Ryan White and Alex Nottingham JD MBA discussed how technology is changing the patient experience in the healthcare industry. White noted that patients prefer to receive appointment reminders via text, and that online scheduling is becoming more popular. He pointed out that patients want control and power in their hands when it comes to scheduling appointments, and that the most frequent time for people to use their computers and mobiles is between 9 p.m. and 11 p.m. White encouraged healthcare providers to consider providing online scheduling services to meet the needs of patients.
HIGHLIGHTS
[0:10] Conversation between Alex Nottingham JD MBA and Ryan White on Patient Experience and Technology
[02:04] Patient Engagement, Expectations, and Affordability Concerns in the Dental Industry
[03:26] Patient Expectations and Value in the Dental Industry During the Pandemic
[04:59] Patient Experience and Online Scheduling
[05:50] Utilizing Technology to Improve Patient Interactions
[07:00] Technological Insights for Optimizing Patient Experience in the Medical Industry
[09:34] Improving the Patient Experience Through Technology
[13:23] Technology and Human Interaction in the Workplace
[14:34] The Impact of Technology on Enhancing the Patient Experience
[15:39] Improving the Patient Experience
RESOURCES
- PODCAST: Boost your Phone Skills with “Share the Sizzle”
- Free Training Webinar: Dental Practice Excellence
About Ryan White
Ryan White, Weave’s Senior Dental Marketing Manager, has spent most of the last decade helping small businesses optimize their marketing processes and utilizing tech in their marketing efforts. Before coming to Weave, Ryan worked for Ultradent Products, where he helped dental offices market and sell more whitening through engaging campaigns. Additionally, he spent the last 3 years helping medical practices utilize free digital marketing channels to attract new patients. Ryan currently resides in Salt Lake with his wife and two kids. In his spare time he is either canyoneering in the southwest deserts or continuing his life-long search for the best Mexican food in the U.S.
About Alex Nottingham JD MBA
Alex is the CEO and Founder of All-Star Dental Academy®. He is a former Tony Robbins top coach and consultant, having worked with companies upwards of $100 million. His passion is to help others create personal wealth and make a positive impact on the people around them. Alex received his Juris Doctor (JD) and Master of Business Administration (MBA) from Florida International University.
Episode Transcript
Transcript performed by A.I. Please excuse the typos.
00:10:05 – 00:32:12
Alex Nottingham JD MBA
Welcome to Dental All-Stars. The topic of this podcast is the patient experience and Technology. Our guest is Ryan White. Ryan is we’ve senior dental marketing manager. He has spent the last decade in helping dental practices optimize their marketing processes. His true passion lies in helping officers maximize the patient experience, resulting in better patient retention, patient care and overall patient health.
00:33:05 – 00:34:08
Alex Nottingham JD MBA
Please welcome Ryan.
00:34:26 – 00:36:11
Ryan White
No, thank you very much. I’m glad to be here.
00:37:23 – 00:48:07
Alex Nottingham JD MBA
Well, let’s get right into the questions, Ryan. Let’s talk about patient experience. We love this topic. What’s the patient experience for you? How do you define it? And what are some other research that you have seen regarding this matter?
00:48:23 – 01:04:25
Ryan White
Yeah, the patient experiences. One of the hot topics and this is nothing new to this dentistry. This is when you think about patient experience, you can also say customer experience in almost any other business and it comes down to the idea that people will make decisions, customers and patients based off emotion, but they justify that based off a logic.
1:05:00 – 1:22:05
Ryan White
And so when you’re creating the experiences, what is the interaction between your office and that patient from A to Z? A lot of times we get very myopic with patient experience and we think it’s just what happens when they step in the door. But it’s so much more than that. It’s every interaction that your office has with this customer and even the perceived interactions from patients with your office.
1:22:05 – 1:39:07
Ryan White
And so the key is if you are a office that is successful, most likely it’s because you found a way to create an experience that’s memorable, that keeps patients, that keeps you top of mind, and they want to return to you. And they are more willing to accept the treatment care because they trust you, they connect with you, and you have that emotional connection through the entire experience from beginning to end.
