Transcription:
Gen X’s Crucial Role in Healthcare

Intro: The following SHSMD Podcast is a production of DoctorPodcasting.com

Bill Klaproth: On this edition of the SHSMD Podcast, so riddle me this, what does Madonna, Miami Vice, The Breakfast Club and the Reagan Years all have to do with this podcast? Hmm. Think about it. Think about it. Yeah, that's right. We're talking about generation X with Alan Shoebridge, Dean Browell, and Dan Miers. And we're going to discuss their new book, Don't You Forget About Gen X: One Generation's Crucial Role in Healthcare. Yeah. Gen X in healthcare. We're going to talk about it coming up, right now.

This is the SHSMD Podcast, Rapid Insights for healthcare strategy professionals and planning, business development, marketing, communications, and public relations. I'm your host, Bill Klaproth. And with me is SHSMD board members, Alan Shoebridge, Alan is the Director of Marketing for Salinas Valley Memorial Healthcare System; Dean Browell, Dean is the Executive Vice President and Head of Research at the Feedback Agency; and Dan Miers, Dan is the Chief Strategy Officer for SPM.

And we're going to talk demographics. What makes Gen Xers tick, strategies for engagement and how Gen Xers relate to their generational neighbors, the Boomers and the Millennials. And for more information on all of this, you can check out their new book, Don't You Forget About Gen X: One Generation's Crucial Role in Healthcare. It's available now at amazon.com,

Alan, Dean and Dan, welcome to the SHSMD podcast. As you know, we start every episode of the SHSMD podcast with Rapid Insights. One quick tip someone can use to make their marketing communications better today. Alan, you're up first. Give us your rapid insight.

Alan Shoebridge: Well, thanks. You know, since we're talking about generations today, one thing marketers and communications should be really thinking about is how to target people in their life stage, what matters to them and why it's important. And we're going to talk about Gen X today, but that's what all marketers should think about, what is their audience, what matters to them, where they are in their life stage. That's really the most important thing when you think about reaching out to your target audiences,

Bill Klaproth: Yep. That makes sense. All right. Dean, you're up. Give us your rapid insight.

Dean Browell: Yeah. Just to speak of Gen X, just that don't think of them as being cynical, rather than think of them as being skeptical.

Bill Klaproth: Okay. And Dan, wrap it up for us. What is your rapid insight?

Dan Miers: I just think it's really important to keep in mind that this is a really rich, diverse generation. They’re the most likely generation to be married, the most likely generation to have kids, the most likely generation to have a household income greater than a hundred thousand dollars a year. And they're also the most likely generation to worry about how they'll take care of themselves and their health as they get older.

Bill Klaproth: And that is your Rapid Insight. Alan, Dean and Dan, thank you very much. And all of those rapid insights relate to our topic today as we talk about Generation X and healthcare. So Alan, the generation of the Big '80s and Ferris Bueller's Day Off and The Breakfast Club, they're all grown up now and coordinating care for their own children, personally dealing with their own aging and dealing with the increasing health needs of their parents. So what of this generation, what makes Generation X tick? What don't we know about Generation X that we should?

Alan Shoebridge: Well, that's a great question and you mentioned some of my favorite movies, so those are still great ones to watch today if you're a catching up and you're socially distancing and isolating. And so, as a generation and I think this came up in the Rapid Insights, but really thinking about where Gen X is right now and what makes them tick is that they are often called slackers, they're called cynical. And really when you think about how to reach them and get in touch with them, the best way is to really think about what they're looking for.

So they're in that lifestyle right now or that life stage right now of having to coordinate their own care, having to coordinate the care of their children and their parents. And what really works for that audience is to give them good information. And we talk about that audience and Gen X as being not cynical, but more of skeptics and having to give them good information.

So, we need evidence. It's not enough to tell them that, "Well, this healthcare system or this hospital is the best." "What makes it that way? What is the evidence? Let me think about things and let me process them." That's really helpful. And I think one thing that also often gets misconstrued or is maybe not looked at enough is how loyal Gen Xers can be. So with Gen Xers, you know, it takes a little bit of extra work to get them to make a decision, to win them over, but once you do that, they can be really loyal to a plan of action. They can be really loyal to a hospital or a doctor or a health system.

