The Experience Economy | With Scott Regan – Part 1

Transcript for Beyond the Stethoscope Vital Conversations with SHP Episode 1 – The Experience Economy | With Scott Regan

 

Jason Crosby

All right. All right. Hey, everyone. I’m Jason Crosby with Strategic Healthcare Partners and along with Mike Scribner, your hosts for Welcome to Beyond the Stethoscope, Vital Conversations with SHP.

Jason Crosby

Today we are joined by Scott Regan.

Jason Crosby

Scott, thanks for joining us today and welcome to the podcast.

Scott (Guest)

I’m happy to be here.

Jason Crosby

So today we’re going to discuss a concept folks may recognize going back what maybe the late 90s and kind of the other industries, and that’s around the experience economy. Healthcare is certainly a different place like meaning the industries today and engaging consumers even more challenging. So let’s just start there, Scott, tell us what exactly is the experience economy?

Scott (Guest)

Ohh, you know the the best way to describe the experience economy is by telling it how we’ve evolved from an agrarian society to now. This is like the fourth stage of the economy by using a birthday cake as an illustration. So bear with me on this. So you know, years ago, when we were in agrarian society.

Scott (Guest)

Our moms would make birthday cakes from scratch. You know, they get the wheat, the sugar or the flour, you know? And and it cost next to nothing to make the make the birthday cake we moved into the industrial economy and we paid Betty Crocker to have a a box mix cost us more. But there was convenience to it. And then we moved into the service economy in which we ordered cakes from the from the store. We go to the public or the Harris Teeter order, our birthday cake, bring it home for our kids.

Scott (Guest)

Now we’re we’ve moved into that experience economy where we don’t even have time to go pick up the cake from the store. We just outsource the entire birthday party to a company that specializes in them. They bring in the cake, they bring in the the air castles, set it up in the backyard. All the kids come over and now we have an experience. And so that’s really what we’re talking about with the experience. Economy is, how do we take the goods and services that we currently offer and turn them into experiences.

Scott (Guest)

And leading edge companies I believe will find out very shortly that the next competitive battleground lies in staging experiences for consumers.

Jason Crosby

So what would you believe? Is the experience of coming more about things like theme parks and and movie theaters than it is about healthcare?

Scott (Guest)

It would seem that would be the case, but.

Scott (Guest)

And it really isn’t so.

Scott (Guest)

But you know this is gonna date me. But back in 1982, there’s a TV show called Taxi.

Scott (Guest)

Now, Mike, you probably remember the show it was on only on for a couple of years, but there’s a taxi driver featured, a taxi driver named Iggy, and Iggy is a New York City taxi driver who decided that he was going to go beyond just moving people from point A to point B. And he started serving sandwiches and drinks. He started conducting tours. He sang Frank Sinatra, you know, to people while he was driving. And he created this very unique experience that people decided that they really wanted to get a ride from Iggy.

Scott (Guest)

And and in the show a lot of people would actually tell you drive around the block one more time and they give him big tips. He understood way back in 1982 that if he wanted to separate himself out from being a taxi driver, and most people don’t think taxi drivers have much of an experience.

Scott (Guest)

That he had to do something different and create that unique experience. And we’re seeing that with you, with Uber drivers. I’ve been an Uber vehicles in which the first thing they do is they offer you a bottle of water. They’re trying to create an experience for you to separate themselves apart and to get higher, you know, get five stars because I had a bottle of water versus a guy who didn’t give me the bottle of water. So.

Scott (Guest)

Yeah, I mean the experience can be in anything. It’s it’s truly how do we how do we connect people in a way that’s meaningful to them to create a better experience for the things that they’re consuming everyday anyway.

Mike Scribner

So Scott, break that down a little bit for me. What are the characteristics of an experience that you’re talking about like make it a little more concrete for folks?

