Welcome And Why Experience Matters

Dr Andrew Greenland 0:00

So welcome back to the Voices in Health and Wellness podcast, where we explore what it really takes to build, run and scale modern health and wellness practices without losing sight of the patient experience. Today's episode is all about what top medical practices do differently, lessons in patient experience, and how the environments we create, both physically and emotionally, shape outcomes far beyond the treatment room. I'm pleased to be joined by Karen Farah, CEO and founder of the Melting Pot Studio based in Brooklyn, New York. Karen works at the intersection of design, branding and experience, helping wellness and healthcare businesses create spaces that not only look beautiful, but actually support trust, connection, and better patient journeys. Her work brings together strategy and creativity in a way that's deeply aligned with where healthcare is heading. So, Karen, I'd like to thank you and welcome you to the show. Thank you so much for joining me today.

Karen Farah 0:48

Hey, Dr. Andrew and your audience, thank you so much for having me and for creating this space to talk about these super important topics. I'm very happy to have this conversation with you. Thank you.

Dr Andrew Greenland 0:56

Well, likewise, looking forward to it. So maybe to start, could you share a little bit about your role and how the melting pot studio fits into the broader health and wellness landscape?

Karen Farah 1:05

100%. So I come from the heavy industry. I'm a construction engineer by profession. So I know that the type of unsexy industries right now have a lot of space for transformation, but there's a very few vendors that can service, you know, those areas because they're more focused on the digitized uh parts of the industry, right? Um, part of my corporate pledge is also to create uh tech equity, right? And I think that it's not also on the philanthropic level, but also at the industry level with our clients. So at that point, uh my mom is a psychiatrist that was her assistant for years. So I saw firsthand the psychological effects and also uh the need for adoption of technology to improve customer experience, whatever your practice is. So when I opened the melting pot studio, uh my background is mostly in business and operations, but I also wanted to have a career in tech my entire life. So with the Melting Pot Studio, we're just creating that sort of bridge in how to solve business problems and organizational problems from process and standardization and platforming and experience with the use of technology. That's why we're tech agnostic. And I always say when we sell technology, we solve issues with technology. So we're very proud to serve, you know, uh very high compliant and heavy industries like insurance, healthcare, uh, supply chain manufacturing agriculture, you name it. Um, and we've had great success doing that because we like to do the hand holding into adoption and also creating trust before even a line of code is written and people are willing to implement it and use it, uh, which also trickles down then to their end user. So thank you.

Dr Andrew Greenland 2:31

It always helps to get the background and context. So you've worked across a number of different industries, as you just mentioned, but what specifically was it about wellness and healthcare focused businesses that kind of drew you in?

Karen Farah 2:41

Yeah, 100%. So I think when it comes to wellness and healthcare, um, it has a lot to do with the experience of patients. With patients are going to the doctor, people don't really like going to the doctor for the most part. So, how can you get people through the door in a way that feels organic and also feels safe for them to keep having them come in while you're also educating them and you're also not burning out, right? Um, so for me, uh the type of technology that I like to implement and develop for others has to be very human-centric at what's best in healthcare and wellness, right? Um, and also creating that trust in patients to keep going, you know, uh to the doctor pretty much and like taking care of themselves. If you can offer them a good experience, good education, good follow-up, you don't make them waste time. Um, and you make you have them going through the process seamlessly, that can pretty much reassure you that they'll be coming back and taking care of themselves, right? I mean, as a patient myself, um, if I have a great experience with my doctor, which I do, it will keep having me coming back and coming back. And that the end result of that is me taking care of myself. So with technology, my I always say that my mission is just to like take care of humanity and what's the best way to do it then through wellness and healthcare.

A Four-Phase Adoption Roadmap

Dr Andrew Greenland 3:50

So thank you. So let's get into the weeds. What does a typical project look like for you from first conversation to finished experience? Well, walk us through something that we can you know help the listeners relate to.

