thing that I think is leading to massive cultural shift too, just came up in the questions, which [Darren Birch 00:37:33], I believe Legacy Health, last time I checked, but Darren asked about the shifts from fee to serve to be for value. I’ll open this to whoever is most excited to answer, but how do you see the marketing department relationship, the types of relationship that you’re focused on driving, does this shift to fee for value, where are you seeing it? Does that change the relationship between marketing and the patient?

Jordis Rosenquest (00:38:07):
It’s an interesting, a fascinating topic because Baylor Scott & White is the coming together of the Baylor Healthcare System and the Scott White Healthcare System, Baylor Healthcare System in North Texas, was, before our merger, largely fee for service. Scott & White Healthcare System in Central Texas was largely value based care. So bringing those two together has been really interesting because it’s forced us as a marketing department to work both sides of the equation, because it almost depends what region you’re in and how you’re doing it. And you’re exactly right, it’s an interesting relationship on the value based care, very tight relationships with our clinics and with our primary care. And basically, that’s the question of acquisition versus retention, and where you’re doing it.

Jordis Rosenquest (00:39:05):
In our value-based care lives, it’s 100% about acquisition. How do I bring people into the system? How do I get you into this world and then… Darren was exactly right, you’re fairly narrow in what you can do. So then I can nudge you to some things, but it’s really acquisition based. In fee for service, it may not be that, but the further complexity is, for a long time, we also shared the belief that this is where everything is going, but candidly, as you all know, we probably need fee for service to pay for our evolution and where we’re going, so our growth. The fee for service is a significant part of our growth plans whilst we are building out our consumer experience. So there’s a lot of tap ins going on and multiple hats you have to wear recognizing which side of the equation you are on.

Chris Hemphill (00:40:04):
And Bridget or Tom, would you care to discuss some of the hats that you’ve had to wear or that you’ve seen in this transition?

Tom Hileman (00:40:14):
Sure. I’ll jump in, Bridget feel free to jump in as well. I think Jordis is right, everyone thought the world was going to be all value based care, obviously that hasn’t happened or do I really see that happening, I think we’re going to have a mix. Much like we talked about acquisition and retention, we’re going to have to work on both sides of value based and fee for service. I think it really changes how we… I think, as Jordis says, it changes how you interact, I think on both sides of it though, it’s really about engagement with your patients. So if we’re in value based care, we need to keep them engaged and minimize care gaps and all the things that we can do to make sure we’re keeping people healthy and that we’re really serving them well. To me, the end goal of keeping patients healthy or fix it, or helping them get better if they’re sick, is a goal of marketers to connect them with the health system.

Tom Hileman (00:41:07):
So that’s the same, it’s just different models of how was we as a health system get compensated, and then how we have outreach, whether it’s a value based model where we have a known population, or whether it’s fee for service, where it’s more competitive or retention based model. I think those are the couple of the hats that we have to balance out. But as Jordis said, health system is mixed, almost every system is mixed at some point, it just depends on whether we’re doing acquisitions or the nature of the geography they’re in and how that goes to market.

Chris Hemphill (00:41:37):
I want to follow that up with a question that came in from an anonymous sender, but I think maybe the anonymity is because it applies to everyone anyway… Welcome back, Bridget. But yeah, this applies to everyone. And Bridget was having internet issues, but she’s logging back on right now. I might… Bridget, can you hear us?

Bridget Reuter (00:42:07):
I can now, I apologize. I’m trying to dial in having an unstable internet connection.

Chris Hemphill (00:42:14):
All good. This is not the best advertisement for Comcast, But I wanted to confirm that you were able to hear this question that just came in, which is that, healthcare marketers have a really tough job for a lot of reasons, but a major challenge is working on behalf of a bunch of different stakeholders, like your service line, leadership, operations, executive, COO, CFO, how do we prioritize working along those relationships? And Bridget, honestly, when I saw that question, I wanted to direct it at you first, but-

Bridget Reuter (00:42:48):
So, yeah, it’s a challenge and it has evolved, I think, over my tenure in my organization. I think for us… There’s a lot of layers to that, but what comes to mind first is, I feel like our chief marketing officer is very closely aligned with our CEO. And so that…

Chris Hemphill (00:43:12):
Sorry [inaudible 00:43:13]. I guess we couldn’t rely on the internet connection for that one. Jordis or Tom, would you like to take the ball and hopefully Bridget’s internet gets better?