Scott (Guest)

Yeah. There’s two parts of this mic, there’s, you know, to an experience. There’s passive participation and then healthcare. We have a lot of that. If you’re coming into the orthopedic office or the plastic surgeon or the hospital, you’re coming in there for an appointment. You may have surgery scheduled that’s more of a passive experience. You’re waiting for other people to do the things to provide the services to you that you’re purchasing. Yeah. You’re engaged in it. Obviously, you’re going to have a knee replacement or you’re going to have a Botox injection, whatever it might be.

Scott (Guest)

So, but it’s still to some degree of passive experience. The other piece, the other characteristic is that we need to find the connection that unites them with that passive experience. So what can we do to create something that is that that really elevates the experience rather than just sitting in a waiting room and waiting for your name to be called. So you can go back and be prepped now and I’ll tell you, here’s a years ago I went down to Celebration Health down in Orlando. And they had it already figured out, so this this was the hospital, the model hospital of the future. When you went back into the MRI, you walked down this hallway that was designed to look like a boardwalk.

Scott (Guest)

And they had cabanas coming out from the side of the wall. You go back into and you there’s little sand on the side, but the floor is actually a boardwalk. You went back in the MRI room and it was beach noises going on. They lay you down on the MRI and the lights above you, you know, has the has that that plexiglass cover in front of the in front of the lights in the ceiling? And it was painted with skyscapes. And so.

Scott (Guest)

Then everything around it was designed to make you feel like you were at the beach. It was. It was an event. It would made it. It completely changed the game for people and patient satisfaction scores. There were through the roof, I mean, because they understood that it goes, yeah, people are coming here for an MRI. But how do we turn that MRI into an experience? And you can do. And we’re seeing this with airlines today. We’re seeing this Westin hotels recently decided, you know, people come here and they stay at our hotels.

Scott (Guest)

A lot of them want to work out, but they’ve they forgot their gym clothes, they they didn’t bring sneakers. Well, lesson started giving people loaning people complete workout outfits. They would they they they come in here, we have a closet full of stuff. Get what you needs or you can go work out. You know that that’s connecting. People say they had gyms that people weren’t using they had people in the hotel who didn’t have workout clothes and so they decided to create a better experience by connecting people who are passively using the hotel.

Scott (Guest)

And engaging them in their in, in, in their gems, Cadbury chocolate recently not too long ago decided to create spas based on new flavors of chocolate, and they offer these spaw experiences for free. And it was only for a couple of days. And when you missed it, people were like Oh my God, you should have been there. They had a spot that was based on this new chocolate flavor. It’s unbelievable. So you know, that’s kind of getting creative and understanding a little bit about how to create an experience.

Mike Scribner

Yes.

Scott (Guest)

Out of something that is just really more of a commodity. Do you remember in 1981-1982 somewhere around there the movie with Michael J. Fox ‘DocHollywood’ again I’m dating myself. Great Fleck. Great Fleck Michael J. Fox is a plastic surgeon who was in Hollywood and decides to come to this little southern town and set up shop now in Hollywood when you saw his when when you went into the lobby of his plastic surgery practice they had live dancers that were shadowed that were behind a screen in the lobby.

Scott (Guest)

And all you could see was their silhouettes and they were slowly just kind of moving their bodies and posing to provide these wonderful images of the human form. And that now or can plastic surgeons do that today, you know? Probably not. But there’s a lot of things that plastic surgeons can do to make the experience different than just somebody sitting in there waiting for their name to be called. And it’s not just plastic surgeons, Mike. We’ve all been to the doctor’s office in which you’re waiting in a really crummy lobby.

Scott (Guest)

For someone to open the door and call out your name and bring you back and and is that the experience that we’re gonna go back and tell all of our friends and family about and refer other patients to probably not.

Mike Scribner

You have a examples of that, Scott of specific you know our typical.

Mike Scribner

Practice that we interact with tends to be a fairly small practice, can be in a rural area. Do you have examples of of what people have done to improve that experience or the waiting or the flow itself?

Scott (Guest)

Ohh yeah that you know and some of them and and again.

