Hey its Marc
Large health systems have been among the first healthcare marketers to embrace tools like AI in their tech stacks to increase productivity, achieve a greater degree of personalization, and focus on customer loyalty and retention.
But especially in a highly competitive market like New York City and the surrounding area – where a lot of medical centers trade No. 1 honors in various specialties – it still comes down to differentiation.
New Yorkers have great choices…from Northwell to NYU and Mount Sinai to Montefiore… so standing out takes engaging through great creative.
At one point, the highways and byways, bus shelters and subway stations became one giant petri dish of medical ads touting US News rankings.
But in recent years, some are looking to stand out by ditching the rankings entirely from their marketing.
One of these is NewYork-Presbyterian. As Devika Mathrani, chief marketing and communications officer for the health system, tells my colleague Jack O’Brien, more important than rankings is the patient experience. It’s why NYP’s ads no longer focus on any one accolade per se but instead on how the health system brings solutions combining technology and humanity to the patient’s bedside.
This week on the show, Mathrani talks not only about that counterintuitive move, but a host of other changes her health system is making on the marketing front, including adopting a patient journey mindset and personalizing its communications.
And Lecia’s here with a health policy update.
Hey Marc, today I’ll give a recap of President Joe Biden and former president Donald Trump’s recent comments on their healthcare goals – from drug pricing to abortion – as the elections inch closer.
And Jack, what’s trending in healthcare this week?
This week, we’re talking about eye damage from the eclipse, TikTok’s top autism patient influencers and FIGS’ Scrubs That Don’t Suck pop-up activation in Philly.
I appreciate you being here in person. I think this is our second in-person editorial guests of the Year. Wonderful have you in here I come originally from the world of covering hospitals and Health Systems. So it’s good to kind of get back to my roots in a way and I was talking with the CMO Atlantic Health System a couple weeks ago and he had made an observation in that Healthcare marketing when it comes to hospitals and Health Systems can sometimes be stodgy and stale and boring compared to what we see in the farm and biotech space curious. How you in your leadership at NYPD have kind of I want to say obliterate that but kind of shaken things up, but we followed your campaigns and they’re not like what we see at other Health Systems. Well, first of all, thank you so much for having me in person. It’s so nice to have an in real life dialogue with you. You know, when you think about Healthcare five 10 years ago, I think so much of it. It’s dying. I think a lot of it was sea of sameness. I think you’ve had a lot of people in scrubs and a lot of white coats a lot of walking in hospital hallways and gurneys and I think one of the things that I wanted to do was celebrate the end patient and celebrate the customer and celebrate the person that we’re helping to live a healthier life and it’s amazing. I think how Monumental that was for the industry to sort of flip the conversation on its head and say, yeah, they’re these amazing things that we’re doing in healthcare to advance medicine and to care for people but at the end of the day you’re doing it for Humanity and you’re doing it for people and how do you bring Humanity into the mix and I would say the new brand and the campaign that we brought into place at the end of 2021. It’s all about celebrating the patient and that’s kind of where I wanted to pick up the conversation is stay amazing. There’s not a place I go in New York, right? I don’t see some sort of stay amazing branding and we can get into the stuff that you’ve done with the Mets and everything, but just at its Inception. How did that come about with Havas New York? So so the campaign used to be amazing things are happening here and what my concern was when I first started was that first of all, the definition of what here is has changed right when you thought about hospitals in the past, it was sort of the Four Walls of a hospital, but now there’s virtual care. There’s Urgent Care there’s there’s care that happens outside of the walls of the hospital and the world at all become much more digital. The other thing is that we were largely talking a lot about ourselves, right? We said amazing things are happening here and we were pointing at ourselves and that was really what the conversation was. But this notion of amazing really resonated for our brand it was something people it was a word and a feeling and an emotion that people associated with New York Presbyterian and I didn’t want to lose that I didn’t want to abandon that I think that’s something he always have to be really careful about when you relaunch a brand so the question was How do you focus on this idea of amazing? How do you build on the equity Equity that we have but again bring the customer into celebration and that’s where stay amazing came from and at the time we