How GoHealth's CXO Approaches Patient Experience at Scale

Phil Sobol:

Welcome to the CereCore Podcast, where we focus on the intersection of healthcare and IT. From practical conversations to strategic thought leadership, let's unpack the decisions, challenges, and journey of those whose purpose it is to deliver technology that improves healthcare in their communities.

Today, we are pleased to welcome Paula Blomquist to the CereCore podcast. Paula is the chief experience officer at GoHealth Urgent Care, where she leads patient and consumer experience strategy across a national network of hundreds of urgent care centers. GoHealth operates through joint ventures with leading health systems, including UPMC, Northwell Health, and Hartford Healthcare.

Her background is hard to find in healthcare. Paula holds a degree in mathematics and computer science and an MBA in marketing, which gives her a rare ability to speak the language of data, technology, and the patient experience all at once. She came to healthcare from senior retail leadership, bringing a consumer-first lens that she has spent her career applying to clinical settings. Paula, welcome to the CereCore Podcast.

Paula Blomquist:

Thank you, Philip. It's so nice to be here.

Phil Sobol:

Well, we're excited about this. You studied math, computer science before moving into marketing. How does that combination shape how you think about the patient experience today?

Paula Blomquist:

Yeah. I'm kind of a geek. So the marketing world welcomed me with open arms, but I think it's really helped me be very comfortable with data, very data-driven. I think it's very essential to study patient behavior and then optimize their experience, when you're comfortable with information and you really pull through your sense of curiosity. I think to really advance in mathematics and technology and data, data science, I think it takes focus and discipline, but I do think that basic instinct of curiosity and keeping that fresh is really what's needed, especially in this changing landscape. So combine all this with my history in marketing, and really I equate marketing to relationship-building, best practices. It really results in very forward-looking, relevant, ideally friction-free experiences for our patients.

Phil Sobol:

Yes, absolutely. No, I remember years and years ago when all of a sudden you started seeing the convergence of marketing with data. And it's been transformational, and we're very interested to see where it's going moving forward. And now you also came from retail into that urgent care market. So perhaps we'll start with what surprised you most once you got into healthcare, and then what does perhaps healthcare do better and/or differently than retail?

Paula Blomquist:

I think it's a great question. I think the complexity of healthcare really surprised me, and the emotional stakes, I think, involved in every interaction. So I think healthcare does an incredible job of really prioritizing that human connection and care. And I think that's something that retail can really learn from.

I think on the other hand, though, retail has excelled in creating that seamless customer experience. And in my retail days, I called that retail magic, when you can anticipate the needs of a customer that they don't even realize they have yet. And that's something I'm really working very hard to bring into healthcare. One way I'm doing that right now, since I have responsibility for both marketing, and consumer research, and IT, I've combined joint ownership of all of our customer-facing applications between the business and IT. So we really go at the ultimate experience we want to deliver together, rather than separately. So that seems to have helped things along.

Phil Sobol:

Oh, that's excellent. And I do think that continually bringing more of that experience that we're used to, all of us are used to from the retail setting into the healthcare. But at the same point, you may bring up such a good point, is that it is a very personal experience. And it's one thing to be online shopping for something you want and/or need, versus all of a sudden you're thrust into a situation where you have to have healthcare. And it is a life-threatening situation in many instances. So the convergence of that is magic, a little bit.

Paula Blomquist:

There you go. There you go.

Phil Sobol:

So GoHealth operates, really, across a variety of markets and health system partners. When patients, staff, partner needs, there's going to be tension there. How do you design systems that will still deliver that consistent experience?

Paula Blomquist:

We're very fortunate to have some of the leading health systems around the country be our partner in the urgent care space. So we take those brands and their needs very seriously. From the GoHealth side, we really do focus on creating very adaptable frameworks that prioritize that ultimate patient experience, that they need for us to deliver and we want to deliver in terms of bringing a unique offering to our marketplaces.

So we try and build in sort of a GoHealth brand in certain elements of the experience, like our registration process, and our website, and things like that. But we also have to be very flexible to either the local nuances of a given market, whether it's an urban area or a rural area. But more importantly, for the most part, we integrate in with our partner's EMR platforms.

So we really need to abide by our own governance in terms of our own technology, and that experience that our technology delivers, but then we are very aware of some of the clinical specifications, service line requirements that we have to adhere to for individual partners or health systems. So it's a balancing act, for sure.

Phil Sobol:

It really is. You spoke about it so eloquently, but behind all of that's a good bit of complexity.

Paula Blomquist:

Very much so. Very much so. Old technology, new technology.

