Using AI to Reduce Friction in the Healthcare Patient Journey

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success): Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Healthcare Success Podcast. Today, it is my pleasure to welcome Sandra Mackey, who is Chief Marketing Officer of of Bon Secours Mercy Health. Welcome, Sandra.

Sandra Mackey (CMO, Bon Secours Mercy Health): Thank you, sir. It’s very nice to be here. I really appreciate the invitation.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success): I’m really excited about doing this with you. And I think we’re going to have a really intriguing discussion today.

So today we’re going to talk about AI, not that anybody else is talking about AI these days.  But, you know, Sandra, it’s really funny. I just got interviewed our agency’s celebrating our 20^th anniversary, and I just got interviewed about that. And then we talked about half the interview was about AI. It’s just that pervasive, right?

After 20 years, nothing has impacted marketing more than the rise of AI since the early 2000s when Google first came on the scene.

I’m curious, do you feel the same way from some of the things you’re watching?

Sandra Mackey (CMO, Bon Secours Mercy Health): Oh, great intro, Stewart. Thank you so much. And yes, yes, and yes.

You know, the title of this podcast is, “Did Somebody say AI?” Well, actually, yes, Everybody is saying AI. Everybody’s talking about it. Everybody is looking to explore the capabilities of AI.

So you can hardly touch anything in our environment these days without running up against the conversation of AI in some way, shape, or form.

You know, it takes me back and you think about the journey that we’ve been on throughout history, right? There are some pivotal moments in history that are just game changers in terms of how they reshape our history and how we think about different technologies.

I go as far back as thinking about decades and decades ago. People used to use a broom to sweep up and clean their houses, and  here they are, they’re using a broom to clean their houses, and off they go.

And then came along the vacuum cleaner, which revolutionized the way that people clean houses and think about cleaning houses.

Fast forward, look at then the seatbelt, right? The seatbelt not only changed the way that people think about safety and driving a car. It revolutionized the entire industry because then you thought about a seatbelt as a mechanism for safety in all forms of transportation, including airplanes, right?

This is one of those pivotal moments, the introduction of Google and the Internet, pivotal moments in our history that changed the way that we think about our history, technology. And once you cross that threshold, there’s virtually no turning back, right? We don’t undo. We don’t unlearn all of those things that have shaped our history going forward. We continue to optimize and revolutionize all of those things.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success): Yeah, I totally agree. Like I said a moment ago, it is the most impactful thing I’ve seen since really Google. When that Google came out, we were at the front end of that.

In 2006, it was around, but not like it is today. And it was fun to be part of that. And we would go out to these conferences and be at Google headquarters and meet the engineers. And there used to be a party called Google Dance, by the way, which is really fun.

But since then, it kind of matured over the last 20 years. And it hasn’t been as innovative. And it’s been, you know, changes in progress. But this is everything is, the toy box is upside down. Everything has changed. And we have to make a whole new world.

So let’s talk about your life right now. In terms of AI, like what role is it play in helping you anticipate consumer needs rather than just simply reacting to them? Because you’ve had some experience in this category.

Sandra Mackey (CMO, Bon Secours Mercy Health): Sure, absolutely. You know, what I’ll say is that obviously AI has become a central part of the conversation across healthcare. And, you know, at a high level, what I would say is that AI has really helped us to shift from hindsight to foresight.

You know, historically in healthcare organizations, we’ve really relied on retrospective data to help us understand what consumers need, when and where they need it, right?

And essentially, look at what’s happened now. We are now in a position where this technology can better enable us as humans to recognize patents earlier and to act on them, right?

And so as we think about the use of AI, and I’m going to go into a deeper dive in terms of how we’re using it here at Bon Secours Mercy Health, that’s one of the things to recognize is its capabilities and how it has changed the way, certainly in marketing, we think about consumer acquisition and engagement, right?

AI is playing a pivotal role in really helping us do deeper research and better understand where consumers are more specifically and what their needs are. And  as we think about AI, we’re not going out  thinking about, okay, here’s AI, now let’s go find the problem that it can solve.

What we’re looking at are one of the problems that exist for consumers that are engaging with us and looking for healthcare solutions. And can AI play a role in helping them meet those needs, helping us meet those needs on their behalf, right?