really thought about what is our new brand promise and our brand promise evolved to say, you know, wherever you are in your life stage like we want to be your health and wellness partner. The other thing was historically when people thought about hospitals they were these very scary places. They were where you thought about you thought about sickness right when you were really sick really unwell, that’s where you went. And I think we have been so associated with extraordinary care. We had a strong association with complex care extraordinary care and Specialty Care, which is absolutely who we are but there is another end of that Spectrum. There’s every day care there is consumers are waking up in the mornings and they’re thinking about their mental health and their physical health in a much more proactive way than they used to five ten years ago, and we needed a brand that captured that full spectrum that thought about every day to extraordinary care and I would say that the former brand focused so much on extraordinary that we needed to make a significant pivot in order to open up that aperture and I’m curious about it and not to focus again too much on the extraordinary care, but one of the ads that is really stuck out and we covered it when it first launched but I still see it on you know digital on TV is the one about the stroke patient who was about 28 years old. I think it was just before his wedding and it was able to recover go to his wedding live what a lot of people would consider a normal life. How one how do you identify a story like that? And then, you know having a patient that’s comfortable enough to say. Yes. I want to have that out there and take the angle of not like hey this awful thing happened to him, but look at the recovery, they happen or organization. Yeah. So my so I lead all of marketing and Communications and one of the things about my team is that we have very direct relationships with our Frontline teams with all of the different departments. The Chiefs the leaders the nurses The Physician assistants and that’s one of the roles of my team is to have those relationships and build those relationships.
So when there are those great stories and stories that the care teams are proud of stories that the doctors are excited about where relationships have been built between a care team and a patient to make sure that they have us top of mind and not just after it happens. But actually when it’s happening often you have stories that unfold over three months and six months and sometimes multiple years of care and making sure that they’re bringing us to the table so we can start a conversation with a patient early to capture their Whole Health Care Journey.
What’s amazing is I think that in today’s day and age particularly in a world where people share so much because of social platforms. People are much more open about sharing their health care Journeys. And what we find is that there’s really two reasons why they’re doing it one is because they feel like they might be able to help somebody else. So if they share Their Own Story their own story of diagnosis their own story of care, maybe there’s somebody in the world who won’t sort of stick their head in the sand and they’ll get checked and they’ll go for screening and they’ll make sure that they catch something the second reason is people want to thank and recognize their care teams. They want to say thank you to the nurses. They want to honor the doctors and one of the reasons in ways in which they do that is by telling their story. So it’s actually quite amazing. The number of times you reach out to a patient and say Hey, you know, we love to capture your story. Would you be willing to talk to us film with us share a narrative they nine times out of 10 will say yes, and I think that’s really different than it used to be many years ago where I think people Maybe not maybe that were a little ashamed of their story. Maybe they were scared to share their story. I think today people want to almost celebrate their Journey. Absolutely. It’s kind of that shifting of the narrative again from what you talk about with a shame or embarrassment. I was in the hospital. I had to get this treatment to hey, I’m on the other side of it. I’m feeling better and you can also get that same treatment here. I wanted to go back to something you would talk about too in terms of being able this is obviously a very competitive Marketplace that you’ve got. NYU langone got Mount Sinai Northwest everything one thing I thought was interesting is when I think it was you had the same amazing Brooklyn and you were talking about hey, we’re not just a minute. We are Manhattan base, but we’re not just in Manhattan. We have you know locations all across the city in Westchester County. How is marketing been one of those tools that nyp is used to try and differentiate itself? Because I I’m sure patients looking and they’re like, oh, I have a north wall down the street or I I go to NYU langone and being able to differentiate and say no like our marketing should stand out and show show why we have this value. Yeah, you know, there’s a couple of things one is when you look at patient insights and customer.