Karen Farah 4:01

Yeah, 100%. So it depends, right? I mean, I think it depends on the level of readiness in the type of client and buyer persona. Sometimes it's a small practice, sometimes it's just a solo practitioner, or it can be a hospital. You have to have to walk you through kind of what a mid-sized clinic is, right? I mean, when it comes to healthcare, they come in saying, hey, we paid millions of dollars, um, or we paid thousands of dollars in this sort of software, and six months later we're just gathering digital dust, and doctors are back to paper and wasting time, and our front desk is just like a mess and there's gaps. We need to make sure that now we can implement something that follows process and has enough foundation for them not to only adopt it, but then trickle down to the experience of our patients. So I get that a lot. They spend time and money just trying to get to the faster solution, and then that didn't work out, they have to count their losses, reel it back in, and then do things more intentionally. So I like to talk about this process in four phases, right? I mean, I like I said, even before we write a line of code and implement anything, it has to do a lot with change management and the process. It's like, oh, you have a Ferrari, but you have square wheels. It's gonna damage the car. I mean, it's not gonna work if you don't have the right foundation. So, first of all, um, once they come in with that, I like to sit down with their staff and basically all the stakeholders involved in the day-to-day and do interviews and trying to map out all the workflows and the gaps that there is in the whatever department they're trying to basically just tackle as low-hanging fruit if it's just one per time. I like to do faced approaches because that's how you create trust and then digital adoption. So we map it out, and then once we map it out, it's about about standard standardizing those processes. And when I say standardizing those processes, people think, oh, it's a 20-page manual. That's not how it is. People won't even read it and they just get stored in collecting dust. You just do a one pager with a workflow that's very clear. And if it's for a role, you just do those conditionals. And after that, you don't even start like implementing the sophisticated AIs of the world and the autonomous systems. It's just like what kind of very simple low-risk workflows can you do, right? I mean, and when it comes to customer experience, even the first step of intake, you can automate those things, right? I mean, follow-up for scheduling, um, also recognition of patterns when it comes to cancellations and like staffing. So those sort of workflows that we can do even without that layer of AI, which still has that sort of human in the loop, which creates that trust and ownership over the system, it's what I would like to implement first. Um, and after that, has some sort of level of readiness, meaning there's adoption digitally by the team. There's also an integration, um, sort of level of readiness as well. Because when I say, hey, if you're still moving from platform to platform manually, your level of readiness is very low. So we need to integrate all of your systems first and then have your leadership buy-in. Once we have that, that's when we add the sort of sophisticated admin autonomous sort of systems when you find your AIs and everything else, meaning um history summaries, uh, appointment summaries, um, again, analytics, cancellation patterns, uh being one step ahead of the patient, meaning if you have a PT sort of practice, if you have an ACL that's torn and you start missing appointments from week three, you're gonna mess your treatment. So you can have systems kind of see that before even the staff sees that, and be one step ahead of the wellness of the patient. So those things you can start implementing in phase three. And then phase four is fully transforming uh your systems. So you have AIs talking to AIs at that point. That's where the sci-fi star stuff starts starts. But I also think that most clinics and organizations think that they need to get to phase four. Sometimes you only need to get to phase three or phase two, depending on the size, level of readiness, and your needs. Um, as an organization, you don't really need a sci-fi stuff. If you're really not there, you don't need it. A PT practice won't be the same as a mental health practitioner, right? I mean, so um, it all depends. Um, but that's kind of like the roadmap and blueprint that we'd like to follow. And then we offer maintenance and support right after that because systems are transforming every single day of our lives. So we like to stay at the top of it and then offer hours a month to just support them and always bring them to the latest of the latest of tools that we can offer them.

Dr Andrew Greenland 8:16

Amazing. So I guess the the founders and the owners come to you to do, you know, to put the work out and ask you to do a particular project. What do you think the benefits are for the sort of more administrative start on staff on the ground from the work that you do and the approach that you have?

Karen Farah 8:31

Um, what do you mean?

Dr Andrew Greenland 8:32

Like um, how does that trickle down to the roles within clinics and like the real the more the more the more basic roles, you know, the administrative roles, how do they benefit from your the approach that you take with your design work?

