The Healthcare Consumer Experience Is Evolving

Stewart Gandolf

Hi, everyone. Stewart Gandolf here and today we are on another interview today, and we are now talking to a colleague that I’ve done a lot of these kinds of things in the past.

Aaron and I first met back when he was working with Binary Fountain, and we ended up doing a COVID series or during COVID, a webinar series. I don’t know how many we did. We did a bunch, at least half of them.

Those were among our very best attended webinars ever, and I think we both had a lot of fun doing that, even though we were in sort of a worldwide pandemic.

But anyway, Aaron has moved around little bit since then, and now is the VP of consumer experience with Press Ganey. So first of all, welcome back to the reporting sphere with me here, Aaron.

Aaron Clifford (Press Ganey Associates)

It’s great to be on and having a session with you again. So we’d like you said, we had a lot of great sessions, and they were well attended.

I think a lot of people during COVID were looking for, you know, all the insights they could get in the uncertain world.

And so we had a good time, but always enjoyed talking with you on camera and off camera.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success)

So today we’re talking about press gain is CX trends report and there’s a lot of insights and as you know, and I love geeking out on consumer trends and I think that’s a mutual passion for both of us and I guess let’s start before we talk about the report.

Just tell little people about your background to get a sense of, you know, what your focus has been in recent years and what you’re doing these days at press game.

Aaron Clifford (Press Ganey Associates)

Well, I had a long tenure at a health system here in Nashville. live in Nashville, Tennessee, HCA Healthcare, and was there for 15 years, have a number of different roles but the majority of that time was spent in the digital space and having the website, digital strategy and the consumer insights.

And so I created the Consumer Experience department there. We didn’t call it that. was a reputation and listings management, kind of the reputation management team.

in addition to having all the other responsibilities for websites and digital tools on the website. And that really took me into an area of learning and, course, implementing listings management and reputation.

Across an enterprise as large as HCA gave me a unique perspective and a unique experience working with my team.

That kind of led for me to go into binary bound, which was our vendor at the time for the consumer experience space.

I left healthcare for a little bit and I went to Dollar General corporate and so that gave me a unique perspective of the consumer.

And, but I was missing healthcare about that time, Press Ganey reached out and I came back as the VP of Consumer Experience and I’ve been having a great time.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success)

That’s great. So let’s talk about the purpose. This is a unique CX trends report, I think. So let’s talk about just the broad characterization of what it was about this time.

Aaron Clifford (Press Ganey Associates)

Sure. So we wanted to get in knowing that the evolution and the advent of AI tools being in the hands of consumers, we wanted to see the impact that it was having and is having on the healthcare journey.

So we’ve had for a number of years, we’ve put out an annual CX trends report and that would give us insights on how consumers are choosing, what’s important to them, they feel about reviews, sites they’re using to research providers, we continue to do that because we think it’s very important.

But we wanted, this is unique in that we implemented and introduced how the geminized and the chat UDTs and others are being used to research care.

timecare and then how consumers feel about even their providers using AI in that setting. So we kind of collected all of that information.

And then we also knowing that wait time and scheduling is a real challenge in different parts of our country.

As far as seeing a primary care physician, we wanted to get insights into how long are you willing to wait and what’s appropriate.

And so those are kind of a nuance and some new things that we introduced to this study.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success)

Okay, good. Well, let’s talk, first of all, about the insights that were revealed regarding finding care when they’re searching for a provider.

What kinds of things were you able to find there?

Aaron Clifford (Press Ganey Associates)

Yeah, so we are, first of all, say that just for baseline information, we surveyed over a thousand individuals and consumers.

And so that’s was pretty broad and across all the areas of our country. So it was a domestic, not international, it was a domestic study.

So in terms of how consumers are finding care, Google is still number one. It is still 60% what consumers start with and trust Google results.

So that brings into question, of course, accuracy and then your well represented on Google. It’s still important, although I would say the playing field is being leveled by the AI. The AI tools, like chat TPT, people are turning to it more, not as much right now. So we’ll still see.

