Today's customers are increasingly using AI to research complex, high-stakes purchase decisions before they ever reach a brand's website. At the same time, marketers are using AI to create content, optimize digital experiences, and make work more efficient. So what happens when AI becomes part of both the discovery journey and the work marketers are doing behind the scenes?
In this episode of The Visibility Brief, Rebecca Colwell (SVP of Marketing, Yext) sits down with Reed Smith (SVP and Chief Consumer Officer, Ardent Health) to discuss how AI is changing both sides of the customer experience: how people find the information they need, and how marketing teams deliver it.
Drawing on his work shaping patient experiences at Ardent Health, Reed shares a practical perspective on what's actually changing and why the fundamentals marketers have been working on for years (accurate data, accessible information, and human judgment) are becoming even more important as AI continues to revolutionize marketing.
This episode breaks down:
How AI is optimizing the way customers get answers
Why more data isn't necessarily better
How zero-click experiences (like Google's AIO and direct scheduling) are creating new entry points for brands
Why your technology partners matter more in an AI-driven world
How AI is changing day-to-day work for marketers
If you're a marketing leader trying to figure out where AI can actually add value, this episode provides a helpful roadmap: use AI to improve the work, but don't lose sight of the data, experiences, and human judgment that make the work valuable in the first place.
Episode Links
Transcript
00:00:00.120 — 00:00:28.160 More and more patients are returning to AI to help with their healthcare journey. This can be genuinely useful and I'm speaking from my experience, but it also creates a challenge for healthcare marketers. They have to be visible and accurate everywhere that both people and machines are looking for information. Here to share his perspective on how to do exactly that is Reed Smith, SVP and chief consumer officer for Ardent Health. Let's get into it on our episode of The Visibility Brief. 00:00:36.000 — 00:23:52.640 Hi, Reed, welcome and thanks so much for joining us today. Happy to be here. Excellent. So you co-host touchpoint, a weekly podcast about healthcare. And you're closing in on the way I understand it, nine years, 500 episodes. That is so many conversations. Um, what inspired you to launch the podcast? And I'd be curious to know how have the conversations changed since you started it? Yeah. Well that's a this is a great question. So. Yes. Uh, happy to be here. Uh, so Chris Boyer and I co-host, uh, touchpoint. It's a weekly show, uh, kind of around consumerism and experience in healthcare. And, you know, selfishly, we started this as just a reason for he and I to connect on a more regular basis. So we had both, uh, at the time, we're involved with some advisory work at the Mayo Clinic, and so we'd see each other in person a few times a year. And it was something that sounded, you know, appealing to both of us and kind of forced both of us to stay current on what was happening in the industry, changes we were seeing in technology and different things like that. Social media was a big topic at the time. And, uh, so yeah, it was just it was just a good reason for us to do that. And it just kind of accidentally turned into what it did, you know? And so, uh, we feel fortunate that that people still care enough to listen, you know, 500 episodes later that we still have something to say. So it's, uh, it's been fun. I think the conversation in the narrative has changed, and yet it hasn't all at the same time. You know, I think here in recent memory, um, you know, we we've talked a lot about AI, certainly. Uh, but we were doing very similar things nine plus years ago, uh, when social media and digital and online communities were such a big deal, um, around kind of peer to peer conversations in healthcare and things like that. And so, uh, you know, the more it changes, the more it stays the same, I guess. And so the, you know, the topics, the technology, some of that, some of that changes, but it's, uh, it's been it's been a lot of fun. That's wonderful. I mean, welcome to the life of a marketer, right? It is constantly changing. I've listened to a lot of the episodes, and it seems like a lot of your perspective is informed by your firsthand experience as the SVP and chief consumer officer at Ardent Health. Tell me more a little bit about your organization and your role there. Yeah, absolutely. So I've been fortunate to be a part of a great organization the last 4 or 5 years. Ardent health based in Nashville, Tennessee. We have 30 hospitals and other close to 300 sites of care across six states, eight different markets. And so, you know, we really have invested in, you know, community based healthcare. So we're in, you know, medium sized communities around the country. Think, uh, Tulsa, Oklahoma or Albuquerque, New Mexico, Tyler, Texas, those types of markets. And and it's been it's been really great. You know, I love I love those communities. I love those size organizations in the mission, uh, that, you know, everybody has to deliver, you know, care in those in those ways, in