1:40:05 – 1:48:25
Alex Nottingham JD MBA
I thought it was very interesting. We were talking about this idea between the patient experience versus a patient engagement. Define that for me. How is that different?
1:49:07 – 02:04:07
Ryan White
Absolutely. Well, think of it this way. The experience is the big picture. That is everything you are doing to create this experience from beginning to end. The engagement is what is the patient doing on their end? How are they interacting with your office? How they interacting with your staff, whether it be from how are they interacting with the appointment reminders?
2:04:07 – 2:20:13
Ryan White
Are they responding? Yes or no? Are they asking questions before the appointment? Are they filling out the forms before the appointment? Are they booking their appointments online and then the interaction also? How are they responding through the treatment plants and what is the conversation when it comes to fees and payments? Those are engagement points and you can have KPIs that are measuring it.
2:20:22 – 2:33:22
Ryan White
But overall, that is just a bigger part of what is the expense grievance and the control that you have. You have control over the patient experience, whereas the engagement metrics are more about what is the patient and how are they responding to that experience makes sense.
2:34:13 – 2:37:20
Alex Nottingham JD MBA
So we would like to maximize engagement, essentially.
2:38:04 – 2:44:17
Ryan White
Absolutely. And you want to measure how they’re engaged. It’s not just that they’re engaging with your office, which is good, but how are they engaging is very important.
2:45:10 – 2:53:06
Alex Nottingham JD MBA
Right. You’re a master of statistics. Tell me about patients’ perceptions and their expectations. How has that changed?
2:53:27 – 3:09:18
Ryan White
I mean, if you ask any office out there, I believe that they’ll tell you, you know, between now and ten years ago, how dramatically patients perceptions of dental as well as their expectations have changed in fact, we do a report every year or we survey hundreds of offices and thousands of patients and we kind of pull in what are the overall thoughts and sentiment.
3:09:25 – 3:26:06
Ryan White
And one of the things we saw in this year, the 2023 report, was that 43% of patients are delaying treatment or care due to affordability concerns or concerns about the market in general. And alongside of that, you have 93% of practices that are planning to raise their prices or already have raised their prices. In fact, 30% of them have raised them within the last 30 days.
3:26:13 – 3:48:21
Ryan White
And so you’re seeing what is the overall experience or what is the sentiment of between patients and dental offices? 32% of offices are saying that patients expectations have increased dramatically since the pandemic, with 39% of those people saying that their less patients are less reasonable than they were a year ago. So here we have this this macroeconomics going on between patients are now expecting more of their dental office.
3:48:29 – 4:03:28
Ryan White
And at the same time, they’re also concerned about the value. They’re concerned about the price. And so if you’re in office, these are a lot of things you can’t impact. You can’t control the macroeconomics of the world. You can’t control the concerns and fears of patients. That’s not within your realm. Now, what you can do is you can address them.
4:04:03 – 4:26:17
Ryan White
And that’s why patient experience is so important, because that’s the one thing you can control. You can control the value that your practice is giving, especially if you’re thinking about raising prices or if you already have, have you ask that question like I’m raising prices. Am I also raising value? Am I being able to showcase that value to patients so that if they see a raise in prices compared to a few years ago, they understand that and they actually feel like it’s not it’s in line with the value that they’re receiving and the care that they’re receiving.
4:27:18 – 4:34:06
Alex Nottingham JD MBA
So sounds like you were alluding to these industry trends with the patient experience. Are there others that are noteworthy?
4:35:09 – 4:59:06
Ryan White
Well, there’s the technologically or technological trends that we’re seeing. And this is just something that has evolved just with technology itself, you know, patients preferring to have the appointment renders being sent and communicate with officers. I mean, if you ask this, we have these reports from years ago versus now and the 93% of patients prefer actually interacting by text, which is a big thing as well as you have my generation, which is not even putting these things into their calendar anymore because they know they’re going to get a text.
