.jpg)
.png)
.png)
Transcript
Marla: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Practice Growth Podcast, Jerry. It is such a pleasure to have you here today.
Jerry: Well, thanks for having me.
Marla: You have such an experience from being a physical therapist to a clinic owner and also being the patient experience, patient journey guru, where you founded your own patient experience company.
Being on the consulting side as the patient experience and patient engagement lead for Equus Growth Advisors.
Jerry: I'm really excited about that.
Marla: Absolutely. And when people think of patient engagement and patient experience, your name comes up. You really do live and breathe it. So excited to pick your brain and talk to you all about that today.
Jerry: I'm always excited to talk about it, and when someone asks me to talk about it, it's an extra bonus because I'm gonna talk about it anyway. Right? So it's pretty funny. You know me. I, uh, I don't leave mu- much oxygen in the room behind me, so...
Marla: And most people do know you. You're, you're very vocal, you're an industry leader.
But for those who don't, can you give us a little bit of a background, just who you are, how you got here, and what got you so passionate about patient experience?
Jerry: Yeah. So I was like, Tara, just for context, I am a PT, because I s- sometimes have peeps speak poorly of us. Um, so PT 34 years. Um, fast-forward to, um, about eight years out, started a business, and my wife's the one who talked me into starting the business, but that we could do a whole story on that.[00:01:30]
She sh- because she got tired of hearing me complain about my bosses, and then she finally pointed out I was the constant, so- ... then I had that realization. Started my own business on my own, then got a partner. We grew to five. We grew to five, and then, like everybody else, and part of our talk today, had to pull that back just a little bit.
Ended up with four in, um, San Francisco and the outlying areas. W- pertinent to the patient experience and everything. So I was in that for 18 years. Pertinent to the patient experience part, we went... W- we had multiple clinics, we had probably 20-plus employees, and boom, we went out of network in 2008, I believe it was.
So I was in this world, all in-network, all contracted, everything. We made a business decision to go out. And I'll never forget to this day, my first thought was, and no joke, "We have to answer the phone differently." That was my gut response. And it wasn't the providers, it wasn't about billing because I knew the providers were good.
But yeah, it was like, "We have to answer the phone differently." And that's how I got here today. And so then I have been on the front end working front desk. I answered all the incoming new patient calls into my own business for a full year because, A, I didn't understand the system, so I had to get on there and do the work, get people to show up, but then I had to build out the systems and processes for that.
And then loved it so much, just stayed there. Took over the front desk, and I haven't left that [00:03:00] side of the world since. And a big part of it was seeing the impact of the things that we're gonna talk about today on the patients and the business. So that's where I am now, and just constantly, constantly putting a foot in the door, going, you know, "Hey, have you thought about your front desk and the experiences that your patients are going through?"
And we'll, we'll talk about all this stuff. But yeah, that's my journey.
Marla: Yeah, you don't see many owners at the front desk, so that is really unique. And
Jerry: I wasn't, I wasn't... I, I want to say this part out loud. I was not representing myself as an owner, nor a physical therapist. Because what I realized early on, I'll get in the weeds real quick here, is that I had to sell an expert And that had to be that person they were gonna be scheduled with.
So I didn't wanna become the default PT helpline, right? So I just answered the phone as Jerry, right? I'm here to help you get scheduled. And when I covered the front desk, I was just Jerry scheduling, collecting co-pays. So I actually went from the phone to the front desk, and I'd already been on the provider side so much, and the provider side wasn't where we needed to do the work, which is part of this conversation.
We've so over-leveraged our providers and we ask them to do so much. I truly believe that we have to allow them to do the work that they're good at, and let the front desk and the other s- team come together to create a better experience, and all the results are good.
Marla: So you lived it, you breathed it, you were there before there was any processes, technology, automation, [00:04:30] and built processes to grow and understand how the patient experience should be.
And that brings me to my next question, is just how do you define patient experience and patient journey? Everyone sort of looks at it differently.
Jerry: So that, the word patient experience is getting thrown around like crazy, right? And when I see it, I, no matter what I'm doing, I'm scrolling, I'm reading, I always stop and focus going, how is this person?
What I find when it's used generally, it's used to talk about a small part So here's the way I look at it, and I'm gonna make this simple. And it was a long time coming to this. If we think about a ... Let's, let's do a pyramid. We won't do it from the top down. Let's do a pyramid. At the bottom is your patient's journey.
That is the foundation of all the work. Once you understand your pa- and that's, right, how, why I had to get on the phone, how does it start? And I'm talking about how does it start? What's the next step? What's the next step? I mean, all the way through. We could say through a course of care, but you have wellness programs, you have things like that.
You want a patient for life. So really, the journey never ends, so you gotta understand all those steps. So on the bottom of the pyramid is the patient journey. Then above that is the systems and processes that you put together during the certain phases and steps of that patient journey to create the third tier up, your patient experience.
So people talk about a patient experience as this nebulous cloud, subjective [00:06:00] thing. What I realize is it can be measured, and we'll talk about that later. It can be measured. Mm-hmm. Yet you cannot create an experience till you understand the journey of the person. This is any business on the face of the earth.
Until you understand their journey in your business and then you start to build out the systems and processes to create an experience. So the definition of a patient experience is it's, is it's the reaction, the emotional connection, not connection, sorry, the emotions that are elicited when someone moves through their journey in your business.
So if you think about what kind of experience you wanna create, then you can build the systems and processes. So just real quick, whether you wanna talk about benefits and costs before they come in, after they come in, right? What kind of experience? How do I want you to feel? If I want to build trust, then- Right
how am I gonna do this to create the experience that you're gonna leave with the go, "That felt good," right? "That felt right." And the experience is it's a feeling, but we can measure it. That's not so pink
Marla: here. And definitely wanna get into that part soon about measuring. But going back to the experience, and you say it really starts even before they get into the front- Yeah
Jerry: door,
Marla: right? It starts before that phone call happens.
Jerry: It
Marla: does. Um, all the way back to when they realize they need-
Jerry: Yeah ...
Marla: something- Mm-hmm ... to help their pain. Uh, what would you say from your learnings from way back in the day till now, and [00:07:30] with the way patients have changed, what are your learnings on the most important parts of that patient experience and what you need to put into it?
Um, you said the bottom of the period, pyramid-
Jerry: Yeah ...
Marla: then the systems and processes. Yeah. What do you need to, what do you need to evaluate and then put into to get to that patient experience that you wanna create?
Jerry: Yeah, so- I, I-- So all this comes together, right? All my books I've read, the people I've talked to.
Unfortunately, and I'll say unfortunately, at the time when we went out to network in two thousand and eight, every- everybody, hundred percent of the people within our profession that we turned to for help said, "No, not gonna work." Or sorry, shouldn't say that. They either said, "A, I can't help you," or, "B, it's not gonna work.
No, no one, no one will pay for physical therapy." And I was like, "Cool, but my other option is close the doors, and I kinda wanna make a run at it." So my partner and I, this was a good thing, and remember, peop- anybody listening to this, no i- very little internet. Still having my flip phone that you only used in case of an emergency because the cost was so expensive.