those communities. I think my role is a little bit unique in a lot of ways. I joined Art and originally to head up all of our digital and innovation initiatives. That's more a little bit over time to now include not just that, but what we call connected care and health enablement. So kind of those nontraditional care channels like telehealth and remote patient monitoring. Chronic care management, wearables, etc. so that along with innovation and kind of new products is really fun to be involved in. I have a lot of oversight of what we call access and experience, and so how people find their way into the health care system and then what people would consider kind of that legacy marketing and sales type function. So I have everything consumer facing of how people search, find, schedule, arrive for care. Um, and so it's in the experience they're in. So it's, it's it's great. It's a lot of fun. I've got a great team. I imagine the AI is having a really big impact on the patient experience, starting with how they find your organization. So what are some of the bigger use cases you're seeing for where AI is becoming part of this process? Yeah, we think about it in a couple of ways. And honestly, I think about it in a couple of ways. One is certainly we're seeing AI change the way people do their work, right? And subsequently we're seeing AI change the work. So it's, uh, it's really kind of two different sides of the same coin base, maybe. But I think, you know, from a consumer's perspective, it's it's very common, um, across the industry and really just in all walks of life that people are going to these models, if you will, to ask questions. Uh, you know, were you were typing a lot of things into the Google search engine not too long ago. You know, we're seeing more and more people as every day goes by type those same questions, um, and content into their, their agent of choice, whether that's Gemini or Claude or ChatGPT or whatever it may be. And then essentially we're seeing those, those groups return results in a very certain way. And so even if you are so going to Google, you're seeing a lot of the kind of AI generated results. And so for the consumer, we're seeing a change in how they search and find the information that they need. I think from us internally, thinking about the way that we do our work, there's a lot there. Um, you know, obviously it can help very much aid in the process and production of content materials. Uh, you know, I mentioned I'm over creative services. There's a lot that's happening in that space. Certainly Adobe's baking this into their creative suite even. And so again, it's just it's allowing us to think about, well, how does the work get done. Um, who does it. Um, what does it look like? You know, how do you drive more efficiencies in those ways? And then to how can we rely on a lot of our technology partners, uh, that have put this in as part of their roadmap, whether that's our EHR or otherwise? Uh, to really change, um, you know, how the work surfaces, even. It is such a disruptive time for sure. I'm I'd like to talk a little bit more about the patient experience. So are you finding patients are gravitating towards leveraging the AI to determine if they need care. Or is it more along the lines of I know, I need care now, where do I go and find a provider that satisfy insurance or, you know, is available? Yeah, there's a little bit of both. I mean, certainly, at least from what I've read and seen and others I've talked to in the space, you know, we're seeing a lot of, um, you know, what we saw early on with the internet, right? Which was people looking for definitional content, finding answers, trying to understand, uh, what is it? How how how bad is it? What do I need to do now? You know, answering very practical kind of next step questions. And so, yes, very much understanding, uh, symptoms, conditions etcetera, which, you know, we went from the internet to symptom checkers and kind of triage tools to. Now that might be what this turns out to accomplish. Right. I think that does lead you down a little bit of a linear path of like, well, what do I do next? You know, appropriateness of care. And so we've talked a lot through the years about, you know, do you go to the ER. Do you go to the urgent care or is this a primary care visit. Do I do virtual care? Uh, do I just tough it out and wait at home? You know, and so I, I think there's a chance that that this helps solve some of those questions. But I do think with what we're seeing with answer engines, specifically when we're actually choosing care. So if you think about, you know, the acuity going up or maybe chronic illness or conditions, things like that, where you're doing a lot of research around the provider, maybe the procedure, the, you know, the clinical trials, you know, all those parts and pieces. It really can aid in that, uh, of pulling all that information together, helping you to steal it down of, you know, really what's important. What does this mean? And I think there's there's a lot of opportunity there. Um, you know, we we try to make sure, you know, the appropriateness of care is right? Um, and so this, I think, you know, has the chance to help people do that. I've been thinking a bit about the shortage of