Scott (Guest)

To create an experience isn’t isn’t always free. Sometimes the experience is just really great customer service training, but I’ve known physician practices who they stocked their fridge with water and soft drinks and little snacks. And you know they offer when people come in because they know they’re backed up. You know, they’re offered something. Hey, can I get you a, you know, a a Coca-Cola or can I get you some crackers? You know, it’s little things like that make a big difference. It says you’re more. You mean more to us than just a patient on a chart.

Scott (Guest)

We wanna make your experience as comfortable as possible and and sometimes it’s just the aesthetics around you. How ho can you change the aesthetic environment to make it a little bit more immersive now? I saw in a lot of this is enabling technology. You know,I was talking to a printer recently who they there’s new technology that you can have that can put artificial intelligence in the wallpaper so that if somebody actually.

Scott (Guest)

Holds up their [phone] they scan the the wall, they they see images that are on there and it’s not that. And surprisingly it’s not that.

Scott (Guest)

It’s affordable. I mean, there’s things like that that you can that if you think hard enough, you can say how can I make the especially the wait time. How can I make that wait time a little bit better? I’m sure you’ve walked into large practices and it looks like a Greyhound bus station. It feels like a Greyhound bus station. And I’ve been in those and that’s the last experience that people don’t want and the question is, who do we need to build this for?

Scott (Guest)

Eventbrite did a survey recently. They did a study and they found that 78% of millennials are willing to pay more money for a better experience, even if what they’re buying is the same. They experience is different, but the actual service or the product they’re buying is the same. They want the experience. And so those millennials, that’s the next generation coming up if we don’t start preparing them to, to embrace the millennials who really, who really want to feel like they’re being catered to, then we’re going to lose those to the folks who figure it out.

Mike Scribner

So how do they? How do those practices solicit that kind of feedback? How do you know whether or not your experience is memorable and driving that level of satisfaction in the first place?

Scott (Guest)

Well, you know, unfortunately most of our patients satisfaction surveys don’t get at the experience it it gets at the the basic things like wait times and we’re you know was the staff nice to me and did they were they attentive and did they listen and all those are important to the experience but doesn’t really talk about hey was your overall experience from the time you walked into the time you left and even in between.

Scott (Guest)

You know, how did it make you feel? So I think we gotta start by asking different questions on our patient satisfaction surveys to better understand what people want now. And the other thing is, is it really just asking and a lot of times, you know, if I’m a doctor and I have a solo practice or even if I’m a big practice, I need to figure out, you know, what do my patients want from me?

Scott (Guest)

That would make this experience so much better for them.

Scott (Guest)

I mean just.

Scott (Guest)

Here’s an easy one.

Scott (Guest)

If you’re running more than half an hour behind, is it possible to?

Scott (Guest)

Pick up the phone and call the patient and say we’re running about 30 minutes behind. If you want to come in later, you know don’t come in now. But you know you have an appointment at 2:00 o’clock, and we’re already. It’s 10:30. We’re half an hour behind, so I don’t want you here waiting around. So it’s it’s knowing that there’s an extra level of customer service that’s easy to deploy, yet how many? How many of us think about actually calling patients to let them know that we’re an hour or two hours behind, yet we go in and then we’re told, well, the doctor’s 2 hours behind today.

Scott (Guest)

And you have a 3:00 o’clock appointment and you see him at five 5:30 and.

Scott (Guest)

Had you known that you, you probably would have rescheduled, so you know, sometimes it’s, you know, we’re not asking the right questions all the time. And if we really want to understand the experience that our patients want, we have to ask them about the experiences to begin with.

Scott (Guest)

And patient satisfaction surveys aren’t set up for that. And quite honestly, I I absolutely believe that a lot of physicians and a lot of administrators don’t want the answers to those questions because they’re not gonna like what they hear.

Jason Crosby

So Scott, that you know.

Jason Crosby

Coming off, you know the pandemic, everybody’s shutting down and now patients are finally going back into their practice or hospital and you’ve had the uptick and telehealth repeat, you know remote patient monitoring. And I’m gonna guess that all of us are probably wearing a, you know, a wearable device now, right? So do you, do you think at this point in time?