Karen Farah 8:46

Yeah, 100%. And that's a great question because it all depends on the type of departments you have. And let me just preface this by saying when you start doing this sort of transformation, you want to tackle the departments that are mostly more influential within the organization. Usually those are the front desks, the billings, right? I mean, customer experience teams. And even when it comes to daily practitioners and even mid-sized hospital, the nurses, right? So when when you're introducing new systems, you don't do it from a replacement standpoint. It's more from an augmentation and sort of relief standpoint. So, how do they benefit? When you're in the front desk, you don't have to wait two days for intake. You can do it in 48 hours. That's when you're positioning it now. We're not replacing you, improved intake in 48 hours, right? I mean, follow-up calls, cancellation follow-ups, right? Even after visit follow-ups. That's time that they're saving at the front desk. And it's more at the mass admin type of tasks that they're doing every day and how you're relieving that. I would not say, not even to a doctor or practitioner that's been, you know, practicing for 20 years, hey, with AI, change the way that you speak to your patients. You don't say it like that. It's more about, hey, draft your follow-ups better and in a more efficient way to your patients in your till, right? And in the sort of language that you're used to speaking to them every day. So that's from the front desk side of things. When we're talking about nurses, for example, um, they're on the daily spending very long shifts, right? I mean, taking care of people and kind of doing where they do best, which is shining on the customer experience, take care and compassion, and also the technical and kind of like the domain sort of practice for them to then after a 12-hour shift to sit down 45 minutes on a computer, navigating three taps, just finding if uh the results were sent to the patient uh from the specialist, only because the specialist put the information in a comment box and then another one put it in a PDF detached. So when you create and create structure and get rid of the ambiguity and just create that's these sort of workflows, that's gonna save them time from their day to do the things that they do best or even recharge, right? I mean, I think we need time to also get rid of the burnout. Uh, the way that I like to implement and also attack these sort of issues, it's more from a human-centric perspective. We're still humans in the loop for these processes. And we need to make sure that we're rested up enough and we're not burned out by the repetitive friction, not only because I don't think people are against, you know, innovation, it's just the friction that it all creates. Um, so you've got to put yourselves in their shoes, right? Um, so yeah, I think that when it comes to adoption, you just have to go through your org chart and then finding what's the most influential sort of department in the tire org that would also give that sort of peer-to-peer sort of recommendation within the company to then scale that to other departments for them to gain that trust to then adopt it. Uh, but always do it from an augmentation standpoint and a replacement standpoint. Um, like I said, just very simple examples as just intake. Um, even for doctors, uh, I'm thinking now that we've done it a lot for you know solo practitioners, um, they get the patient's chart, you get a summary of it with only highlights that you need to know for that type of visit and then the after visit as well. And you can keep a dashboard just to see the the even the performance of the patient, meaning their medication, the sort of visits, if they have anything to take with them, if you're a PT, if they need to do the exercises and whatnot, that's very helpful and it's not hard to implement either, which means also saving money while it's saving you time. So it's a win-win.

Dr Andrew Greenland 12:22

Brilliant. And now let's think about the end user, the client, the patient. What do you think the advantages are to the patient from your approach or the patient interfacing with a practice that's um worked with you?

Karen Farah 12:34

Yeah, 100%. I think every single thing that we do, even if it's at a utility level for hospitals or practitioners, that trickles down to experience. If doctors and practitioners can do their jobs better, people are going to notice it and they're gonna feel it. If you know what you're doing, what you're doing it with, and you make it seem less, that definitely translates into the experience, making the patient feel like they're the center of attention that you're catering them and specific to their needs. Who doesn't like that? Right. I mean, and you do that through understanding what's their journey and the whole arc of their situation, then after the visit, how you're following up and also educating them and keeping them in the loop, and how do you keep them coming in? How do you do that also? When they're trying to call and try to get results, you're not spending 40 minutes trying to look for their results in their file. If you have a system that can basically just be one step ahead of you, it's a two-minute call that will give them all of their answers. That's customer experience and patient experience, that it's coming from a utility sort of solution that you have inside of your clinic or your organization. So I think everything that you do from the inside, that it's going to improve the way that you do your job, it's definitely going to trickle down to the way you service. Uh, and again, making them feel very much catered and that they're the center of the world. I went again in the world of wellness and health, it's very personal already. People have the reservations in going to the doctor. So when you give them a personalized experience through technology and predictive technology, I think that only creates um it reduces churn and creates more um attendance for sure and more engagement with the materials that you're trying to produce for them.

Dr Andrew Greenland 14:07

Got it. Thank you. So, what does a typical day look like for you now as a founder? Because I know you're a founder and you probably wear lots of hats in the business. But what does a typical day look like if there is even such a thing as a typical day and there probably isn't?