Insights and just consumer insights. One of the things that you learn is that actually convenience matters more to people almost than anything else. When you ask them convenience, do they take my insurance? What’s the quality of the facility? Those are types of things that people think about so when you think about our campaigns like our state Brooklyn campaign or our Westchester campaign, it was letting people know you don’t need to cross the bridge and you don’t need to go through a tunnel in order to get great health care because we’re bringing Healthcare to you because we know convenience matters and I think that was really important people I think for a long time people felt to get great health care in this region, you sort of had to go into Manhattan and you had to go to the upper west or you had to go to the Upper East Side and we really want people to know we’re bringing great health care to you and that’s where those campaigns come from. But the other thing for us in terms of differentiation was you know, this is an industry that has been a war of ranking’s I would say over the last I don’t know two decades. Everybody is a number one. Everyone wants to talk about us news. That was a battle that I just it just feels like it’s like you say number one. I say 1.5.
Five, you know, like it’s it’s and it’s funny I come from the I come from the financial services industry and it was sort of very similar in the credit card space where it’s like you’re offering 50,000 bonus miles. So I’m going to offer 60,000 bonus miles and it was a little bit of that war of numbers and my point of view was it’s not about rankings. It’s about the experience. It’s about finding Solutions. It’s about bringing a combination of technology and Humanity to the bedside which is what patients want. And so let’s talk about that and let’s highlight that explain to people why you might be a number one explain to people why you’re so great and why you have accolades and don’t focus on the Accolade itself. So when we relaunch the brand one of the things that we did was we removed all of those rankings from most of our marketing and that in and of itself began to differentiate us at the time and it’s so interesting because we’ve seen different hospitals and Health Systems even pulling out of those and saying hey that these rankings don’t necessarily speak to the quality of these organizations provide. I want to go back you were talking about your financial background you spent two decades in consumer banking and it’s so interesting seeing people that have started or have backgrounds outside of the healthcare industry coming in and realizing to a certain extent what a cluster it is in terms of, you know, when consumerization comes up in healthcare and people talk about like it’s this profound thing when it happens in retail. It happens in automotive. It happens in any other industry, but when it’s health care, it’s like oh we’ve never you know, really listened to what consumers talking about. How is that been for you in terms being able to take an approach to marketing where there has been this kind of hesitancy towards? Oh we have to actually listen to what the consumer wants to the end of the day. You know, one of the things about the industry is is that decades ago in healthcare consumers actually didn’t have a lot of information to even be able to make an informed decision right? There was not a lot of resources and tools for them to say well let me go learn about the doctor. Let me go learn about that practice. Let me hear what people say even about just the customer service around a particular medical practice and I think in in the in the banking space that’s just existed a little bit longer. There’s been places where you could read ratings and reviews and places where you could read.
Customer service reports and that was something that I almost had to help educate within the industry and say, you know what consumers they’re making a much more informed decision. You can give them a referral a primary care doctor can suggest a cardiologist can suggest a dermatologist can suggest a neurologist but before a consumer makes that appointment they are no longer sort of blindly saying I’m just going to go with your recommendation. They’re going to read everything that they can and inform themselves. And that is that was a fundamental change for the industry and making people realize. Okay. Well then how do you compete in that space? And because people are doing research where they doing the research, how do we show up in those spaces? I mean digital right digital years. I mean, even when I join the industry, I would say the mix was still sort of 80% traditional channels and probably 10 15 20% in digital spend when you think about the industry today, I think that is heavily heavily shifting and people realizing that what is I think 70 plus percent of Health Care almost like appointments Begin by somebody in digital kind of asking a question in Google and that question by the way is not looking up a particular doctor’s name. It’s not looking up a practice name the name of a hospital. It’s usually that they’re asking a question about health there or they’re saying something like they’re researching a topic like Cardiac Arrest their researching a topic like stroke and then from there they’re educating themselves and then they might go and try and find a provider. So how do you make sure that you’re the source of truth? And you are answering those questions that people are searching for and I think that also created an opportunity for digital to grow and that’s where I think part of my background came in because I would say Financial Services is a little bit more ahead of the game on that. The other piece is been around regulatory, you know, and I think about Healthcare and financial services. There are two of the most highly regulated Industries while the regulations are different. I often tell people I sort of traded off reg Z and Reggie for HIPAA, but they’re equally complicated and they equally are all about protecting consumer information and protecting privacy and I think bringing that type of experience and saying how do you operate in these types of channels in a way that is compliant and protects consumers while at the same time trying to be more relevant to them and presenting things to them at the right stage in their life and when they might need certain types of care.