So you didn't have access to the information and the knowledge that we do today. How are you? So I found a business group, and really I consider them my business mentors even though we're on paper all peers. But yeah, so that was a huge tipping point in this journey. So as being part of that business group, some of the things I talk about now came out of, um, [00:09:00] networking and actually being in different groups, uh, business groups.
Okay. So this idea of a business as an ecosystem is what I call it, and one of my colleagues actually wrote one of the books, one of the top five books I share, um, and had no idea it was her name on the book. Yeah, it was, it was so weird. I was like, "Wait a minute, that's you." Yeah. So it was really cool. So your business is an ecosystem, and in an ecosystem, the step before is where the solutions are, right?
So let me use this. Think about cancel. I get this all the time. "I need help with my cancels, Jerry." And I'm like... "No, sorry. I need help with my cancel calls." I said, "I can help you with cancel calls, but would you prefer not to get the call at all?" So that business as an ecosystem, if you're thinking about I wanna prevent this, then we go the step before, step before, step before.
So my biggest takeaway, and it really came, fortunately, it was total luck that I was answering the phone. I got to see the impact of starting to manage and set expectations and build systems where I'm building more trust on the first phone call, and I saw the downstream impact, meaning company-wide cancels went down.
Yeah. So every PT's cancels went down. But we didn't- I didn't have to do anything with my PTs. I literally put all these systems and processes in place, and by the time we looked at what the providers were doing, it was like, "Yeah, just go ahead." Right? After I'd been yelling at them about cancels, [00:10:30] drop-offs, no-shows, which we all do, right?
And then so the big learning here is that the step before was more important. Well, first visit arrival. What's the step before? Oh, shit, the pre-arrival process. A first phone call. How and when do you deliver benefits? What do you promise? Do you promise a cost? Do you promise this? What's the paperwork gonna be like?
Where's your freaking parking? How are they greeted in the waiting room? I mean, that is all non-clinical, but I'm telling you the impact to the business as an ecosystem is ginormous. So that is the single biggest takeaway. Thinking this, and I use this, there are five principles I share all the time, and that's one of the biggest ones.
Um, first one is patient success leads to business success, and then there's that one, that your business is an ecosystem. So think about the step before, and you're really not gonna solve the problem at the moment it happened. Just like an upset employee. You're not really solving a problem. You're trying to learn, you're listening, you're being empathetic, and you're promising to go figure out what the hell happened.
We can go upstream, right?
Marla: So you just walked through all that.
Jerry: Yeah.
Marla: When somebody comes to you and you consult for them, what do you, what do, how do you guide them in setting up that process? Yeah. And what are the most important pieces they need to
Jerry: do? You, you know what's really cool about all this is, I'm gonna tell you, most everybody is about 75% of the way there.
It's just scattered. This business as an ecosystem means you understand the connectedness of [00:12:00] your patient's journey. So if I understand that our patients come... I'm j- I'm gonna use, you know, let's just use one track, right? There are multiple ways. If I understand that someone's going to call me, then I have to understand where is, what is the objective of that call?
Well, it's to get them scheduled. And I'm like, but to what end? Right? So it's really not to get them scheduled. The objective of that call is to start to build a relationship, build some trust, set up the expert, make sure they know what they're gonna get for their time, money, and energy, right? That's actually the objective of the call, which in the end turns out to be a person on the schedule who's ready to arrive, pay, and stay, right?
So, so- I talk about the front desk a lot, and I'm known a lot as the front desk guy, but I appreciate you introducing me. I've always wanted to be the patient experience guy. And when I changed everything, all my front desk stuff to patient experience about eight years ago, everything got bad because I lost everybody.
Because it was like, "Oh, Jerry's that front desk guy. What's he doing now? I have no idea." But it was the same damn thing. And the front desk is the most leverageable part of this whole experience because why? They're further upstream, right? So I start at the front desk. So if you came to me, Marla, I, I do a what I call a practice health audit.
And it's no different than a PT eval. I tell people all the time, you wouldn't hand out a plan of care without doing an evaluation. "Oh, hi, I have a shoulder problem." [00:13:30] "Great. Here's your plan of care." We do this all the time, and business consultants do it, right? In and out of physical therapy. So I say, "Hey, Marla, let's sit down," and I've got a, I've, I've got a form.
It's, um, I share it all the time. And we're gonna go through your business, and we're just gonna look at where it is currently, right? Where do your leads come from, right? Yeah, so how are people finding you? Then how are people getting ahold of you? Faxes, right? It's all of it. And then, okay, what happens next on the first phone call, right?
Okay, what kind of payer model do you have, right? Um, what's your practice model? PTs, PTAs? Because that stuff has to be worked out on the front end, right? Okay, and then are you getting benefits? Are you in-network, are you out-of-network? So we look at all that all the way through the business, and I call it a practice health audit.
And it, it's a 30-day... Well, it's anywhere from a 30-day to three-month process. Bigger you are, a little longer. Because we're gonna start with the executive team. Then we're gonna get the people doing the work, and then- Right That's my favorite part. As I ask a question, the owner's going, "Oh, yeah," and the person who does the work every day is going, "What?"
And I go, "Thank God I pulled him in." So yeah, it's called a practice health audit. And so it is, it's a PT evaluation for your business. So w- so I can do what? Show you a plan
Marla: So with that practice health audit, what are the KPIs and metrics- Oh, yeah ... that you need to see? Yeah. Here we go. And what are the ones...
Can you give us-
Jerry: Yeah ...
Marla: first the metrics and then the percentage that they're [00:15:00] at where it's at risk where you know that's where you need to dive a little further into?
Jerry: Yeah. So I want to give credit to your webinar you had a couple months ago with, uh, talking about the survey that Prompt did and looking at, uh, patient experience, uh, people and culture, I'm looking at my notes, and then, uh, all about RCM.
I want people to understand when you're trying to solve a problem like RCM, when you're trying to solve a people culture problem, when you're trying to solve an arrival problem, the step above that is to step back and go, "Okay, what is the journey? What are the s-," right, "what are the points," right? Because you could have a billing problem.
Um, I think Jeremy brought this up. Someone brought this up, right? I had more negative reviews in my business for that, uh, statement that showed up two months after discharge. And we invested all kinds of time, money, and energy in billing to solve that problem. Guess what happened eight months later?
Nothing. Total coincidence. Total coincidence. Luck of the draw I was working on the front end But I'm feeling- So we get through that. We see nothing's changed, but I had changed the conversation at the front end because I knew we were out of network and I knew I couldn't tell Marla, "We give you..." Oh, because I tried this, "We'll give you your cost and your benefits when you arrive," because people are showing up pissed off.
"You didn't tell me you're out of network," and everything. By the way, that, that was me, right? I put it together. So it [00:16:30] didn't work. So we had gotten done with that billing thing, and then so I moved, completely revamped how we manage cost, how we check the benefits, and how we got people their costs. I revamped our own financial policy so they all matched.