Jordis Rosenquest (00:43:24):
Well, like Bridget, our CMO is extremely closely aligned to our CEO. So that helps a lot, but-

Bridget Reuter (00:43:32):
… Strategy, as you know, is really determined… We’re part of those global…

Chris Hemphill (00:43:38):
Bridget, can you hear me? Okay. I think Bridget might be on a time lag, so I’m going to suggest that she dial in, and Jordis, if you wouldn’t mind taking the ball.

Jordis Rosenquest (00:43:55):
Okay. Similarly, it helps a lot to have that deep connection. So there’s a very short line of kind of approval. But the other side in our organization, I have a partner, up here, who basically is in Bridget’s role, so where I might focus on the brand and focus on the system. So I’ve got a different kind of mandate. My peer Ashley focuses on the operations, the presidents and more the service lines. More, I’ll say what we’ll call the business, what is the actual business product appointments? And then I will be more focused on the overall experience and stuff like that. So we have split it, for that very reason that it’s really a bear, and more importantly, how do you prioritize? We have separate budgets and separate stakeholders for each of us.

Chris Hemphill (00:45:00):
Oh, go ahead.

Tom Hileman (00:45:01):
I was going to say, we’ve seen similar things, similar organizational structure in many of the health systems we work with. And I think that works pretty well, because it’s hard for one person to balance both of those. I guess what I’ve seen so far has been really successful one is, the chief marketing officer to be in line with the executive leadership a 100%. Without that, it’s very difficult to get anywhere because no one knows what the direction is. So that I think is tenant one, and then tenant two, we’ve seen that brand consumer side typically split from service line marketing, because someone is got to be able to an answer those clinical folks that say, where is my value, right?

Jordis Rosenquest (00:45:40):
Yeah.

Tom Hileman (00:45:40):
Yeah. And then you need to have someone who’s who’s always looking at that every day to make sure our service lines are getting the focus and attention they do, but that’s counterbalance to brand and consumer experience, specifically, if it’s value based. I think it’s really good to have that kind of split in the organizational structure and have those folks as peers, because then… And essentially you’re working shoulder to shoulder trying to advance the health system.

Chris Hemphill (00:46:07):
An anonymous attendee, you’ve got us thinking, one thing that comes up as a result of this is… So we’re seeing that there’s even a divide and conquer approach, because there’s so many demands coming in, so many questions that need to be answered that it can’t just fall in one person to answer to all of these stakeholders simultaneously. So a question that I think that leads to, maybe I’m wrong in asking this, but how do you learn about, like, you’ve got these various stakeholders, like a COO in one health system’s not the same as COO in the other, how do you learn to work with these executives and how do you learn to collaborate and drive that partnership in a way that works for them and communicates value for them?

Jordis Rosenquest (00:46:51):
Data, I mean everybody in healthcare is evidence based. So I’m going to say data is king. In our system, and I imagine in all systems, expertise is appreciated and recognized, but it can’t be opinion. The reason I’m saying this is ABC. And so its data linked to outcomes that you’ve been able to prove works. I think goes a tremendously long way, now, we do have, and there’s an excellent point and truth in that, really what we’re marketing in our case, and everybody’s case, is our physicians. It really is those practices that people come for and seek and that kind of guidance.

Jordis Rosenquest (00:47:40):
So we’re very cognizant of that, but at the end of the day, especially getting into the area of experience, it’s coming down to data to show, if I can deliver this experience, I can deliver this investment in these tools, in this model, and why I’m doing paid search a certain way, or why I’m doing paid social a certain way, or why I’m setting up a nurture campaign in this kind of funnel as opposed to, this is a painful subject, but I’ll say it, buying another billboard is because this is what I’ve been able to show. MPS, I buy a lot of billboards, but this is what we’re able to show, but I think it comes down to data and logic.