4:59:06 – 5:06:14
Ryan White
And so they’re like, okay, well I’ll just put a quick date in my calendar. But then they’re expecting that text to come to remind them, you know, seven days before to be like, Oh, make sure your calendar is free because of disappointment.
5:07:00 – 5:07:20
Alex Nottingham JD MBA
That’s some true.
5:08:01 – 5:23:07
Ryan White
Absolutely. And the big one I’m seen in these last couple of years are online scheduling. When you think about the patient experience now, once again, you want to think about what happens when they’re in the office, but it’s more than that. How is the patient interacting with you? Are they interacting with your website? Are you offering the capability to actually schedule an appointment online or at least request one?
5:23:07 – 5:37:02
Ryan White
This is something you’re going to see continually over these next couple of years become more of a standard where patients want to have that control, a little bit of that control and power in their hands so they can at least request appointments. Because when people are on the computers, when they’re on their mobile, the most frequent time is between 9 p.m. and 11 p.m. as well.
5:37:24 – 5:50:18
Ryan White
Your office is an open at that time, so they can put a reminder in their phone to say, Oh, remember to call the office tomorrow and try to schedule an appointment. Or if you had that experience where they had the ability and the power to request an appointment, or they can text your office and say, Hey, I would like to schedule a cleaning one hour availabilities.
5:50:26 – 5:58:11
Ryan White
That is a positive interaction that the patient now has. And another reason that they choose you, because it’s just you’re making things easier for them. You’re making it comfortable and convenient.
5:59:13 – 6:18:06
Alex Nottingham JD MBA
Yeah. When you mentioned the technology with text messages, my chiropractor, for example, their text message reminders went down and it really threw me off because I’m like, where are those messages? I rely on that. Yes, it’s on the calendar and then I went to my dentist’s office today and yeah, it was fun. And I was I love the text reminders.
6:18:06 – 6:29:24
Alex Nottingham JD MBA
And what’s nice about it is so for the next cleaning to book the instead of having the book, I know I’m going to get a reminder soon to get me to go ahead and comply. So it’s a really.
6:29:25 – 6:38:13
Ryan White
Age old question like, are you available six months from now? You’re like, I have no idea. I don’t even know what I’m doing next week. But you had that expectation like, it’s okay, I’m going to get the text reminder. I can make sure my calendar is free when I get there.
6:38:22 – 7:00:03
Alex Nottingham JD MBA
Yeah, it’s really stressful. That’s interesting. I love to hear Larry’s perspective, our scheduling guru, because it’s all about reducing broken appointments and like booking six months out. It’s so stressful. I don’t know, like you said, I don’t know what I’m doing and then I have to rely on that. But what’s nice with a text message when you’re getting close, then you can adjust and start to to make that movement in that realm.
7:00:23 – 7:03:05
Alex Nottingham JD MBA
What other technological insights do you have?
7:03:28 – 7:21:16
Ryan White
Well, those would be the big ones. But well, you’re also seeing is especially with this market where staffing is getting harder and more challenging, you’re seeing how do people become most efficient in their job. Now, when you talk about the patient experience, I like to brag about dental here because if you go into like your audiology clinic or your I went to the podiatrist recently as well as a chiropractor.
7:21:22 – 7:33:15
Ryan White
Dental has always been very business focused. They have to be in store to stay in business. So one of the ways that they are business focus is they focus on that experience. And when you go into your chiropractor, I went in and I’m still filling out a form, you know, online, I’m not billing online, I’m doing the clipboard.
7:33:15 – 7:46:01
Ryan White
So the first interaction I have when I step into that office and you think is a new patient, I’m walking in, they’re asking who my name is, you know, where I’m, you know what time I have my appointment for. Then I’m filling out the first 10 minutes, filling out this form while I’m sitting in a couch. That is becoming a very outdated experience.
