MGMA Insights: Harnessing AI and Automation for Next-Level Healthcare
Download MP3Hi, everyone. Daniel Williams here, senior editor at MGMA, host of the MGMA Podcast Network. We are back with another MGMA Insights podcast today, and we have a repeat guest. I can't even remember how many times we've had this guest on here, but I'm so happy to welcome back to the show, Jennifer Thompson. Jennifer is chief executive officer of Insight Marketing Group and just a really strong partner with with MGMA, speaking, writing, providing insights, everything you could imagine, own marketing, your medical practice.
Daniel Williams:Jennifer will be speaking at our upcoming MGMA operations conference in Las Vegas, and that's that conference is gonna be March. It's gonna be in Vegas, so it's not too late to sign up for that, everyone. Jennifer's gonna be speaking on the topic of harnessing AI and automation for next level health care. Jennifer, welcome back to the show.
Jennifer Thompson:Thank you so much for having me, Daniel, and I look forward to Las Vegas here in just a month or so.
Daniel Williams:Vegas is a cool place. It's just different than just about anywhere else in the world. And I've got a lot of things to talk to you about, but you have an amazing year coming up. So just share with our audience because a lot of them know you and share a little bit about what you're gonna be doing in the year 2025.
Jennifer Thompson:Yeah. Twenty twenty five is a big year for me. So I'm turning 50. I'm actually turning 50 right around the time that we're gonna be at the conference. So it'll be, like, right in my transitional time.
Jennifer Thompson:And then I'm, headed up in April. I'm gonna make the drive from Florida to Alaska, working, stopping and visiting some clients, working along the way. And then I'm gonna be over at the private practice conference in the fall and then or in the summer, and then I'm gonna head home to Florida in the fall, and then I've got a month in Italy planned for my for my fiftieth year.
Daniel Williams:You and I were talking offline and went, wow. I I got a new job when I turned 50, but I didn't go to Alaska. I didn't go to, Italy for a month. And and then you're traveling by what what did you describe it as?
Jennifer Thompson:Oh, yeah. I have I have an RV. I've I've I've gone up since COVID. I started in a small one, got a bigger one, and a bigger one, and I've got the whole thing decked out with workspace, office space, great Internet. So, know, it should be pretty good.
Daniel Williams:That is so cool. Well, you're you're gonna have to, like we're gonna we're gonna call you occasionally and let you report from the road. It'll be Jennifer Thompson from the road, and you can give a marketing report of what's going on from parts unknown and parts that you, land in. That's so cool.
Jennifer Thompson:Happy to do it. And I will tell you, before we even get started, I have used AI to help me with almost all of my trip planning this year because it's been so easy.
Daniel Williams:Okay. Well, shameless plug, but what AI is your favorite? What's your go to that you use?
Jennifer Thompson:I like them. I like there's quite a few. I like the newer renditions of ChatGPT, but I really prefer to do my research on perplexity and my writing with Claude in Grammarly.
Daniel Williams:Okay. So cool. So cool. Because you're always cutting edge. I mean, when I ask you a question about marketing, I just and I have a degree in marketing, but I never really used it.
Daniel Williams:You know, one of those people that gets the degree, does something completely different. And, I'm just amazed because if I had a medical practice, you're who I would go to to help me market it. Yeah. So the this is the interesting thing because I know you are an innovator and you're on the cutting edge of things. I always know you as my go to person to really map out a plan on how to market that practice, how to, get that retention, how to get branding front and center.
Daniel Williams:But you're speaking on AI. So talk about where you kinda dipped the toe or dove headfirst into the deep end on AI. Tell us about that transformation.
Jennifer Thompson:Well, I feel like it's been a lot of sink or swim. Like, we're all kind of figuring it out as we go. But plain and simple, like, when it comes to marketing, you either get on board the train, the AI train and automation train, or you get left at the station. And so we talk about it kind of twofold. One is we're all burnout.
Jennifer Thompson:Physicians are burnout. Staff is burnout. You know, in fact, like, stat health care stat reports came out with a report a couple weeks ago about AI and and who's gonna be using it. And then the numbers show that almost sixty percent of doctors plan to use AI to deal with burnout and staff shortages, in the next couple of years. And then you couple that with, like, patient experience, which is really what marketing is all about, whether it's, you know, getting the patient or dealing with the patient when they're there or post patient follow-up.
Jennifer Thompson:Well, you know, Press Ganey came out with its new numbers, and 61% of people prefer that digital first experience. And so AI helps kinda solve both of those problems. It says, let's drill with deal with burnout, but let's also deal with, you know, patient experience. AI and automation is kind of that intersection for for everything. So it's like either get on the train or get left at the station.