But Google is still consumers’ first trusted source, like when starting and referring and searching. And that is just, you know, going to be there, I think, for the next few years, it’s not going to be less important.

You’re just going to have to be more aware of what’s happening on all the other third-party sites, because even Google is with their AI mode, their profiling more third-party sites as well, HealthRates and WebMD, and even Yelp is getting in there, too.

So you’re going to have to be more aware, and then I’ve seen this journey the last 15 years that have been involved in the consumer space in healthcare, is that we cared about Google a lot, and then we are like, oh, we cared about third-party sites because those were ranking higher than Google introduced to the map pack, and we’re profiling its properties more, so we cared more about it, and then your trust in your own brand, first-party, always worry about it.

But we were, you know, it’s just kind of got through a cycle, so it seems like we’re on a cycle of now of like, you have to be aware of

of everywhere, everything, everywhere, all at once, the movie title, you kind of have to be that way now. That’s what our research is showing.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success)

Yeah, it’s really interesting, Aaron. We’ve tracked this, of course. We’ve done other podcasts and webinars on this topic with AI and Search.

And what we’re seeing is the market share is still, at least in terms of using ChatGPT, for example, and others versus Google.

It’s still overwhelmingly Google. So the 60% you’re talking about is comparing all sources, not just online sources. So we’re still seeing that, but we are seeing it growing.

And of course, the large language model (LLM) tools are growing really, really fast and usage and the way people are using them.

Like anything else, you know, my experience, I remember sitting down in, you know, marketing class years ago, learning about the diffusion of innovations where you have sort of the innovators and early adopters, early majority, late majority, laggards, that whole model.

And that’s what we’re seeing today, people that are just eating it up, using it for everything, and others are still using Google mostly, they haven’t even really tried it, but definitely the trends are there for sure.

It’s interesting too, Aaron, and I will see how this evolves. We get inquiries every day from our agency, because we’ve done a lot of thought leadership over the years, of course, so we get inquiries daily, but what I’m noticing is we’ve had a couple recently that are really good straight in our sweet spot, and I like to ask, how’d you find us?

both of these two really good ones did say they found us through ChatGPT, so I thought that was really intriguing.

So that’s a whole other topic for another day about how to show up for ChatGPT and the LLMs, but it is interesting, and it’s definitely changing.

So let’s talk about the rating side of this. the finding, well, actually, going back to the finding doctors, you mentioned the vast majority are still finding Google, what are some of the other common sources your survey shows, in addition to Google.

and LLMs.

Aaron Clifford (Press Ganey Associates)

Well of course the you know other third party sites as far as making a decision, very important. Insurance websites rate up there pretty high.

It was number three so you know as far as in when relying on the who you rely on the most for referral or when selecting a primary care provider for example.

There will be other providers that there’s a high trust so this is like kind of offline right but then right behind it so that was like a 60 percent referral from an existing health provider and this is around primary care specifically but it kind of gives you paints the picture for other specialties as well and then 59 percent was online search and then the third one was the insurance website and sometimes as marketers we forget about the insurance website right either like well they’re going to do what they’re going do they’re going to get their appropriation but I do encourage.

audit of your providers, of your health system and a provider system. Go look at the United, you know, directory and see if your providers are well represented on those sites, and then take action, if not, whether it’s photography, whether it’s the phone number, or other metadata around that, to go and say, for sure pay attention to that.

And then there’s the, of course, you know, review sites to help care better sites. There’s RaterMD, of course, and health rates, and a number of them, vitals as well, then other, of course, the referral, but referral, it used to be referral in person.

Referral was like number one, and it’s interesting to see over time that kind of go down, because we’ll trust more from our research online or from AI as well.

And of course, the advertisement, it showed up, and I got 28. and then at 26% our AI tools and that’s what was surprising because we’re only like a couple of years right at the end of 2022 ChatGPT came on and just the LLMs of maturing and just gaining usage and so we expect that number to be a lot higher.