So Marla heard something You that- She then got a call back and heard her cost, and then the financial policy matched it when she walked in the door. And the front desk team would hand it to Marla, say, "Hey, Marla, this is your financial policy. Um, it's, it's exactly the conversation you had with Jerry. So if you see any problems, have any questions, you let me know."
And there never were because it was so dialed in. Guess what? That fixed it. The billing problem- The billing problem ... disappeared. Mm-hmm. So I'm gonna tell you big picture, I love arrive, pay and stay, right? If everything you do and everything I listen to and my notes I took have to do with arrive, pay and stay, and if you think about it, you probably could, but there's really no business metric that falls outside of arrival, pay and stay.
Retention, conversion rate, cancel rate, dropout, everything's within that moniker. So I always say, right, that this arrive, p- pay and stay mentality all through this patient experience, because you're keep, gonna keep going, "Okay, I need someone to arrive for first visit." Well, and then the provider's in the room going, "Okay, I need a, I [00:18:00] need someone to arrive and pay."
And the provider's in the room going, "Well, I need them now to keep coming back," the stay part, right? Stay. And agree to whatever, knowing what the cost is gonna be. So it, it brings the connectedness that I talk about that is insanely missing. A word I wrote down that gets used a lot now, especially with AI, is handoff.
We have messed up these handoffs forever pre-tech. Pre-tech. Remember, I was in this pre-tech, people. We, we'd, we'd never been good at the handoffs, and this is why when I hear on the webinar, "Okay, we have these three..." Now, don't... Just bear with me. "We have these three pillars, and patient experience is a pillar."
I'm like, "Well, patient experience is the foundation- Foundation ... that all these things are gonna sit on." Because if I'm gonna fix RCM And we're gonna go straight back to selling. So Marla, tell me the conversation you're having when a patient calls your clinic or on a fax referral or any... I love fax referrals by the way.
Besides the word, fact that we have to use fax, but it becomes an outbound call, and I have all this information. So anybody who's in sales, if you have all this information on a potential client, you would take that any day over cold calling, right? So even someone calling in, "Oh, I wanna get scheduled," we don't know this stuff.
So this stuff, do we know their insurance? Is it in-network? Is it out-of-network? Have you, do you check the benefits before the call? Are we gonna have that, right? All that has to come into play to solve these problems. [00:19:30] So when you ask me about the metrics, I break the client journey up into pre-arrival, arrival, and then we have course of care, and now really there needs to be a fourth step, that post course of care, right?
So I assign objectives and tasks and a c- and KPIs to the phases, and all those KPIs and all those tasks should feed into the next phase, into the next phase, into the next phase. And then if we add that all up, it should ultimately deliver into this ultimate business goal. It could be a revenue goal. I like completed courses of care.
We could say active. Uh, there, there's multiple things you could do here. We could talk completed courses of care as the ultimate metric of success, because even if you're gonna move someone, someone has to go through a course of care. Just bear with me on this. Not 100%, but basically in, in today's model, someone's got to go through a course of care before I can put them in a post course of care program.
Correct. So that course of care, I think to get there has to be one of the... That's the business metric. When I, when I put together front desk teams and the strategy for that, they get bonused on a completed course of care. Find me, and I know they're out there, and by the way, I've heard some of them on your webinars.
Um, Ken Gusardo, Ben Carlson, I always say his last name wrong, right? These are guys, by the way, Ken and Ben, they have no idea I'm mentioning them. I, I follow them on LinkedIn. I read their posts. I engage with their posts. I learn a [00:21:00] lot because they're the ones putting all this stuff we're talking about into action.
Yeah. So I always love seeing Ben's stuff, and it's like, damn, l- look what's happening. Look at the results of this, right? They just posted about their clinic getting, like, best of in the area, right? That, that happens because they understand all the stuff we're talking about, right? So yeah, so I bonus the front desk team on a completed course of care.
Everybody gets bonused on that number. That's the company goal. Yeah. Because what happens if we have a completed course of care that meant what? They arrive-
Marla: They stay ...
Jerry: they pay, they paid, and they stayed.
Marla: And they stayed.
Jerry: Yeah. Of
Marla: course. Yeah. I, I absolutely agree. I think it's completed course, course of care and looking at DC by itself or DC by PT.
Oh, you
Jerry: got it.
Marla: That's the, the-
Jerry: Yeah. Well, that's one of the big words. Yeah. So you want to take the opposite. So I always talk about less now cancels, no shows, drop-offs. That came up a lot. Jeremy mentioned it. Josh mentioned it. Everybody mentioned it, right? And that's the bane of everybody's existence, and it is the single most controllable thing we have.
And s- it's a huge tell when I go into a business and go, "So Marla, what's your drop-off rate?" And you're like, "Well," and I'm like, "Oh, darn, you do not measure that, do you?" Because it is. It's the canary in the coal mine. Yeah. It's the anti-arrive, pay, and stay. It's so bad. Marla said, "Thank you very much. I'm not coming back."
Click. And it'd be like- I, I love [00:22:30] bringing in personal real-life, because it's all the same business personal. I love talk dating, right? So right, I'm dating someone and, right, and they just, they ghost you. And it's worse than someone go- calling and saying, "I hate you." Right? "I wanna break up with you. I never wanna see you again."
You're like, "Well, at least I knew."
Marla: Yeah.
Jerry: So yeah, drop-off is the worst. I call it the canary in the coal mine. It's the anti-arrival, right?
Marla: Yeah.
Jerry: So, you know ... Yeah. Yeah, I'll, I'll just leave it at that. It's, it ... Those, those are big metrics. Those are big metrics. And I'm gonna tell you, if you have this mindset of patient success equals business success, my business is an ecosystem, I understand the connected dots, then the solution to cancels, drop-offs and no-shows is the pre-arrival process.
Marla: Perfect. And for all those metrics, what would you say ... And our survey was on high growth clinics- Yeah ... kinda sort of growing really, really well- Yeah ... over that 20% mark. What would you say for those high growth clinics, their arrival rate, their-
Jerry: Oh, yeah ...
Marla: cancellation- Yeah ... their drop-off rate- Yeah ... are. Where do you, where do clinics, so they can listen to this podcast- Yeah
and say, "Shoot, that's where I should be." What is a acceptable good metric for high growth clinics?
Jerry: So let's do this. First off, I don't ask people cancels anymore.
Marla: Okay.
Jerry: Because everybody defines it a little differently.
Marla: Right. Do they reschedule? Do they-
Jerry: So- Yeah ... let's just use that context. And real quick, I'm, I'm saying you still have to track it, but here's what I'm gonna challenge people to track.
Remember when I said we wanna prevent the cause? So you, [00:24:00] you have to track a cancel. So- Probably not for today To us ... but the high-growth clinics understand there are gonna be cancels, and they budget in cancels. So people trying, there is no zero, there is no zero or 100 on any of this stuff. So g- get that out of your minds.
There is no 100% arrival rate ever.
Marla: Right.
Jerry: Why? Because-
Marla: Life ...
