In this week’s episode, we’re joined by Jeremy Rogers, Executive Director of Digital Marketing and Experience at Indiana University Health, who brings nearly nine years of experience at the organization and a deep understanding of the evolving healthcare marketing landscape. We dive into a critical challenge many marketers face today: demand for healthcare services sometimes exceeds supply, requiring a strategic shift.
Key Discussion Points:
- Evolving Marketing Priorities: Marketing’s traditional focus on acquiring new patients has evolved due to longer wait times for patients. Marketers now need to balance patient acquisition and managing patient expectations.
- Redefining the Marketer’s Role: Today, marketers must continuously reassess their role and be the voice of the patient within their organizations. This means advocating for patient needs and adjusting messaging and tactics to align with new realities.
- Building Internal Relationships: Successful marketers work closely with operations, scheduling, and other internal teams to optimize every touchpoint along the patient journey—from appointment scheduling to post-care follow-up.
- Navigating Hybrid Work: Balancing in-person and remote work is essential for building strong internal relationships, especially with leaders and operational teams who are often on-site.
- Data-Driven Strategies for High Demand: Understanding access metrics and focusing on areas where patient care can be optimized is key to navigating the current challenges.
Connect with Jeremy:
Connect with Jenny:
- Email: jenny@ec2-3-80-87-79.compute-1.amazonaws.com
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jennybristow/
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Jenny: [00:00:00] Hi friends. Welcome to today’s episode of We Are, Marketing Happy a healthcare marketing podcast. My name is Jenny Bristow. I am your host and I’m also the CEO and founder at Hedy & Hopp, a full service, fully healthcare marketing agency. And today I am super excited to have a special guest on today. We have Jeremy Rogers.
He is the Executive Director of Digital Marketing and Experience at Indiana University Health. Welcome Jeremy.
Jeremy: Hi, Jenny. Happy to be here.
Jenny: Yeah. So I’m really jazzed to have you on today. I’ve been following you on LinkedIn for some time and really respect the work that you’ve done. You have been at Indiana University Health for almost nine years.
So you’ve been through and seen a lot of the shifts in healthcare marketing and the different ways marketers have had to pivot as far as digital becoming more important and the privacy becoming more important. And what I’m excited to chat about with you today is a lot of my podcast episodes have been around the [00:01:00] conversation of driving patient demand, but sometimes demand far exceeds supply.
And so marketing’s role in that case really shifts. We’re still very important in the conversation, but it isn’t about driving patients. So I’d love to start off this podcast, just getting a little bit of insight from you about what are you seeing with that shift? How is that impacting you and your role within your organization?
Jeremy: Yeah, it’s a super important topic. You know, I think you’re spot on. I mean, I can think back, you know, my career here at IU health is basically split in half by the pandemic thinking back in the good old days, pre COVID. The top of the funnel was wide open. Everyone was focused on acquiring net new patients.
You know, it’s low acuity, primary care, urgent care, fill the funnel, you get downstream revenue. That’s the classical model. Well, the reality is in this post pandemic world, it’s super duper uneven. I mean there are many parts of the country where access and you can [00:02:00] define access many different ways.
I don’t want to quibble over that. But it takes a lot longer for a patient to receive care today than it did, say, four or five plus years ago. And so, the impact of that, the trickle down of that, I think is being felt in different waves across the country. You know, a lot of our work back in the day was heavily focused on primary care.
That was the quote unquote loss leader. You attract a patient, you get your hooks into them, you build loyalty, you get a referral, they have a procedure, a screening, what have you, and then magic happens from there. Well, the reality is today, for a typical primary care provider, you may not be able to get in for two weeks if you are lucky.
And so in terms of what that does with the customer journey, the way people come in and out, the way people are leveraging urgent care or quick care or virtual care. As proxies or alternatives [00:03:00] to receiving care and the impact that has on their lifetime value their brand affinity for a health system is just totally different now than it was.
So again, super duper important topic.
Jenny: Absolutely. So what is marketing’s role in this new ecosystem? Right? Like the brand hat, we have the brand hat, we have the communications hat, the digital hat, technology, we have all these hats we’re supposed to wear. What is our day to day look like when this is the scenario?
Jeremy: Yeah, I wish I had an easy answer for that. I do not. I’m sure people much smarter than me have figured it out. I think the short answer is it depends on who you are, where you’re at. And I think it, it varies day by day. I believe, you know, a progressive marketer nowadays is really reevaluating the value they add in terms of the pay, you know, how are they representing the patient, representing their organization.
At the core, a marketer should be the voice of the customer. Like, what are you representing there [00:04:00] internally? So in terms of the collaborations we are having across your systems, whether it’s operationally medical groups you’ve got to be at the table speaking up about what customers expectations are, because that’s what pains me the most is even in my own family.
There are people who just don’t understand. You know, if you have to go to an emergency department today, it’s not a great experience. You’re oftentimes waiting for hours and hours. And I don’t think a lot of consumers around our country have embraced that similar with like primary care. I mean, I told my own mom a few days ago, you may want to book your wellness visit a little bit earlier this year, because it’s going to take you longer.