So it’s really flipping the script of like, let’s not just get an AI solution and then go find a problem? No, let’s identify what the problems are and look at AI solutions that may be tech-enabled solutions for us as humans to be able to solve on behalf of our consumers.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success): So without stealing the show of some of the questions we’re going to ask you in a moment, are there any surprises you’ve already discovered, things that were really shocking or just really useful or maybe gave you an early warning on something you weren’t aware of before.

Sandra Mackey (CMO, Bon Secours Mercy Health): Surprises? I think the surprises are how fast this technology is evolving, right? I think when we think about evolution versus revolution, when we look back at some of the ways that we have revolutionized, both the internet, Google, search engines, et cetera.

I feel like there were more gradual entrees into what was to come. I think AI is growing and learning so fast and its ability to spit out information that really challenges our thinking in so many different ways has been a pleasant surprise to me, right?

I think of myself as a marketer and I often think of some of the things that we have done automated creates a little bit of lazy brain for us, right? No, we don’t have to do these things anymore because it’s a way that we can automate them. I think AI challenges our thinking more so than any technology has to date.

Certainly, as we have implemented it, we are learning more and more about it. And so it’s almost like going back to school. I think that’s probably a surprise, not a shock, but a surprise at how fast that’s happening.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success): That makes sense. And so how are you incorporating AI into your consumer-driven strategy, and what is that going to look like in terms of success this year and beyond?

Sandra Mackey (CMO, Bon Secours Mercy Health): I will share one case example of an investment that we made into an AI platform that we’re continuing to enhance and continuing to grow.  

But first, let me share that as parts of our marketing mix, as part of how we think about marketing strategy, we don’t think of AI as kind of this standalone separate solution. And I think that would limit our capabilities to really think about why we’re using AI and how it’s going to add value to how we deliver services to our consumers.

We think of AI from a marketing standpoint as part of our overall mix, right? So when we’re developing our marketing plan, we’re looking at how we can enhance that plan through the use of AI.

And the one case study that I will share with you is that almost two years ago, we partnered with a conversational AI development company, marketing company, called Brado.

And Brado had been working in the space of really revolutionizing the large language model that feeds AI platforms and learning more and more about its use. They really had made significant progress in helping us to reshape the consumer’s journey.

As we all know, consumers getting to the right place for care at the right time with the right provider is something that causes a lot of friction in that journey. And so that’s the problem that we presented to Brado when we partnered with them.

Through that partnership, we did a lot of test and learn to better understand how we could make that journey more frictionless. And Brado had developed this conversational AI platform, which we then called Catherine. The reason why we called it Catherine is because in implementing this technology, we wanted to really ground it in the values that really represent who we are as a health system.

We called it Catherine because Catherine McAuley was one of the founding sisters who was the founder of Mercy Health. Catherine McAuley was a sister who grew up in Ireland, and she was the founder of Mercy Health.

She came to the U.S. Why? Because there was a need. She came to the U.S. to really service the sick and the poor. And at that time, it wasn’t about building a hospital structure. It wasn’t about being in this very protected, contained environment to provide healthcare.

She came to service a need where there was one, right? And she took care of the sick and the poor. She brought other sisters along with her. And therein, that was the founding of Mercy Health.

And so we named it after Catherine so we could always be grounded in those values of how she thought about healthcare and what she was called to do. We are called to do the very same thing. And so in this partnership with Brado, we started with that. We said, “this is who we are. These are our values.”

And we believe that there is an opportunity to enhance the healthcare experience for all of those consumers that are on a health care journey that today find difficulty—difficulty and friction in the handoff, difficulty and friction in understanding where to go for the right care at the right time and be able to get answers to their healthcare-specific questions.

And so Brado, in their development of this tool really continued to look at that healthcare journey, understand what the consumer needs were, really be able to feed us back with great data that helped us understand not just what we perceived at the problems that consumers were having, but actual data that demonstrated where they were having the friction and problems.

And so with that tool in place, We were able to smooth out that journey considerably, while also leaving it to the healthcare experts—the providers, the physicians, the nurses, all of those practitioners that provide healthcare. We were leaving the heavy lifting of doing the inpatient direct -to -patient care with them.

We’re not relying on AI to do that; we are relying on our providers to do that. And as we stood up this platform and set it up, we really did call upon our providers to provide input on the content and how we were asking the questions and how we could get to the best answers that would really help to smooth out that healthcare journey for all the patients that used it.

So that is an example of how we’re using an AI platform to really enhance the consumer and the patient experience.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success): Sandra, that’s really excellent because that turns out to be the number one thing that people express that friction with trying to get an appointment, trying to book and get the care they need is the number one thing.

