Patient Trust Starts With Cutting Red Tape

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Richard Briddock: Hello, everybody, and welcome to another episode of the Ignite podcast for healthcare marketers all across the country. We have a very special guest today, Pete Deutschman, who is joining us from Patient.com. He is the CMO and Chief Partnership Officer. Pete, you’ve got the sharpest pair of scissors in the healthcare game, I understand. You’re out there cutting away all the red tape and doing some amazing work for healthcare consumers in the United States. Truly a game changer. We don’t often get true disruptors on this podcast, so I’d love for you to just start with telling us about some of the amazing work that you’re doing at Patient.com and generally what that team is doing to help make user experience, patient experience, a much better place and save us all from frustration over the next couple of years.

Pete Deutschman: Yes, thank you, and thanks for having me today. Big fan of the podcast. Obviously, as a marketer, I tend to glean a lot from my peers on some of the initiatives and the programs that others are tackling across multiple verticals and multiple industries. I’m in a very unique position with Patient.com because the Patient.com brand is direct-to-consumer. We are a consumer-first application. We are not tethered into any one system. In fact, our big mantra internally is all about the spirit of independence because we believe that being independent as a platform is a way in which we can be there for the patient.

We are not looking out for any one tech stack within a provider system, et cetera, and so that spirit of independence is something that we can take a lot and learn a lot from other industries that have embraced that over the years, but healthcare is one that definitely needs some support and a different way to look at things.

Patient.com is, at our core, is an independent, hyper-secure, personalized healthcare administration navigator. A lot of words, but essentially what we’re doing is each one of those is important. Independent, as we just talked about, meaning that a consumer can trust that we are looking out for their best interest and not necessarily looking out for any one provider or payer or pharma, or anyone else in the ecosystem’s best interest. We are truly trying to be independent and be there for the consumer.

Hyper-secure. This is an important one that, from a trending perspective, is such that we’re seeing proliferation of new options of consumers being able to find answers. These answers historically have been through countless hours on the phone or walking in and asking questions. They’ve been sending emails, going into new portals. They’ve been really a burden on the consumer to try to get the answers they’re looking for. The onset of AI has created an opportunity to have instant access through Chat or other tools that allow me to be able to get some level of intelligence and response, but hyper-secure is not one I would consider. By being independent and being hyper-secure, we’re creating a real companion for our consumer through those two definitions.

Then the personalized navigator is the other part, because once you have the security, you’re gaining consent and trust from the consumer. When you get consent, it allows us to be able to operate alongside the consumer and act as a personal navigator to their circumstances. I’m no longer uploading and sharing information to the web or trying to go deep into blogs to understand, oh, that person has a similar situation to me, and they happened to share what they did to solve those circumstances in their health journey. Personalized navigation is that Patient.com will understand who I am. It will be verifying my information and my identity.

We have a partnership with ID.me. ID.me allows us, there’s 70-plus million consumers in the United States that have ID.me. You can also create an ID.me account. We verify who you are with a great level of certainty. We then pair that with the ability to understand your insurance and your benefits, whether you have it or not. Then, through that, we’re able to help you navigate your benefits. Understanding your current circumstances, understanding who you are, understanding your economic circumstances such that we can make recommendations based on what we know about you.

You’ve given us consent to do that because we are hyper-secure, and we’re doing it just for you. This is not information we’re sharing with others unless you say you want to share that information with others, in which case, we’re being very transparent in the way in which we’re proceeding with that very sensitive transfer of information if necessary.

The other thing I think it’s really important to understand as it relates to cutting through the red tape, as you say, which the red tape for us is about healthcare administration. It has nothing to do with care. We believe and wholeheartedly believe that caregivers are in the business because they want to give and they want to care for others. It’s all the administrative layers and the red tape around it that has built up over the years, at no fault of any one person or any one system. It’s just the layering of how we’re needing to continue to address the complex cities of our administrative financial side of healthcare, and it’s just not sustainable.

We have to cleanly cut through it, cut through the administration, find paths to solutions and answers as quickly as possible. That is what we call removing frustration. Frustration is that overwhelming feeling that consumers have trying to understand their own healthcare administration. Doing so allows them to focus on their healthcare and the relationship with the provider.