Like I can tell you personally, I’ve got one booked out over a year from now because I know you just can’t get in like you used to. So just the small things and big things like that’s where I think marketers have to play.
Jenny: Oh, Jeremy. First of all, I do too. I book my annual when I’m at my annual. So I aligned with you because I understand how the world works now.
Jeremy: Very smart. Yes. [00:05:00]
Jenny: But so if we’re thinking about that, then it’s more about you know, loyalty, current customer engagement, proactive communication about service line availability, et cetera. So then building relationships with other teams within your organization is super important. What are some of the departments within your organizations that you’ve become good friends with?
Jeremy: Yeah, so I would say almost all of them is the reality and maybe not good friends, but like bigger edging, like we’re frenemies maybe potentially but heavy on the operations access side and it depends on how the different orgs are structured, but folks who run your scheduling teams, whether it’s the call center or the front desk, you’ve got to be plugged in with them.
In our case, we have a very strong medical group presence. The medical group is heavily involved in that. They’re the ones who are handling patient throughput, even new provider recruitment, because you think about the supply demand piece, you got to be involved there too. All the way down to registration, like what is the, you know, look across the [00:06:00] customer journey.
It’s not just the care continuum, it’s the pre and post piece. You’ve got to be plugged in across that entire continuum.
Jenny: Yep. Absolutely. I’m going to ask a question that may be controversial for some folks. What’s your thought about working from home when you’re needing to actually develop friendships?
Because I’ll tell you a lot of our clients, we work with systems across the country. A lot of them are still working from home. We have some folks that maybe they go in a day or two a week. I mean, how realistic is it to be able to really work from home primarily or exclusively and then also still be developing these relationships?
Jeremy: No, I’m with you. I’m not a purist. I think it’s a bit of both. I think in my experience, the average academic health system in our country is still fairly conservative. You’ve got a lot of people, whether it’s leadership or operational people, they’ve been in person. Forever. They never stopped being in person.
So I think we, you have to show up where they’re at. So, you know, for example, my team, most of my [00:07:00] team is largely hybrid. They’re not in person very often. Me personally, I’m on average in the office maybe four days per week because I want to be able to bump into those leaders in the hallway, the break room in the elevator.
But that’s just my style. I think you have to kind of, you know, have a pace and show up where people are at basically.
Jenny: I completely agree with you. I definitely think that’s really important to building that community where people are wanting to collaborate and work together. So if I were a listener were a marketer in a hospital system, and they’ve been really primarily focused on driving patient volumes, and they’re starting to see maybe they need to stop driving volumes because appointments are too far booked out, and they haven’t yet developed these relationships, and they don’t really understand what scheduling looks like.
Do you have a couple of tips or starting points for them with some activities that they could do to kind of start wrapping their arms around what their own situation [00:08:00] is within their system?
Jeremy: Sure. So I think if they don’t already get to know the people who produce the reports, like get into the data because they’re there.
I guarantee you, if you don’t have it already, there’s some people in your organization who have the data that would show you. They may look at things like next available or median lag, whatever the measure your system uses to quantify access. You need to understand that. That’s the first step. Once you get there, it’s really drilling into it because, you know, I mentioned earlier, it’s hot and cold, right?
I guarantee you, you still have some access. There are probably some service lines or individual services where you have decent access. It may not be the ones where you want them to be. They may not be super strategic, but you’ve got to know, like, what is the current state? Once you get that, then what is your planning cycle?
Whether it’s brand planning or service line planning. You probably want to focus your time, energy and resources on those areas where you have [00:09:00] a good shot at getting a patient in within a reasonable expectation. You probably want to double down in those areas. And I think conferences I’ve been to in recent months, I still hear people talking too much about casting a broad net.
I worry people are wasting their time. They’re wasting their money and their finite resources on promotion or campaigns or just efforts that don’t have a chance in heck of actually resulting in a booked appointment because there just isn’t access. I see too much of that.
Jenny: Yeah, I, that’s an excellent point.
I mean, one of our best practices as an agency is whenever we are running patient acquisition campaigns, there’s a multi multiple times a week, we’re talking about available appointments and what locations do we need to pause? What locations can we double down on budget? So if you as an organization either manage your own media or have a third party, definitely incorporating something basic like that as a starting point can make sure that your spend is allocated appropriately.
Jeremy: Because most people probably [00:10:00] don’t have bigger budgets now. So you want to make sure you’re being smarter with the money you have. And this is a really good way to do it.
Jenny: Absolutely. Awesome. Well, Jeremy, this has been so helpful. And I think really gives folks an alternative way to think about their role as marketers in the shifting landscape.
So thank you for your time today. I’ll be putting Jeremy’s LinkedIn link in the show notes. So if you want to connect with him and ask any follow up questions that will be available. Otherwise, thank you so much for tuning in today. Be sure to like, and subscribe, and we will see you on a future episode of We Are, Marketing Happy.
Thanks, friends.