Daniel Williams:Yeah. Wow. Okay. So how do you see generative AI changing the way practices create content and connect with patients?
Jennifer Thompson:It has completely changed things. So if you think about it and this is what bothers me the most is that for years, all we've done from a marketing perspective, not all, but one of the major focus points from a marketing perspective is just get your practice on the front page of Google. I don't care if you get yourself there because of organic traffic, if you do it through paid search, or if you really focus on, like, reputation and directory listings. Just own that front page. That's been the goal.
Jennifer Thompson:Well, now with AI, we're not using Google like we used to.
Daniel Williams:Yeah.
Jennifer Thompson:In fact, I find myself doing it. I'm going to chat GPT and asking it questions that I would have asked search. And so if you wanna talk about how AI is upending the way we do marketing and from a content perspective, that's the biggest change to me is that when we're writing content, we're having to now optimize for Google or for search, optimize for voice AI, like Alexa or Siri or whatever. And then we're having to optimize for all of, like, the AI snippets that are showing up, you know, through Gemini or through chat GPT or whatever, which means we're having to use AI to help us rank for AI, which is FAQs and things like that. So let me throw out some more acronyms.
Jennifer Thompson:FAQ, AI, you name it. But that's to me, that's, like, the biggest issue is I'm going back retroactively and changing all the content on my client sites
Daniel Williams:Right.
Jennifer Thompson:To be optimized. We optimized years ago for voice. We didn't optimize for this latest change. Okay. And when you're looking at, like, the press gaining numbers from 2023 for their patient experience survey, and you're seeing that Google started losing market share from a search standpoint on where people are finding their doctor, Well, it's that's been accelerated probably tenfold since CHAT g p t came out and all the new renditions of Gen AI came out.
Jennifer Thompson:And so really gonna start paying attention to that, but we can use AI as kind of that assistant, that helper, you know, from a creative creativity standpoint. But there's some real numbers that are impacting the way we market our practices, and I would say that starts with the way that search is happening now.
Daniel Williams:Okay. I've gotta stay with this topic. You're blowing my mind a little bit because we had you write a chapter in the advanced strategies book for medical practice leaders talking about marketing the practice. And I've known you now going on, I don't maybe four, five, six years. It's been a minute.
Daniel Williams:And I'm you exactly what you said is what I have heard from you and from others. Get on that front page of Google. Everything else will figure that out, but you gotta get there so you come up in that search. How if you're saying that people are reaching their doctors or whatever they're doing, you, planning out your travel, whatever it might be, how do you adapt to that then? I'm I'm I'm trying to get my head around it.
Daniel Williams:So how do you live in a we know you get on the front page of Google, but how do you get in the front response or prompt answer of, AI? How do you do that?
Jennifer Thompson:I'm not a %.
Daniel Williams:Okay.
Jennifer Thompson:I can say that our best practice right now is, you can optimize your meta description so that you'll show up when because, basically, AI is a giant search engine. It's just scraping your head. You optimize optimize your meta descriptions. You make sure that your website is, everything's in the form of a question because we're asking in the form of a question.
Daniel Williams:Okay.
Jennifer Thompson:And you need lots of FAQs. So lots of frequently asked questions. So if I go back and say, you know, why does my why does why does my knee hurt, and do I need a a joint replacement? Then I should have an FAQ series on my long form of 20 common questions around joint replacement and knee pain so that I'm showing up on those snippets. And so it's just changed the game.
Jennifer Thompson:We don't even know how reputation and directory listings who are really the way we've been getting to the front page because it's how you get so much juice, how those are gonna be impacted by this either. Either. And so it's all tied together. I mean, right now, it's literally like, hold on because we're getting ready to go on the ride of our life like we were, you know, way back in the day when the Internet just started.
Daniel Williams:Right. That is so interesting. And it's so interesting because at MGMA, we've been sitting here creating 500 page books and 3,000 word articles. And we went, wait a minute. That doesn't mean we quit doing those things.
Daniel Williams:We still have those. But exactly what you're saying, what's a tool? What is a checklist? What is a you name it. Something that is five ways to do this.
Daniel Williams:Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom.
Daniel Williams:And it's not in the way that we used to do it where, oh, it's a listicle or what. Not for that purpose, but we need something that is solution based. And as you're saying, it is being, I guess, the algorithms are picking it up as well or the search engines are picking that up. And is it important to have that terminology FAQ? Is that what it needs to have, or is it serving the purpose no matter what you're calling it?
Daniel Williams:I guess that's what I'm trying to get at. Does nomenclature matter?
Jennifer Thompson:I think it would be serving the purpose no matter what, but just to cover my base, I'm gonna say frequently asked questions.
Daniel Williams:Okay.
Jennifer Thompson:You know, parentheses FAQ. And and I think, you know, it's still too early in the game.