They are being used a lot for research, of course of conditions and treatments, but also to book and find care is we’re seeing in fact one stat I’ll share with you just in terms of 36% of the consumers who responded to our study are already using generative AI for healthcare purposes.

So of that like 43% was around the researching our conditions and then next was exploring treatments, but 31% was scheduling appointments.

So actually going in and asking, you know, are there appointments? How do I schedule an appointment? And so that tells me as a marketer, like, one, I need to ensure that it is clear as day on my first party website, on my health system provider website, that it is clear of how to make an appointment.

And we know most appointments are still happening over the phone. That’s digital guides and, you know, like me. We like to, yeah, we like to like, no, it’s all digital, it’s all book online.

But we know that online appointments are, they’re still difficult, right? Because there’s a lot happening there, whether it’s the technology itself, or if it’s the scheduling patterns and habits within provider system, we know that it’s a challenge.

So a lot of people are still picking up the phone. But make it clear, make sure that it’s accurate, accurate information where it’s extremely clear to the consumer.

I know this sounds like we’re preaching this 10 to 15 years ago, but it’s never been more important. And we find every day systems that may not have the rigor or the discipline or the technology or partners to help them with it, that it’s not accurate.

doing an audit, you’ve discovered a lot of inaccuracy. So that’s just more troublesome to the consumer, to the patient.

And we need to do our best to avoid that.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success)

So, you know, it’s funny, the whole online scheduling part of that, we can just talk about that for a second.

It’s getting better, but it’s still really hard depending on the providers. So there are providers that recognize what it is.

our agency works with both, you know, hospitals, systems, but also multi-location providers. on a lot of these multi-location providers, they’re PE-backed, they have more of a business acumen, and they find a way to make the online scheduling work.

especially when they figure out its competitive advantage. And in some areas of the professions and specialties like dentistry is becoming table stakes because if you don’t offer it if you don’t offer it other people do Then you’re gonna win and or vice versa.

I mean if you don’t offer it and other people do you’re gonna lose so the It’s been something that you know, you’ve complained about I’ve complained about My friend Rob Klein speaks a lot on this topic these kinds of topics, you know We’ve been saying why can I book on open table, but I can’t book with a doctor Why does it have to be so hard and it’s still hard depending because of you mentioned the technology changes and also You know internal policies and I understand why those policies are all there But it just makes it exceedingly frustrating for the consumer.

I find it really interesting that people are asking how to book an appointment. It should be so obvious The you know on the rating side of this, where do you what did you learn about the we talked about choosing a doctor?

And then let’s talk about the rating side of it. How is that changing with the advent of LMS and where do you see that going.

Aaron Clifford (Press Ganey Associates)

Well, one thing that we saw, and I’ll mention this part, then go to the LLMs, the, you know, as far as how consumers or what percentage of consumers are using reviews to make a decision, saw that 30% of consumers always read reviews, and then another 32% do so frequently.

So that’s 64% are caring about the online ratings. And some of the red flags that the consumers are looking for when it comes to reviews are 45% are looking for that poor quality reviews, impacts, if it’s, if they’re uncertain, and there’s, you know, a lot of negative or a lot of ambiguity, like not great, consumers are gonna go somewhere else, it’s just like it went for a product or even a restaurant, know, but it applies in healthcare as well.

If there’s not enough reviews, to use, that’s going to be a red flag. So if there’s a small number now, we’re used to seeing in all other segments that we interact with, whether we go to Amazon, or whether we even go to a hotel, right?

We’re looking at third party reviews and third party reviews, but your red flag, if there’s not enough reviews. And then star ratings under 3.7 star ratings.

So if you have less than a 3.7, it’s to be concern there, right? Yeah. And then maybe not enough reviews, 19% said not enough reviews on third party sites.

So it’s one thing to have, and we are well versed with this, and we help organizations around giving their first party survey, their med practice survey results to be on their website for first party reviews.

And that’s a very reputable, it’s kind of verified buyer status kind of. um, approach, right? But then if you see 100 reviews on the provider website, you go over to healthgrades.

