Episode 56: Beyond the Software – How Culture Shapes Patient Experience ft. Shaun Priest

Sean Priestu2019s Background in Health IT 0:00

Sean, thanks for joining me. I love doing these. So for those who don't know you, give a quick background of what you've done the last 20, 30 years or whatever for your vocation, and then talk a little bit about what do you do for prom play. My name is Sean Priest, so I lead the go-to-market team at Promptly Patient Experience, and then I'm a 30-year HIT guy. So I started out on the implementation side at Meditech and Cerner installing EHRs. And then, I switched over to the business development side, Just a wonderful field, all the growth and change we've seen over the last 30 years with Y2K and meaningful use.

And now AI, it's just been a, uh, wonderful journey and Kate, I'm now on the back nine. So I've not on 17, but I also not, not 10. I am somewhere between 10 and 17. Yeah, that's awesome. How long have you been at Prompley? So have been probably coming up on two years. Okay, that's awesome. So give a quick overview of who promptly is and what you do and then I'll ask a handful of questions around, you know, the technology stacks at practices.

What Promptly Does 1:14

Yeah, so PROMPLY is the end-to-end patient experience solution. So we don't want to be your practice management or your EHR, but we want it to your one patient-experienced partner. And that's all the way from lead management and CRM to online scheduling to appointment reminders to check-in to insurance eligibility to payment to post-visit follow-up to recalls to reactivations, having that one full suite, that wonderful partner integrated with your Practice Management System. It's really helpful for this first question, which is, what is the role of technology in our practice for the patient experience?

You kind of just mapped out all the touch points, but as you work with practices and you see practices taking their technology stack serious and investing in things like PROMPLY, What are some of the impacts you'll see on the actual patient's experience for patients specifically? What's interesting, my first answer is not technology. So my first answer is, what's the culture of the practice around the patient experience? So we see the patients experience all the way from the staff that answers the phone or the AI that answer the phones, to where parking is to,

Patient Experience and Practice Culture 2:25

where the lobby is how easy to find. So if you're really committed to the It's that full end-to-end piece, which is very wide. And if you're committed to the culture of having the best patient experience, then technology has to be part of that. So I do think technology is step two. That's what Promptly does. But I think first is then how do you have a culture on it? And then, how you map out those touch points? How are you touching where the patient is? And one of the interesting things in healthcare, I talked about my 30 years, you also deal with multi-generational in health care.

So how can you help meet the patient where they are? So do you meet patient on their mobile device, do meet them on the landline, email, all of these different pieces? How can set up these touch points to meet where your patient, where are they in their journey? That's really good. What do you find are the most common challenges at a practice level kind of related to their tech stack specific to the patient experience? Yeah. So what's happened in our industry? So again, I've been doing this a long time and I started doing websites in 1999. That is awesome.

In 1999, Places didn't have websites. Again, how old I am. But what has happened in the market today, so you choose one company to do a website, then you chose another company do reminders, you'd choose another to check in, another coming to pay. So what's happened, if you look past the last 15 years, organizations have made great individual decisions. They had a business problem, they chose a partner, and they solved it.

Common Tech Stack Challenges 3:58

Now, how can I look at that full patient experience? Essentially, for our model, we have one partner. The tech stack has grown. I just did a hiking meeting this morning, so if anybody is familiar, I do hiking meetings. And we actually spent a lot of time with the person I hiked with this morning about how you do need to be integration. So the technology matters. Who's their EHR? Who is their practice management system? How are we going to connect to those pieces? So technology is the nuts and bolts of it are still very important today.

It'll be interesting to see how much AI changes the market. Is AI going make it easier to integrate with these third party systems? Right. How can it help with us? Like one thing we do is online scheduling. The challenge in online scheduling, patients are demanding online schedule, it's actually with the providers. The providers don't want to get the wrong patient at the right time on their schedule. So then for us, we use AI on the backend to ask a set of questions to make sure you line those pieces up.