health care providers that we have, you know, nationwide, especially in rural areas. And I imagine this can be an incredible tool for determining do I need to drive 45 minutes, you know, to get the care I need, or can this wait until tomorrow? And you also mentioned virtual services. So I'm curious, do you see AI empowering your teams to deliver better care or more care or increase access in particular ways? I hope so. I you know, I think we're still early in that journey. Certainly we the industry I mean, early in that journey, I think, um, you know, the hope is that that that turns out to be the case. I think what we can all agree on is that we're not going to have enough primary care doctors any time soon. Like, that's just the math is not there, right? And so if we think about, um, the levels of care. You know where you're going. For what? And the appropriateness of that care. Like we were just talking about, I hope from an authentic perspective, we've got a way to help people manage some of their chronic conditions diabetes, hypertension, you know, things like that. It's not that people don't need to see a doctor in person. They very much do. Um, but how do we help load balance, I guess, is maybe some way to think about it, to make sure that the people get in that really need to get in right that minute, that we're able to reduce some of the lead time, wait time, etc.. You know, you mentioned kind of the rule or maybe underserved communities. I still think we've got to solve some of the SDO pieces around broadband, for example. Uh, health literacy potentially, uh, depending on the areas. So again, there's still some, some gatekeeping to some of this. Uh, but I do think, um, you know, the demand is there. Certainly. Uh, it's hard for us to have enough providers. I don't care where you are in the country. And so serving that that kind of unmet need. I guess we hope the promise of AI is true, that we were able to see some of this come to fruition. And from a marketing perspective, have you seen evidence of patients or potential patients using AI more? Are you seeing that evidence show up in your metrics anywhere? We we do. I think it's interesting because I, you know, the, the the KPIs or the measurement, if you will, um, has changed a lot through the years for a marketer. You know, early on everything was very eyeball centric. You know, how many impressions did we get? Uh, you know, then we moved into conversions and, you know, some things like that. And, and even now, you know, we we have a better chance to show, you know, true attribution of our outreach or our campaigns and things like that. I think as we've seen answer engines and some of these pieces come online where people are searching for care. We are seeing more bots on the sites. We are seeing less people to the homepage, for example. Um, and we're seeing more conversions without really website visits in a lot of cases. And so again, I think that the the premise that we've held for a while with, I'll say Google, for example, is still true, meaning, you know, zero click search is still a thing. You know, they're wanting to serve everything up to you and make it to where you don't necessarily have to leave that search result page. I think that is still right. Um, you know, as we see knowledge cards we're building in scheduling functionality there, um, we're kind of skipping over the website, so to speak. In a lot of cases, you still have to have a website, of course. Um, it still has to be, you know, where you're hosting and serving a lot of this information from. You still have to be able to drop trust from it. Um, but it's it's a very different experience than it used to be. Uh, we're just everybody was kind of entering through the homepage of your website. I think as we think about what the front door means. You know, that definition is really changing quite a bit. How are you thinking about feeding those llms the information they need information about your providers, you know, locations, uh, insurances that you accept. And how are you feeding that to LMS? Yeah. And I think that's where the website still plays a real, real role. Um, I think there are very few organizations in the country, um, that are a destination for content in and of itself. You know, we've thought about Cleveland Clinic in these ways. We've thought about Mayo Clinic, you know, all the big logos that somebody might, you know, Hopkins or Cedars or Indy Anderson for cancer or whatever it may be. But the vast majority of hospitals are not that. And that's not really the business that they're in of creating, uh, consumable kind of definitional content. Right? They're not a content engine. And so I think what LMS have done is allowed for some level setting for the consumer of getting the answer they need and then being able to take the action they need. And so, you know, a lot of that action is local. Uh, and so having those specialties, the location, the availability. So i.e. scheduling for example, hosted in a way that is consumable by these LMS, I think is really important. You've also mentioned on one of your past episodes that the patient experience itself starts long before they walk into one of your locations, and it really starts with the research and in the booking