And by the way, Sandra, if you were to ask me for, I’ve been doing this now for a few decades, and that is the number-one biggest problem we have on the marketing side. We can’t see the patients that we’re generating for our clients. That drives us crazy to the point where I thought about getting in the call center business for a while there.

But fortunately, AI is going to skip right over that problem and solve it without having to build more call centers and help use the call centers we have more effectively.

I love also that you’re saying that it’s embedded, you know, throughout everything. It’s not just sort of a one-off and for our agency it’s exactly the same.

I was talking to my CFO today um who’s kind of slowly retiring and i talked to him to catch him up today on some of the things that we’re doing and how embedded it really is since the last time i talked to him of four weeks ago of how just fast and it’s just in the middle of everything so for you guys how is it embedded into the consumer strategy overall rather than just as a separate tech project? And can you speak to that for me?

Sandra Mackey (CMO, Bon Secours Mercy Health): Yeah, great question. So, you know, I think it’s important to note, too, that through this process, we really do engage very heavily with our providers, right? You know, when we think about what we deliver from a healthcare perspective, people don’t show up in a healthcare setting to meet the marketing person. They show up to meet providers. So it’s important to listen to the voices of the providers and understand not just from a qualitative/quantitative perspective, what’s going on with patients and what their needs are, but qualitatively listening to providers and what they’re seeing show up in their waiting rooms or in the hospital setting.

And so, you know, as we think about solving for those issues, when we’re developing the marketing plan, it’s really important that we’re framing up how we will use AI as part of sort of the marketing ecosystem, right?

We develop plans and we talk about the things that we’re going to promote throughout the year, so to speak. And through that lens, we also have to look at, well, where are patients now, potential patients, where are our actual patients, and how can we best serve them and make their journey a smooth one in getting in to see the providers, right?

That’s the barrier. That’s been the sticking point, I think, the healthcare marketers for a very long time, is better understanding how we remove some of that friction, right? And to us, embedding AI technologies into our marketing mix allows us not to, you know, have blinders on or be myopic about the way that we think about meeting the healthcare consumer where they are and engaging them, but thinking more broadly about what are all the things that we’re doing, right?

So this is one of the things that we’re doing to really engage in dialogue with consumers. How do we then turn that into messaging to consumers that may fall into another bucket within our marketing mix, right, into our social media, into how we use this across, using what we learn across the spectrum, that so while we are solving for a consumer need, we’re also being more proactive about how we conduct outreach to those consumers through all of the channels that are in our toolbox.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success): Wow. So one of the things that people talk about, whether it’s AI agents or other usage, is the consumers trusting AI rather than just the familiar face. And maybe you might have some thoughts on that and how that’s evolving in the real world, maybe compared to how you thought it would and how, you know, what’s next?

Sandra Mackey (CMO, Bon Secours Mercy Health): You cannot talk about AI without talking about the trust factor. And unfortunately, trust has not been inherent throughout healthcare, right? Because we have struggled to be as transparent as we can be in healthcare, which is shaking consumer trust. And if we can’t get consumers from point A to B, that also erodes trust, right?

So we have to earn that trust back. And I think trust is foundational in healthcare. It has to be table stakes, right? It’s not something that we have a choice on. And think about how we’re using AI. It really is establishing trust in the healthcare system as a whole and demonstrating to consumers that we’re listening and we’re taking action while also protecting their patient privacy, understanding the guidelines that we work within because healthcare is a highly regulated industry, right? And there has to be transparency that we have to establish that trust through transparency. And where that transparency is ultimately fulfilled is in the doctor’s office, right?

And providers do a great job of sort of re-instilling that trust for consumers because of the care that’s delivered to them when the consumers do meet with their doctors. It’s all the fragmented pieces that are around that that tend to erode trust that we have to be able to address. And I think with the use of AI, we can demonstrate how we are safely using AI and how we’re grounding our use on our values as a healthcare ministry, right?

We have to start with that. We have to start with the beliefs that human dignity, compassion, and all of the things that we hold true as our values are being communicated to consumers that so they’re standing behind our brand and know that as part of how we present ourselves, they can establish that trust because we’re going to do our due diligence to make sure that we’re putting guardrails around AI and its use.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success): One of the things we talk about a lot about AI internally is we have to fix the train while it’s moving, right? So for you guys, we talked offline a little bit about executing and then also evolving, all these things are happening at the same time.