Karen Farah 14:19

Uh uh thank you for that. That final remark. Because I think my days, they don't they don't look the same every day, but definitely the intention is the same, right? We're a startup, we're a little bit over two years old. So definitely wearing a lot of hats as we're growing, but I'm also very careful in growing too fast because I want to stay small enough to care. So I take care of a lot of the departments and things that we do every day because people want to work with you, right? So every day I'm servicing our clients that are already in our roster, making sure that all the projects are on track, that all of our maintenance engagements are on track and people are being serviced in the way that we promised, because we take that very seriously. And then I just go out there. The job of a CEO is just finding business, strategic partnerships and opening up to markets. Right now we're opening ourselves up to the Latino market. I'm Latina, so I think that's such an on-tap market for what it's emerging technology. So most of my days now is just finding strategic partnerships in Latin America to start growing there, given the level of readiness, it's just an opportunity for us to bring innovation to them. Um, other than that, I do love to interface with our clients directly. That's why I say people want to work with you because they want to feel, right? I mean, that they're catered and that their center of attention, which they are, they keep our lights on. So I spend a lot of time interfacing with our clients and also our internal teams. I like to stay pretty much involved, but I cannot lie and say that I'm not supported by an amazing team of people that I delegate to. So I also interface with them on a daily basis. But Karen basically has their foot in every single base and finding strategic partnerships to just keep growing and innovating because things in the industry are literally changing every day. So for me, it's also getting education every day through social listening and my own research on how we can become better and have that competitive edge. I think that's the job of a CEO, however, you want to, you know, see it.

From Transactional Visits To Tailored Care

Dr Andrew Greenland 16:07

So perfect. So you've got a unique vantage point across um multiple businesses. What major shifts are you seeing right now in how clinics think about patient experience? Obviously, you've been telling us all about how you view the patient experience, but how are clinics seeing it before they get to work with you?

Karen Farah 16:22

Um, how they're seeing it now or how they should see it.

Dr Andrew Greenland 16:25

How they see it, but how they're seeing it before you have the conversation about you know what what you're going to do to help to improve the patient experience.

Karen Farah 16:31

Yeah, I think that's that's a great question. I don't think I've ever asked been asked that question. It's that's so important because I think they see it more as a transactional sort of exercise. I mean, for them, it's a workflow that takes them from A to B. Um, people come in, they get service, and then they get out, they're healthy, we're doing the follow-up, but it's very transactional instead of being more of a holistic sort of evergreen exercise with them and with the patient. So they're not really worried about educating patients on, you know, um what their condition is and how to improve it, or even how to create spaces for them to come in and feel more comfortable with whatever their treatment is or whatever their arc is. They're not really interested in giving them experiences more than having that sort of transactional relationship that they come in, they get healed, they get treated, and then they go out. Um, right. And and even with that, which is pretty much like an A to B sort of workflow, they still have gaps because there's a lot of ambiguity and there's no ownership over that experience, that it's pretty transactional already. So before that, that's before we work together, that's kind of like the mentality that they have. But then, like I'm I'm I'm talking to you, I'm more about everything comes back to customer experience and more in this era where we have so much fatigue from everything that we're seeing every day and all the places that we need to be. You need to give them a cater experience so they feel safe enough to keep coming back. Right now, when they come to me, it's not happening because everybody's fatigued, even leadership. So there's little buy-in from leadership or even proactiveness into like creating spaces that are more curated to patients. And it's also the fact that they put all patients in one bucket. They're just patients, they don't take really the time to understand the profile of patients, the generational brackets that there is and how they like to be serviced. So that's why I say that it's very human-centric change management stuff that happens even before we implement anything. It's really understanding your audience so you know how to service them better. And that sort of understanding I feel it's missing, um, even from the bigger sort of hospitals and clinics and practitioners. Um, and that's where we actually have a lot of fun kind of doing that discovery with them because then you see how excited they get to really understand who's coming through the door and then how to create that sort of tailor experience for them, which they hadn't think about before.

Dr Andrew Greenland 18:50

Thank you. And how are leading how are leading practices approaching design, branding, and environments differently today compared to perhaps a couple of years ago when you were first starting out, or even before that, if you were aware of the industry?

Karen Farah 19:03

No, that's that's a great question. I think, I mean, we don't focus that much on branding and marketing and kind of like brand voice for them. When we come across a prospect, they're already pretty established within this space and like they're not really looking to redesign the way that they're presenting themselves to the world. It's more about how everything looks under the hood. But when we have to, it's definitely now more refreshed and trying to make it more modern looking so they can speak to younger audiences as well, right? I mean, we're not getting any younger, um, and only new generations are getting now that sort of autonomy to start getting closer to doctors by themselves without the parents, you know, like we're all kind of like growing up and into taking care of our own selves. So, how do you speak to newer generations that now are in this kind of position in their lives? So people are trying to modernize more the way they look and how welcoming and warm they look to others instead of looking so clinical in the way that we know it. Um, so that's kind of how we've been seeing, but really in the healthcare space, we usually just get people that are pretty established, they're ready and they're not trying to redefine the way that they present themselves, it's just how they operate more than anything.