process, and how information accuracy is absolutely vital. So walk you through that a little bit more like what happens to the patient when they're getting the wrong information. Yeah. Well you know, turns out health care's not, uh, low consequence in a lot of in a lot of ways. I mean, you're not you're not, you know, you're not buying something off, I don't know, Amazon or whatever. If the wrong thing shows up, it's not the end of the world. You return it, you get the right one or whatever. And so again, there's reasons people end up inside of a health care system. And some of those are very much convenience based, location based availability. Do they take my insurance. And most of those are episodic or kind of lower on the acuity scale. I think, you know, certainly, as you know, chronic illness or the acuity rises, you know, the stakes go up. You know, you need to make sure that you know, you have the right information for the folks. They're looking for it at the time that they're looking. So in, in, in best case, uh, you're just frustrating somebody's, uh, worst case, you're putting them in potentially a bad spot from a care perspective. And so, um, we certainly want to make sure that we're delivering the right information at the right time. Uh, but it does start well before. Hey, I need to book an appointment. Right. And so some of this goes back to how are you putting the information in front of them? How accessible is your information. Correct. And so again, it's funny because even though we're talking about AI, you still end up back to conversations you've had for years around taxonomy and data governance and some of the hygiene and structure pieces that power and allow a lot of this to work. So the things you've built for your physician directory, uh, in years past, uh, is still true. Um, and so, you know, how do you work with those partners? Um, whoever that may be, uh, around your listings, around your provider information, uh, to make sure it's correct. Because that's where a lot of this is getting picked up from. Sounds like a lot hasn't changed, but I'm sure a lot has. Um, have you, like, what do you think has changed the most in your job as a healthcare marketer, say, over the past five years? If I think back even further, if I think back initially, um, you know, 25 years ago, it was a lot around awareness. Uh, it was a lot about community relations. And those things are all still important. You know, we're we're in a lot of times a large employer in a town. And it's important to be connected there. Um, and that's true for a lot of folks around the country. I think what has changed is the amount of information we know about a person at any given time. And so I think what that next best action is, we're much more informed and, and have the ability to help them in that journey than probably we ever have been before. We have an awful lot in our EHRs. Uh, we have an awful lot, uh, coming in through, um, you know, feedback mechanisms like h caps, like patient family advisory councils, um, you know, notes through, you know, the portal, for example. Uh, you know, people are telling us stuff all the time. What are we doing with that information? How are we aggregating it? How are we using that to better a process? You know, what does that look like? Um, that is that's not really the problem. Like the lack of information, um, is not the problem. And so I think for the first time we do we really have an opportunity to help people, uh, in their journey, uh, probably different than we ever have before. It's amazing. Earlier you mentioned some of the things that your team is doing to leverage AI to be more efficient. I'd love to dig into that a little bit more. There's a couple of things that we look at from a process perspective. So certainly Creative Services is one of those, uh, a lot of content gets created. You think about some of the SEO and optimization around what is written and put online. Certainly there's a role for AI there. I think as we look at the reporting and analysis of what's happening across our organization, even outside of just purely our marketing outreach, uh, there's a lot of pieces there as well. You know, looking at, um, you know, the insights from what? And kind of marrying those up. It would have been a really hard project to say, hey, our physician outreach individuals are hearing this and they've documented this and the PRM. And then we're seeing this in H cap. So we're seeing this in our Google reviews. And we're seeing this from a patient family to try to crosswalk all of that information around the idea of experience. It would be really tedious and take somebody a lot of time to try to figure out, well, how do I thematically make sense of all of this? That's becoming almost an instantaneous answer in a lot of ways. And so I think, again, anywhere that you have inputs and data coming in, you've got the ability to to drive insights. And so that's that's an interesting one. We're seeing other things, uh, from uh, um, from an AI perspective, especially evolving how we do our work. Uh, so you think about we're doing a lot with ambient scribing right now with our clinicians, um, and kind of changing the way that they do their work and reducing some of that burden and burnout potential