So I think that's what I would encourage people most when I'm thinking about this audience. The life stage they're in is a time where they're making a lot of decisions. You have an opportunity to wield some influence with that group. And so provide them good information, provide them things that they can make good choices based on evidence. And then once you do that, you'll probably be rewarded with a really good consumer that you can have a great relationship with over a long period of time.

Bill Klaproth: Yeah. When I think of Gen X, loyalty isn't the first thing I think of, but as you explain it, it really kind of makes sense. And another thing we need to remember is think skeptical, not cynical. So Dan, Gen X-ers, their ages now are between 40 and 55. So their window of influence and importance is going to be at its true peak for the next 10 to 15 years. So this is a generation we all need to pay attention to. So, this really is an important target audience for healthcare marketers, communicators and planners. Is that right? That's the way we should be thinking about this?

Dan Miers: Absolutely. And it's a great way to think about it. Research that was published looking at claims data across a huge cohort of people show that between the ages of birth and childhood and 40, we only spend about 16% of all the dollars that we're going to spend on healthcare in our entire life. And then once we cross 40, from about 40 to 64, we spend about 25% of all the money that is going to be spent on us in healthcare in our life. And then it only takes off from there.

That's really important for two reasons. One is that, of course, we're making decisions for ourselves about care needs we have right now. That 25%, that big escalation in dollar spending. We didn't spend anything for the first 40 years and now we're starting to make decisions. The second thing is we're starting to form opinions and beliefs about healthcare, how to engage with the healthcare system and how to really make long-term choices about our healthcare.

So we're at that prime influence state in our lives when we reach that age group. And right now those are Gen Xers, who are in the heart of that curve, really forming the attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors that will become the foundation of their healthcare-buying decisions for the rest of their lives.

The other thing I would add to that is we also see from research that our firm has conducted is that when you look at the generations preceding and following Gen X, we'll see that there's a huge jump in self-reported diseases like arthritis, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and the emergence of type two diabetes. So a lifetime of habits are just beginning to rear their head and influence and move themselves to the front of that Gen X generation's mind as it relates to "Wow, I really need to be paying more attention to my health."

Bill Klaproth: So that makes a lot of sense. And you said, Gen Xers are trying to figure out how to engage with the healthcare system. So Dean, we as healthcare marketers, how should we approach trying to engage with Gen Xers? What is the right marketing stance to take?

Dean Browell: Yeah. Well, I think building on what my coauthors have said, I mean, part of it is just really understanding who it is that you're speaking to and understanding that they kind of come at things a little bit differently than everyone else does.

So I think being prepared for, I think as Alan said, their level of skepticism, I think is important, because that means that they're going to want a certain amount of transparency. They also want to see, and I think this is important to have in your messaging towards Gen Xers, they like seeing the logic, they like moderation as well. And I think part of it that they're really looking for, and I think this is something that a lot of people feel, I think always ends up projecting too far much younger, I think generationally, but Gen X really likes the peer endorsement angle as well. And I think that's even true in terms of online and reliance on reviews.

So I think really understanding what the power of a testimonial, not a cheesy one, but a testimonial that really, you know, opens up a bit and shows you what someone went through. That would potentially be very powerful for Generation X and showing that kind of transparency and that logic, that's how you'll get to that loyalty marker. They're not going to give it freely. But if you can sort of show them the expertise, show them that people like them has made that same decision to go to you, that's been important kind of marketing angles to give that you might not normally think of when you think of Gen X, but it can really lead towards some really important loyalty.

Bill Klaproth: Right. So Gen X is sometimes is called the forgotten generation. The two generations around them are bigger. And as you talked about using the words like people think they're cynical. So Gen X is finally having their moment. Alan, is Gen X ready for this? I mean, finally their time has come. Are they ready for this? Tell us about that.

Alan Shoebridge: Well, you know, on one hand, probably not. I aged in and I'm a Gen Xer, I mean, nobody wants to really start consuming more healthcare, right? So it's not someone sits around and says, "Well, I can't wait till I turn 40 or 50 and I have to have those regular colonoscopies," no one's sitting around saying that.

So on the one hand, it's like, "No, do we want to age into this?" "No, we didn't?" "Are we prepared and doing a good job?" Yes, I think we are rising to the challenge of really tackling our own healthcare, the healthcare of our parents, the healthcare of our children. I mean, we're doing that. We're there. And again, I don't know if anyone ever really wants to be there, but that's where we are.