Phil Sobol:

You talked about that journey, from that first online experience all the way through that patient discharge. And perhaps, where is technology helping in that overall experience? And then where is technology in that overall experience, I wouldn't say maybe getting in the way, but maybe lagging, room for improvement?

Paula Blomquist:

Technology needing improvement. Yeah, I'm familiar with that. I think I want to start with my marketing hat first. The marketing technology has come such a long way. So from my marketing team, along with our agency partners, we really lean very heavily into the latest data platforms. We're using a lot of AI tools to make sure our paid media and really our SEO efforts are as efficient as possible. So, but also consumer centric, they're compliant. There's lots of rules in healthcare around how you can market and relevant.

So from a search engine optimization, forever it's been, how do I get more traffic, or how do I own urgent care near me? We've had to adjust our tech staff and our digital content strategy for all of the AI engines or AEO strategy. And our new questions are more like, how do I become the answer? It's much more conversational if you compare an AI engine to, let's say, Google, or how people are traditionally searching for things.

So it really has demanded that we look at everything very differently, including our metrics. So once we have a patient, we've attracted them in, we know they're not feeling well, what's next in terms of technology? It's really, we've put so much energy over the last 18 months into our scheduling, our online scheduling, our copay, prepay before you even come into our center, sort of that speed pass, if you would, the check-in process, we're using OCR for document capture. All of this has really simplified access to our brands, reducing friction, it's reducing stress on our teams, in our centers. So that's all the goodness part. So the second part of your question is, where does it still get in the way? I think, it's funny. I haven't been running a big IT organization for, it's only been a couple of years. I'm running it as a marketer.

But what I'm finding is that technologists in general throw a lot of technology at problems, but the underlying processes don't necessarily jive with what you've installed or what you've implemented. So I think in some cases, you're counting on technology itself to solve your problems, but in the end, if you're not looking at your underlying process, if you're not investing in change management training, it really could result in the business actually becoming less efficient.

So I think we are really trying to rationalize our tech stack, and use less technology, and really look at the process, and what has to ... Especially if you're running diverse brands or in diverse markets, or you're growing through M&A activity, and you're bringing in all different things, really taking the time to streamline that before you're going to throw new solutions at it seems to be a better choice.

Phil Sobol:

No, that makes a lot of sense. And you think about technology and the context of the people that are in front of the patient, right? So, and urgent care is very demanding, especially for those frontline team members. How do you look at technology as a solution or a support solution for them, and not just an efficiency play?

Paula Blomquist:

Yep. Yeah. I look at it, again, they are my customer. So again, being very customer-centric, I want to make sure I'm meeting their needs, and then the efficiencies will come. And then I think the happy end patient will come. But our goal really across the board and all of our digital solutions is to remove as much as the non-clinical tasks from our staff as possible. So we've embedded AI scribing into our EMR solutions. We have, like we talked about before, very intuitive self-registration. A lot of self-service solutions is really what we're looking to do, from putting more of the burden on the consumer because they're used to it. Retail has done it, banking has done it, travel has done it, right? Healthcare, people, put it on the burden on the customer, take it off of your tired teams. That's sort of what we're trying to do.

We have even looked at bringing our IVR solutions, our phone solutions to next generation, and really just allowing or letting clinically-based calls get to the center, and really have very efficient point of phone call options for our customers. Like our IVR, for example, very sophisticated. We are really trying to just, post-care questions, prescriptions, test results. We've studied why people call our centers, and then we designed our IVR around that. So we really, again, are trying to have them answer less phones, do less clinical or administrative tasks. We've embedded AI tools into our help desk, so we help them faster. And when we do have technology issues, and you're always going to have them, we want to make sure we get ahead of them and we communicate out to our centers, and we don't have to have them take on the burden of putting in multiple IT tickets, for example.

The ticketing system is a blessing and a curse in the IT world. So we're trying to avoid that. But yeah, it really is, again, focusing on their needs. Their need is to provide care, and we have to, anything that's not doing that, we got to try and reduce it.

Phil Sobol:

Yep. No, that's excellent. And I think it's always a balancing act, like you said, between pushing some of those things out to the patients in self-service, but at the same point, knowing where that line is, where you say, "Okay, wait a minute, there does have to be now a human interaction."

Paula Blomquist:

That's right. And it varies by market. So in some markets, we are able to push much more self-service, some much more innovation than in other markets. So we're learning that as well.

Phil Sobol:

That's right. Well, you guys deal with a lot of joint venture models. So what makes those work, and what are some of the challenges when it comes to dealing with the workflow back and forth between those partners as it relates to technology?