I’m in a very fortunate position. I’ve been working in marketing and technology marketing, consumer marketing, B2B marketing, innovation my whole career. This is one of those once-in-a-generation opportunities where we really couldn’t do what we’re trying to do three to five years ago, but we are in this moment in time where we can. It’s been great to see the response of the marketplace. All of the peers from providers we’re talking to, from the executive level to the existing healthcare navigators, they are all pulling out of conversations with us saying, I really want you to succeed. That gives me great hope that we have something really special here that patients really deserve.

Look, we’re all patients. Rich, you and I are patients. Every provider we talk to is a patient, so everybody understands the idea of frustration and that red tape is the leading cause of it.

Richard: I always find it fascinating when I go, and obviously, I’m a sample size of one, but I always find it fascinating, and I’m sure you’ve heard the story over and over again, when I go to a specialist that I’ve been to 10 times before and I’m asked to fill out the same forms. I’m like, I don’t move every month. I don’t move every two weeks. Why do I need to give you my address again? It’s insane in a way, and it’s just something that you don’t really experience in other warps of life. I am a huge convert and believer in your mission and what you guys are doing, and I think it makes complete sense. I love the fact that we finally got to a point where we can turn that thought and that problem statement into a solution that’s going to work for everybody.

I did want to talk a little bit about marketing in general because obviously, you are a CMO, and you alluded to it. You’ve also run marketing agencies, and you have a massive background in marketing. Back in the day, our parents’ and even grandparents’ generation, the healthcare journey was relatively straightforward, right? There was something wrong with you. You went to the doctor. The doctor told you what you needed to do next, and then you did it. For us, the patient journey has become so complex. Even before the rise of AI and chatting with AI and having those conversations, just the amount of information that you can get on the internet, the amount of content that has surfaced, it’s almost overwhelming. I feel like sometimes, far from adding more clarity, it adds more uncertainty to the patient journey and trying to understand and diagnose some of these things.

Why do you think that healthcare has become so good at generating content around symptoms, around conditions, procedures, treatments, but also to give the end patient that level of clarity around what to do next, around what the journey should look like, and how to get to that right answer, how to cut out all the noise? What do you think is the root cause of that? Then how do we improve that as a marketing division, as a marketing approach?

Pete: It’s the right question to be asking at this moment in time. Healthcare is not immune from the seismic shift that has been taking place of the customer experience in the last 15 to 20 years, but it is the least mature as it relates to the customer experience. I can go buy a car on my phone. I can walk in to pick up that car, pay for it with my phone, walk out with my phone, never sign a piece of paper. We all have had that experience, or you know others who’ve purchased a Tesla. We know that that’s the experience that has now become part of the expectation. Yet, to your point, every time I show up at my provider’s office, I’m handed a clipboard and I’m told to fill out the same information over and over again, even if I’m walking across the hall.

The consumer doesn’t understand I’m walking across the hall and what’s across the hall could actually be a different provider, which is contracted and under a different contract and paid differently from a different payer system. They don’t understand any of that, but all of those complexities have created these layers that we as the consumer feel the burden of. It’s just the way it is, right, and that’s what the case is.

When you layer that on top the fact that in the world of marketing, we’ve gone from word of mouth into more of a, I am expected and have the ability to do my own research, and yet I am not provided an opportunity to be able to be empowered. When you have a relationship with a provider, you should trust what that provider is saying. 100%, they’re looking out for your best interest. When you hear in the news cycle all the things that give you distrust because of the economics, you can’t help but wonder if they’re looking out for your best interest, if they’re just trying to get you out the door.

The truth is that I’ve not seen that necessarily be the case, so our job as marketers is to bring that trust back to care, addressing healthcare as a result. The world that we live in is distrust that happens to consumers because recommendations are now paid. Do you understand what I mean by that? Recommendations are now paid. Whether it be going to Google and seeing the first five results being promoted, you and I are guilty of this. A big part of how we make our business is trying to get preference, trying to get awareness, trying to get consideration, and then focusing on measurement around a transaction.

The last 15 years has all been about optimization of transaction. Shorten the sales cycle, get the transaction done, and justify our existence in the world of marketing. That’s not how healthcare should be working. Healthcare should be working much more like a lifetime value. We should look at it through the lens of how do I go from this recommendation engine saying, come on in now, I’ve got a better price. It’s no longer about value in the lens of a price. It’s more about value in the relationship that I am getting and a recognition that I don’t have to be everything to everybody. I can be a promise and a premise and a place that they want to be part of. It stops being advice and it starts being something more.