I would say one other kind of thing that's been sort of funny on some degree. Obviously as we've, dealt with coronavirus, the pandemic, there's been so many unfortunate things from that. But as we watched Gen X kind of get recognized again, of like, this is the generation that was sort of prepared to hunker down, to prepare to get people to take things seriously. And it's been kind of interesting to see so many stories of Gen X having to reign in their parents and say, "Hey, mom and dad, don't leave the house. Don't go visit people you don't know," having sort of the same conversations with teenage children and things like that.

So as the generation was very kind of self-sufficient growing up, you know, that's really benefited I think from the generation's attitude to the pandemic, especially when you look at comparison to some of the other generations that sandwich us. So I think we were prepared for the moment we're doing a good job in the moment. But on the other hand, I don't think we're ever ready to really accept the fact that, yes, we're getting older and we're going to start using a lot more healthcare.

Bill Klaproth: Right. So that was an interesting point talking about how Gen Xers relate to their parents. So Dean, how do Gen Xers then relate to their generational neighbors, the Boomers and the Millennials. They're sandwiched right in between. How do they deal with both of those other generations?

Dean Browell: We're sandwiched between two noisy behemoths of generations that have been overwritten about. And I think there's two ways to look at it. One is how we act in the workplace. And I think that's really important, especially for healthcare to understand how you're supposed to interact and how to appreciate what each generation brings to the table.

And the main thing with Gen X is understand how independent they are. They're kind of allergic to the endless meetings that they feel they were often subjected to, especially by generations older than them. And at the same time, they also reject this notion that more hours in the office equals more productivity, that there's an idea of you work smarter. And they really want to fight for and retain that work-life balance. I know that gets put on millennials, like they invented work-life balance, but Gen X really sort of took it partly as a course correction from what they felt with the Boomers.

So I think workplace-wise, they can be way more independent and, while they sometimes can come off as curt, I believe, is generally speaking towards this idea of working smarter. Now, in terms of in generally, I think that the good news is if it is a Gen Xer who might be having a new baby. I'm a Gen Xer who had a baby last year. And when we looked at reviews from whether it’s looking for an OB-GYN, whether it's looking for a place to deliver at, we're looking at reviews that maybe have been written by Millennials. And that's where that life stage is important because we could be influenced by the other generations just fine.

What's important to keep up with is that we're also in this incredibly mixed area by being by this triple threat, I'll just take myself as a complete unicorn example. I'm a Gen Xer married to a millennial. I have a 16-year-old Gen Z daughter and I have a one-year-old that's from a generation that's to be named. I'm an only child, so I'll be caring for my aging Boomer parents. So I mean, many times Gen X truly is a bit stuck. And so they have to relate to all the generations in a way that a lot of other generations don't necessarily have to right now. And so I think they're kind of having to act like the great translators often between generations as well.

Bill Klaproth: It sounds like they're in a position, Gen Xers, where they kind of pull from the Boomers and from the Millennials, right? Dean, is that kind of how that works?

Dean Browell: I think they both pull from them, but then they also want to perfect from them. They want to course correct. And they want to say, "Okay, you know what? You're right about that. But here's how I'm going to apply that in our situation." So they can end up being way more unique, I think, than we sometimes give them credit for. But you're absolutely right. They look to both, but I think they're the ones who then go, "Okay, let's make it our own."

Bill Klaproth: I love this topic. I think it's going to be eye-opening for a lot of healthcare marketers, because I think Gen X probably has flown a bit under the radar. So this book is going to be really important.   Well, the book is called Don't You Forget About Gen X: One Generation's Crucial Role in Healthcare available at Amazon.com right now. Alan, Dean and Dan, thank you so much for your time. We appreciate it.

Alan Shoebridge: Thanks, Bill.

Dan Miers: Thank you.

Dean Browell: Thank you for the opportunity.

Bill Klaproth: Once again, our thanks to our board members, Alan Shoebridge, Dean Browell and Dan Miers. The book is called Don't You Forget About Gen X: One Generation's Crucial Role in Healthcare available now at Amazon.com.

And to learn more about SHSMD, please visit SHSMD.org. And please subscribe to this podcast and visit our education page to learn about our upcoming programs at SHSMD.org/education. And if you found this podcast helpful and as always, come on, how can you not? Please share it on all of your social channels. We would appreciate it. This has been a production of DoctorPodcasting. I'm Bill Klaproth. See you!