Jerry: because fricking, yeah, 'cause it's gonna snow tomorrow, because someone's gonna wake up with a sick kid, because someone actually has to go to work and prioritize that job that day, right? So yeah. So you have to track cancel calls, and then from there, then you can do your cancel/reschedule thing, cancel and not rescheduled, right?
So that's what I would do. Cancel calls, cool. We had 100. Out of the 100, 90 rescheduled within seven days. You can just call the reschedules within seven days. And then, uh, 10 canceled with no future appointment. Those are people that freak me out, right? That's the stuff. And by the way, that's the b- the, the 100 cancel calls, well, we, we'll look.
Let, let's see how much time and chaos it was creating. But those 10 people who canceled and didn't reschedule, they're the ones who are getting turned into drop-offs, right? So cancel calls. That was good. Drop-offs, uh, so drop-off you alluded to. Drop-off is a unilateral, is a unilateral I'm done, and le- initiated by the patient, right?
So there is no drop-off from the provider side, [00:25:30] right? That's called a discharge. So drop-offs are bad too 'cause that's an uniniti- right? That's a o- one-sided unilateral decision not to come back. And then a no-show is the I didn't even respect you enough to call.
Marla: Yeah.
Jerry: So let's double back. No-shows, in my opinion...
Now, mind you, you don't show up on Tuesday, you have an appointment on Thursday, you know, you either show up and go, "Oh my God, I'm so sorry about Tuesday," or you call on Wednesday and go, "Oh my God, I'm so sorry," that's not a no-show. Right. Sorry. Right. It's not. It's, it's a missed appointment. Yeah. Okay? So no-shows should be as close to zero as possible, right?
I mean, single digit down, like 1, 2, 3%. And think about clinics right now. By the way, we won't go down the path of people that hope for no-shows so they can drag down their wait lists. If you have two hours, we'll talk about that. So think about no-shows. They should be-
Marla: There should be no reason
Jerry: One, two, three maybe, you know Got it.
Got it ... percent. Drop-offs, same. Uh, they're still gonna be there, maybe 5%. And then cancels, depending on what we say. I think you have to budget in. And by the way, we got to take, right, the New York versus California, right? Weather, right? So you have to know your market and you have to know your people. By the way, Pete's clinic is going to be listening to this going, "Are you effing crazy?"
Right? Because I've [00:27:00] worked with Pete's clinics, right? So all these clinics have to take into consideration who they serve, geography, all that. I'm just going to say for a typical musculoskeletal, it's
the true cancel rate, though. I don't want people calling and rescheduling. And guess where you fix that before they ever show up, pre-arrival. And I've helped people fix that. And I'm telling you it can be done, is that should be, if I had to budget and I was in California, I'd budget 10%. That means that person who is in that spot is no longer in that spot.
So that means, right, that means people calling and moving. So a reschedule to me is still an issue, right?
Marla: Yeah, absolutely.
Jerry: I wanted to give those numbers, but it needs all that context. Otherwise, people are going to sit around and go, "Wait, that's not how we measure it." So I want to make sure people understand how they measure it.
And then cancels are about the people you serve in your geography. True cancels. Hey, you know what? I can't make it today. I get it, right? I can't be your priority every day. But guess what? I have a whole strategy for how do you manage that on the front end. And you don't force people into a 3 o'clock appointment when they said, "But I got to pick my kids up at 3.30."
Well, I got a 3. Just take it. And then they call and cancel. And you're like, "Oh, that's all right." And I'm like, "You just gave permission to cancel."
Marla: Yeah. So you're looking at that part as that infrastructure of the business, like you said, right there. And then anything on the back end, like the [00:28:30] RCM, the billing, collecting payment, all of that really stems if you don't have a very healthy front
Jerry: end.
So by the way, the metric, one of the metrics for pre-arrival is first pass, right?
Marla: Yeah. Yeah.
Jerry: Did we get the correct information into the system? And was the correct information, right, then entered or moved into a platform to check the benefits, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right? So first pass is a metric too.
Marla: Yeah.
Jerry: Big time, right? Because by the way, here we are chasing money down here. It's like, how many of those were not, you know, first pass and they're, you know, whatever the percentage is. So co-pay collection rate for the... Oh, by the way, there's three roles of your front desk. There's the voice of the company, the face of the company, and then the back office.
The voice of the company is going to be first visit arrival, right? The face of the company is going to be keeping people on their plans of care, scheduling out, and co-pay collections. Let's just call it payment collection. Forget co-pay, right? I'm not saying $100 copay. Something like, just call it payment please, people.
Right. So yeah, so those are the big metrics, right? Putting people on a schedule to show up ready to pay. Right, because, uh, Jeremy said this very well, and I wrote this down and it's everywhere. The majority of drop-offs happen between visit one and three. That is a value issue. And I'm gonna argue a lot of times it's a flat out financial issue because [00:30:00] you weren't clear with that person.
Yeah. So if someone ... I don't think this was shared on the webinar. Just so an idea here, I'm gonna hold the front desk accountable to first visit arrival, and guess what else I'm gonna hold them accountable for? Drop-off before visit three. Uh, sorry, not front desk, the voice.
Marla: The voice.
Jerry: Because if they drop off before three, there's a value issue.
Uh, sorry. I, I'll take it a step further. There's an expectations issue. Cost. Is this the right expert? Is this the right place for me? I'm like, "No, no, no. We manage that before they ever show up." And you know how we manage that? We ask questions. We don't tell. We oversell so much on the front end. Everybody who tells me they hate selling oversells the hell on the first phone call without ever telling me or asking me what's important to me.
They just tell me all these things. I got a ... I did a secret caller the other day. They asked me if I'd ever... Think about this for a second. Have you ever... So I do a secret caller. "Hi, my name is," one of the Beastie Boys. It's simple, people. "Hi, my name is. I have low back pain. I want to get scheduled for physical therapy."
I'm like, "I don't make this difficult." So this person was going down the right path. It was just so scattered. It... That's just what I say when people are, like, 75, 80% of the way there. I'm like, "It's all there, but no one's gonna sh- uh..." Why am I gonna arrive after that call? So they asked me if I had physical therapy before.
Huge ask, and you gotta be ready to roll with the answer. [00:31:30] I said, "No." So think about that. I have no experience-
Marla: Experience with physical therapy ...
Jerry: so what I just told you is I have no idea what I'm buying from you. Think about that for a second.
Marla: Yep. Yep.
Jerry: Think about someone selling Prompt and I ... and they call you.
They're like, "Oh, are you familiar with Prompt?" And they go, "No." And then they just go into the same sales pitch, right? It'd be like, nobody would ever do that. But there we are at the front desk- Managing setting expectations They know It never gets done when I do a secret call. Nobody ever, ever sets this out properly.
I say no, and then the, all the s- what, what's scripted and what they were told to do is now tell everybody how we're different. I just told you I don't even know what you do, so telling me how you're different is-
Marla: Doesn't help ...
Jerry: and it just, and I can feel it. And I, and I'm in the moment, right? I really get on the phone, and I'm not looking for people to screw up, but I'm just feeling myself sink more and more into what confusion and uncertainty, an uncertain buyer.