Dr Andrew Greenland 20:15

Thank you. So when you start working with um a new clinic, where do you see them most often underestimating the impact of experience, whether that's a physical space or digital touch points or communication?

Karen Farah 20:28

That's a great question. I think it's more about on the digital touch points. Usually the physical space is not an issue, it's just how to even get people into the physical space that where they underestimate um the power, right, of the digitized um sort of approaches that we offer. Um everything's digitized in our world. People are always in front of a screen, whether it's small, medium, or large. So people really um underestimate the power of reach and kind of doing like strategic touch points with them in voice that matter to patients. And again, that comes from really knowing your audience of patients and your population of patients. So I think that's one, but I think it's also the fact that most practitioners, if you've been practicing for a long time, you've gone through all the high waves. So there's obviously in most cases a lot of lack of trust because you've probably gone through really poor rollouts of digitized solutions that never worked out, or really poor training, or you know, or we just really really poor results that they didn't have KPIs behind it to measure it and improve it. So I think the underestimation of these sort of efforts doesn't come from the solution itself, but past experiences that the staff has had, meaning they won't trust it, meaning there won't be adoption. So they will just discard it automatically.

Dr Andrew Greenland 21:47

And in terms of their the clinic's growth and retention, where does this kind of approach really fit in?

Karen Farah 21:54

Um return and reach, you mentioned. Um I think definitely. Um, creating experiences that can give you more return in terms of how can you not only from a practitioner standpoint or mindset, um, and you can create through the clinic itself, give you return, but the return you created by having them come through the door more, right? So, how do you do that? Educating them, um, doing the follow-ups, right? Um, if you give them good customer experience through very seamless intake, then follow up, then doing your predictive analytics to understand the cancellation pattern so you know where to get them and retain them more than anything, and really understanding from the clients that have already converted or patients that have already converted what made them convert so you can acquire more, whether that's through advertising, strategic partnerships, or referrals, that's also how you get the return by just automating all these processes and making it autonomous with AI, where it can actually give you the insights of the pattern recognition. Everything is pattern recognition with data. So we can gather that and not only understand your current client for retention through experience and seamless customer experience and patient experience, it's understanding what's working from here. So you can then acquire new audiences from whole audiences. And again, that could be through cold calling, advertising, TV ads, and whatnot. Because everything, when it comes to data, you can replicate it in different channels. So I think that it's more about really making it human-centric and understanding who you already have, so you can just replicate it.

Dr Andrew Greenland 23:20

Thank you. So from the businesses you're working with right now, what's what tends to be working really well for them and what's frustrating behind the scenes for them?

Karen Farah 23:32

That's a good question. I'm gonna start from the second part because that's usually um how most um engagements are. There's a lot of resistance into doing these things and the digital transformation part of every engagement. Usually we're having a hard time, and I think that's what makes us different is that we have the patience and the expertise to kind of walk them and decision makers through the benefits of doing this in a really faced approach. But we cannot also be blind to the fact that most decision makers in this industry sort of in a typical generational bracket, that they're not really as tech savvy as maybe the digitized business. So they don't really understand what's going on. They just know that they want to get a piece of the pie and be a part of this. So it's usually getting the leadership buy-in that takes the longest and worth the most friction is at the very beginning. But then, like I always say, once you get through that, which usually happens through a very um standard cycle, um, then the sky's the limit, right? But then you got to be very intentional and careful with um with how you approach these things because you still need to earn the trust through actions and implementations and KPIs that are being met. So what's working very well for them, it's exactly doing just a faced approach, not only for them to gain the trust, but the people are gonna be using these things within the company. Because if you're not doing very intentionally, you're just gonna burn out someone else's collaborators and that's never looking good. So I think that doing faced out approaches, even for the fact that it's big operations that you don't want to disrupt and also high-compliant operations that you don't want to disrupt, um, it's always something that resonates very well. Um, and even as a company yourself allows us to learn in the process without being so rushed into just going from zero to phase four. So doing faced out approaches after getting leadership buy-in um for a very intentional blueprint, um, it's what's been working very well for us so far.

Dr Andrew Greenland 25:21

And in terms of the challenges or bottlenecks which are most impactful for some of the businesses that you're working with, what would those be?

Karen Farah 25:28

Um in terms of solutions, sorry, I missed that.

Dr Andrew Greenland 25:30

Um in terms of the challenges or bottlenecks that most of the that many of the businesses you work with have, what what are those typical things?