7:46:08 – 7:57:22
Ryan White
And one of the things that you’re seeing is how can we optimize the time that this patient is in the office? So are you using digital form so that when that patients in the office, it’s now a one on one connection? You only have so much time with that patient and you really want to take advantage of that.
7:57:28 – 8:11:17
Ryan White
Having friendly staff that when they come in, they know who they are, they greet them, and instead of just handing them a clipboard and say, Here’s your homework for the next 10 minutes, it’s hey, let’s talk about you. How is your day? Everything’s going. Those are building those human connections that people want. And the medical industry is still catching up in that regard.
8:11:17 – 8:26:22
Ryan White
And dentistry really is leading the forefront of that. But you have that specific digital forms is big. And the other one is on the flip side, can offices, specifically office managers and other people in the front desk are seeing that they have more and more to do now? The problem is when you have more and more to do, but at the same time push the patient experience.
8:26:28 – 8:42:28
Ryan White
You have two different things competing for your time. So what can technology do to help free up time? What can it automate? What can I outsource essentially so that when that patient comes in, I can focus on that one on one time. I’m not just on the phone all the time and then I do a quick like up the doctor’s ready to see you.
8:43:04 – 8:54:19
Ryan White
It’s more of that communication moving on from the next, you know, the front office to the operator. And what can technology do so that I’m not bombarded with a to do list while patients are in my practice?
8:54:19 – 9:10:21
Alex Nottingham JD MBA
That’s very helpful. Well, you have a say on technology. What are some of these technological systems we mentioned? Text messages are a great way. Online scheduling is an option. Now I see some like active and passive online scheduling like passive is you fill out a form and you make requests of where you like to be and more activists.
9:10:21 – 9:13:16
Alex Nottingham JD MBA
You really can block one out. Any comments? It’s a fun.
9:13:16 – 9:34:17
Ryan White
Topic. That’s a fun topic because giving it’s hard to give that power away, to give your patients full control over your schedule. That’s really hard. And a while it’s very convenient for the patient at the same time. Is that optimal for your practice? It may or may not be. And so you do have that passive and active where you can request an appointment and you kind of select a few times and then they get back to you, or you can have that full, you know, just like a restaurant where you actually booked that expected time.
9:34:17 – 9:47:26
Ryan White
And that’s what you plan on coming in. That one’s a hard topic and I think we’re going to get there and it’s going to become more and more active as it gets there with some guardrails. But either way, if you have that ability that gives that patient at least a little bit of power, you’re going to find that you’re going to get those appointments come through much easier.
9:47:26 – 9:59:13
Ryan White
And if they’re booking that appointment themselves, it’s going to be much easier for them to commit to it rather than just in the office, which is obviously important. While they’re in the office, you want to get them to schedule to their next appointment. But giving that power away a little bit will actually empower your office to have a better experience.
01:10:00:18 – 01:10:23:12
Alex Nottingham JD MBA
Excellent. What other technology we mentioned text scheduling are there others that we can use too? Because I look at the patient experience and I look at technology as well. The technology is a way to remove some barriers, some to the patient experience, because what is it? I heard this before, Erica, president of coaching, talked about friction and you want to have a friction less office where there’s not so much friction.
01:10:23:12 – 01:10:33:02
Alex Nottingham JD MBA
Like you mentioned, you went to the chiropractor office and you’re signing forms. That’s friction. There’s all these barriers to get over to get what you need. So how can we reduce friction in an office and improve the patient experience?
01:10:34:01 – 01:10:49:03
Ryan White
A couple of ways. One, you do is there any moments of friction or areas where people are backing out or not completing, for example, forms, etc.? But then the other part is, if you’re going to add a little bit of friction, you have to make sure you add more connection because the more connection you have with a patient, that’s where that friction is no longer an obstacle.
01:10:49:11 – 01:11:06:17
Ryan White
One of the technologies I’m really loving right now is just automation. What can you do as far as can you schedule text messages? Can you schedule messages or create message templates that you’re using over and over again? How do you implement that? And now we’re seeing, you know, some buzzwords, you know, chat GDP. How do you start using other tools to make it so you’re not spending an hour a day trying to craft messages or think about them, but you can do it once.