There is no such thing as an uncertain buyer because they don't buy. Yep. Uncertainty kills the deal. So I'm getting buried in all this stuff of what we're not, and I'm like, "When are you..." Hey, I didn't say it out loud, but when are you gonna just tell me what you are and let me choose?
Marla: Yeah.
Jerry: So yeah, it's, uh, it's, it's interesting as heck out there.
And so again, that whole idea with what that will [00:33:00] solve. Because by the way, unfortunately, you know what they moved into is they didn't ask me how I wanted to pay. They just went s- straight from eval to going, "Okay, so we're out of network. That means you're $249." And I hung up that phone. I take a deep breath, and I just go, "Okay, I'm a consumer.
What am I gonna do next?" I'm like, "Um, I am at least 51% sure I'm gonna call somewhere else right now," right?
Marla: Or not show up
Jerry: Yeah. By the way, I've done that as a patient, as a PT patient. I called some places and I w- I had like three days in, decided I didn't want to go and called them back. And I'm like, "It's real people."
Marla: Yeah.
Jerry: I just didn't want the hassle.
Marla: So you're very, very much focused on setting up the right process of if this question is asked, this is what you do next. And by the way,
Jerry: this is all SOP'd out. This is all freaking systems and process.
Marla: Yeah.
Jerry: It is scalable, right? Otherwise, I wouldn't be with Equus.
Marla: Yeah.
Jerry: Equus is about scalability. It's a big reason I want to make... It's the same work. Yeah. I just get to do it on a bigger scale and have a bigger impact.
Marla: Yeah.
Jerry: Help more people. I always tell, um, practice owners my goal is for you to be able to help more people in community who need your help, and that means telling some people no.
Sure.
Marla: Well, and the thing that's most important here is that we're an industry and we have an industry problem. We need everybody to understand, love, [00:34:30] experience therapy in a great way. You guys- One clinic doing it wrong hurts the whole
Jerry: industry ... you guys talked about it on the webinar. Yeah. And Jeremy had a great analogy, and then Kim went back to it, where, right, people love talking about a bad experience far more.
By the way, I'm not sure you were there at this time, but I was. I was in the Bay Area at the advent of Yelp, and I was like, "Oh, this is gonna be cool." And Yelp just turned into a place for people to just share bad experiences. And guess, um... Remember that downstream billing problem I told you I had? You should...
I still have copies of some of the Yelp reviews. They all started the same way I loved my physical therapist. If ever I read a review that started, "I love my physical therapist," I was like, "Oh, fudge."
Marla: Here comes Bill. Yep. Yep.
Jerry: And so yeah, so a, a bad experience, right? So this idea of, here, and I love the fact he shared it, I, I lead all my talks with this slide now, and it shows up on LinkedIn at least once every two weeks.
Only 10% of the people who can use our help ever find us. And then here's the, here's the saddest thing 85% of the people who start a course of care do not complete it. So here we are, all this work we're talking about, they drop off. Yeah. Right? And Jeremy know that, you know, and it's not because I worked with him.
He knowed it. I mean, everybody needs to go back and make sure you put a link to that webinar, [00:36:00] Candice, right? The drop-offs between one and three and greater than six, and he knowed it. One in three is an expectation value issue. Six is someone kind of lost a little energy here.
Marla: Yeah. Yeah. And you really do, you, you recommend laying that out.
And now with technology- Yeah, yeah ... this is where you did the hard work back in the day when there was none. Now with technology, you can put that into GPTs and create- Yeah ... a system where you ask a question and it'll pull the next step, or you really can say if then and automation. So let's jump into that part of it.
Where does technology fit into this- Oh ... without taking out the specialty of the people that make us so important as well?
Jerry: So what, what is your technology, um, Marla, that you guys are using to help with documentation at
Marla: AI? Prompt Sidekick.
Jerry: It's Prompt Sidekick. I, I'm asking you this because I knew the answer, but because, um, when I first saw this technology before it was part of Prompt, I was like, huge value here.
Huge value. So I kept seeing, and, and I'm just gonna say this broad term, the, I kept seeing early on all the AI scribes. When AI first came out and it first... Well, first came out, what am I talking about? When AI first started leveraging itself in all of our conversations and really started looking heavy in healthcare, maybe what?
About two, three years ago, three years ago max, I made a decision, a conscious decision that [00:37:30] it was gonna be huge in healthcare, and I was gonna learn all I could about it. So I would like to say I've been in it. Doesn't mean I understand it all, but I've been in it. So here come the AI scribes. I'm like, "Wow, this is really cool."
And then everybody's selling AI. By the way, you'll never hear, you haven't heard me use the word efficiency. Yeah, I, uh- I'm gonna use that word. E- everybody, here comes AI scribes and everybody's talking about saving time, more efficient. You know what I saw? An opportunity for you and I to sit down during an evaluation...
By the way, sales phase number two, front desk has to get you to arrive. The PT's got to get you to stay. I call that there are three sales phases in this process. This is sales phase number two. This is it, man. Th- this is what we've all been working towards. Here we go Right? And then what do I gotta do? I gotta look back through my notes.
I gotta take all these things, and I, I go, "Okay, okay, Marla, based on our findings, um, I'm putting together this plan of care here for you." So you see where I'm going with this. Sidekick, I get to sit there, we do everything. I do my evaluation during my obje- By the way, I have an SOP for how to have a conversation.
I don't tell people how to treat or what to charge, but we gotta connect the first phone call with what actually happens in the room. So now I'm moving through my objective exam, and let's say you're a golfer, and I have you laying on the table, and I'm checking your hip range of motion, and I'm showing you how this [00:39:00] hip is tighter, this one's good, but Sidekick's catching it all here.
Talking. Well- So- You will be ... the value of Sidekick and an AI scribe in my world is the completed plan of care. It's my fricking sell sheet. Let's say the quiet part out loud. "So Marla..." So now I get done, right? And, and I've been, I've been setting this up, the whole process, right? I should be setting up this movement towards the plan of care.
The plan of care is basically the product, and then asking for the close. Sorry, deliverable, and then asking for the close. But now all I get to do is go, "So Marla..." And maybe I turn the computer around, right? Maybe I do whatever. But I'm not gonna read it. I'm gonna say, "So Marla, based on everything you've told me and all the work we've just done, I've got the plan to get you back to 18 holes of golf in probably six weeks.
I've got the plan to get that right hip more flexibility. I got a plan for blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and this is what it looks like. Now let's discuss this a little bit. I want to tell you what that journey's gonna look like with me." So I don't, don't have to go back and go, "So Marla, let me see. Based on that..."
Right? Sidekick, I did a webinar- Mm-hmm ... on this about the value of the AI scribe is the plan of care And so, yeah, I mean, it, it's, that's, it's things like that. Well, [00:40:30] then let's think about this. So the front desk is putting information into Prompt, into the system, and then Sidekick is pulling it, so it's already populating.