Karen Farah 25:38

Yeah, the typical things, I mean, in terms of the general landscape, not only healthcare, um, it's usually in the internal operations. There's no sort of foundational um process that everybody's following. So there's a lot of ambiguity, like I said, and that translates a lot into healthcare. But the thing with healthcare, it's a high liability industry. So we're very careful into understanding the process of standardizing and not doing it for platform or department. It's more per role. And that's something that also translates for the rest of the industries that we work with in manufacturing, agriculture, supply chain, it's more about the bottlenecks in process. So there's a lot of ambiguity. There's no ownership of the process per role. Um, so that trickles down to entire operation, whether that's customer service, that's logistics, that's billing, and that's basically the foundations of your business. So everything trickles down to knowledge bases and in process, lack of process. I think that's the biggest bottleneck. After that, you can automate and then add autonomy with AI on top of it. But again, those are the square wheels of the Ferrari that I mentioned. So bottlenecks are usually coming from that. And then that also trickles down to churn, right? I mean, if you're not doing your job well, you're gonna lose clients and you don't do your job well because you have no roles that have ownership over these processes. So, how do you get more clients? So, client acquisition is usually and retention is usually one of the more pragmatic not bottlenecks that we see. But then we got to look under the hood and we notice that there's no standard process for quality assurance and also customer service, and what's even good customer service and what is it coming from and who owns it? Um, so yeah, I think that in terms of anything, I think that's the biggest KPI for anybody, conversions and acquisition. And that's what we see a lot, but it comes from a long, long way of lack of process.

Fixing Bottlenecks With Feedback And Training

Dr Andrew Greenland 27:24

Thank you. And if you had a magic wand and you could fix one thing in most practices tomorrow, what would that be? And would that be the same thing that the practices would also want fixed? Would they have a different take?

Karen Farah 27:34

Hmm. That's a lot of power to give someone. Let me think about that. Um I would I would say um really getting feedback from your staff um on a cadence because you don't know what's not working and what to fix, and you don't know what to fix if you don't reveal it. And usually leadership hasn't when it comes to that point, most cases leadership at this mid-sized and bigger practices, for example, they haven't touched the patient in years, and they haven't been part of a staff for years, so they don't really know that on the daily what's going on and what's working and what's not. So, really listening not only to your patients, but the staff that's treating your patients, um, and really then putting together and aggregating all of that data into finding common solutions. So I always say for this, any industry and any product, ask the people. It doesn't hurt to ask. So making it a part of the routine to always ask quarterly, monthly, depending on what works for your operation, but really have a very standardized process on how you're gathering feedback and you're implementing it in ways that it's not disrupted. So that's what I would do, definitely.

Dr Andrew Greenland 28:40

Brilliant. And if a clinic suddenly experienced a big influx of new patients, which is probably a nice thing to have, I guess. What do you think would break first for them?

Karen Farah 28:50

Wow, I would definitely think, and it comes not that doesn't come really from the software itself or the tech itself, it's just how well roles, not department, but roles are trained in the benefits of the tools that you're implementing and knowing how to use them for volume. So if anything, I would say for higher influx, definitely intake. If we don't really know how to even audit the intake kind of database and like how to even use that process, that's your top of the funnel. That there you're losing your top of the funnel, you're losing the patients right there and then. If you don't really know how that works and how to audit it. Um, and then on the practitioner side, when they're gathering data from patients and gathering the historical data of their health and kind of treating them and kind of having that sort of arc and like long-term visibility on their health. If they don't really know how to use those ERPs and those sort of tools at a practitioner level, you're losing the patient there. Because from that experience comes the aftercare sort of workflows and aftercare sort of service that makes that experience more tailored to them. So I don't think it's coming from the tech itself, because the tech is there and it's usually built to scale. It's how well and how practically you're training people per role and how the tool can help them and how to audit it and how to make them understand how it works. So when it breaks, they know exactly what to do to get it back running. So I think it's more about training per role. If I would focus on that, because if anything breaks more at the practitioner level and more at the intake level, because after that, everything is in cruising mode. I think that you'll be fine. That's where we see most of the bottlenecks happening in the first 30 days, right? I mean, after they start getting some sort of traction, after they launch campaigns and people start coming in because it's everything's automated and autonomous. But then if you don't really know what the system's doing and you're not trained to really audit it, um it's gonna break. Because I mean, in a high compliant and sort of high liability industry like healthcare, there has to be a human in the loop. It's not like it's just like delegating it and just letting it run with it, you know.

Dr Andrew Greenland 31:01

Got it. So, what's the biggest time drain for um founders or operators that you work with? Is it more clinical, operational, or admin? And which of those things have you been able to give them their time back for?

