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

Bill Klaproth (Host): On this edition of the SHSMD
Podcast, what if you were to take your patient-facing app and use it for your
employees as well, put special content on there and also let them use the
patient-facing tools? How cool would that be? Wouldn't that be easy? You have
this great app for your patients. Why not repurpose it to use it for your
employees as well? Hmm, that's a good idea. Let's talk to Lea Chatham from
Gozio Health about this exact idea. How do you use your patient-facing
technology for your staff? And can it help with staff retention? I bet it can.
Let's get to Lea right. now.

Host: This is the SHSMD Podcast, rapid insights for
healthcare strategy professionals in planning, business development, marketing,
communications and public relations. I'm your host, Bill Klaproth. In this
episode, we talk with Lea Chatham, Vice President of Marketing at Gozio Health
and how to use your patient experience tech to improve staff retention.

This episode is also brought to you by Gozio Health Partners
with health systems to increase consumer engagement using a proven mobile
platform and strategy. For more information, go to goziohealth.com. Lea,
welcome to the SHSMD podcast.

Lea Chatham: Hey, Bill. Thanks so much for having me.

Host: Absolutely. Very interested to talk about how to
use patient experience tech to improve staff retention. So, let's jump into
this. Why should healthcare providers consider using existing patient
engagement technology to improve the experience for staff?

Lea Chatham: Well, you know, it's an interesting thing.
I think what we've realized is that there are some similar problems when you're
looking at patient experience and staff experience in both those cases. You
often have lots of disparate digital tools that aren't always really easy to access
or intuitive, or they're hard to navigate, right? Maybe they've been poorly
communicated and people don't know exactly where they are or how to get them,
how to use them.

And so, we often hear from health systems that what they're
looking to do is streamline, right? They're looking to streamline the amount of
technology they have. They're looking to streamline how people access that
technology, whether that's patients or staff. And they're hoping to be able to
more effectively use one solution for more things, right? Fewer vendors, fewer
technology solutions. Can we squeeze more out of a certain solution to get more
out of it, right?

And so, the way that we've always looked at our platform as a
mobile platform is, "Hey, we can take all those things that are
patient-facing and put them into this platform, make it very easy for patients
to intuitively access all that in one place." And so, we kind of asked
ourselves like, "Could you do that for staff too?" Well, yes. You
know, so I think it was just a way of sort of saying like, "Yeah, I think
you could use some of these same things to get the same better experience,
right?"

Host: So, it sounds like you're kind of repurposing
patient-facing applications and just kind of turning them towards the staff. Is
that right?

Lea Chatham: Yeah, to some degree. I mean, it really is
sort of saying, "Well, if we've done it for patients, we can do it for
staff. We can take all of their digital tools and put those into a single
location too, and make it easy to access from their mobile device."

Host: Absolutely. So, the word of the day is streamline.
So, how would that work then, Lea? Doesn't staff need to log in? So, how do you
do that?

Lea Chatham: So, I think what's interesting about this
use case in particular is we want staff to be able to access all the same stuff
patients can access. Because often, your many thousands of staff in a health
system also are your patients, right? There are tools there like wayfinding
that are useful for everybody. But yes, there are some things that need to be
secured or authenticated into. So, the way we've kind of set it up is it's a
single app and all this stuff is there. And for the things that do need to be
kind of gated, where you need to authenticate in, we can support whatever single
sign-on mechanism the organization is using for that. So you know, that allows
you to put all of that staff-facing digital stuff in there. And when they do
authenticate, now they're able to see both, right? They can see the things that
may be patient-facing and open to everybody, as well as now the things that are
really specific to them.

And every organization is different. So, I think one of the
things we are learning is you really have to do some discovery with each
organization and figure out what tools are they using, you know, how are they
authenticating now, how can you make that work, you know? But interestingly, as
we've seen often on the patient side, hospitals will generally think they're
very unique. Everyone thinks they're very unique. And that's true to some
degree, but the underlying stuff that everybody needs is essentially the same.
So, you may use different vendors and you may even configure some of that
differently. But everybody needs, say, an HR tool or, you know, a time-off tool
when it comes to training tools when it comes to staff. Or on the patient side,
everybody needs appointment scheduling or provider search, right? Who will use
it and how you set it up may vary, but a lot of it is the same stuff. So,
that's kind of what we're seeing, is there's some uniqueness in the way you set
it up, but everybody's doing a lot of the same things.

Host: So once the staff logs in, they can also access
all of the patient-facing tools then?