So I'm s- maybe I don't have to ask you all the same questions, but I see some things I have to clarify. But all those are gonna get pulled together, right, into what? The plan of care. I'm gonna tell people the plan of care is, it is the, it is the holy grail. Yep. Because it should be what everybody's been searching for, meaning Marla, and I just helped you find it.
Mm. Right? And now I'm giving it to you, right, and saying, "Here it is." And that is the sell. And so the ability of tech, the combination of a, a tool like Prompt that does an intake, that then has AI in it, and maybe it collected some of this on the first phone call too, through AI, and then populated for the provider the next sell space so that that provider is set up for success to do what?
Sell a freaking plan of care.
Marla: Yep, and create the therapeutic alliance.
Jerry: Oh, yeah, there's the other word that came up.
Marla: Yeah, yeah. So absolutely agree that that part in that stay, and how important the AI is with the clinician and creating that experience on step two. What about on step one is even coming in the door?
Where do you see AI being useful and helpful that you can eliminate some of the [00:42:00] mundane work-
Jerry: Yeah ...
Marla: without taking away, you, you just went through how important it is to have the relationship and the people. So we'd love to know, and this is your, your idea and vision. We'd love to know what you think about that- Yeah
and where it fits.
Jerry: So let, let's double back to the provider real quick, right?
Marla: Yeah. '
Jerry: Cause that whole thing was the provider is the, right, the provider's there. And I'm gonna put, put it to you this way. The provider's there on the front end to make sure the conversation and the flow of everything is going into the system so that the input is good.
As I like to say, "Shit in, shit out." And then they monitor the output, the plan of care, to review and go over with that. It's still a potential pa- uh, they're a there, that's, it's the patient, right? So it's the same thing at the front desk. So this work with AI I've done in this short amount of time, um- I have yet to go anywhere or bring it anywhere where people were fired, and I can say that unequivocally 100% of the time.
So you'll never hear me say AI is here to replace people. Okay. Um, by the way, some people need to be replaced regardless of AI or not. I did a call the other day somewhere and I... Oh, man, I rage on, uh, LinkedIn 'cause Twitter, I'm yelling into the void now. I feel like LinkedIn, I still get a little, uh, traction.
I said... What did it say? It said, "I know AI is not gonna replace everybody in healthcare, but damn, it needs to re- replace the [00:43:30] person who took my call today." So, so you go to the front end, and man, all this leverage, all this leverage, and the leverage there is the deliverables, the output, right? So again, if I understand the connectedness of the journey, if I understand what needs to be in front of the provider, if I understand what needs to be flowing through for billing, if I understand what needs to be moving in other parts for the potential patient, whether it's emails or paperwork, then I build it out here, right?
So I gotta understand what I need from it. So
It, it's come a long way in a very short amount of time. I burned through two benefit check platforms because what I found was it... And they weren't doing that. I, I don't blame the founders But we were building out the platform for them and paying them to use the platform. It wasn't ready for prime time.
So had one, then I went into another one, it was same thing. They've come a long way. So, so I talked about early on, right? People have to get something around cost, and it can be a benefit check, it can be a number, it can be whatever it wants, but in order to get people to show up and pay, you gotta deliver something.
The ability now with the platforms to get information and take the front [00:45:00] desk people, maybe the back office admin people off of the phone to do that is getting better and better every day. So we l- we look at something like that has to go. It's gotta go, right? That phone call, all of that. And what's getting real good in the system was the thing I had to do manually, which is, is starting to track all like, oh, okay, all the Blue Crosses, right?
They always need the auth on the third visit, all that. It's starting to gather all that and build that brain so that it's going that way. So it's getting better and better. And again, which is gonna do what? Prevent all the downstream chaos, the chasing the money, the, the billing. The other thing I really like, and this is in the research, and if you wanna hear about it, I'll share, but paperwork is the bane of people's existence in healthcare.
Do you know why it's the bane of people's existence in healthcare?
Marla: Because they do it over and over and over. You
Jerry: got it. Thank you. Thank you. It's not the paperwork.
Marla: Yeah. Yeah. We, we actually just submitted to the digital health pledge at CMS. Yeah. It's called Kill the Clipboard.
Jerry: Yeah.
Marla: And it allows- Yeah
any paperwork you've ever done- So there you go ... anywhere to be- So
Jerry: there you go ... passed along. There's the next one, is what did I collect? Yeah, and I found this out early, and I just floored me. And then simple enough, I told people at the end of the call that they weren't gonna have to repeat themselves when they came in.
And my front desk team would remind them, "Oh, and here's your pre-filled form." I'm like, we wanna talk about building [00:46:30] an alliance. By the way, we- I call it Team Alliance, and my name's actually on a paper challenging this, saying there's a team alliance to build, be built by just therapeutic.
Marla: Yeah.
Jerry: So we get tech to just populate.
So you're giving people... And by the way, you must tell them, "If you're going to do this, you must set the expectation. 'Hey, Marla, I have great news. When you arrive, you're not gonna have to put this all on paper again. We're gonna have it all, and you're just gonna have to check it for accuracy.'" As God is my witness, if people don't think that's gonna get someone to show up versus not show up, then you haven't been in healthcare long enough.
Yeah. So now I've promised you, let's just say you benefit call back. Now I promise you, you don't have to fill out the form. Jeremy said it I don't remember how you said it exactly, but I'm going to repeat what Jeremy said, right? The loss. This is... We're, we're beyond the clinical stuff. And by the way, I guarantee you there are people not showing up in clinics today who go, "This is the right place for me clinically," and it's all this shit.
And probably greater than 50% of your no-shows are for those reasons, right? That uncertainty that, um... So what'd I say? Uncertainty, um-
Marla: Expectation.
Jerry: Yeah, all of it. Not... So expectation has to be managed or set. Mm-hmm. So I just set some for you, right? Without asking you, because why? Because I know what the research says.
People hate paperwork. Yeah. No, they don't. They hate repeating themselves. "Hey, Mara, I have great news about, [00:48:00] uh, when I arrive on Thursday. You're not gonna have to fill this all out again." Meaning AKA you're not gonna have to repeat yourself, right? We... There's nowhere on the face of the earth where we ask people to show up for something without giving them some kind of idea around the cost.
I mean, th- this is just plain and simple. No, no one. You'd never go to a restaurant that... Right? If you showed up at a restaurant and there was no- Prices ... prices on the menu- Yeah ... how long would you sit there? And that's what we ask people to do every day. So we get them a cost. We tell them they don't have to repeat themselves.
Now, baked in all this, I sold an expert who's gonna give you a diagnosis and gonna give you that plan of care, and I'm gonna talk about that expert. So right now with the tech, I think those two are really big. The then kind of sec- That, that's part of that. The secondary thing is, is I cannot for the life of me, on August 6th of 2026, why anybody's phone is going to voicemail or IVR.
And by the way, for people listening, IVR is press one, press two, press three, press 35, press 48, and doesn't have an AI voice agent picking up your- Just give me this, your rollover, your after-hours. Let it do your after-hours. And here's the beauty of it, and man, it took me months to get over this. So I have now put together four voice agents on four different platforms, right?