Tom Hileman (00:48:25):
I mean, I would agree with the [inaudible 00:48:27] specifically we deal with physicians, surgeons, especially, you have to be able to show the data and have a logical rational outcomes and show the cause effect on what marketing does and doesn’t work. And you can sway folks that way, especially, when you’re thinking about clinical mindset, because that’s how they’re used to operating, they live in a world of tests and measurements and care paths and prescribe ways to do things. I think it really comes down to fundamentally, Chris, looking at who you’re communicating with and trying to understand their worldview. And many of the folks that we work with are clinicians or service lines of folks who run groups of clinicians, and that’s how they think data, test. And they love the testing stuff, Jordis [crosstalk 00:49:15].

Jordis Rosenquest (00:49:14):
Yeah.

Tom Hileman (00:49:14):
I mean, let’s test it, like, let’s compare your billboards to what we miss with [crosstalk 00:49:19].

Jordis Rosenquest (00:49:19):
Yeah.

Tom Hileman (00:49:20):
And then let the facts fall out where they are. I think those testing mechanisms, and then having data and facts, and don’t argue from opinion, because that you will get annihilated nearly every time. And if you don’t know, you don’t know, because a lot of times we don’t know either.

Chris Hemphill (00:49:37):
Bridget, I’m going to throw a little bit of a tough one for you, but I know that you’re immersed in that and have a good understanding of the results and impact of these campaigns. Is there anything that you recommend in terms of how to present or communicate that data that… Or just any recent example where you presented this data and it’s gone well, any kind of stories that might help out? You’re on mute right now.

Bridget Reuter (00:50:04):
Let me dial again.

Chris Hemphill (00:50:04):
Oh, no. Echo.

Bridget Reuter (00:50:07):
Okay. Stop. All right. If you can hear me on this [crosstalk 00:50:15].

Jordis Rosenquest (00:50:14):
You’re okay.

Chris Hemphill (00:50:14):
Yes.

Bridget Reuter (00:50:16):
… For now, but apparently my phone is also through Comcast. Okay. So yeah, I have… I will agree with everything that I heard, it’s the data, the testing, the… Sometimes too much data can backfire when presenting, especially to groups that do not deal with the marketing, they’re not regularly looking at the marketing data. So sharing call length of time, I’ve had that backfire, because then a doctor feels like that too long or that’s not long enough. So I would say, being able to really draw those conclusions and show that percentage of increase, if I can show the patient volumes that is benefiting them… It has taken a while, because I will always have those physicians who want to know why their colleagues at another health system are on a billboard or why I’m not lighting up the buildings teal for a certain cancer awareness month, but I can…

Bridget Reuter (00:51:20):
Now that we have been working with CRM for a bit of time for a couple of years, and we can really look at that data, I have that in my back pocket and I can come back to them and say, well, yes, I understand that, but this digital campaign that you may not be seeing because you’re not the target market delivered 25 new patients to you in the last quarter. It helps. It makes a tremendous difference if I can track those leads to conversions. If I’m keeping their team informed along the way, I find that makes a big difference too, working closely with the service lines and the people in the… The practice directors, even letting them in on our process and making them part of our process, I find is also a great way to make everyone feel like they’re included.

Bridget Reuter (00:52:15):
And it sort of has helped to educate. I also try to present out, at least on a yearly basis to some of those clinical steering committees, to be able to share the impact of our marketing efforts. I have to be quick and I have to show some impressive numbers and not get into all of the, really, great, creative strategy that I like to talk about. That’s not always what they want to hear about, but I can sprinkle a little bit of that in, but if I can present at least once a year at those key different meetings, with those physicians present, I find that’s also helps to educate them and has brought them along in understanding the value of our digital marketing tactics rather than some of the mass media that everybody, truthfully likes to see, and wants to see, but is not as effective.

Chris Hemphill (00:53:14):
So yeah, the way you laid that out, I actually think it forms a playbook where part of your answer was being involved in these discussions with people early, so that they feel included, so that it’s not just a bunch of numbers that just pop out on the screen. And then when it comes to those numbers, you have to be really specific and focused on what you’re presenting. The way that you worded that around, choosing carefully, which metrics to focus on, which metrics drive impact versus which is just going to lead to more questions that lead to nowhere, that’s a very important part of the dance. I dropped a link to a webinar that we did with colleague of yours at Virtua, on the very subject of Data Storytelling, love the way that you laid it out.