So how do you, when you’re working with AI, think about near-term consumer value, but you’re building in the long -term capabilities? And it’s not easy. We have the same issues at our team.

Sandra Mackey (CMO, Bon Secours Mercy Health): Yeah, absolutely. You know, for marketers, we have had to learn to walk and chew gum for a very long time. The problem is, we’re not chewing one or two pieces of gum. We’re chewing like a whole pack, you know, 12 packs of gum at the same time, typically. And so, you know, we have to kind of prioritize how we go about implementing the kind of strategies that bring value ultimately to the patients and consumers that we serve.

When we think about implementing many of the programs, including AI, we have to operate with a dual-track mindset. We can’t just think about developing the technology without also thinking about how we continue to add value, bring value to the patient today, and continue adding value to the patient and what they need.

And those needs are evolving. The way that they access care is evolving. And so we constantly have to be on this track of not just looking at today’s solution but thinking about what that means for tomorrow.

And while we’re optimizing those journeys, we’re also having to look at ways that we can enhance finding those patients in the right place, improving their experiences from the very first interaction to the very last. And then developing other capabilities that support it. We need to make sure our data infrastructure is sound and it’s constantly evolving. And that doesn’t stay stagnant and get left behind. We also have to look at governance as a key component of how we implement new programs—in particular AI.

Governance becomes a really important component of how we think about AI. We have to guide our associates; we have to guide our organizations in terms of usage: What’s acceptable use versus what’s not? If we’re not putting those guidelines in front of the people that are working on the front lines and throughout our organizations, I think we’re selling ourselves short and leaving a lot to be interpreted as it relates to common uses of AI and what would be acceptable.

We really do have to operate on a dual-track mindset to ensure that we’re looking at both the execution and evolution and not just one component of that.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success): That makes sense. And, you know, the AI costs money, right? Investing new system takes money. And again, we go through a lot of this even with our agency of, okay, we have to budget this. And I talked to my CFO, why I’m recommending we do this. I’m still, I’m the CEO, but still I have to justify this.

And in the hospital, you have to justify everything. So how do you work through that helping justify investments and make investments in AI, given that  budgets are always shrinking or, at best, stagnant?

Sandra Mackey (CMO, Bon Secours Mercy Health): Yeah, absolutely. Well, it is certainly prevalent across the industry. Budgets are tighter than ever, and certainly I don’t see any relief for that in the short term and certainly the long term either.

And so we have to be creative in thinking about how we prioritize our initiatives to ensure that what we’re doing, we’re not just pointed to technology and saying, “I need this bright new shiny toy because our competitor next door has one,” but to really think, be very thoughtful about how we are positioning what we’re doing as an enhancement to our consumer experience, because essentially that’s what it is.

And that has to take priority, right? If we can demonstrate ways that we’re bringing value to consumers and prioritizing that in our list of assets—we’re marketing, we’re storytellers. We have to tell the story of how improving these technologies really positions us better to deliver what we promise to the consumer and really helps us more efficiently deliver upon that promise, right?

And so it’s a smarter investment to think about when you don’t think about it as pointing to just technology. It really is about, what are you doing? How are you really bringing values to the patient ultimately and to the consumer that is considering us for their health care, how does this technology enable that? I think that then becomes a different budget conversation than just, “we need this new toy.” And I think for healthcare marketers, it’s a language that we’ve had to learn to adapt, putting the patient at the center of why we’re using new technologies to advance our capabilities.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success): So it’s funny because for us, it’s infinite. The options are really. I mean, there’s so many ways you’re going to apply AI at every step in every way. So a lot I think is, you know, I always believe in the Pareto principle. Like one of the 20% of activities can get us 80% of the results and recognize you just can’t get to everything you want.

But when it comes to AI budgeting for us, at least, when we’re thinking about and it sounds similar to what you’re doing a lot of times we’re looking at not cutting people out but just making them a whole lot more effective. So for us in particular things like search of optimization are so labor-intensive and you can do things that we would have been working on for a year for a client we can now get done in a month, let’s say as an example, and so we’re able to just provide much more value we’re not like just taking you know doing less work and taking the money.

We’re saying “what can we do for the client that get more impact faster or better?” and we really need to today, because AI, as you know, the whole showing up in ChatGPT and the different LLMs is changing everything so we have to be really strong and using these expensive technologies wisely but to benefit our clients as well.