Jason Crosby

Where Healthcare is going in terms of consumer engagement, that’s going to help. What what you’re talking to us about today in terms of the experience economy, is that a plus that you see?

Scott (Guest)

Well, I think it’s already uh impacting health care, Jason, especially some of the things that you just mentioned, you know the apps that you have, I I generally when I’m not feeling well.

Scott (Guest)

I pull out my phone and I talked to a doctor from my insurance company in 15 minutes and he’s diagnosing me and prescribing me and he’s giving me an experience right in my home. It’s like, that’s great. I don’t have to leave the house. I don’t want to go see my doctor because I got to go in the car and I got to drive 45 minutes. And then because I don’t have an appointment, they’re going to have to fit me in. It’s going to be 2/3 hour away.

Scott (Guest)

And I’m paying a copay, then I’m not paying with the telemedicine app. So the insurance companies are already they’ve already harnessed technology to figure out how to provide a better experience at a lower price point. That helps them because it costs them less for me to see the telemedicine docked than it doesn’t see my real doc. And it’s better for me because I never have to leave the house and I get to see him like in 15 minutes. I’m in the queue, and they’re there. So we’re going to be gobbled up by all the technology that’s coming down the road.

Scott (Guest)

That’s allowing others to circumvent the patient physician relationship if and which makes us more of a strategic imperative if we don’t improve the experience for our patients, they’re going to find an alternative solution and it may be another Doctor Who has a better experience. You know the Doctor Who you know and This is why a lot of people were paying money for concierge medicine.

Scott (Guest)

What are they really paying for? If you’re paying 1500 two $1000 a year to see your see your doctor whenever you want, you’re paying for the better experience people are willing to pay 1500 two $1000 for a concierge medicine experience rather than not paying it and sitting in that waiting room for for a couple of hours for the for an appointment time that you made six weeks ago and you’re still having a way to couple of hours. So this is all under foot and we can if I’m a physician.

Scott (Guest)

I can kind of turn my head the other way and pretend it’s not gonna happen, but it’s already happening. It’s already happening. Unfortunately, the typical doctor, especially primary care, it doesn’t know how many patient visits he or she is losing to the telemedicine apps. They have no idea. They may see volume going down. It’s like, OK, that’s we can blame it on COVID.

Scott (Guest)

But I’ll tell you what it’s I don’t. I think we’re naive if we’re gonna blame it on COVID. You know, if we looked at this a different way and if we said what if we charged admission.

Scott (Guest)

What if we were a theme park? You talked about theme parks earlier, Jason theme parks charge admission, so they know people are paying. You’re going to Disney. You’re dropping 150 bucks a person for that one day pass, and you’re bringing your family and you want the Disney knows we got to give these people an experience that’s worthy of that price tag. If I’m a physician. And I looked at it that way, what if I charge my patients at admission charge to come see me? I had to pay in advance. They had a it’s a $25 ticket.

Scott (Guest)

How would that reframe this? How would you rethink your whole business model and to some degree they are paying it an admission fee. It’s the copay they’re paying 35 bucks to to come see you. Yet we don’t look at it that way. It’s like, well, OK, you know, that’s for our service. No, I’m paying that regardless of what you what you prescribed for me. What I what I what happens in that visit if you know I’m paying that 35 bucks it better be well worth my 35 bucks to come see you. So we needed.

Scott (Guest)

We really need to rethink.

Scott (Guest)

How we’re practicing medicine by flipping this around and saying, yeah, we’re not just providing a service.

Scott (Guest)

But we have to provide a service in such a way that it makes for a much better experience for our patients.

Mike Scribner

OK, so step back if I was a.

Mike Scribner

Practice administrator or physician. Hearing this, I I would. I would probably saying yes, I agree with you, but it’s kind of intimidating to me to think about pivoting from what I’ve set up my practice to be over the last 20 years to to really change and move in this direction.

Mike Scribner

Help me give me what are my first steps. What are the first couple of things I need to be thinking about?