Chris Hemphill (00:54:02):
We are running very low on time, and they’re kind of a big area that we hadn’t fully gone down, which is getting things started… Again, Jordis, you outlined a huge initiative with regards to getting all the data in the right place. We started off with like, Hey, here’s the result of if you’re able to reach out to audiences accurately, but when it comes to like, somebody on this call feeling like it’s too big initiative to take on, or the organization is just not yet ready, who… Would anybody like to take that on and just thoughts and what it takes to get started and the types of things that one should do if they’re looking to address these issues newly?

Jordis Rosenquest (00:54:51):
I almost want to hand it to Tom, because, well, you’ve seen the widest variety of people who’ve probably come in at different stages and how they started.

Tom Hileman (00:55:06):
Yeah. No, and they’ve started everywhere. Right?

Jordis Rosenquest (00:55:09):
Right.

Tom Hileman (00:55:09):
So typically we see two things, one not so good, and one’s pretty good, but… So usually when we come in, either be something is on fire and it needs fixed, so they don’t have volume in some area and they don’t know why and it’s broken and it has to be fixed. Which isn’t really the best way to enter in to working together, because it’s very myopic and almost throwing a dart sometimes, because you don’t necessarily know how the old system interplay and that is. So sometimes people are starting with what’s burning, and business reality sometimes demand that, if you have new clinics or new practices and you need to get people there, then that’s what you got to start. The better approach, of course, is more of a strategic approach as to like, what’s our roadmap?

Tom Hileman (00:55:54):
Where do we want to be? And at an honest level, where are we today? In a really honest level. The current state assessment needs to be really brutally honest. And for all the good and the bad, works in all as they say. My preference is to come in and button do some the strategic discussions where we can say, okay, here’s where we are today, here’s where an organization, the CEO and the CMO have stated that we want to be, and then build a roadmap to get there. And then let’s…

Tom Hileman (00:56:23):
I’m a Stephen Covey guy, so let’s always begin with the end in mind, if you can define what that end state is, then it’s pretty easy to see, not easy to get there, but easy to see where to start or a few places to start. And then you need to start with things with tangible value, so you can get a quick win or two and show that you’re moving the organization forward. Sometimes spending two years doing something isn’t going to be quite fast enough for a foundational piece for a CEO or a COO, so you have to be able to understand where you want to go and what’s kind of that minimum viable product or project that I can put together to show that the end state is valuable.

Chris Hemphill (00:57:01):
Jordis, I’m going to throw a question at you just because… Well, in our conversation in the past, you said sometimes it feels like we’re building the airplane while it’s flying. Curious, because it seems like, perhaps if there’s a fire, that Tom reference, like it’s not the ideal way to get in, but if that fire then forces the issue on some new, like dabbling in a new path, is there a way to build from that into the larger strategic goal that one might have?

Jordis Rosenquest (00:57:37):
Absolutely. Tom is right. We have always had, or we did start with building a roadmap, now, did we follow the roadmap as is? No, because of all the fires. So we still have where we want to end up in mind, but we’ve had to take a rather circuitous route as we’ve had to solve some of those fires along the way. But, each time, what they prove a little more in the solution is that we’re going in the right path, we’re going in the right direction, we just have to get stronger. So along with getting our data in line, the other thing we had to make sure is you measure the heck out of everything you do. And I found a huge appreciation for pilot tests. The pilot test, and it can be relatively small, but again, you measure the heck out of that thing and you give updates as you go along.

Jordis Rosenquest (00:58:35):
And that builds the momentum, because all of a sudden, once you’ve done the pilot test and hopefully it is successful, you can replicate that, maybe we do it on, for an example, a single service line, how we’d like to do something. It works, I can replicate that right away to five other service lines that people buy into. So it’s both solve for the fire, and once it’s been successful, make sure you multiply the impact. So make sure you use that, but it’s messy, it is completely messy.

