Why Constraints Create Better AI Strategies

Visibility Brief by Yext: Have you ever used an LLM for healthcare advice? ⁓ it's allergy station, so I sure have. And what we're finding is that as more and more patients turn to LLMs for healthcare research, the healthcare systems are facing a brand new challenge, which is how do you ensure the LLMs have accurate, localized, patient validated information? I'm joined today by Scott Orstad, who leads marketing at Catholic Health. Catholic Health is a health system with six hospitals and dozens of outpatient locations. And Scott is here to share how his team is operating in a new world where patients get their answers from AI before they ever step into an exam. Let's get into it. Scott, welcome to the visibility brief. It's great to be here, Rebecca. ⁓ so excited to chat today. I have many, many questions. But before we dive in, ⁓ I'm very curious about the function of healthcare marketing. So tell us a little bit about ⁓ how you got into your role. Sure. ⁓ I got into healthcare marketing about 25 years ago, starting on the communication side, because I really loved ⁓ telling stories and educating ⁓ people about how to stay healthy. And over time, you know, ⁓ became more excited and interested in the marketing side of the the function both from a branding and digital marketing as all of that grew. And now as I've, you know, been in the industry for a while, it it's kinda like it's come full circle because in some ways a lot of what we do in marketing now is that storytelling aspect as well too, through the different channels that we use ⁓ to share information with the public. So it's been a a really fun journey. It's amazing. I'm sure you have seen so much change over the past 25 years. ⁓ I know I have. Yeah, absolutely. The types of tactics we're using now, some of them weren't even invented back then yet. And some of them are definitely influencing things in a much different way than they were even just five and 10 years ago. Absolutely. You know, YX just conducted a a global consumer research study. And one of the things that we found is that ⁓ for people who are using LLMs for research. 44% of them are using them for healthcare research. ⁓ diagnosing conditions, finding providers. I imagine that is having a huge impact on your marketing strategy, and I would love to dig into that. So I first wanted to just think are you seeing that play out in your marketing? Are are patients conducting research on AI before they come to see you? Yeah, we're definitely hearing anecdotally from our physicians and other providers that patients are doing. research online and particularly with ⁓ AI search tools. I think everyone's always curious about what their condition might be, get a little more knowledge before going into the doctor's office. And I think we all like to, you know, play doctor a little bit and diagnose ourselves anyway. There's that curiosity factor there. So we are hearing anecdotally that it is something that they're starting to s to see more. And in some cases it's definitely helpful because patients come in more educated and prepared and sometimes it can also not always be the the best scenario as well just a it's kind of works in both cases. Well I imagine I mean if I'm going in to buy a card, I can conduct all of the research that I want. And if I'm incorrect about something, it's not a life or death situation. Healthcare can be very different. So I'm curious the the costs of getting it wrong are pretty high. So how are you thinking about getting, you know, accurate trusted information Out to the LLMs. Making sure that there is that trusted information is one of the reasons why we've really developed a ⁓ strong content strategy over the last year. You know, we felt like adding more content about different types of treatments and conditions and just general health information was really important to help educate the audiences in our areas where our hospitals and outpatient centers are, thus, using our physicians as those trusted sources to be cited. And just knowing as well too that the more frequently a website is updated, that the ⁓ the LLMs are seeing them as a trusted resource for content and information. It's interesting that you're tapping into your subject matter experts. That's fantastic. I tried to do the same thing. ⁓ but I imagine it's a bit easier for me to get a subject matter expert at Yaks on the line than it is for you to connect with a busy physician. So how do you do it? Like Content marketers everywhere are probably begging to understand how you get their time. Well, it's a combination of two things. Sometimes our team is doing interviews early in the morning or or late in the afternoon to accommodate the physicians' schedules. Sometimes, too, if it's a more generalized topic, we'll t you know, do some research with reputable sources and kind of put together a first draft for them to react to to kind of give us feedback. So we, you know, we work with the physicians based on what the topic is. You know, if it's more generalized, we'll kind of do the research first and do that first choice. But, you know, for some of the more specialized procedures, it's really important to hear from the physician firsthand ⁓ their knowledge in order to craft the story correctly. Are you writing the stories in plain English or are you using medical terminology? We're trying really hard to use as