For four different... No, not, not four different payer models. For every payer model there is. I've done a [00:49:30] cash voice agent. I've done one where it's hybrid. You, you share your insurance, it's gonna tell you. And then I've done one all in-network, right?
You then get to decide what you want it to manage, right? It's not IVR, it's not a voice. Don't make it a freaking voicemail. You're gonna invest all this time, money, and energy, and it's, it's too good. It's too good not to do this. Decide what you want it to do after hours because it can manage things after hours, right?
You don't want it to talk about billing? No. "Hey, Marla. Hi, Marla. This is Jerry. I'm the AI voice agent for ABC Physiotherapy. How can I help you?" And by the way, it's 10 o'clock at night and you dialed me. You didn't expect to get a voice, and you're like, "Oh, wait, uh, you know what? Uh, I had a billing question."
"Oh, Marla, no problem. I can't answer that, but if you share with me what you're looking for, I'm gonna have the billing team call you back tomorrow morning after 9:00 AM. Will that work for you?" And you're gonna go, "Sure." Marla says, "I need to cancel, reschedule my Thursday." Great. Let me help you. Yeah. Right?
Yeah. So, so, so don't go zero to 100, right? Think about it. Now, mind you, my- that first voice agent I ever built out went all in, all in. It took every call. I was really excited and scared for them, 'cause I was fearful. I was like, "Oh my God, how's this gonna work?" Tashed. The first call I [00:51:00] listened to that it li- answered after hours, that was a new patient, and told them...
You just remember who built the system out.
Marla: You.
Jerry: Told them that, "Yes, this is not a contracted plan and this is what we're gonna do, and this is roughly what your cost is gonna be." They scheduled and arrived. 10:30 the other day.
Marla: Yeah. Yeah. And I would go one step further is every patient's different. Yeah.
So you have voice agents, but you also have online scheduling-
Jerry: Oh, all of it, right ... and
Marla: text, 'cause
Jerry: not everybody wants to
Marla: talk And, and just
Jerry: make
Marla: sure it all
Jerry: talks and make sure it's connected. Everybody talks. Yeah. Well, and, and right. So h- here's the follow-up to that. Never had the AI been the, uh, two things.
Always identify as the AI. I'm convinced. I, I haven't seen this, but I've heard it. If when the AI- you... Uh, because people come to me and ask me this, and I'm like, "You know, that's a funny question, and you're right. It's a totally legit question. Do we tell someone it's AI or not?" And I'm like, "You absolutely tell them," 'cause no one wants to feel like they were fooled or duped.
Marla: Right.
Jerry: Here's what I believe to be true is once you tell them it's AI, they stay on the phone more. They're more willing to let that agent manage whatever situation they're bringing.
Marla: Yeah.
Jerry: But if you dupe them, you're gonna be screwed, right? So, um, that's number one. And number two is, yeah, just please connect it all.
Marla: Connect it all. Connected care. Please. And you even said that.
Jerry: Yeah.
Marla: Please connect it all. Every piece of the puzzle [00:52:30] needs to be
Jerry: connected.
Marla: Right?
Jerry: Yeah. And if someone's gonna use your online portal, right, what are you gonna do next? Just send them to a chat? Yeah, whatever, right? Um, by the way, think about some of the stuff I've shared.
If I, and this is my bias, so- I still wanna talk to people that before the last step, no matter what. And I get it, but just bear with me. I have people... Remember how I told you earlier I love fax referrals because we have all this info, so I'm staged for success? If you're gonna create a web form and let people schedule online, make it more than about their diagnosis.
Don't ask them a diagnosis. Ask them, "What problem are you trying to solve?" And if it's gonna be attached to AI, tell them, make sure when they hit send on that, they get an email back. Here, here, here's a g- Here we go. Let's build this out. So I send you, I sign up, I'm Jerry Durham. I hurt my back in the gym, right?
I'm looking to get some help with physical therapy, and I've never had physical therapy before. Now, how about if you got an email back, right? A- and maybe you checked, "I want an email reply." Here we go. How would you like to hear back from us? Email. Cool. But the email comes back, and it talks about you not being able to go to the gym, and I understand you've never been to physical therapy, Jerry, so let me set some, um, expectations here about what's gonna happen here, right?
The connectedness is: what is that next step? You gotta be thinking ahead the next step.
Marla: Yeah. All
Jerry: right?
Marla: And I actually think that's one of the most important pieces that came up in [00:54:00] our survey, too, is that when you did all these separate platforms- Yes. Oh, yeah ... and there, it caused more of an operational- You got it
problem and actually set KPIs and metrics back. So having it all in one platform and fully integrated that the- Ah, huge ... intake speaks to the sidekick, speaks to the therapist, speaks to the RCM and billing, and then closes it all out. That's what you even said. You know, you want them to come, stay, uh, come, pay, and stay.
Jerry: You got it. And, and yeah, that c- that collaboration in one place, I, I, I believe is gonna be the future. Yeah.
Marla: Yep. And I would also ask for your perspective on RTM and, as you said, that almost post-care, right? So in between care and post-care, what are those pieces, and what technology are you utilizing to make sure that it's never done and they know to come right back when they need you?
Jerry: Oh, boy. You got another two hours. 'Cause I, I believe RTM is, is one of the... Right? If you ask me, where do I see the profession in five, 10 years? RTM is not a, I'm gonna want it or not a hope to have or something, it's gonna be required. I know RTM existed before, but again, just like AI. Yet before I really knew the platforms and what was out there, I was trying to find a communication tool that you [00:55:30] would call the clinic, and I'd say, "So Marla, here's the next step.
I'm gonna send you a link to our..." I wouldn't call it a patient portal, but that's what people call it now. "I'm gonna send you a link to our o- online space where you are going to find your paperwork. You're gonna find a short video introduction to your expert, Dr. Jane Doe, and w- that's gonna be the place where you get your home exercises."
So I was tr- I was talking to people who have ended up getting purchased by other people. I was talking to some platforms and going, "Will it do this? Will it do this? Will it do that?" Because I wanted a communication tool. I wanted a one-stop shop here, right? We're talking about post course of care and all this, right?
Well, and I've seen, um, I just heard some data this... I, I haven't seen it, some data this week. The sooner I get you on it, I mean, we all know the more you're gonna use it, the more you'll see the value, the more opportunity I have, and the more likely I'll be able to keep you engaged. We don't have to go into all the research.
If I keep you engaged through that R- and I'm just gonna call it RTM tool, that good things happen. And which is a beef I have with you all, um, that a email showed up in my inbox probably three or four months ago talking about, and I never saw anything anywhere else, this is my beef, is that Prompt clients who were using their RTM tool actually increased their business per case.[00:57:00]
Marla: Because they completed their plan of care.
Jerry: Yeah.
Marla: Yeah.
Jerry: But why, why was that one... If I, I was like, this should be on billboards.
Marla: Yeah.
Jerry: Just so you know.
Marla: Yeah. Yeah.