You only see three. There’s some distrust there. Like, what’s going on here? So, ensuring that those are needed. we’re seeing from an AI overview, and you may have experienced this too, just in searching for a provider, is it is, you know, find me a primary care physician in Nashville that is rated highly, you know, those type of prompt engineering that’s happening.

And we don’t can’t capture all and we don’t understand all of what the consumers are entering into the AI chat from a prompt engineering standpoint.

But these things are going to be important. So, they’re just showing up and they’re providing links and sources to where the reviews are, and they’re pulling in the third-party reviews.

we’re extremely bullish in terms of like, you got to own third-party reviews. and take action on it to ensure that you’re well represented on those third-party sites.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success)

So it’s so interesting how, you know, like sometimes I feel like, because I’m a heavy user of chat GBT and also I have a premium perplexity account.

Aaron Clifford (Press Ganey Associates)

So I’m using LLMs all the time now.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success)

but sometimes it’s spot on and it’s fantastic. Other times like, really? That’s because for lunch. And like, we know each of those restaurants like that was a big, so it’s still a machine, right?

And it’s trying to go by reviews and other sources and try to pull together, but it’s going to get better and better.

And I think that’s the key and optimizing that for sure. You mentioned the, so we’ll see how that evolves, but you know, clearly, you know, doctors, reviewing doctors.

That’s going to be something that we think. a lot about. again, we’ve covered that topic on other podcasts and other webinars of how to do that.

And for those of you that are listening on this time, just the short answer is, all the good stuff you do for Google helps a lot with reviews and or helps a lot with the the LLS, large language models.

So the let’s talk about another topic which you alluded to in the opening. And I’m not sure tell me how much you guys covered this, but because this is google, I’m guessing that your CX report is going to be out of date really fast.

My wife just got her blood tests back from her annual physical and she threw it in a chat GPT.

And she was like, I love this. This is amazing. It was telling her everything. And she got like, not just results of, you know, what each of these measures meant.

at the end, I said, whatever you’re doing, your doctor must be proud of you.

If it’s like, if it’s exercise, it’s making these numbers look so good, keep it up.

So she felt like, I’d never get comments like that from my doctor. So that’s a big leap, right, that they’re using it.

you guys cover the idea of patients, you know, asking for about either specific results or more just about their condition or treatment?

Like what kinds of things did you learn so far from your report?

Aaron Clifford (Press Ganey Associates)

Yeah, question. Well, we wanted to understand definitely, you know, who’s using it, what are they using it for? So as I mentioned a little earlier, as far as the 36% of consumers using it for health-related research.

So that research conditions and explore treatments were definitely, you know, 43 and 42% respectively. And so the component is what we asked as well is how comfortable are you using AI with each generation?

So, you know, obviously you have the baby boomers and up and they were less comfortable using it. Obviously, the comfort rose, as you go to the younger generations where 47% Gen X and 61% But then we asked like, where are you comfortable with your doctor using AI?

so nearly one third of consumers would feel uncomfortable if they learned the doctor’s communication was generated by AI, which thought was interesting, just attitudes like, hey, you know, I’m a little uncomfortable, but that’s, you know, that’s interesting.

Some one third means two thirds work comfortable, right? But 75% of consumers expected to be when AI was used in healthcare communications.

So transparency is key. They want to know when it’s being used and how it’s being used. So I think it’s important from a

Practice and care provider perspective to and I had this recently just myself like hey My provider said I have ambient listening.

It’s gonna be taking notes. We want to ensure accuracy Are you comfortable with that? I’m like, yeah, thank you for asking.

Yeah, it’s so I really appreciate Their research because I asked a little bit

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success)

Yeah So it’s interesting Again going through this as a consumer my wife and I both have had doctor’s for you know fortunately small things and Both of us were asked, you know, is it okay if we’re using AI and I went to see my allergist for example, because I just have chronic allergies drives me nuts And I’m like sure please and I feel like is it be interesting to see how this evolves over time I can imagine that you know older, you know citizens or maybe less educated or more educated depending on the case Maybe more full of AI, but for me

It’s like, look, I’m using Fathom today to record this podcast. My writer will use that as a start to summarizing the podcast for us.