01:11:06:17 – 01:11:31:28
Ryan White
You can brainstorm, you can use some technology to help that. You can book all your appointments, you know, and get those messages ready and then just schedule them. So that way you have an hour of free time. You can schedule your messages for the whole next week and then it just runs by itself. The big one I’m loving is and this is obviously we’ve as involved with this is insurance verification I’ve had so many interviews with customers where they talk about horror stories of being on hold with insurance companies, you know, 30 minutes, 40 minutes an hour, or even just spending time and time on the website just trying to get all the insurance verified
01:11:31:28 – 01:11:48:02
Ryan White
before the patient comes in the next day. But that is starting to be simplified. We’re starting to get where insurance is, are willing to share information and through integrations, you can actually do some automated insurance verification. And that just flags you on. Hey, I could, you know, verify the insurance, check with the patient or check with the individual provider.
01:11:48:07 – 01:12:00:23
Ryan White
And if you’re freeing up that amount of time so that your front office is not spending four or five hours day, in fact, several offices have an insurance coordinator. If you’re able to free up that time, what you’re able to do is take what can we do with that time? Can that person now start pushing the patient experience?
01:12:00:23 – 01:12:11:13
Ryan White
Can they start developing different marketing ideas? So you’re just redirecting their focus to something that is more productive. And that comes down to the top. Question is, does your office priority is the patient experience? And that starts at the top.
01:12:12:18 – 01:12:44:16
Alex Nottingham JD MBA
I like what you’re saying because there’s fear about a I and a lot of what we’ve does has technology included, right? You you link with their practice management software you’re able to make it more seamless, less friction. There’s reminder processes. And I love what you said. You said what’s great about these technologies is it frees you up to do the soft skills to provide the patient experience because a legitimate excuse says we’re really busy and we’re having to do so much manual labor or insurance verification reminders.
01:12:44:16 – 01:13:05:13
Alex Nottingham JD MBA
And if technology can ease that burden, we have an opportunity to train our office on border office comprehensively. Train, train, iPhone skills on scheduling, on rapport building skills right. Plug for All-Star Dental Academy. Right. Do your online training. But again, I, I think I’m like an excuse buster. That’s probably my SEO aka excuse buster. There’s always an excuse.
01:13:05:13 – 01:13:23:09
Alex Nottingham JD MBA
I can’t train because I don’t have the right people. Well, we help with hiring. We’ll do that. Okay. I can’t train because I’m too busy. Well, get. We’ve to offload a lot of the technology stuff and then start training because that’s where human beings are best utilized. So far, AI and technology has not replaced the warm blooded interaction.
01:13:23:15 – 01:13:44:01
Alex Nottingham JD MBA
I was talking with the hygienist today in my doctor’s office and she was saying that she’s very interested in telemedicine for dentistry. Well, that’s fine to some extent, but you got to probe the teeth. You got to do something with the mouth. It’s different if I have a tummy ache and I can assess. There’s some telemedicine you can do with dentistry, but dentistry is going to be for a while a hands on experience until we have robots that will, you know, go through your mouth.
01:13:44:01 – 01:13:58:21
Alex Nottingham JD MBA
But that’s going to be a while. So the point is. Well, I think here’s another point, though, Ryan, and I think you’re going to be strong on this. And I know you’re a big fan of technology. That’s what your company does. But we can rely too much on technology and say, okay, well, we’ve got to do it all for me.
01:13:58:24 – 01:14:08:16
Alex Nottingham JD MBA
I don’t have to work anymore. I don’t have to give the patient experience or I can go be late. I can, you know, I can sit back and, you know, be lazy or what I say lazy, but complacent is a better word for it. Does that make sense?