Scott (Guest)

You know my first up and I’ll tell you what, you gotta you gotta you gotta fix the entire process. I think my goal if I was a practice administrator my goal would be to get rid of the waiting room. Now I and I say that someone ingests because you’re always going to have to have.

Scott (Guest)

Place to park the family members would come along for the ride.

Scott (Guest)

But do we? You know, you go on a place that has a giant waiting room, and it’s designed the moment. And I’ve seen this. I’ve walked into practices. They have a waiting room that could put 50 people in it.

Scott (Guest)

The first impression you get is I’m gonna. I’m gonna be waiting. I’m gonna be waiting. How do we shrink that waiting room and figure out a process to get people through the front door faster and back into the exam room?

Scott (Guest)

Even if they’re waiting, just as long as they are in the exam room. But you make that a better experience. You know the worst thing is when you go to the exam room and you’re there for 45 minutes and nobody comes to check on you and you’re finally saying, I wonder if they forgot that I was here. Has that ever happened to you that you’ve actually had to walk out of the exam room and find somebody said you guys know, I’ve been in an exam room 6 for an hour and nobody’s come to see me?

Mike Scribner

Absolutely.

Scott (Guest)

Well, yeah, that’s happened to all of us. This happened to all of us. So we gotta fix our processes. We rethink how we schedule. We gotta you know there’s I mean you almost have to start at the end of this Mike and and look at at the people walking out and work backward how do we how do we improve this my daughter is a PA in a very busy internal medicine office in Atlanta and they and it’s all about as driving as much volume through as possible by by 10:00 o’clock in the morning they’re already an hour behind.

Scott (Guest)

And because they’re so focused on just, you know, you know it’s a cattle call and you know, and they get away with it because they’re, you know they’re part of the Emory campus. Everybody, you know, the internal medicine doctor has been there for a long time. But if you’re if you’re not in a tree primarily and they have a long roster of Medicare patients who would never go anywhere else because I’ve had a relationship with him for 20 years, you know, but we’re not always. We don’t always have that luxury.

Scott (Guest)

And especially if you’re a physician who has a cash business, dermatologist classics organs, lot of primary care doctors now opening medical spas, they’re doing skin care products. They’re doing laser body sculpting. They’re doing Botox injections because they can’t survive on a primary care model anymore that they have to find new revenue streams.

Scott (Guest)

If you’re in any of those cash kind of businesses, boy, I’ll tell you what. Now. The experience economy really takes hold because you’re not gonna go sit in a primary care doctor or family medicine office for an hour to get your Botox visit sitting around with a bunch of people who are sick and you know, and sniffling and and just not feeling well. And you’re sitting there because you want to get, you want to get your cool sculpting done. I mean, so we the, the, the whole thing has to be blown up.

Scott (Guest)

And we have to change the paradigm, especially if you’re an older physician. This is really, really hard because they weren’t brought up to practice medicine this way. They were brought up to be a good doctor, not not to stage an event for people coming in.

Scott (Guest)

The younger doctors that I’ve talked to that are coming out of medical school, who are who are on the are are millennials themselves. They get it and they’re investing in the in the types of things to create a much better experience, better waiting rooms that are process is better technology, apps that you know that, that track loyalty that people can, they they, you know, they get instant notifications, they all sorts of things to improve the communication.

Scott (Guest)

I still have trouble with my doctor getting somebody to return my call and I can never get my doctor on the phone. It always goes to voicemail and then it’s days before somebody actually calls me back. So.

Scott (Guest)

Heaven forbid it was really a life threatening emergency. I  know I can’t rely on my doctor to give me a call back on the same day. And this is the world we live in this world we all live in. And those are. It’s some basic things we have to fix. We’re going. Everybody’s going to call trees. Automated automated phone systems. Nobody ever answers the phone. It goes into a voice mailbox. Nobody’s checking the voicemail box so it could be days if anybody checks it at all. And by that time you’ve lost the patient. The patients are going somewhere else.