I’m curious from your perspective you talk about obviously where you’ve seen the shift in your time at nyp and certainly compared to your background the financial services. Where is there still room for improvement on that front? Because I feel like everyone’s pad themselves on the back and they’re like, hey during covid we had to get we had to embrace virtual care and we’ve we’ve had to kind of embrace this retail of health care, but it’s not finished by any stretch. So where do you still see opportunity to make improvements on that front? Yeah, it’s funny when I think about my role, you know marketing and Communications a large part of what I’m actually doing now is thinking a lot about the customer journey and what happens before an appointment what happens during an appointment what happens after an appointment? So for example, let’s say you are going for your first mammogram. Have we done the right thing by helping to educate you on? What’s that experience going to be what’s going to happen when you get to that appointment it let’s say you have an upcoming procedure. I don’t know. Maybe you’re having meniscus surgery on your knee. Do you? What can you anticipate? What is what is the doctor want to share with you in advance? What can you expect in terms of your Aftercare? So a lot of that is very very new for the industry right thinking about a full Journey from before during and after and that is how do you use video? How do you use text messaging? How do you use personalization so that it doesn’t feel like Mass marketing, but really it’s about your appointment about your care.
The other thing I would say is just a simple change of mindset between patient and customer.
And I often share with people I said, you know consumers think of themselves as a patient when they’re in an appointment when they’re in a doctor’s appointment. They’re in the hospital. They’re in a procedure. It’s almost like the minute you put on the awkward gown that ties in the back. You’re on a patient right now, but you don’t want to just have be a pain, you know, if you are a brand or a hospital system that only thinks about a patient. That means that when you walk out of that appointment, we haven’t thought about how do you keep that person engaged? And so it’s that mindset of saying they’re not just patience. They’re customers of ours and you can be a customer of ours 24 hours a day seven days a week. And what are they looking for by way of health information? Are there are they are they focused on their preventative health and how do we be their source of information? How do we be their source of coaching? How do we be their partner? I think that the healthcare industry has a long way to go there. I think there are some Brands and institutions that are beginning to play in that space and that’s where content comes in right you’ve got these brilliant experts who know so much about their fields and their specialty. How do you take that Brilliance? And how do you take that expertise and make it digestible to Consumers? Right? I don’t I don’t want to know the consumers are getting information from an influence on tiktok. Who’s not the right person to be giving guidance and advice. I want that to come from my doctor.
It’s really interesting to hear you bring that up because I’ve talked with Healthcare leaders over the years and they’ll make that slip up they’ll say oh we’re talking to our customers and they pause and they’re like oh patience and it’s like it is there is something that differentiation that there is a value in being a customer because I think about and I’ve talked with other leaders too and they’re like we want to take our health brand and make it a brand not just make it this institution where it’s like to your point you go for a procedure you go for a checkup or something and then you’re gone. It’s like no we want to keep that dialogue open because when misinformation spreads whether it’s about covid or about some sort of respiratory illness or you name it, they want to be the authorities on it. But if they’re only having those one off that’s not how you build a relationship that’s not able to Foster this and have that trust with what is essentially a consumer. So they rely on you in times like that. It’s got to be very frustrating and that way this to see that where it’s like just a one and off and set of like this continual relationship. Absolutely and I you know in many ways, you know is Healthcare a Lifestyle brand with some people it almost is because some people have made health and wellness and every day part of their life think about the number of people who get up in the morning and they’re doing their seven minutes of meditation. Right? So many people have brought some form of exercise or sport into their daily and weekly routine all of that supports your health and wellness and it’s figuring out how to you as a brand insert yourself in that. How do you make sure that you are that you’re a part of that conversation with them and there’s so many different creative ways in which you can do that and it’s just so interesting too the idea that like, I I’ve seen leaders scoff at the idea of like, oh Amazon’s gonna come in or Walmart or whoever I saw yesterday that Costco is now getting into the weight loss treatment space and it’s like yeah, but they already have an independent relationship with these consumers. They already know how to