Lea Chatham: Yes. And I think what's so great about that
is, well, first of all, obviously, like I said, a lot of your staff are
patients too, and they want to be able to schedule appointments and get places.
But we have always heard that one of the great features that staff already
really liked when one of our apps is in place is wayfinding. And the ability to
save your parking spot, things like that that staff use anyway. And we recently
heard from one of our newer clients that they had had a process in place
previously where every new employee sort of shadowed someone for a period of
time to learn their way around their complex facility. And that that was a huge
burden with high turnover and burnout and, you know, lower staffing, and they
were struggling to keep that process in place. And when they added the app and
they had the wayfinding piece, they were suddenly able to say to every new
employee coming in, "You download the app. Here's a list of places you
need to go," like sort of like a game, "Use the app to help you find
all these places over the course of the next week."

Host: Wow, that's interesting.

Lea Chatham: Yeah. They didn't have to pair up an
existing staff person and pull that person off of their rotation to train
somebody how to get around. So, we know that staff were already using some of
these tools. So, it was good to be able to say, "Hey, it's one app and you
can now use it for both things. You can use the patient-facing stuff, you can
use the staff-facing stuff, right?" We're just going to try to make as
many things as possible easily accessible.

Host: So for the lack of wayfinding or confusion on how
to find things that was causing staff turnover or new employees to say,
"I'm out. It's still confusing. I can't find my way around this
place."

Lea Chatham: You'd be surprised. I mean, I don't know
that I could officially publicly say it's a cause of turnover, but I can say
it's a complaint. It is certainly something people struggle with, especially
given how many health systems have been growing and merging and adding new
buildings, whether they're building onto existing facilities or buying new
facilities. I remember last fall being at a conference and somebody saying, you
know, he was a provider and his health system had bought a new hospital and
they were sort of moving their staffing around and people were really
struggling. People who'd been at one hospital for a long time, now being
staffed over to another facility they weren't familiar with at all. And it was
causing a lot of frustration and burnout, just trying to find their way around
in a new facility, but working for the same organization they've been working
for for years. Yeah, it can be very frustrating.

Host: And that's kind of my point, I could see where
that would turn somebody off. I've been in that situation where I've had to go
to the doctor at a new place in a major healthcare system. You don't know what
parking lot to go to. There's 20 different doors to go in. Once you get in,
it's a maze of hallways. What floor? And you're going up, how do I find this?
Where is this doctor's office? So, I could see where that is a major problem.
And wayfinding, although it sounds simple, like, "You mean you can't find
where you're going?" But yes, it can be frustrating.

Lea Chatham: It can be very complicated. You know, we
have clients who have facilities that are several square blocks large. And the
ability to be able to say, "I'd just way find me to this place," and
it takes you to the right parking garage and it marks your parking spot, that's
something patients and staff, I think, really benefit from.

And the other piece of that, and the thing that we see in terms
of benefit to staff, even before we ever started looking at putting staff tools
into the app, was prior to COVID, everyone would say to staff, "If you see
someone who looks lost or you see someone who looks confused, stop and talk to
them and find out where..." Then, COVID comes and everybody wants this
very touchless experience and, you know, you're trying not to sort of interact
with people as much and you want people to be able to find their way around.
And so, there was a real benefit to having wayfinding and staff could say,
"Here, you can download our app." And there were signs in the
facilities and, you know, those kinds of things.

Then, we saw huge burnout and turnover in staff and now, it's
like you don't have enough staff to spend that much time walking people around
your facility to where they need to go, right? So, there's a benefit in terms
of sort of taking some staff burden off by making sure everybody has access to
those wayfinding tools as well, right? There's just not enough time in the day
for the staff to do what they need to do separate from that, right?

Host: So true. Well, that totally makes sense to me as
one thing that would turn off potential brand new employees. What else about
having an app for the staff? How can that also be the answer to any staff
retention problem someone might be facing?

Lea Chatham: We were looking at recent research to try
to understand what can impact staff retention. And Qualtrics actually has sort
of a worldwide study that they do on staffing and staff experience. And what
they found was that in areas where there's a sort of high disengagement, high
burnout, high turnover, some of the solutions were pretty simple. Really, what
staff had to say was we sure would like it to be just a little bit easier to
access the tools we need at work. We would just like some of the processes to
be simpler and more streamlined. There was some feedback that, you know, it
would be nice to have better things like recognitions and rewards. And these
are all things obviously you can do on mobile, right? Mobile is kind of where
people are. Everyone has a mobile device. And we do hear different health
systems have different ways of dealing with mobile access. Some allow people to
use their own devices. Some have work devices and personal devices and there's
different things and everybody has to kind of address that. But it's a lot
easier than having to go find a laptop and log in to stuff, right? And a lot of
people are on-the-go all the time and there's not necessarily easy access
everywhere all the time to laptops and other devices. So, I think, you know,
what we're seeing is even just that little bit of improvement, "Hey, all
your stuff is kind of accessible through here. And, you know, as we continue to
build that out and sort of grow the functionality, just getting feedback and
seeing where can we make additional improvements, what else would be helpful, a
small change can make a big difference if really all you're looking for is to
make things just a little bit easier in healthcare, which is, frankly,
everything is really hard all the time.