We’re not creating content right now because it’s what fills up the gap when somebody is searching. We’re not creating content because we’re looking to build a relationship. We’re creating content in a way where it’s filling a cell on an Excel spreadsheet in the world of marketing. We’re not creating content with true empathy for what that person could be dealing with at this particular moment. That’s when I say we couldn’t do this a couple years ago. We couldn’t do what we’re about to do a couple years ago because the technology would not allow us to do this at scale. We’re utilizing technology and personalization in a secure way to be an independent navigator for a consumer so that they can understand the right way to approach their healthcare journey.

Richard: I totally buy into that principle of there has been a lot of marketing activity to fulfill a short-term gain or objective without thinking about the long-term material consequences of trying to force a square peg into a round hole. It’s not just about poor patient experience, poor consumer experience. There is a material impact to those providers’ business by trying to engage with the wrong patient because you’re trying to hit a number, because you’re trying to lower a CAC, because you’re trying to scale volume. When did you guys first realize that this was more than just a patient experience issue and that it was actually a significant financial ramification of it’s just the way it’s been mentality to these provider groups that you are trying to work with?

Pete: It’s interesting. That journey has been several years in the making. Our team started with a deep belief that consumers deserve better, that patients deserve better. Yes, we focused on experience, but to do so as a marketer, you’ve got to do your homework. Even though we’re all patients, it starts from a place of empathy to understand what are the top frustrations that consumers are dealing with. If we’re going to eliminate them, let’s be really clear of what they are and what they are not.

Our take is that the top frustrations are mostly based in financial ambiguity. It’s mostly dealing with the affordability. It’s mostly dealing with not sure what’s included in my benefits. I don’t know if I’m in the right plan for my circumstances and my family. When I am in this plan, how do I best leverage and maximize it? If I don’t have coverage, what is the right way to be thinking about these important decisions? What does this bill mean?

When we started unpacking and saying, well, those are the things that consumers feel and say today, there were two things that floated to the top for me in saying, okay, we can address a lot of these. One of the issues that came up was really about, I don’t want to fill out these same forms again. That’s really interesting. We can actually solve that because if we’re asking for the consumer to trust us and share their information so that we can solve their administration issues, we actually know all that information about the consumer. If the consumer is walking in today and handing that same information in an analog manner to the front desk every single time, how hard would it be for us to, with consent, share it?

Same way you go into Apple Pay scenario, right? You’re consenting to share that information for a transaction at that moment. Why can’t we help in that process? When we started talking to providers about the ability to solve the consumer problem, they leaned over to us and they said, do you realize what that’s going to do for us? Because they would tell us, and we had this conversation, we’re having this conversation with providers, with payers, with pharma, with everybody in the ecosystem, and they’re saying, if the consumer is willing to share that information with us and remove the clipboard experience, we can be more efficient throughout our entire revenue cycle.

We have clean data that we know is verified by the consumer, and you’re going to share that, and it’s going to allow us to be so much more efficient. Why? Because of the costs that exist in the world of the provider, a huge portion of it has to do with clerical errors, bad data, missing. I’m not sure, is this person who this person is, or is this person the old file, or how is this right? You know who pays the brunt is unfortunately the providers and the patients because there’s constant denials or misclassifications or confusing bills, or that’s not right.

We all have to put so much time in to get it right because the payer is ultimately just going to deny that claim if the information isn’t correct. If we can package it up, we get a chance to actually streamline that, and that reduces the cost of healthcare. The downstream benefit to serving the patients with better clarity is significant to the system. That’s part of the ROI for a provider to say, you should use Patient.com. You’re going to have better information, you’re going to understand your benefits, you’re going to come in better prepared.

If you are eligible for a grant, Patient.com is going to make that recommendation for you. If you need some additional financial support with regards to how to afford the care, we want you to get the care. Here’s how you can make that happen, and then come in and get the care. Guess what? Because you’ve consented to share your information with us, the provider gets to be more efficient. That is the lifetime relationship that we want. We want to create that situation where the patient is at the center of the ecosystem and everybody wins.

Richard: Talking about the provider and the provider experience, I want to pull in another thread here, which is AI. You mentioned AI previously, but we now have a situation where a lot of people are turning to AI. I think I saw at one point, and this was last year, that there was like 500,000 health-related AI queries happening, AI conversations happening in the US. I’m sure it’s way over a million a day now. It was 500,000 a day last year. I feel like the exponential rise of AI is wild.