meet their needs and do it in a very convenient and time effective way. It’s going to be much harder. I imagine for hospitals and health system to then try and learn those lessons because that takes years and so much research and commitments making that happen. It’s not overnight thing and it’s all so finding, you know, one of the things about some of the brands that you mentioned is that they consumers are already engaging with them and so how do you one thing I’ve said is it? How do you reach consumers where consumers are as much as I wish that everybody woke up every morning and came to New York, you know nyp.org website. That’s just not what people are doing. And so how do I go to where they are? So for example, I think you know recently we launched a partnership with the Food Network and we know that food and health and nutrition they go hand-in-hand and so many people are much more conscious about what they’re eating and what they’re putting in their bodies. And so I know people are going to Food Network to check on recipes and they’re going to find out what they’re going to make for dinner. So, how do I bring my experts into that space and make sure that our expertise about you know recipes that are better for your cardiac health or people who might be suffering from diabetes. And what should they shouldn’t they be eating? How do I bring that expertise into those spaces? And I think that is also a fundamental shift for Physicians and the medical space to think about we have to be out there in these marketplaces that you never would have expected. Otherwise, we’re not going to reach the consumers and to that end we’re recording this the start of baseball season you’re in year two of this partnership with the New York Mets. How did that come about? You know, one of those is where my podcast research fits is a big Mets fans. His ears perked up. Yes, you know and it’s a very different type of partnership when you think about you know, the traditional space of Partnerships and sponsorships you often think of like lots of logos and lots of places and that’s not how we collectively approach this what we wanted to do was say, how do we come together in a very integrated fashion to bring the right type of expertise and information to our shared audiences and also we’re both Hometown New York Brands and we’re also brands that have presents in Queens by Citi Field is in Queens. We have New York Presbyterian queens and how do we create opportunities within the community? So for example, something as critically important is, you know, prostate screening for men and we know they have a big male audience coming to games last year. We did a prostate screening event on a game night. You could show up at the game a little bit early you could even come by, you know in between Innings and you could get your prostate screened and that was so important right we had men who did it probably people that were sticking their head in the sand and avoiding those types of things despite the amount of nagging that they probably got from family members to do it. And you know, what out of that there were a number of people where something got flagged and they needed to have follow-up appointments and that’s what we’re trying to do together. So it’s not just about signage and things like that. It’s about how do we activate together in the community? You know last year. We did a job fair for the healthcare space on the city field campus at the field and it was an opportunity to reach people in Queens who might be looking for employment and want to be inspired to do something in healthcare and let them learn about different types of opportunities. So that’s when we think about our partnership. It was really about serving our communities together because we have a shared passion for New York. It’s so interesting to hear you talk about everything else that comes with that partnership because I remember when I saw the press release come out and thinking okay. So, you know Healthcare we’re going to write about it because it’s a health care brand. It’s a well known sports team, but then to see yes, we’re going to be doing these job fairs and I didn’t know about the prostate exam night that is a marvelous idea for a number of reasons, but being able to see that extension. I talked with the folks at nycfc and they partner with a PBM and it was the same thing where it’s like, oh is it just gonna be something on the Jersey and it’s like no we’re doing community events. There’s a deeper level there, which I imagine strengthens a brand partnership not only for you from a business to business lens, but also with consumers that are then going to interface with that as well. Absolutely and you know, another great example of that is we’ve been a long time partner of Lincoln Center and one of the things that we wanted to do is to say, how do we how do we just approach this partnership completely differently. So what we do with them is in the summer, for example, every Wednesday evening between give or take Memorial Day and Labor Day we create content together and we take their artists and what they do well, which is music and performance and drama and dance and we bring that together with our health experts and Integrative Health and other things and we’ve designed attention programs yoga programs. It’s all free programming. It happens at Lincoln Center. It’s obviously co-branded.