Jordis Rosenquest (00:59:10):
The hardest thing is probably defining the end goal and doing the work, Tom said to say, here are my gaps. Specifically, there’s probably going to be a lot of tool gaps, maybe technology, but definitely tool gaps. So what do I have to bring in? What do I have to try to get that in? Let me show how that’s been effective, but every time you come to the end, if you have the measurement and showing the positive impact to the business, you’re going to get the approval to go on to the next stage, because it is exciting and people do see it. We’ve always laughed in the kingdom of the blind, the one eye man is king. Well, if you have the data and you have the measurement, you totally have the eye, so keep going.

Chris Hemphill (00:59:52):
Wow. I love it. And-

Bridget Reuter (00:59:54):
[inaudible 00:59:54] master class here.

Chris Hemphill (00:59:56):
Yeah. We’re going to start our master class, we’re going to call marketing plans forged in flames.

Bridget Reuter (01:00:06):
I support the pilot approach, I’ve had a lot of success. We’ll just start small, we’ll just call it a pilot and we’ll see what we can do and measure, measure, and test and then go from there.

Chris Hemphill (01:00:20):
We are at the end of the hour. And I want to just… One thing that I always emphasize is that, I’m thankful that everybody came here and there was a reason that you… There’s a reason that you jumped on and we’re all part of this community, and there’s something that you’d like for them to know and understand or possibly change as a result of having heard this conversation. So just around, I call it final thoughts, if we just want to go around the board and just share some final thoughts that people can take into the end of this week and the beginning of next week, all for it. And Tom, I hadn’t picked on you enough so [crosstalk 01:00:59].

Tom Hileman (01:00:59):
All right. Well, I guess I kind of stated in my final thoughts, I think in the previous one, it’s really, just as Jordan said, we use pilots all the time, because it’s the way you can prove things out. So start small, make sure everything is measurable, because we don’t… The roadmaps are useful to build, because it helps expand your thinking. They’re never the actual things that actually get built. It’s, I think, McCarthy said all, all plans are worthless, but planning is vital. So the process you think through, the roadmap never completely holds up, but having thought through that, you then know what the key criteria and constraints are. I would say that, focus on building the plan and then being very light and nimble as you go down the path and pilot test to measure

Chris Hemphill (01:01:47):
And you, Jordis.

Jordis Rosenquest (01:01:51):
It’s interesting, so I completely agree with what Tom said and what Bridget has said previously. I think I’m going to deviate a little and just recommend that people be kind to themselves, because it is a messy and it can be frustrating, but I think it is also very exhilarating as long as you can say, Hey, we’re moving in the right direction. And it is a huge change for healthcare and healthcare catching up, and I firmly believe will even surpass the marketing sophistication of other categories. Is a pretty exciting path. So just be kind to yourself, it’s not an easy way to get here and we do run into obstacles we did not expect, but that’s okay, we’re actually doing a good job moving everything ahead. That’s what I would say.

Chris Hemphill (01:02:45):
Excellent.

Bridget Reuter (01:02:46):
[inaudible 01:02:46].

Chris Hemphill (01:02:47):
Bridget, you get the final word.

Bridget Reuter (01:02:52):
It’s easy for me to get caught up in the new tools and the data and how we’re going to grow faster and add more things. And I would just always try to remind myself and others to think about that patient pathway. What’s that patient experience when someone answers the phone, when they walk in the door, when they receive that email, what’s the tone. And the note that’s hitting when we’re trying to draw volume, what does that look like on the other side when a patient receives that in their inbox?

Chris Hemphill (01:03:25):
Fantastic way to think about it and close it out. And honestly, I could keep going on, but I’ll save that for another webinar. I just want people to, like Jordis said, be kind to yourself, be forgiving to yourself. And when it comes to these really intimidating challenges that we’re talking about, and oh, like the advent of consumerism and healthcare and everything like that, just remember that there are small projects, you can start small and work iteratively on it. That’s kind of what I got out of it, the final part of this. Again, appreciate everybody sticking around with us. We will have this recording available hopefully early next week, if not by the end of this week. So feel free to check on, well, we’ll send an email out or you can subscribe to our YouTube channel where you’ll get alerts and stuff like that whenever these new videos and things play that come out.