Jerry: I called a couple. I, and I called a couple other platforms. I'm like, "Have you seen this? Did you guys get the email from Prompt?" I'm like, "Is nobody else seeing this?"
So the idea here is that if I get you on... So the point of that was a completed course of care. Everybody's like, "Oh, RTM, I bill, I do this, I do that." I'm like, "No, you get people engaged and they com- they show up more." That's the thing. Well, we don't get paid if people don't show up A- if we're using this, people don't show up.
I go, "But more completed courses of care, less ca- " And I'm like, and the research out th- is all out there. It is out there. Yeah. Right? That shows that engaged patients return, re- engaged patients complete courses of care, engaged patients do better, right? So I get Marla into that platform on day one, and we're done.
And now I have to build, here's what else. I gotta build the systems and processes so the damn team can manage it. I can't just go, "Okay. Okay, uh, Jerry, Marla's on the platform. Uh, communicate with her," right? There, there has to be a whole structure around this. And this is kind of scary, and I've, I've posted this a couple times on LinkedIn.
Something like, if you're not getting on, onto RTM because you don't understand the systems and processes of how you need to use it, that's actually the problem. Yeah.
Marla: Yep. [00:58:30] Yep. You need to understand the why and what you're accomplishing. And at the end of the day, it's get patients to show up, stay, and then- Yeah
pay and complete plan of care.
Jerry: What better way to build a lifelong client, right? And come back when they need to. What do you do? Oh, my front desk prints out an email list. I'm like, oh, my God, right? Yeah. Make it, please make it more difficult, right? So if we have the integration, right, of a RTM pl- See, I believe this, Brunson.
God, if, uh, people find me so hard on this. Everybody should go onto the RTM platform, whether you can charge them or not. I don't give a shit.
Marla: I agree with you on that. Can I
Jerry: say shit? I don't give a shit if you're gonna charge them. Everybody has to go in it And, uh, just stop it now. Dog nut face. Stop what you're saying.
I got older patients. All the research. I Google... I, I research this stuff about once a week, 'cause I wanna make sure I have the newest stuff to go, "Yeah, you're wrong. You're just wrong." By the way, guess who the fastest adopting people are on all the tech and, and on healthcare tech? It's the 65 and older crowd.
I'm getting close to that. How can I say that now? Um, they're embracing tech, and they're using it more than anybody else, right? So everybody will use it. Here's the other thing, and I always ask, "Did you give them a reason why? Did you give them a reason? Did you actually use it in a manner that would actually get Marla to want to use it?"
Yeah. The other thing I say, which I didn't say on the first phone call with that platform, [01:00:00] "Hey, Marla, your paperwork's there. There's an introduction to your provider." Oh, God. I can't believe I forgot this line. "And Marla, this is gonna be the way you communicate with your provider." By the way, why would I say that on the first phone call?
Because the number one thing people want more from healthcare is to be able to communicate with their provider. I don't make this shit up, right? Yeah. I go to the consumer side. Yeah. What do they want? I'm typing it all the time. What... I start, what do, what do healthcare consumers want from their providers?
What do healthcare consumers want from AI, right? I type it in all the time, and then I build that conversation. Yeah. And magically, Marla heard, right? So here we are. Because when I hang the phone up with Marla... So I used to do this with my team. They would hang up the phone with a new patient, and I'd go, "So why will Marla arrive?"
And if we... Everything you've heard today is a summation effect. There's no one thing. There's no one thing, right? It's, it's all these things. They know they're seeing an expert. They know they're gonna get their costs. They know they have communication with their provider. All this goes, yeah, that's worth it.
That's worth my time, money, and energy. Yeah. I gotta drive through the fricking tunnel. I gotta give my car, right? That's 20 minutes further away than I thought. You know what? I'm gonna go. Yeah.
Marla: And you used all the technology to make it easy for them. Yeah, yeah. So that's where it fills into- Well, and,
Jerry: and then where...
You, you [01:01:30] wanna hear where I want it to go, is I want it to go where you call, right? "Hi, my name's Marla. I have low back pain. I wanna get scheduled for physical therapy." I want the little AI coach sitting there next to the person. And because I wanna go one step further, let's do this. We were talking about primary care.
The front desk is going to be the key in primary care. The providers cannot do all the triage. There's a level of triage before. So, right, one of the, one of the, um- One of the qualifications for me making, uh, finding a platform that would work with me on the AI side, on the voice side, was they had to commit to working on something further upstream too once we got working together.
Um, and I do have a partner now. Um, you guys are building it out, but I do have a partner now. I finally-- well, it's been a year and a half, so I'm really excited. Just did a webinar with him. So, um, yeah. So I found a partner that understands that it's people process tech. They, um, understand that that pre-arrival process is so leverageable.
They have all these, um, components and... Right? And they allow people, which I really like, and I saw this early on, at least the AI crowd figured this out. It's not buy this whole package, but it's, yeah, pick and choose. You can upgrade at any time or downgrade, right? So, yeah.
Marla: So your vision is people process tech, implement it, get everybody knowing the why, understanding the reasons, [01:03:00] coming in, staying engaged, easily able to connect and have a successful outcome with their plan of care completion.
So not just complete it, but a successful outcome plan of care completion, and know that they can easily just come right back in- Yeah ... if there... anything they need, come right back. I think that's a great way to sum up what you just went over, um-
Jerry: You-- I'm looking at something here. You said b- I think you said it in there, but I wanna say it a little louder.
People and culture. So if we're gonna roll that out, we gotta get everybody in the room and show them that it, this is going to help the company serve more people. This is gonna help every member of the team, not just the damn providers, be more successful in their role in creating patient success. That then to me becomes the visualization, the actual doing of the culture.
Marla: Yeah. And when that's your vision, the success and business metrics follow. Yes. So when your vision is the people process patient culture-
Jerry: Right ...
Marla: and focusing on that and those little pieces then you get the reward, the business metrics to follow, so
Jerry: And it doesn't matter what your payer model is. Yeah, everybody gets a little caught up in the payer model.
I'm like, people drive further. They'll... The... It's time, money, and energy. They'll drive further, they'll wait longer, and, um, right, and they'll pay more for something they value.
Marla: Well, I couldn't appreciate this enough. What a great conversation. Uh, [01:04:30] loved hearing your insights, your thoughts, where you see the patient experience, the patient journey, and of course, how AI and technology fits into that.
Appreciate you, Jerry, and, uh, look forward to others learning from all of this today.
Jerry: I really appreciate you. I want everybody to double back and listen to, because they'll get to hear this. It'll be fun. Listen to this first. Go back and listen to that. By the way, I've listened to that webinar now three times.
So I sat in it, and I've listened to it twice more. S- listen to this first and then go back and listen to the webinar that's linked below because you're gonna hear, get to hear Ken, you're gonna hear, get to hear Josh, and you're gonna hear, get to hear Jeremy talking about actual implementation and doing.
So if you take this and go through that and then come back here and then go back again, then that's where the magic is gonna happen.
Marla: We will link that webinar and that survey to this podcast.