Host: Yeah. So by removing friction to help them perform
their job better or access things easier, or to be able to save time, that can
be really important. So, it sounds like you're able then to add staff-only
content to the app as well. Is that right?

Lea Chatham: Yeah. And so, I think that's the thing, you
already want your staff to download your app and be showing patients how to use
it. So, having one app that they've already downloaded often is nice because
now you're just saying, "Now, you can go here and do your sign-on and get
your other stuff, your staff-specific stuff," you know? That way, you don't
have to create another app. You don't have to download more apps. You're just
adding to your existing app, which is nice.

Host: So, could you put messages from leadership on
there? Here's happening with our latest capital campaign or lookout. We're
going to start construction on a new wing, or this parking lot is down for
resurfacing. Can you put those types of news items for the staff on the app?

Lea Chatham: Yeah. You can do all those things. And
that's, I think, one of the nice things. And it's funny you bring up the
parking piece because you can also close parking lots and close off doors and
do other things in the back end of the wayfinding. So, people won't be directed
there in the first place, but you can do push notifications, you can do banner
ads, you can link out to any kind of tool. So, everyone hates it when I say
this, but it's really only limited by your imagination when you have a mobile
foundational sort of platform like this, you can plug in anything that has an
API or that you can link out to so you can really provide any tool and, at the
same time, you can customize it so that you can communicate information very specifically
just to staff in the same way you would with patients. You can use the mobile
app to do that with patients as well, do banner ads or push notifications or,
you know, geofencing, things like that, which actually I think is one of the
nice things, the ability to sort of geofence into a specific hospital. So, you
may be a large health system with multiple hospitals, you can geofence specific
tools and communications to a specific location.

Host: Wow, that's pretty impressive. So, it sounds like
you're doubling the use of the app.

Lea Chatham: That's our hope. I mean, our hope is that
because a lot of organizations are already asking their staff to download their
existing mobile app so that they can help support getting that out to patients,
it's just one app. You're not asking staff to download another app for them,
right? Everybody's on the same one, and that means that you're getting tens or
hundreds of thousands of patients on there. You're getting, you know, hopefully
thousands of staff on there. Everybody's just on one app and everything is
there.

Host: Wow. It really is kind of a no-brainer if you
think about it. Lea, thank you for your time. Is there anything else you want
to add as we wrap up?

Lea Chatham: Yeah, I mean, I think I would just say the
goal really should be, I think for health systems who have so much technology
and so much going on, to try to look for ways, to reduce the number of vendors,
reduce the amount of technology. And sometimes, really just a small impact can
make a big difference when you're looking at something like this sort of crisis
in staff burnout and staff turnover. The numbers there are huge right now, 25%
turnover in healthcare, it can be up to a million dollars to replace a single
provider. It's costing three to six million a year for large health systems and
nurse turnover. Those numbers are enormous. So, just that small extra effort of
making things just a little bit simpler, even a little impact could make a big
dent in that, right? And their experience and just improving how they feel
about their job, but also when we're looking at that bottom line. So like you
said, I think it is a no-brainer because even a small change could have a
pretty big effect.

Host: Very well said and better communication always
helps an organization. No matter what you do, who you are, communicating better
always helps. So if you're able to communicate better through an app through
the phone, which everybody's got with them all the time, you know, it just
makes sense.

Lea Chatham: We like to think so.

Host: For sure. Well, Lea, this has been fascinating
talking about the usage of a patient-facing app for the staff. So, really
interesting stuff. So, thank you so much for your time. We really appreciate
it.

Lea Chatham: And thank you so much for having me, Bill.

Bill Klaproth (Host): And once again, that is Lea
Chatham. And this episode is brought to you by Gozio Health Partners with
health systems to increase consumer engagement, using a proven mobile platform
and strategy. For more info, go to goziohealth.com. And if you've found this
podcast helpful, and how could you not, please share it on all of your social
channels. And please hit the subscribe or follow button to get every episode.
And remember to join us at SHSMD Connections 2023, September 10th through the
12th in Chicago, Illinois. Register at shsmd.org/education/annualconference.
This has been a production of DoctorPodcasting. I'm Bill Klaproth. See ya!