So the market's moving very fast. But now can we also use A.I. to makes it easier to get information out of these backend systems and then put the right information back into the systems? If not, you do API, HL7s, whatever the practice management systems. I feel like I got in the weeds on that one. No, it's good. I mean, as a general rule of thumb, do you think practices are adopting the fast pace of changing technology and consolidation and evaluating, or do think it is a real friction point and it something that, again, most practices really struggle with?

So one thing, and I'll do the macro comment on healthcare, healthcare is always a lager, right? If you go to medical school, rule number one is do no harm. So the easiest way to do no harm is to keep doing what I've been doing for 30 years. So there is a natural friction there. And then one of the pieces we talk about when we speak to practices across the country is like, what business problem are you trying to solve?

AI, Integration, and Market Change 5:57

Do you have a no-show problem? So how can we actually communicate with the patient? Just remind them when the appointment is. Is it open appointment slots, so I got to online scheduling? Is an insurance? I mean, one the things in our industry know, people that use the service expect somebody else to pay for it, right? So, you know no margin, no mission. So usually what happens is it'll practice, find some specific business problem they're trying to solve that's now, do no harm. It's not doing harm that patients aren't showing up for appointments, that I'm actually not getting paid for the services I am providing.

And then typically they look at it and we say, okay, well now you've got these other legacy systems How can we actually look at it as a whole is where the market usually moves. But to your point, the markets, it moves super quick during COVID. So just get on my diatribe for a second. I've been doing this a long time. There's been external movers. When we had Y2K, people upgraded because of Y 2K for all the old people listening. Then there was meaningful use where you had to upgrade your technology.

So in 99 there, was a big move in 2008. There was, a huge one with COVID. One of the pieces practice found with, COVID is they actually couldn't check in a patient remotely. They just couldn' do it. So that was a big move. And so I think we're moving back to a more traditional spot. So one piece we do see in the market. If in 2001 you made a bunch of quick decisions because you had to make COVID decisions and maybe you did pick three or four vendors, now five years later, you're now looking at it again.

But typically healthcare runs about a seven year decision cycle, but it's a steady business. Back to being a great business, again, I love doing it, It's hard for organizations to do change. Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. I guess my last question for you is, you know, practices listening to this, they're thinking about their tech stack. It's a little overwhelming to think about getting rid of five vendors, consolidating down to one, getting ready to 10 tools, consolidate into one stack, so where would you encourage your practice to start?

Where Practices Should Start 7:56

Like what's the first thing you think they should evaluate and consider and kind of move toward in terms of technology transformation in their practice? So I'd go back to my previous response around what business problem are we solving? Because we do, if you look what promptly sells, I had to think we sell change. And change is hard for everybody, right? Change is harder for me. So we're switching from PowerPoint to Google Slides, and I'm struggling because I've been using PowerPoint forever. But so I would answer not like, where's your problem?

Because if you have a big enough problem, organizations will change, right? So we'll just take something simple like no shows, so if have no show problems, start there. because you're gonna be motivated to do it. And then when you solve that problem, well, now I have to more messaging. So now, I can get more proactive with messaging, Now I say, hey, you know what? Let's actually do recalls, right? You had this one procedure, and you need to these follow-ups. Okay, we're doing that. Oh, know you what, let's go reactivate patients that haven't been in a year.

Now you wanna go re-activate them, go do scheduling, And I could do the same thing, Let say you've got an insurance denials problem. Let actually start with insurance. right? How do I cap to the insurance before the patient comes? So I actually don't think that answer varies by the practice, because if they have that challenge, they'll stick with it. If they say, hey, I want to replace everything because it's a nice to have, those are harder projects. Yeah. Makes a lot of sense. Really good stuff.

Sean, thanks so much for joining me.

Closing and How to Connect 9:28

For those who are not connected with you online, what's the best place to follow you, connect with, you and engage with your online? So I'm not on the Facebook. I am not the Instagram. So you reach out on LinkedIn. And you guys do a great job. Thank you. Previously, I know you support Guido's podcast does a good job, so you're also a promptly partner. We appreciate all this stuff Yeah. Thanks, Sean. Appreciate you joining.