I think what AI tends to bring, it brings an alternative to a lot of challenges that you typically have with providers, or historically you’ve had with providers, which is it’s available to access anywhere. It’s available immediately. There’s no concern or confusion around what it costs. You don’t have to fill out any forms to speak to AI. It’s going to spend all the time in the world with you as long as you like, and it’s anonymous. At least in the mind of the consumer, although we, of course, know that it’s using that data to inform models, but in the mind of the consumer, you can say your deepest secrets and health concerns to this thing, and it feels like that anonymity in your protecting feels like it.

Pete: It feels like it.

Richard: Correct. Obviously, for a lot of people, because of the consumer usage of it, they feel like it brings a lot of benefit. How should healthcare providers be reacting to that? How should they be adopting AI, in your opinion, not to compete with AI, but to make it part of the health journey and, to your point, optimize the patient experience? How do you think they should be leaning into AI?

Pete: It starts and ends with trust. Patients trust technology, and I’ve seen this not just with AI. This is in my previous life working alongside YouTube and Google and Facebook before Meta. I used to be the head of innovation for Michaels on the retail side and developing marketplaces. Consumers trust technology when they can understand it. They understand the why’s behind it, how it’s working for them. They want to see that it’s being used ethically, and ultimately that there’s some element of human oversight in the experience overall, whether it be in how it was architected or how it’s being managed, and it’s not just a robot that’s on its own. Even more so in the world of healthcare.

There’s a recent data point that came out of Wolters and Kluwer, and it was 72% of clinicians and 61% of patients worry, specifically around ad-sponsored AI, that the recommendations will potentially bias care decisions. You think about that in the analog world, it’s crazy to think about, I’m going to walk into a provider and a healthcare navigator is going to basically be like NASCAR where they’ve got all the sponsorships everywhere and they’re basically be like, “You should try this.” You’re going to be like, well, are you sponsored by them? Is that why you’re making the recommendation? Is that the right care? Go down the hall and get your MRI over here. Why? Why should I do that? AI has that potential of having distrust because of the biases that may be coming from either paid economic situations or from others that have created other biases in the past. That’s one of the things that we’re navigating in our build.

The thing I would tell providers to be looking out for is that independence is actually a really important thing. Building something because you can build it, because it’s a bolt-on to your existing EHR, building it for your own systems may accomplish the goal of being able to have something that you say is available to a consumer, but recognizing that the consumer is looking for independence and what you really care about is that they trust the technology and they get the right answer.

That is what we’re building for. That idea of trust being earned and that they’re earning that is through this level of transparency and a layer of human connection. I think that’s a big part of what I would always encourage anyone, not just providers, to be thinking about when they’re looking to deploy technology.

Richard: Yes, solving that big problem that we were talking about at the beginning, where you’ve got this overwhelming amount of content out there that is supercharging this confusion around the patient journey in terms of where the patient should go next and what they should do. Helping to create a navigator, to your point, a wayfinding solution that helps them get to that right answer, what to your point, is also incredibly credible. There is no thought of bias or some ulterior motive that might be impacting the recommendations that agentic solution is giving to the patient.

Pete: Yes, the opportunities are significant when a provider, they should be investing in the technology within their tech stack to make themselves efficient, and your EHR providers or other technology solutions that are built to work within your ecosystem. You need to have your machine operating really efficiently for yourself, and AI and other tools are great for that, and there’s no doubt about that.

When it comes to how to think about the patient engagement and patient experience, I’ve had couple conversations with folks who have said, okay, we use MyChart and/or we have our own app that we’ve built out for the consumer experience, or, we have a portal, why do I need something else? The way I’ve explained it, and this may help some of your audience think about this, the way I’ve explained it is in the world of finance, we have our own banking app, Bank of America, or Wells Fargo, or Chase, or whatever your app is. That’s MyChart.

It’s transactional. It’s very much the core function of how I have my relationship with my experience. I’ve also got my Blue Cross Blue Shield app, or whatever my insurance provider is, and I’ve got those apps. Patient.com is a companion to those. Not looking to replace those by any mean. This is an app experience as a companion. It’s like if you use Robinhood or if you’re utilizing the former mint.com or some other management solution that helps you with understanding what are your goals, what are you trying to accomplish? We’re going to live in this world across all of your banks, across all of your solutions. Across how you’re thinking about it, and really be here to help you navigate all your optionalities.