there. Um, so there's a lot uh, there's certainly a lot, uh, you know, I can think of a million use cases. Um, and again, some of it's, uh, that's maybe the hard part as well is how do we prioritize it? Where do you start? Where's the most value? Uh, here. Uh, but we do. We've got ways in, in my shop where we're using, uh, agents to, uh, proof documents, uh, to audit landing pages, to audit content and repurpose content across different channels. Uh, there's all kinds of stuff. And there really is. I think we've lost count. Just inside my department have, uh. Um, you know, built somewhere in the neighborhood of 70 or so different prompts that just the creative team is using to to make their work more efficient. Are you a purist in any way? In any way? Is there something that you would refuse to allow, uh, AI to touch? Hmm. That's a good question. My knee jerk is. No, um, I'm not saying there's not. I can't think of one off the top of my head. I do think there is something to be said. Again, going back to creative services, I don't want to make it sound like we've just automated the entire world. I think there's, uh. You talk about the need for judgment, right? And so, uh, a lot of what we do is human in the loop. Um, and so again, how do we better a process, make things more efficient? Humans are still in the loop, making a lot of judgment calls. And I think in the creative services space is a good example of where we are talking about pure creative production. Um, style is something that I'm not sure AI is quite there, and I don't mean like, you know, can it figure out your slide deck template that that's that's pretty easy. But when you're looking at, you know, how do we inject warmth and tone and some of those things into what we do? Um, you know, again, that probably still skews towards the human side. It probably will for some time. So I'm with you on that. And I think when we leverage AI effectively for the more tedious projects, like taking a slide deck and, and, you know, tweaking it to be consistent everywhere, it frees up creatives and marketers to, to make better judgment calls for pivoting into our final section. Um, this is the practical Advice for your peers section. We talk about what people should stop, start and reconsider. So let's start with the start section. Um, what do you think is one thing marketers should start paying closer attention to. Folks should really spend a lot of time figuring out how to get all of their strategic partners together and understand kind of what those roadmaps look like. I think we've heard plenty of product pitches. That's not really. That's not really what I mean. Um, but kind of where are they headed relative to AI or kind of the the evolution of technology? I think it's going to be important to understand if you have some real strategic partners, not vendors, the people that you've really partnered with to move the business forward to make sure everybody's aligned. Again, it's an interesting exercise to try to get some of those folks together and get their product roadmaps, understand where they're going, uh, and try to figure out, you know, do does this align with, you know, the opportunity with the problem we're trying to solve? Uh, or not? Is there an assumption people have made about health care marketing in the past that you think no longer holds true? When I started 25 years ago. Um, 00:23:54.000 — 00:25:51.720 you know, I don't say marketing much anymore because it became pretty obvious to me a few years ago. I spent a number of years ago now that, uh, marketing meant advertising to most folks. Um, again, right, wrong or indifferent. And I think there's a lot more to what we do. Um, and what my, at least what my department is, is in, you know, charged with doing, uh, then advertising that. Is that a part of the equation? Sure. Um, but I think, you know, there's an opportunity there to kind of reframe that. Um, and so again, I'm not sure that's fair. Um, but it's reality. And that's just kind of where we are. But that's, that's kind of the way that I think about it. Yeah. Maybe as marketers, we need to to market ourselves a little bit. Change the perception. Yeah. Yeah. I mean that's fair. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. But but again, in a lot of reasons. That's why I'm, you know, it's called consumerism or I'm the chief consumer officer. Um, so try to kind of get a better sense for it's not just about awareness and advertising. Um, it is about consumer engagement. Right. Right. Absolutely. These were fantastic insights. Um, if people want to hear more about your ideas and connect with you, how can they do that? Yeah. Best way is probably to track me down. Uh, is LinkedIn. I'm relatively easy to find there. There's not a lot of people with my name, at least that do what I do. So, uh. But you can find me there. Touchpoint Dot health is the website for the podcast. You can. You can find us there as well. Excellent, excellent. Well, thank you so, so much for joining us today. I really appreciate the insights and have a great one. Thanks for having me. That's a wrap on this episode of The Visibility Brief. If you found this useful, subscribe, leave us a review or send this to a colleague who needs to hear it. We'll see you next time.