Paula Blomquist:

Yeah. I think there is a challenge of, always of scale when you're in different environments. So I think what we really focus on is really making sure we've got expertise, whether it's in GoHealth, or at our partner, or any support companies that we hire to come in, that they really understand integration and adaptability. Real integration, not just API here, plug it in, but what are the downstream implications when you're trying to bring two entities together?

And then again, change management. We are a joint venture, and our hospital systems have many joint ventures, and it seems the more transparent, the more we can jointly agree on the 80%, and maybe we have to ... The 20% has to be somewhat customized, but yeah, I think it's that integration and adaptability. Because everybody wants to do everything that much faster, everybody is innovating, but it all has to plug into each other and then actually work.

Phil Sobol:

Yes. Absolutely right. Absolutely right.

Paula Blomquist:

Yeah.

Phil Sobol:

So we've had the privilege of working a little bit together, our organizations. And I think our work together included some project management, Epic services, some workflow documentation. What challenges were you all trying to solve initially from the start of that? And how has that support helped you organizationally?

Paula Blomquist:

Yeah. We had a great experience with CereCore. So we needed to streamline, at the time, several key systems and processes in support of our people function, IT, and operations, so pretty significant areas. So the CereCore team came in quickly. They helped us identify the priority areas. They took my guidance. I always say, "You can do anything, but you can't do everything."

Phil Sobol:

Yes.

Paula Blomquist:

So they really helped us focus on the right elements of the transformations that we needed to do and wanted to do across those three areas. And then with the project management, it was great. They worked alongside and sometimes even led some of the projects, and helped us really get stuff done on time, within our budgets. So it was a great experience. I think they really took the time initially, and this made a difference too, to understand what our end goal wanted to be, and what our metrics were going to be. How are we going to measure, at the end of the day, what these either new systems or processes needed to do for us? So it was very good experience.

Phil Sobol:

That's excellent. And we always ask this question, because we like to have our team members hear directly from our clients just about the work that they do. And so what would you want them to know about how their work in your setting impacted the care that you all deliver on a day in and day out basis?

Paula Blomquist:

Yeah. I think the team did a lot of documentation work for us, and integration work, requirements-gathering for some new solutions that we were putting in place. So I'd want them to know that sometimes that work was a little tedious, I could see it, but it was so foundational, and it really helped us realize real success, and more impact to our business. Some of the solutions that we put in helped with onboarding our team members, cutting the time in half, in some cases, really making sure they were getting set up in our systems quicker.

So integration work, again, I'm going back to integration, because seamless integration and well-thought-out processes, and clear documentation enables scale. And you guys were involved in several solutions and helping us do that. And the result has been, now, a lot of our solutions are predictable and stable, which is great.

And it's opened up for even next iteration of things like automation, or AI, tools for maintenance and monitoring, and things like that. So you guys were in on some of the initial work we did in our application management, in our new software that we put in for our people team. And again, now we're adding and building on some very solid foundation work, which is great.

Phil Sobol:

That's excellent. So we've touched on a little bit about AI, and I don't think you can have any conversation in and around healthcare now if you're not at least touching on AI. I think you've said that AI should preserve the human touch, not replace it. And so what does that look like in GoHealth today?

Paula Blomquist:

Yep. I think for us, we're using it in several areas, mostly behind the scenes, although I think I mentioned before, we do have AI scribing tools in all of our markets now, which has been great. But right now, even behind the scenes, I think, is ultimately improving the customer experience. So we have improved response time from a service perspective. We've accelerated advanced analytics to find patterns in operational metrics to help flow folks through our centers more efficiently and quicker.

We have, our marketing organization for sure are using a ton of AI, from content creation, creative execution, again, analytics, to really make sure that we are producing for all of our markets, it's a lot of markets, the right messages at the right time for the right customers. So we've put AI policy in place, the governance, I have that responsibility as well. So that was really step one, in partnership with our compliance, our legal ... And we hired a lead in data governance to help with all of our data governance, but specifically for AI.

And now we're looking across the company to build our AI roadmap. So we're inventorying on where it's working great, where we have opportunity, things like that. So yeah, AI, automation, it's all needed, but again, you have to start with, I think, clean data, clean processes, and then from there, you could really make them fly.

Phil Sobol:

Absolutely. And a proper business case that everyone buys into. So it makes good sense. Well, healthcare is, unlike some retail, it certainly operates on tight margins. Urgent care is no exception. How has, for you all, the use of technology really helped preserve, protect the integrity of the organization [inaudible 00:21:46]?

Paula Blomquist:

Yeah. I think, again, we've claimed, if you would, or define the GoHealth portion of our footprint, and we have made that very scalable. So again, that is a central registration platform, virtual visit platform, website, IVR, things like that. And not to mention all of our infrastructure and cyber. So all of that is really what I would say sort of the GoHealth way. And we've gotten to the point where that is very scalable right now. It's very efficient. So that's helped us reduce costs. It helps us optimize our operations, and really not compromising care and quality and things like that.