Karen Farah 31:12

Yeah, that's a great question. I think it's more on the intake side because it has to be a very intentional kind of like routing process. And I keep going to intake is as your top of the funnel. And when you have that first touch with patients and understand where to service them, I would also say definitely admin, uh, just to like kind of encompass that into one category, it's definitely admin clinical operations, um, insurance intake as well in underwriting and making sure that that process is also covered. Um, and also when it comes to auditing the historical data of patients. Like if you want to go to a patient's file and you don't really find it right away, that can become a 40-minute call for real, or like a longer also um appointment with your doctor if they don't really know how to use um the platform or they're still doing it on paper, right? So I think when it comes to clinical operations, that's what takes the most time. Um, and really just doing the follow-ups for cancellations um as well. So any sort of follow-up that they need to do, whether it's before a visit or an after visit sort of follow-up, there's a lot of time that's invested there that they could be using for what they do best, which is shining with the customer or the patient once they're there. So once you start automating that, they can even get 70% of their time back. That's the benchmarks that we've been seeing. Um, only from intakes and follow-ups before and after visits and during the appointments, um, also finding um kind of like the the health history of the patients, getting that sort of summary. So you're ready for the appointment and then the after summary after the appointment. So then you can do very intentional follow-ups, whether that's for email, SMS, or phone, you can automate all of that with the without a human having to touch points with every single channel. So um, and that comes with phase two that I mentioned, right? And you don't sometimes you don't need AI for some of these things, it's just like really good processes that then will become a workflow. That's all.

What Works Now And What’s Next

Dr Andrew Greenland 33:05

Have you seen clinics experiment with group programs or digital tools or other ways to extend the patient journey beyond one-to-one care that have really worked?

Karen Farah 33:15

That's a good question. And we don't really for healthcare more than anything, uh, they like to build preparatory, meaning they don't really like to use out of the box per se. If we use out of the box, it's more on the support side for the solution. But we build preparatory using major cloud partners. AWS, it's one of the major cloud partners that we use to build. But then definitely we use NAN in the mix of the worlds and the saviors of the world uh to kind of shape up um the solution more, but as part of the solution, but it's not the main provider. Only because when you do proprietary, there's a lot more control and governance as well over the data that you're treating and user control, which is very important in these sort of industries. So if I have to speak on a name, it has to be a cloud provider and AWS, for example, because it's cheap. It's it's the talent market for it is also very competitive, meaning you can also have someone in-house that they can take care of it, and it's not gonna be that cost intense for you. Um, it's very flexible, it's connected to all the major foundational models if you want to use AI. Um, and then it integrates very well with again supporting platforms that are more agnostic to an industry that can then support the solution. Um, we architect from zero, so we architect things and solutions that are more tailored to the needs of the business, and that's also what makes us different. To prototype, yeah, sure, we can use out-of-the-box um sort of um solutions, but they're not client-facing yet. It's only prototyping just to get leadership buy-in. We don't put it in front of patients. We always build preparatory for them.

Dr Andrew Greenland 34:50

Thank you, and can you um think of any examples of systems or processes that have worked either surprisingly well or have completely bombed and failed that you've kind of learned something from?

Karen Farah 35:01

Yeah, okay, that's that's a great question. I mean, thank the Lord would have we haven't had anything bombed yet. And I don't think I I hope we don't, but something that worked surprisingly well. At some point, I was um pretty much connected with the PT world, like physical therapists. Um, and like I said at the very beginning, something that stayed with me, it's um we built this sort of AI agent that would follow up with patients if there were missing appointments that would then trickle down to their treatment and basically their journey with the PT, um, which actually helped with the KPI of retention. So it was studying all the cancellation patterns of the patient, and then it would do follow-ups with basically just education and also incentives to have them come through the door, whether that was offers and whatnot, but just for the wellness of the patients not to keep missing their appointments, because that's messing up not only the lesion that they already have, but also the business as it is, um, and also the experience. So that worked surprisingly well for the retention and also conversion type of KPIs. Um, and then also for intake. Um, we do a lot of intake for legal as well, for example, and for financial institutions, healthcare is one of them because it's very light when it comes to first party data. So it's not super high compliant in terms of what you could do with that data. So that's worked surprisingly well, and it's not rocket science either. It's just making sure that you know exactly what you need to gather from the patient, make that experience in UX UI as it is, meaning what you had in front of the patients very seamless, and then how to use that data to then cater to them with a very tailored experience. So that's worked very well for us because after intake, that's when the world opens up uh for the patient as a lead. Then you can start treating them through SMS, you can start targeting even on social media, you can start doing email, you can do phone calls, and even with phone calls, if you don't want the front desk to do that, AI is so advanced at this point that you can have an agent, like a voice agent that can do those calls for you and then spend all that time that the patient may need or may not need into catering them. But all that comes from intake, and intake comes from really standardizing uh what makes you um different as a clinic and then as a hospital. So what's your UVP? So that's worked very well for us. So yeah, definitely for retention conversion, sort of like predictive analytics, and then follow-ups after that, and then intake very intentionally as well.