Like, it’s just makes sense. It’s crazy not to. And when I use, and we’ve talked about this on other podcasts, Fathom for meetings, the stuff that I’ve missed is amazing.

So of course, doctors are human. Like, this is a positive thing. so it’ll be interesting to see how that evolves over time, because, you know, in fact, when I said, sure, go ahead and use AI, my doctor was said to me with a sigh, I’m like, Oh, thank you.

So it’s obviously already much easier for them when they can rely on the AI and much more difficult. And if a third or objecting, it’s just certainly as they’re right, it’ll be interesting to see over time if that becomes less and less of a concern.

They just get used to it. It’s everywhere. I’m guessing so, you know, like where it becomes sort of like how you interact with life.

In the meantime, we do have to respect people’s wishes and privacy and, you know, that makes sense. I have another question.

I don’t know if you guys covered this or not. I’m curious because I read the report, but it’s been a while.

The two of the things that are really exciting for me about AI and healthcare, one is more obscure consumers really wouldn’t notice, but in call tracking platforms now are able to take calls and analyze the inquiry of the call to be able to decide if, you know, was the call handled properly?

Did they result in an employment? The thing about call tracking is, and we always say this call may be reported for hippo, you know, and quality assurance.

So just lest anybody freak out, we always exit at the very beginning of the call with the technology to remain compliant and ethical.

But anyway, nobody ever listens to those calls. Nobody goes and picks out the calls, but AI can summarize it.

So that’s a big deal. And secondly, another technological development happening already in multiple fields is having a AI agents to actually interact like it’s a human with people.

And it’s funny, I’ve had some say that, you know, the companies we talk to recommend disclosing it’s an AI agent, others like it’s not a big deal, clearly it just sounds like consumers, you know, care, want to know when they’re dealing with AI, but did you guys survey any of these kinds of topics or I think just broadly we do know that they want to be disclosed, we need to at least do that.

Aaron Clifford (Press Ganey Associates)

Yeah, we didn’t to the contact center and those specific items. This year when we do the study later this fall, we’re going to dive in a little bit more into those details.

As the proliferation of those tools are being used, we definitely want to understand consumers feeling about it, you know, I want to go back to just in terms of while we’re still on AI, which we can have a whole episode more to talk about, which I have.

you have me back. I think that the component of as providers that adopt these tools and as they’re enabling them to do more, we know they’re already crunched for time.

And so I was just talking to my provider, Mike, well, what you think about it? like, this has saved me so much time.

I think it’s going to have a direct impact on online scheduling. know, well, how do these two go together?

I think in terms of the time blocks that providers have made on their scheduling, it’s going to allow them to see more patients and provide better care and more attention on and because it’s relieving the administrative burden.

And so I do think that we’ll continue to hopefully inch our way to, we’ll never be 100% online scheduling, I don’t think.

know, I’d be cool to be using the phones for a long time. so don’t abandon your calls, center, know, invest in it, if anything, make it an amazing experience, if anything.

But I do think that we’re going to see more. availability from a scheduling standpoint. And I hope that providers need some relief any way that you can get it, so.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success)

Well, when I talk to people outside of healthcare, a lot of most people that I talk to, and I don’t know what your data shows, really are no clue about like the, they assume doctors are getting richer and COVID made the hospitals rich, and they assume that everybody’s getting screwed somehow, and they don’t really know that the hospitals are actually most of them lost money during COVID, the impact.

But the one thing that’s, you know, people are kind of beginning to get a sense of his access, and, but I don’t think they still get really how impacted access is.

And so, you know, when people that are in healthcare talk about using PAs and MTs to help expand the coverage with medical doctors, which clearly we’re seeing more and more of, and we’ll continue to see more and more of.

But AI is another way to relieve pressure on the access problem, right? The more efficient a doctor becomes. The more they’re the director of the play, not doing every single part, the more efficient it’s going to be.