Um, we have a partnership with the seaport and you know Seaport has some beautiful new spaces and they also have a lot of families in that area who see the seaport is kind of a great location and destination for them. We have physician talks and we did one physician talk which was with one of our Behavioral Health doctors talk and pediatric doctors talking about. How do you think about the Mental Health crisis in New York? And how do you think about approaching your kids on tough conversations and using their spaces and their audiences and bringing our experts in a very approachable comfortable relaxed environment where people feel like they have access to experts so when you think about Partnerships and that’s why I say like even the word sponsorship is almost no longer relevant because that to me is logos on on items right versus this is so much about partnership which is why we take each partnership. So seriously and thinking about do we have shared values do we have a shared vision and do we have a ability to activate together? You know, one of the Partnerships that we are so proud of and is very very recent.
Um is you know blood blood donation and I was gonna ask about ah, yes we talked about on the show a couple weeks ago. And I again another brilliant idea in terms of being able to say like people have their needle phobias. Some people are just so uncomfortable with the idea and it’s eight minutes. I mean for those out there that are listening that are uncomfortable. It’s eight minutes that you just sit there. But also to have you know, not only treat at the end of it which is a big plus whenever you donate blood but like from a steamed Chef. Yeah, and that comes together, you know, I remember it was towards the latter part of last year. We got a right at the end around the holiday season. We got you know, the New York blood center reached out to us and did share obviously they were facing a blood crisis, which of course we know about on a day in and day out basis being a recipient of getting blood from the blood center for you know, our infusion centers or surgery and for our hospitals.
And we immediately said this is something that we need to get behind as a cause and an ongoing one because I know people know this but you know, you can really only keep blood on the shelf or give or take 40 to 50 days platelets. You can keep just less than a week. So it can’t be a one and done you need people donating regularly. And as you can imagine when people are traveling during cold and flu season where people are not donating numbers are volatile.
So we wanted to get behind it with a general Campaign which we did we designed a campaign called blood bags, which is in market right now, which literally visualizes an empty blood bag and on them are written things that the recipients of that blood have been able to do because they were recipient of blood they were able to walk their daughter down the aisle. They were able to graduate from college. They were able to become their class president things like that.
But then we wanted to take that even further and draw serious attention. So this is where we came up with this idea of saying, you know, what as a part of the blood process the blood donation process you are giving some type of either sweet or salty treats at the end. And how do we how do we up our game? And we wanted to take we wanted to take advantage of sort of the drop culture phenomenon that exists in the US and it is it’s a great tool that exists sort of in the marketing toolkit. And so we reached out and we connected with Chef Dominique Ansel who is absolutely fabulous as a human being an individual as an artist as a baker, you know, his his whole team is phenomenal and we reached out to them and they said absolutely we want to do this with you and then from there the creative process began. How do we design with the treat is going to be how do we capture that whole process just because that will inspire other people to do it and it was a great success. We did mobile units. We used the New York blood center of physical locations and it made such a difference. I mean the percentage of people that came out that were first-time donors.
Was so important because there are some people that you know will be will bring them in because of the emotion when you tell somebody, you know one donation that takes you less than 30 minutes can save three people’s lives. Some people are hooked. They’re like I get it I gotta go make an appointment. Some people need a little bit more of an incentive, right? They need a little bit more of the what’s in it for me, you know many consumers. We are all myself included. We all have an angle of selfishness in us. So what was the thing that we could use to draw them in and that’s where the design came up for the treat and it was it was such an honor to be a part of that program. I’m sure it will not be our last in that type of space because it really was such a success. Yeah. No it was again it was something that we talked on the podcast but like it’s it’s one of those things where it’s like if people need that carrot to be able to go out there and do something that again makes such a important difference in other people’s lives all the veterans special when it comes from somebody is talented as the chef that you coordinated with. I would be remiss if we were having a conversation about anything in the world now, it’s not bring it up but generative Ai, and how if anything that has impacted the work that you do on the marketing side because we just had our transform conference yesterday that was about half of the conversations are all about generative Ai and good bad. Otherwise, was it been like for you? You know, it’s funny. I think particularly in the marketing space people are like you are generate eyes. It kind of like replace agencies it can is it going to replace the creative process and I always say to people you know, it doesn’t but what it allows you to do is to sometimes give you a starting point, right? Sometimes it allows you to build a framework for something think about a message and give you almost like your first draft that being said one thing that I do believe is that in many ways generative AI is only as good as the inputs in many ways. And because we’re at a time in healthcare where we’re trying to change the game and we’re trying to elevate The Narrative and the narrative is evolving because consumers engagement is changing. If you look at some of what comes out of generative AI in the healthcare space, it feels a little bit like the Sea of sameness write some of the words that are used.