much plain English as possible because we want the stories to be as digestible and understandable for the consumer reading the story because we really see our patients as consumers who have choice. And we also feel by using that more plain language approach that it helps with ⁓ just building overall higher visibility, both from a traditional search standpoint as well as from an AI search standpoint, as these different resources are. looking for sites to source for information. Are your content marketers medical experts themselves? Not specifically. They all have a curiosity and may have and have different levels of of medical acumen, but I I think it's that ability to ask the question and understand which really helps because I think if they had too much knowledge, they might be a little too close to the situation and may not be able to really do the the plain English ⁓ Language that we're looking for justice because we want to make sure it's as understandable as possible so it can be as beneficial to the consumers reading the content. ⁓ that makes perfect sense. When we bring the curse of knowledge to our content, it makes sense to us. ⁓ are there topics that are more likely to be researched? I mean, specialties where you're seeing more questions being asked. We see a variety, we see common things that, you know, see a lot of search visibility. For example, we recently ⁓ did a story about the importance of the annual blood work that patients have during a physical and that's ⁓ scored very well and showed up in ⁓ an AI search for us. And then there are other times too we'll see if for example, when a you know, maybe a patient gets a referral from their their primary care doctor to see a particular type of specialist, and it may be ⁓ a an area they ha have never heard of, such as a thoracic surgeon who deals with lung conditions, and they may want to go search out, well, what does a thoracic surgeon do? And what type of treatments do they provide and help ⁓ with? So, you know, I think it it kind of comes down to both from that curiosity standpoint, from an education standpoint, to learn about a particular type of medicine or just to see to get more knowledge on some of the more common areas of medicine. As well too. Well, now I know what a thoracic surgeon does. Thank you. I actually had no idea. That's great. As a content marketer within the healthcare system, you've got this added layer of complexity around compliance and ensuring that you are adhering to all of the complex rules out there. So tell me a little bit more about how you manage that and what the relationship looks like with your compliance group. Sure. You know, compliance is an an important part of the mix within healthcare. We're a very highly regulated organization. It's a a bit more challenging for us to show the impact that we have ultimately on the on the bottom line, which we do as far as getting patients to schedule and fulfill appointments and the the money value that has. But the the the real key is having that open and transparent relationship with them. I think it's, you know, critical the compliance is aware of all of the different ⁓ marketing tools and functions that you're using and you bring them in for from the very beginning and get them comfortable with the process because it really needs to be a strong relationship and a team approach because when you do have that, it it it makes for things it makes for a more successful relationship. Do you find that being in the space that you're in ⁓ limits your ability to adopt AI tools yourself? ⁓ agentic execution or or any of these, you know, ⁓ cutting edge tools? I I don't think it necessarily inhibits us. What it may do is we may not be able to be the first ones to try it. We may let others, you know, work out some of the kinks, but I think there's definitely a desire because there's there are tools where you even from an operational standpoint, the organization has adopted to make ⁓ basic routine things like resetting passwords and things like that for for patients and consumers easier by simply using ⁓ AI tools. We sometimes the appointment reminders as well too. So we're trying to make things as easy and frictionless as possible for our patients. So there's the opportunity where AI can play a great benefit in those areas and and others as well too, that there's definitely a willingness to embrace it, but it just needs the appropriate vetting so that it can be ⁓ utilized appropriately and correctly. Cause first and foremost, you know, patient privacy is of our utmost ⁓ importance to us. And we just want to make sure that we're able to uphold that in a way that helps to benefit them as well too, from an AI tool. So I love that you are out there creating plain language content to to help people with some of the common questions. But there's this whole other category of information that that people are using LLMs to find. And that is when they do need treatment or ⁓ a diagnosis, they're using the LLMs to find local providers, ⁓ map those to insurance companies, you know, that that sort of thing. So I'm curious how you think about that part of your content marketing challenge. How are you getting detailed information about your healthcare facilities, providers ⁓ out into the world? Sure. You know, one of the most important things we did a c several years ago is really kind of do an audit of all of the information out there. And