And then you start getting to things like reviewing lab results or scans and trying to get to the meat of the matter really quickly and still using your brain to double check.

But man, it’s a lot faster if you can use tools to get right. So I think that’s really part of the solution for access and the limited number of doctors with an expanding aging older population.

So, you did a couple more things before we wrap up for the day. know, how long consumers are willing to wait?

did you find, you know, four in a point you find there and do you find that changing over time?

Aaron Clifford (Press Ganey Associates)

Yeah, you know, Nashville, this was what we were seeing just with a number of our partners and the availability and access, what we’re on access.

So, the scheduling here in Nashville, for example, just to get into see a primary care physician, there’s about a nine month waiting period.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success)

Wow.

Aaron Clifford (Press Ganey Associates)

Yeah, I mean, it’s like it is, I’ve tried and it is nearly impossible, like you almost have to know somebody to get in and have a secret pass code, the secret handshake feels like.

And so we wanted to understand like, where are you willing to wait and for how long? And so, you know, high percentage is still not a high percentage, but just for example, less than a week was 25% ish for a primary care.

So expectations are still high. then for specialty care, a little less like not every majority of people, they don’t believe they can get into a specialist with less than a week.

But in terms of like, most people and like 50, not most, 50%. And a little less than that, um, we’re one to three weeks was reasonable, the willingness to wait past three months, you know, where one to three months is lower in that 30% range or 20% range, uh, and even less for four to six months, but, um, you know, so 49% of consumers will wait one to three weeks for an appointment before they’re just like, yeah, you know, what’s happening.

But, um, 30% when it comes to specialties, 30% are willing to hold off for one to three months. And that’s, we’ve trained the consumer with that, right?

we’ve trained, we’ve conditioned them, our expectations have been set. But with the shortage of, and we, I heard this stat 13, 14 years ago, that in 10 to 12 years, we’re going to have a physician shortage, a family, uh,

physician shortage. I’m like, hmm, because at that time I was marketing to get more patients because we had vacancies.

So I was thinking, you know, patients, um, you were too, I’m sure working with. And now it’s like, whoa, you know, we don’t have capacity.

So there’s some of this other shifting of the, um, initiatives have turned to specialties in an overall brand. Um, then hit on overall brand, because we did want to understand that, of course, because brand just being such a big thing.

So online reviews for providers and everything else, but then the reputation of the brand in general, I think is extremely important from an access standpoint.

And why I say from an access standpoint is what we asked for, um, because we know that in the absence of being able to even freestanding ERs.

And so we are wanting to. understand, well, how does that impact, you know, from, know, who will you choose?

Because there’s all kinds of different brands in the urgent care space. And many of them are owned by a health system, but they’re not co-branded, some of them are, some of them are, some of them are just standalone and affiliation.

But we found like 64% were more comfortable with having, to an urgent care that was affiliated with that health system.

So, you know, what we’re seeing is brand for overall systems are so important, you know, to understand not only from an online reputation standpoint, but then broader into a market study of unknowing, how aware are they of your brand, and then what’s the preference for your brand.

And then if you have your access point strategy and it includes urgent cares, how are they branded? Should you be thinking about other strategies with

it’s branded and maybe aligning it more with your system. So just some other interesting insights and tidbits that think some of your listeners would be interested in.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success)

So yeah, for sure. right, some couple comments before I ask you the last question. One is, we will be, if you’re listening to this on a streaming service, you find us through iTunes or Pandora or wherever or through YouTube.

If you go to the healthcare success.com website, find the search bar and search for this episode, so you’ll find the press gaining report attached.

you can look at it that way, or of course you can just Google press gaining CX trends report and find it that way.

So but for your convenience, it will be on our website as well. the data that you can get the actual raw data.

Secondly, I wish we had time, I talk about this one topic forever. Urgent care, we work with multiple urgent care chains.