Language that comes back so there is a role that it plays and it will continue to evolve because again, it can be that first draft and then you have your creative team take that and say how do I build on it? How do I evolve it? But some of it also is playing back what you know from 10 years ago opposed to where you want to take Healthcare and I think that’s different in different Industries. I think the data behind generative our AI is different based on the industry that you’re in. Yeah, and it was something that came up in conversations actually Ramon Soto from northwell one of your peers it was talking about but like is teams marketing team can see using it as you know, a first draft of copies not be the final one, but it gives you at least that starting point. Then you have the manual inputs. It’s able to build off that and actually makes something that is humanly crafted and its original but it’s not letting it drive the entire process and it almost gives you in some cases because we’re challenging the conversation and we’re challenging how people see and view health care and how we want people to integrate Health Care in their life in some cases. It gives me a
Is to work off of and say this is what I want to change actually like this is what I want to build off of. This is the perception of healthcare. This is how Healthcare has talked about today. How do you actually do it differently? But I but I do listen I think it is. I think they are tools that people should not be afraid of they are not replacing human thought they are not replacing strategy. They’re not replacing writing. They’re not replacing creative. But there’s a tool that it plays and for those who avoid it. I think they’re making a mistake because I think that is the where the world is going. Absolutely you get left behind if you don’t embrace the technology is a absolutely I’ve appreciate you not only being on the show but coming in person here and obviously I’m glad you came today and said of yesterday when it was just a male strum in New York. So I really appreciate that would be remiss to end the sky recession. I saw on a previous interview the you talked about your love for U2. And our Editor in Chief Steve Madden is a U2 fans. So this is really my way of conveying a question from him. What’s your favorite U2 song Beautiful Day? Okay. Yes. I feel like it is a it is a song.
Filled with optimism and energy. I also had it played when I walked in the room at my wedding. So it plays a personal role in my life. But I love U2. I think that their music is very very inspirational. Sometimes it’s it’s hidden in a dark tone, but there’s something about their messaging that can be a really beautiful thing. That’s just Irish music though. It’s always gonna be there’s gonna be something beautiful. That’s gonna take a while to get there. Exactly. Excellent. Well, I again I appreciate you being on the show here. Love all the insights. Can’t wait to see obviously What Happens Next In terms all these different campaigns the work you do with Havas New York, so we’ll be sure to keep following us. Well, thank you so so much for having me.
As we get closer to the 2024 elections, presidential candidates are turning up the heat on their health policy priorities and goals, hoping to gain favor among voters.
Last week, President Joe Biden teamed up with Sen. Bernie Sanders to tout his administration’s drug pricing reform efforts – including the Inflation Reduction Act’s Medicare negotiation provision, as well as recent moves by pharma companies to cap the cost of insulin and inhalers.
In his speech, Biden emphasized that several major pharma companies – including AstraZeneca, GSK and Boehringer Ingelheim – recently announced they would cap the cost of their inhalers to $35 a month. The drugmakers made the move after pressure from lawmakers in Congress who were demanding lower costs for patients with asthma.
Biden also went so far as to claim total victory over the pharma industry – noting that QUOTE “we beat Big Pharma,” though this is a bit of an exaggeration.
“[Bernie] and I have been fighting this for 25 years. Finally, we beat Big Pharma. Finally.”
Biden’s emphasis on drug pricing reform is a big pillar of his presidential campaign, as he hopes to highlight his role in tackling one issue that voters on both sides of the aisle generally agree upon – lowering the cost of healthcare.
But experts say that while Medicare’s new negotiating power will save money for Medicare, the direct impact on patients is still unclear. The new maximum fair prices for the first 10 drugs selected won’t go into effect until 2026.
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Meanwhile, former president Trump has been emphasizing healthcare topics as well this week, specifically touching on abortion and IVF issues.