And one of the things that comes up there, too, is it’s not just having the tools, it’s having the people, right, in the processes and skills. So how do you guys do that? How are you investing now and what’s working for you and what’s not?

Sandra Mackey (CMO, Bon Secours Mercy Health): Yeah, it’s a great question. You know, I’ve heard just so many conversations about the potential for AI to take over and eliminate people. This is healthcare. Healthcare delivery will fundamentally rely on our ability, human to human, to deliver those services, right? There is no questioning that.

As you peel back the onion, you think about ways in which we can more efficiently deliver those services. And that requires people and an investment in people.

So as much as we’re thinking about technology enhancements and ways that we can invest in technology, alongside of that has to be ways that we think about how we can develop the type of people skills that allow people to, and I’m going to coin a phrase here because it’s used so often, work at the top of their license.

The example that you gave of how you became more efficient to deliver more quickly, those are the things that we need to think about and the ways that we need to think about investing in our teams and our people is upskilling, but so they can apply technology to help us be better, cheaper, faster.

How can we deliver services to the patients that we serve in a more efficient way quicker on their timeline? Technology should be used to enhance that, but only when guided by people. And we have to keep on investing in upskilling people with the latest technologies and the latest uses of technology so they are better able to become more efficient and spend their time wisely developing the kind of and really enhancing the kind of technology that improves the patient experience.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success): Great. That makes sense. So last question for today.

When we talk about personalization, which is a hot topic in marketing, right? That’s always the sort of Holy Grail of really being able to communicate to a prospective patient or prospective doctors or whomever and personalizing our message has a lot of opportunity it has a lot of responsibility it also carries risk so and you don’t want to be communicating with people the wrong message through AI the machine takes off and just starts giving them crazy talk, like how do you balance that and how do you you know make sure that the the experiences remain you know correct, ethical, trusted, how do you do that? And how are you doing that?

Sandra Mackey (CMO, Bon Secours Mercy Health): Yeah, great question. I’m going to go back to something we touched on earlier during this discussion. You know, personalization must always be grounded in ethics. We’re in healthcare. We are charged with an incredible responsibility. And one of those main areas of responsibility for us in in healthcare is protecting patient privacy. We go to great lengths to do that, and that always has to be one of the core principles that we adopt and embrace as we think about engaging with healthcare consumers and earning their trust.

And so what that means is greater transparency. And in healthcare, relevance can never come at the expense of trust, right? I want to be known as a health care provider, as a trusted health care provider, and not being trusted in my mind is more important than being relevant, right?

You’ve gained relevance because you’re trusted and not the other way around. And so making sure that we are taking all of the steps necessary to prioritize governance around AI usage, data stewardship, and to ensure that we are clearly defining what those guidelines are around how data is being utilized is critically important and that we have continual monitoring of that process and that we understand the clear consumer value that we can bring.

All of these things must be in place to help us better implement really good technology standards that enhance the patient experience.

And finally, what I’d say is that as a Catholic health ministry, our values guide us in everything that we do, truly everything that we do, particularly those of human dignity and stewardship. And so we take that very seriously, and we take that very seriously as a pillar of how we build this trust with our consumers.

And so while personalization really helps us better connect with consumers, we also do that through the lens of our values and what every single associate here at Bon Secours Mercy Health is called to uphold.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success): I love that. And I’ll just finish with this thought. You’ve referenced values throughout this conversation. So we’re talking about technology; we’re talking about AI. But at the end, the values are the basis of everything, right? And the values for your brand are obviously very important to live through, and I love that. I just think that’s such a great way to approach this incredible new technology—to remember values throughout that process.

Sandra Mackey (CMO, Bon Secours Mercy Health): Exactly.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success): Well, Sandra, I knew this would be a fun interview. You did great. Any of the final words before we say goodbye today?

Sandra Mackey (CMO, Bon Secours Mercy Health): This has been a great discussion. And I think if there’s one key takeaway that I drove home a couple of times, it is that AI is simply a tool. And the goal has always been for us and will always be serving consumers in ways that they fear that it feels more intuitive for them and that we’re supportive of them through their healthcare journey.

Because remember, those consumers that we help drive to our organizations that become patients are one day going to be us or someone we love. Don’t we want the best, very best for them? That is what should compel us to really keep innovating in ways that we improve the way that they are receiving care.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success): What a great way to end. Thank you, Sandra.