And in fact, I’m going to be going to the Evolve Urging Care Association meeting in a couple weeks in Dallas. So I will be there. So, it’s a big part of our business. So, urgent care, it’s risen to become such a first line of defense in so many cases. You know back in the old days when I was sick, we would call our primary care doctor and sit there, but now we don’t even consider that. They can’t see us because they don’t have time and it’s not convenient for me either and I think that’s comparable to about 90% of the population at least, right? So whether they want to by design or not, we’re giving away those key visits or those sick visits to urgent care. And a lot of people we said a moment ago, we can’t get into our primary care doctor, so they think urgent care is their primary care, which is a whole different issue. Right, so there’s a lot there. And, by the way knowing how Nashville has grown so explosively, that access, on a local level is obviously unknown to me but I guess in retrospect not that surprising because Nashville has just so explosively grown over the years.

So the last question is and we don’t have time to do this justice today, but, you know, where do you think this is going to go the next 10 to 15 years with AI going back to large language models? I mean, it’s really hard to predict because it’s already surprised us. But any comments on that.

Aaron Clifford (Press Ganey Associates)

You know, I think that what doesn’t change is the need for quality content, first party here for your own website, and then always be aware of the third party.

good content and ensuring this accuracy, that doesn’t change because that’s going to be consistently feeding the LLMs. Obviously, how generations interact in expectations of what they can get done will be changing because of how fast we can get certain tasks done using AI.

So I think with the advent and the advancement of agents being used and individuals having their own personal agents and go do this on my behalf is definitely

going to come into play and how that interacts with health systems and providers and what they need to be aware of both.

Aaron is a little agent responding to either scheduling and picking up the phone and answering for me and being able to manage my schedule.

We’re going to see that, so it’s going to go both ways, right? Individuals will have agents and they’re going to be interacting on our behalf and so how we there’ll be new strategies that have to we have to employ for those scenarios and I think that’s sooner rather than later but then also just in you know how we make choices will continue to evolve in our dependency on I think there’s going to be a lot more dependency of how we use these ChatGPTs and Gemini and Claude and Perplexity and these others that are just going to be too hard to predict so I’m a little safe.

Because I don’t know what I don’t know, and I’m constantly blown away by new tech, I’m like, I didn’t see that coming.

So I’m not a futurist, but it’s a pretty exciting time to be alive.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success)

I think that the one thing that I notice is on anything that’s a sort of a rote task that I don’t really want to do that, that requires creativity.

So for example, we’re writing a case study about actually success in urgent care. And one of my salespeople wanted to have sort of a bullet point email.

And so it’s like, well, I can do that as a quick AI place to start. And it was really good.

was 80% of the way there. I just had to tweak it.

So I don’t knock into my brain up to AI, at least not willingly and not knowingly at this point.

Mike, do you worry about people becoming so reliant, creativity gets stifled, thinking critical thinking becomes stifled. Because when it’s right, know, let’s pretend we get to a point where AI is right almost always, you know, then it’s not, but it’s still not always. And so if you’re not looking, you’re in trouble.

The best metaphor just occurred to me is, I remember story about somebody who lived in a country road and, you know, there was never anybody in that road, never, never, and so eventually they just quit looking left when they turned out into the street and boom, they got killed because there’s never anybody coming, right?

So that’s not to be too morbid, but like if you overrely and you give up your critical thinking, you get into trouble, even if it’s rare.

So that’s a positive thought to end our interview.

Aaron Clifford (Press Ganey Associates)

Great Stewart, I appreciate it. Haha

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success)

You’re rocking in the corner and depression. But anyway, Aaron, was fun as always.

Aaron Clifford (Press Ganey Associates)

Yeah, thank you.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success)

We will put the report on our website. You’re always welcome back. And by the way, I don’t know if you even know there’s a interview with lots of people from Press Ganey over the years.

My dad, my friend, Dr. Molino, Tom Lee. Lots of people, but it’s like so fun to have you back on this meeting and we’ll we love the research you guys do The work you guys do so.

Thanks so much for being here today.

Aaron Clifford (Press Ganey Associates)

Thank you for the opportunities to her. Appreciate it. All right.