we worked with the X to help get us consistent information to about our different centers as well as our physicians consistently because we realize in many cases, ⁓ as much as we want everybody to come to our website to get that information, as they're doing that search as many times the information they're looking for, whether it be a location, a phone number, they can obtain just in that actual search. especially from a Google business listing. So we knew it was really important to have accurate information online and consistently throughout the different resources that people may be looking at. So kind of making sure that our foundational information was accurate and correct was something that we just knew we needed to do. And one of the other things we're looking to do now is make sure that as some of our specialty physicians may you know, have two or three locations, we're making sure we're having specific location information about each of those and not just the primary location, knowing that as search is getting more specialized with closer and smaller geographic distances, we want to make sure that our physicians show up in any of the locations they may be at, not just that primary one. Scott, I'm curious, what other kinds of information are you managing out aside from location Phone numbers, specialties. I imagine the corpus of data is just getting larger and larger for what people want to know. Sure. I think one of the other key pieces of information that people are looking for is the ⁓ the insurance ⁓ that that particular physician w participates in, because you know that's an important decision for someone. Obviously, they want a high quality physician who is skilled at what they're doing, but they also want to make sure they're finding some who Who participates in their insurance plan to help keep their costs under control. And so providing that the information about participating plans is a a critically important piece that ⁓ we work on collaboratively with our with our digital technology colleagues as they they populate that information, whether it be in the find of physician profiles or the other information that we share out to the other ⁓ To the other publishers because we want to make sure that we are providing as much information as possible about our physicians so that the the consumer searching for them will ultimately select them. Can you tell me a little bit more about how you're managing this? So you've got your digital team. I understand you've got a data warehouse of a sort that is collecting all this information. So how are you tell me if that's right, and then how are you connecting that to YEX and then publishing that out to the broader worlds? That that's correct. Our our digital technology services team has create created this ⁓ tremendous warehouse resource of information where as we have a number of different ⁓ data sources within the organization. They aggregate all the information together to make sure we're sending out that correct information through the various different digital platforms from the website to a a daily feed with yes to make sure all the different publisher networks have the right information to our find a doctor tools. So we we have a great relationship with our DTS counterparts to ensure that our online presence is accurate and correct for each of our locations and most importantly for our physicians. ⁓ you mentioned find a doc. Do you have local pages for your providers and locations? We we do. We think it's really important to make sure that each of those specific locations for the specialists do have that that local ⁓ connection to them. And so that is something that we have started ⁓ to add as part of the the overall mix as far as making sure we have that accurate information. And I I know on the healthcare front, reputation is really, really important. It's often I I remember when I had I needed a ⁓ my gallbladder removed and I got a recommendation and I was like, well I don't know anything about picking a great gallbladder surgeon by the way or even about their ultra. ⁓ So I am curious how you think about managing your reputation and Especially across so many different providers and locations. Sure. It is something that we are rethinking our strategy with right now. We do routinely ⁓ ask our patients for feedback for surveys. And that information is shared in our find a doctor tool. But what we also realize is that information right now is only available right there. So we are looking at getting that information populated out because we recognize that one of the the the sources of information that the AI searches are starting to favor as much as well now too is online reviews. And so we are looking at ⁓ increasing that for our different locations as well as our providers with a proactive strategy so that it's not just those who may have had a positive or negative experience and are controlling the narrative because we're not being proactive because we know from past experience with our urgent care centers when you Proactively ask patients there about their experience. The vast majority of them are positive experiences and tell a better story about what's really going on. And so we are looking to ⁓ enhance what we are doing for that online reputation piece because first it's the right thing to do as far and we know consumers are looking for, but we also know that the the AI searches