Daniel Williams:Yeah.
Jennifer Thompson:But but I think it always goes back to you know, this is anecdotal, but you just seem to do a great job with everything you do. And you need to do your best and put your best foot forward. You need to have a consistent content strategy, a consistent everything across the board. And, you know, eventually, it's all gonna weed itself out. Because if you've been doing the right thing for ten years as a practice, you're you know, yeah, you're gonna make some tweaks, but you're still gonna show up.
Jennifer Thompson:It's not like somebody who just showed up is gonna surpass you. And so if you've been doing the right thing and being consistent in your marketing, you should be good, but nobody knows what the rule book is right now.
Daniel Williams:Right. Okay. Well, let's let's go to Vegas for a minute, Jennifer. Let's let's go to Vegas because you're gonna be talking about a lot of these topics at our operations conference. This is gonna be so cool.
Daniel Williams:We love that show, and we love Vegas. And so that's gonna be a lot of fun. But just give us a glimpse of maybe the overarching theme of your talk and if you wanna give us a little snippet of a takeaway, some FAQ piece here that we can walk away with.
Jennifer Thompson:Yeah. Totally. So I have brought this talk with I've got tons of real world experience from clients and things from in the trenches, and I always like to go back to some data. So I've taken some, I've taken the most recent patient experience report from Press Ganey and the most recent report, from stat on healthcare care and AI. K.
Jennifer Thompson:And I've looked at the unique challenges that are being presented and the pain points. And then I've taken real world examples of things that you can do today or tomorrow in your practice to specifically address those pain points. So, for example, one of the easiest things that you can do as a practice, is appointment reminders and please start doing online scheduling. We know that sixty one percent of patients want a digital first experience. People want that ability to schedule online.
Jennifer Thompson:And And so I've got some data that I'll show at the conference that it's a practice that I work with who implemented online scheduling, I don't know, three years ago. And in 2024, they saw 41,000 appointments scheduled online, which was a 20% year over year increase. That means 41,000 fewer telephone calls. Wow. So when you talk about burnout being that, like, that talking point, that challenge, AI and automation can solve for it.
Jennifer Thompson:So I hope in that talk at the ops conference in Vegas to really look at what the data is telling us about how people are interacting with their health care providers and then showing through real world examples how we can use AI and automation, not the fancy stuff down the road, but the stuff that's available right now to address those pain points.
Daniel Williams:Okay. For that online scheduling, not to plug a particular product, you can if you want, but is it through the portal? Give us an idea of where this owns online scheduling takes place.
Jennifer Thompson:These guys are doing it through their EHR.
Daniel Williams:Okay. And
Jennifer Thompson:it is not a great solution, but it is a solution. And
Daniel Williams:Okay.
Jennifer Thompson:Everybody has a solution available to them. Sometimes it just feels like too much of a lift, but the data supports going ahead and doing the lift. Another thing that I'm gonna share is I'm going through, I got some use cases on practices and, providers using chatbots to communicate. Not just chatbots to communicate with patients, but chatbots to build a referral relationships to the point that, you can get a chatbot propped up in a matter of a couple of days. And it's easy and it's inexpensive and it's low hanging fruit, but you can put it roll it into a patient, either a patient experience, strategy or you can roll it into a a physician referral strategy.
Daniel Williams:Okay.
Jennifer Thompson:And, you know, it's a different way of looking at it, but AI and automation allows us to go after it and do it very inexpensively. Some solutions are, like, you know, something that, you know, it's daunting, but some are just, like, inexpensive, you know, duct tape solutions, but they work.
Daniel Williams:Mhmm. Yeah. You were talking about chatbots, and one thing that I've noticed is it's not all chatbots are made alike, but I've seen the progression and the evolution of them. Maybe many of our listeners will, be able to, feel this, but my my daughter's in college in California. And, you know, Netflix used to let everybody just share a membership.
Daniel Williams:You know? You just log in, and now you log in that's not your address, and they go, hey. Is this your new address? And so I wanted to make sure she could get it, so I I had to add a family account where it paid a little bit more, but I had to go into a chatbot and talk to it. We talked back and forth by, you know, texting for a couple of questions back and forth, and then it realized it didn't just do the thing where they answer two questions and say, did I answer your question for you?
Daniel Williams:And I'm going, absolutely not. And I wanna throw my computer through the window. It recognized that we had gotten to this endpoint and said, I'm gonna connect you with a human being now, and we're gonna talk that out and get that done. I was just amazed at how much it had evolved. My mind keeps getting blown by the evolution of technology.
Daniel Williams:When you were doing your study and doing the research through Press Ganey and other places, what else has blown your mind, that's going on right now about things or how it's created an entire revolution and an evolution of technology?