We're working on where we have specific requirements from either a specific health system or partner, how do we then overlay some of these customizable pieces onto our standard in a most cost-effective way? So we're still working through that, but I think for the most part, we are definitely seeing ... We're streamlining things. The automation is really helping, again, free up resources to think more, which I love. I have a lot of analytical people. I have my engineers and developers, certainly my marketers. So a lot of the technology has taken over tasks that normally would take some time to do, repetitive things, and they're able to really study the business, study the marketplace, study innovation, things like that.

Phil Sobol:

No, I think that's great. So in looking at the difference between urban and rural, you talked about differences in the messaging, but are there differences in the required technology for those, or are they the same?

Paula Blomquist:

Yeah. I think we design technology with flexibility in mind, so we can ensure it adapts to the unique needs of any community. So it means balancing very high-tech solutions with personalized, accessible approaches when needed.

So in other words, we want to stretch the innovation, but then if people don't want to self-register, or they don't want to talk to a chatbot, we have alternatives for them to get that human connection, but it's really secondary. And we use our metrics to decide when we have to kick those levers in, if that makes sense.

Phil Sobol:

That makes perfect sense. That makes perfect sense. We talked a lot early on just about bringing some of the retail in, that whole concept of consumerism. And I know that's kind of somewhat of a newer concept, and sometimes we get a little bit of pushback from clinicians and all, "No, this is healthcare, it's not retail, it's not consumerism." But how would you respond to that? How would you explain that that consumer mindset can actually be very helpful and supportive, and not undermining when it comes to clinical?

Paula Blomquist:

Yeah. I think we drive our hospital system partners crazy, because we use customer a lot, over patient, But I think the consumer mindset is really ... All these years I've studied it, it's about understanding and meeting needs of people as individuals. So I don't think it undermines clinical care in any way. I think it just enhances it by ensuring that patients feel heard, valued, and cared for throughout their journey.

And that's really what retail has been trying to do for all of these years. The word consumer or a consumer, they have options, and they want ease, they want convenience. And I do think the healthcare space is starting to get this. I really do. I think you're starting to see health systems out there that are not just talking about digital innovation. I think they're actually executing on it, which is really nice to see. You're starting to see a lot more on demand, 24/7, less clipboards, more online scheduling. And the consumer world has been used to these things for years and years.

So healthcare has been compared to other industries, who have been taking or leveraging the digital world to form these very intimate relationships with consumers. And I think we're here, which has been great.

Phil Sobol:

Agreed. So I think we always love to wrap these up with kind of a last words of wisdom or inspirational, but I wanted maybe to focus that a little bit, given your vast experience in this segment. So for leaders that are looking at that digital front door and saying, "You know what? There's some improvement that needs to take place there," what would you leave with them as a practical place to start, without boiling the ocean or over complicating the whole matter?

Paula Blomquist:

Yeah. I think you got to get the basics right. So I think look at your scheduling, that's what people care ... They care about access. So where is it hard to access? Where is it hard to do business with you? I think you have to be very ... Let's go back to the curious word. I think as leaders, we're not curious enough about our customer. We look at a lot of reports. We spend a lot of time on Teams and Zoom and all of that, but are you in your communities? Are you in your centers? Are you really being curious about your customer? Who are they? Who should they be?

Phil Sobol:

Yes.

Paula Blomquist:

I'm a data and math person, but the biggest thing I've learned over the years is what's not in your database. Invest in process work. I know that sounds 1997, but we've done some amazing process work lately, and it really has revealed the good and the friction. And boy, there is friction, especially in healthcare, where there are multiple systems, you are in control of some of the customer journey, and in other things you're not. So you really do need to understand what is that journey like, and where are those friction points? Where are the failure points? And then based on all of that, you evaluate your current technology, and either build or adjust your digital door.

Phil Sobol:

There you go. No, that's excellent. Well, Paula, thank you very much for your time and your insights today, and just greatly appreciate the relationship and partnership that our organizations have had. And thank you for sharing with our audience.

Paula Blomquist:

Thank you. It's great to be here.

Phil Sobol:

Thanks for listening to the CereCore Podcast. We hope you enjoyed this conversation. Follow us on your favorite podcast platform for more episodes. Connect with us on LinkedIn. Visit our US website at cerecore.net, and for those abroad, visit cerecoreinternational.net. Learn more about our services and find resources. At CereCore, we are healthcare operators at heart, and know the difference that the right IT partner can make in delivering quality patient care 24/7. Let's help make IT better. Here's to the journey.