are value this information as well. And so that's also why we're looking to Add that to our digital footprint. Are there ⁓ any internal metrics that you're reporting across the organization for providers or facilities that are are performing well from a reputation perspective? Sure. We we regularly monitor what the current online presence is for different providers as well as locations so that we can keep a snapshot and we work very closely with our patient. experience team with regard to that and are partnering with them on those next steps on how to take that experience piece to the next level. So everyone has line of sight as to which providers are ⁓ getting favorable reviews as well as which locations are getting favorable and those where there may need to be some areas of improvement. That's great. Well Scott, I think one of the biggest things that organizations are struggling with is is Actually monitoring their visibility and their sentiment and just understanding how am I showing up ⁓ across the board, especially at the scale that you're operating at. So I'm really curious, ⁓ are you ⁓ what tools are you using to monitor your visibility right now? And what are you learning? You know, it's it's an exciting time right now to figure out what's going on in the kind of the AI space. We have ⁓ partnered with YXT on on the Scout tool to get a sense on where we kind of stand. And we found some really helpful information. There were a lot of little quick win things from an information and a visual standpoint that we were able ⁓ to make some impact on. But there are some other things that are going to be a little bit more of a longer haul, you know, such as the online reputation piece and having a more proactive strategy with that. But we felt it was important to see because the way in which AI search is ⁓ evaluated online is different than traditional search, and we needed to make sure we had a mechanism to measure both so that we could be visible in both areas. It's time for a final section. This is my favorite section every time, puts people on the spot. But ⁓ when you're thinking about healthcare marketing and everything that has changed, what is one thing that you think marketers should start doing? I think one of the things they need to start. Doing right now, if they're not already doing, is making sure they have that sense of what's going on from a data standpoint to make sure everything is accurate and correct and really relook at in in partnership with that their content strategy. You know, content has kind of become king again in its importance. You know, four or five years ago, ⁓ I I think some of the the the flashy type of visual graphics and video content were big and video content is still very important. We still invest heavily into it. But I think plain English has become even more important again because of AI search. So I think getting back to the basics and making sure that you're focusing on content and making sure your data is correct is really what, you know, people can best do right now to help be successful in the the new world of online search. ⁓ what should we stop doing? I I think the one thing everyone should stop doing is trying to react on a weekly basis to the latest news about AI. I I think you can kinda send yourself a bit into a tizzy. I I you know, I think you know, the one thing we all used to try to do maybe a few years ago is buy our way into the results with, you know, paid search. And now I think that's kind of been replaced by trying to react to every pivot we're seeing and just realize that some of the things are gonna work and some of them are, but we just gotta wait a little bit and be patient and see which ones really kind of stick. ⁓ God, that you you're speaking my language today. It does feel like every day there's something new and we're just really trying to stay on top of all of it and and pivot. So that great foundational advice about the basics, getting the fundamentals right. ⁓ is there anything we should just be rethinking entirely? I think what we need to be really rethinking is about how is thinking more about the the consumer experience and how they really are looking for information and are are craving it. I think at times, especially in healthcare marketing, we still utilize some tactics that have been kind of all tried and trues and we still want them to work. And they sometimes can be effective, but the the online presence and the sort being a source of information is just so important. And we need to make that digital experience as frictionless as possible for our our consumers and patients. that we we need to be part of the solution along with our operations and our IT peers because that's really where the the future I think is going to be and for organizations who make that online digital experience frictionless both in their own environment with their own websites and tools and information in third party sources, whether it be AI or Google, will ultimately win the game because they're making it easier for the consumer to select them. Scott, this was a fantastic conversation. I really enjoyed connecting with you today, and we'd love to have you back again soon. We'll love to be back, Rebecca. Enjoyed our conversation, and I hope that ⁓ you found some helpful information from it. That's a wrap on this episode of the Visibility Brief. 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