Jennifer Thompson:One thing that is blowing my mind is that I've seen some tools recently where AI is your after hours reception or your everyday reception.
Daniel Williams:Okay.
Jennifer Thompson:And AI through voice can have a conversation with the patient, do the entire intake or the scheduling and then the intake process directly tied to the EHR. And in some instances, when care is delivered, like follow-up care, you can bill for it. And so there's companies out there just, like, blowing this up. When you look at, another thing that's just that's getting me is so chat g b t just released some new versions, which includes if you have it on your phone, you can actually have a conversation with chat GBT and strategize. So I do it sometimes in my car, where I'm just talking to chat GBT trying to come up with solutions and then asking it to tell me, you know, what are my competitors doing?
Jennifer Thompson:What is the doctor down the street doing? How could I do this better? Can you provide me some citations? You know, it's a real human experience. So, yeah, I hear you.
Jennifer Thompson:Like, the chatbots have come a long way. They're not perfect because I'm doing one right now. It's a spreadsheet. I enter in questions and answers. The chatbot does it, but at least it goes to the next step, and it is crawling the Internet to also provide solutions.
Jennifer Thompson:And then, like, directories. I always go back to, like, Google directories and, you know, my Google My Business and my Apple pages and my maps and all that. AI is able to cut the time where that used to take maybe a full time person for a large practice
Daniel Williams:Mhmm.
Jennifer Thompson:And make this completely an automated process. Really allowing you to get some good data about your practice, but keeping your listings clean online.
Daniel Williams:Right.
Jennifer Thompson:And we weren't able to do that just a couple years ago.
Daniel Williams:I love that. And this is what I keep hearing, and it's what I'm hearing from you as well. In some cases, it may take the place of some job functions, but I'm not saying the human being because a lot of the stuff that people in health care are doing is this repetitive time based administrative stuff that that's not why they got into health care and they just, I don't wanna be doing this stuff. And if we can utilize these tools to get rid of doing some of the stuff that we don't wanna be doing, and then we can focus on the stuff, one, we're good at, another, that we're passionate about. I want you to talk about that if you'd like.
Jennifer Thompson:Yeah. I so so I have a a good group of employees that work for me. And, you know, a lot of them didn't wanna use AI at all. And I said, look. You know, AI will not replace your job.
Jennifer Thompson:It is it's smart, but it's only as smart as the data that you've got. So use it as an assistant. Use it as a way to be more creative. To me, like, that's the way that we should be leaning into AI. And I just think there's so many opportunities out there for us to take these tools to be better and to do the things that that feed our souls.
Jennifer Thompson:Like, not that not that spreadsheets and analytics is gonna feed your soul, but there's something fun about elevating your math game
Daniel Williams:Yeah.
Jennifer Thompson:By dumping some spreadsheets into some closed loop AI and having it identify the trends for you so that you can dive deep. Mhmm. And then when I'm presenting to the doctors, I can say, well, look at all these trends, and they're escalating to this, and this is where the source was. And that's all AI driven. It just makes your life so much easier.
Jennifer Thompson:When your life's a little easier, it's a lot more fun.
Daniel Williams:It it is. It is so much more fun. So final question here then. If someone's getting started in AI in their marketing, and you may have already answered it, but what's one simple thing they could start doing this week?
Jennifer Thompson:I think if you're gonna do one thing, start with appointment reminders. You know, from a patient experience standpoint, you know, set up an SMS or an email appointment reminders. It's gonna reduce no shows. It's going to help, you know, free up staff. It's gonna lead to a better experience for the patient.
Jennifer Thompson:Even if it's AI sending them that or, you know, an automated message, it's still a thoughtful reminder because, you know, we forget about things.
Daniel Williams:Yeah.
Jennifer Thompson:And then if there's one other thing, get a chatbot on your website. You know, make it make because if unless you're gonna make it so simple to find everything, you know, people are looking for health care after hours, you know, on the weekends, things of that nature. You're not necessarily open. Put a chatbot on there to make it super simple, and you could do that in a matter of a couple days. There's no reason that we shouldn't be doing appointment reminders in chatbots.
Jennifer Thompson:That's just like phase one.
Daniel Williams:Yeah. I love that. Jennifer, I always have so much fun talking to you, so thank you for joining us yet again on the show.
Jennifer Thompson:Thank you, and I will see you in Vegas.
Daniel Williams:I cannot wait. So everybody just Alright, Daniel. Yeah. This has been Jennifer Thompson. She is gonna be speaking at that MGMA operations conference.
Daniel Williams:She's gonna be talking on the topic harnessing AI and automation for next level health care. Her session is gonna be Monday, March 3 in Vegas. So until then, thank all of you for being MGMA podcast listeners.