That is what we are building from an independent perspective. Once you land that concept, most of the providers understand that I’m not looking to replace the portal that I’ve invested in over the last decade. I’m actually looking to create a new way to think about the patient experience.

Richard: I see MyChart more as a repository of documentation, information, test results, et cetera. Whereas, to your point, Patient.com is more of that sherpa, that guide to help patients maximize their healthcare and reduce the flustration.

Pete: I would say one other thing, Rich, if I could, is that the providers are, well, everybody in healthcare, they’re already doing this. It’s just they’re not getting paid for it. It’s a cost of doing business today. I give this story where, when I was in high school going into college, I worked at RadioShack. Remember RadioShack?

Richard: I do remember it. I’m an immigrant, so I got here just as RadioShack was basically on the outs.

Pete: Well, long Live RadioShack, this place where nerds worked at RadioShack because they were all in on the new technology. It gave them a chance to help, and you did everything from putting hearing aid batteries into people who walked in needing, I need a replacement, to selling computers and understanding cellphone planes and understanding wireless routing systems, et cetera. By nature of me having worked in that space, to this day, I’m the nerd in the family. When anyone has a question around technology or connectivity, or should I do this or should I do that, whatever the issue is, I get the phone call.

Today, if you’re in healthcare, if you work at a payer, if you work in pharma, if you work at the front desk doing registration, or you’re a doctor, clinician, you are dealing with the burdens of your friends and family calling you to say, “You’re in healthcare. What does this mean?” They show the bill, they show the EOB. They have all these questions that they are asking you because you must know the answer to this. We in healthcare end up helping those friends and family, some of which are our parents, try to navigate the complexity of healthcare administration.

Sometimes we’re doing our own research. Sometimes we’re leveraging our experience. Sometimes we’re saying, you need to call these three people because these are the people that are going to have the answer to your questions. They also don’t know my circumstances when I’m calling. They don’t understand my financial propensity to pay a potential bill. How much is they have to ask these questions? When we tell those people what we are doing at Patient.com, they suddenly realize that the burden that’s been on their shoulders by nature of being in healthcare is going away.

They now are becoming our greatest advocates, and they say, you should really check out Patient.com. I’m happy to help you, but this is going to be a much more secure, personalized way in which you can navigate these exact circumstances of situation, which is the greatest compliment that we can get as a new technology is when one of those heroes are saying, try Patient.com. It’s making the heroes more scalable.

Richard: That’s awesome. Pete, I feel like we probably could’ve talked for another 30 minutes, so maybe we’ll have to schedule part two of this, but I’ve really, really appreciated your insight. Like I said, it’s not often that we get someone on the podcast that’s doing something truly disruptive in the way that you guys are and really helping to plug some of the ongoing challenges that have existed in the patient ecosystem for as long as they have. It’s been my absolute pleasure. Thank you for joining us. Where can listeners connect and find out more about Patient.com?

Pete: I would be doing a disservice as a marketing head of partnerships to not call it out. Go to Patient.com. It is mostly focused on consumers for purposes of education and awareness and onboarding, but there is a section on there for partners, and partners would be anyone in the ecosystem. Whether you are running a provider, small, medium, large provider-sponsored health plans, whatever the case might be, we want to talk to you. We want to talk about the ways in which you can make recommendations for your consumers to work with Patient.com and how you can benefit.

If you are in the ecosystem, you have a product that solves affordability issues or some sort of healthcare navigation issue, we also want to talk to you. We want to bring you into our ecosystem and get you integrated into the idea of a recommendation at the right time at the right place for a consumer. Since we are all patients, go to Patient.com and create an account. Try it out for yourself.

We’re getting ready to go national. We have some relationships with some great providers. We’ll be releasing a lot of those details here pretty soon. This is a great time, and there’s a lot of really great things that happen when you create empathy for a consumer, and this is one of those moments that I think isn’t just going to create a great output for the consumer, but ultimately could be a great savior for this complexity that exists in the system itself.

Richard: Awesome.

Pete: Yes, I highly encourage you guys to check out Patient.com. I have signed up. Thank you again for joining us, and have a great rest of your week and a fantastic 4th of July.

Richard: Thank you. You too. Appreciate your time.

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