01:14:08:26 – 01:14:34:08
Ryan White
Absolutely. I think of it this way and I’m going to borrow a phrase from one of my friends is she talks about paperwork versus paperwork. Technology is going to help you do paperwork. It’s going to help you do tedious tasks or processes. Like when you think about at 20, I talked about this one customer we’re chatting about 20 years ago and they talked about how they used to create customer ledgers and had this giant calendar that spanned four feet that went all across her desk that was paperwork and having digital and technology replaced that is really where it focuses.
01:14:34:08 – 01:14:50:08
Ryan White
And now you can redirect and say what is important paperwork, connection, talking with the patient, selling them, whitening any of these areas where you want to focus on where really are going to have the biggest impact on your business. It’s not like whether or not they got a text message that’s convenient, but ultimately it’s how did they feel when they were in your office?
01:14:50:08 – 01:15:06:20
Ryan White
Which is why I say the patient experience encompasses the whole. But at the same time, a very important part of that whole is what happens when they’re in your office, when you think about what is the biggest commodity in today’s world, it’s people’s time. There is so much they can do with their time. And we have conditioned ourself with, I can do this, I can do that, I can be bingeing a show right now instead of doing this.
01:15:06:25 – 01:15:22:22
Ryan White
Time has become the most valuable resource. And so when you have to have someone set aside their time to come to your practice, they have to feel like it was a value driven activity, that it was something not only beneficial to their health, but it wasn’t a waste of their time. What can you do with your time? If you were given more of it?
01:15:22:22 – 01:15:39:00
Ryan White
How can you redirect that focus towards patients if you’re able if technology is able to do a lot of a tedious task, you can now say with your office and empower your members and your team to brainstorm ways to increase that experience. For example, I have one office that when they’re able to have more time, they are able to diagnose and find these areas to increase the patient experience.
01:15:39:00 – 01:15:52:21
Ryan White
They had one patient that couldn’t go on a trip to Mexico that he talked about previously. Well, because that office had time to connect with them, talk about that history, talked about that vacation. The next time that person came in, which was only a week later, they were able to throw an entire party for everyone. They did margarita mix all day long.
01:15:52:21 – 01:16:07:01
Ryan White
They had Jimmy Buffett, you know, blasting over the radios. This is a very special one on one patient experience that they’re able to share with others. And the reason why they’re able to do this is because they had time to talk to the patient. They had time to really get in and know their experience. And this office has thousands of those stories.
01:16:07:14 – 01:16:17:25
Ryan White
And what drives that is, one, the it’s push from the top patient experience is king. And this needs to be our focus. And two, they actually have the time to really find these opportunities to do that.
01:16:18:27 – 01:16:39:09
Alex Nottingham JD MBA
Wow. I really like it’s always fun meeting new experts out there. People work versus paperwork. I learn something new today. I love that line. In summary, you’re getting rid of some of the paperwork so you can invest in the paperwork. And and like I said before, I think we’re using technology inappropriately when we say we would like it to do both, it will do the paperwork.
01:16:39:15 – 01:17:03:07
Alex Nottingham JD MBA
We then have to use the the people time to get better and use it not as a crutch technology, but as a supporting system, if that makes sense. As a friend to improve the title and the topic of today, the patient experience. Ryan, I really appreciate you being on this podcast and we’re going to have we’ve at our next two that we’re really excited to have and I’m working hard to get Ryan over there as well.
01:17:03:09 – 01:17:18:21
Alex Nottingham JD MBA
I’m sure. Great to have a senior marketer at the event so we can get Ryan. That will be great, but at least we will have we’ve representation. You guys are doing great things in dentistry. We really appreciate you and your time. I’ll put a link in the show notes to get Web.com for those that are interested to learn more about this great tool to help automate your business.
01:17:19:03 – 01:17:38:22
Alex Nottingham JD MBA
And again, thank you, Ryan. And please remember everyone to follow us on Apple Podcasts and Spotify and the more reviews and comments on our show page, and most importantly, the more of you that follow us, the more great content we can make for all of you and your dental buddies in dentistry. Until next time, go out there and be an all-star.