Dr Andrew Greenland 37:26

Brilliant. Really good examples, thank you. So looking ahead, where do you think the biggest opportunities are for clinics that really want to differentiate on experience? Because we've been talking a lot about the experience of staff, founders, and patients. But where are the biggest opportunities in the future? Do you think?

Karen Farah 37:42

Wow. I think there's a lot of areas of differentiation and also capture and retention, and that could do a lot with utility sort of solutions that are more in-house. But if you want to help experience as it is, I think creating digital products for your patients that are more preparatory to your clinic that can be more of companions for them because health, it's an it's it's not a apologies. Um healthcare, it's not a one-time thing, it's an ongoing thing, evergreen thing, right? I mean, whether that's more for your annual checkups to what maybe a situation that you're going through in treatment. So, how can you create digital companions that can also be wellness coaches for your patients and they can feel accompanied by it? So building that today with the magic of AI, it's not hard, not at all. And slow cost, and it creates a lot of retention, acquisition, and reduces churn and creates a lot of experience, which will make them excited to come in. So I think that's it.

Dr Andrew Greenland 38:43

So if you were starting the melting pot studio again tomorrow, is it anything you do differently based on your experience and the benefit of hindsight, which is a wonderful thing?

Karen Farah 38:51

Yeah, no, a hundred percent. I think something that I learned along the way, and also with the changes in the industry, it's not only how to become a service sort of like provider, it's how to productize and create long-term wealth and well, long-term um benefit for not only your clients, but their end user. So, more on the productization, which is something that we're doing now with our own clients, it's finding opportunities for them to not only create an experience, but a product out of the things and solutions that they're doing, to create that sort of long-term wellness, benefit, wealth for them and their end users. So that's something that I would focus more if I would start it again from tomorrow. Be like, hey, not only service, but within the service that we're providing to you and our domain expertise, how can we identify opportunities to create that sort of long-term experience that doesn't end with that solution, but can transcend and even create another venture for yourself? At the end of the day, we're working with founders and other businesses that need to operate and scale. So that's something that I would definitely focus on.

Dr Andrew Greenland 39:50

And thinking about the next six to 12 months from your perspective in the melting pot studio, where would you like to be in a year's time? What are the what plans do you have on the cards for your business?

Karen Farah 39:59

Wow. Um, we don't really know what's in store for the industry because I can have a plan today and tomorrow something comes out and it's completely out the window. But I would say that something that's not going to change is the the thirst of uh new entrepreneurs, solopreneurs, and companies to keep innovating. So maybe in six to 12 months, um, it's something that we're doing now, we're starting to do. It's more about how we become also more of a venture studio and help our clients if they're more in the low sort of readiness startup space, uh, how to grow with them and also get them to market by building with them, consulting for them, advising them. Because again, we're industry agnostic. We have we're a melting pot of talent. That's also part of the name. We're a melting pot of talent and experience and years of experience that don't only ends with talent that's towards one specific solution or capability. It's more about how do you create your idea, how we can walk you through that roadmap, implement for you, get you to market, and then make you grow, maybe towards an exit. So that's more of a venture studio at this point. We're not presenting ourselves into the world like that, but when we're meeting certain clients that are case by case, um, and we see that opportunity, it's something that we're taking. Maybe we'll become that, but right now we're just having fun with it and just trying to exercise our expertise in that way and do what we have fun with. I think everything else is just a byproduct of us just being aligned with the things that we like as a collective in the company.

Dr Andrew Greenland 41:23

And with that, Karen, I'd love to thank you so much for joining me today. It's been such an insightful conversation. I think a lot of people will take away some really practical ideas from this, especially around experience and how much of a role that plays in what people really expect from the clinics that they visit. So thank you so much. Really appreciate it.

Karen Farah 41:40

Thank you, Dr. Andrew. It's my pleasure, and thank you, everybody, for that.