After previously suggesting he would support a 15 or 20-week federal ban on abortion, Trump has appeared to change course. In a four-minute video posted to his social media platform, Truth Social, Trump said abortion laws should be left to the states.
TRUMP: From a legal standpoint, the states will determine by vote or legislation or perhaps both, whatever they decide, must be the law of the land. In this case, the law of the state.
He also claimed that he supported IVF in the wake of the Alabama Supreme Court ruling that frozen embryos can be considered children under state law.
TRUMP: We want to make it easier for mothers and families to have babies, not harder. That includes supporting the availability of fertility treatments like IVF in every state in America.
I’m Lecia Bushak, Senior Reporter at MM+M.
and is the part of the broadcast when we welcome check O’Brien to tell us what’s trending on Healthcare social media. Hey, Jack. Hey Marc, so I’m sure like a lot of our audience you went out and saw the eclipse did you?
I did indeed. Yes, and was it wonderful?
Oh man, it was a cosmic education day at this with home. I bet you all about it later. I look forward to hearing about that offline. Unless you what was your Eclipse experience like yeah. I mean, I just kind of walked out of my apartment and looked at the general Sky. I noticed it got a little bit darker, but it wasn’t anything like crazy. You know, it wasn’t we weren’t in the the pathway of total eclipse zone. So it wasn’t as mine blowing as I imagine the other areas where but I did notice that that like weird Eerie kind of like slight Darkness.
Yeah, my neighbor who I went up with a couple of the older ladies in our building and she had pointed out that it looked like a during the summertime when a rainstorm will be coming in and you just see it kind of get slowly darker and darker. Yeah, and then it passed over we were in about 89% of totality. I luckily have some family members up in the Adirondacks. I got to see it in 100% totality which was trippy scene and pretty surreal. But I hope that for both of you I assume that because you’re both sitting here that you did wear proper eye protection. That was a big thing in the lead up to it was Warby Parker and I know the New York Public Library’s All Around Town, everyone was handing out these these eye protection glasses. I know that you go by any subway stop and potentially buy these protection glasses don’t know what the quality was. I saw a tick tock that was explaining the difference. I think it was from Mount Sinai or one of the systems here, but
Protect your eyes that was the biggest thing is just that I think Lecia you and I were talking about earlier, but the fact that there were just so many social media posts making essentially the same joke of people going blind or doing severe I damaged it was really a banner day for ophthalmologists optometrists across the internet with people looking up and if you didn’t have the right protection good luck for sure, you know, I didn’t have one of those glasses but I also did not look directly at the sun because I don’t want to go blind. So I was just kind of like looking at the general sky, but you know, what was your experience wearing the glasses and like seeing the clips they were incredible because I put him on before I went up to the roof and I waved my hand in front of the glasses. You can see anything and so it was one of those things right 1000 times more strong than your regular pair of sunglasses or something like that. Definitely and people kept saying like, oh, I’ll just wear my sunglasses or what if I just get a glimpse and it’s like no you want to do that. One of the older ladies in our building came up to the roof, and she said it’s so bright up here. I thought it was supposed to be dark. It’s like no that’s the the entire point of the soul exercise that it gets very very bright. And then very very dark mark. I’m curious from your experience. You said it was a cosmic education day. I assume that you were you were well prepared or at least protected in terms of looking up there. Yeah. We had very powerful nearly we had ordered the glasses ahead of time.
We got one of my local eyeglass shops in town handed out the blackout glasses for free at a local mall, which was a nice brand Italian. I thought but and in one of my kids made the cereal box. Yeah. Yeah kind of Look Backwards and you see the reflection which I tried out as well. Those is a fun was like a fun bonding moment. You know, we all got on the law.
Here it up into the sky wearing her protective gear or whatnot. And so it was a nice moment. Then even my older kids got into the act the younger kids schools kind of bowed to parent pressure and let them out before the eclipse, you know, as I kind of pondered how many schools also kind of made that decision? Yeah due to concerns about liability over kids looking into the class which gets back to your point about, you know, the advice from the homology association about how to recognize I damaged from this. Yeah, I’m gonna be very curious. I’m sure we’ll see over the next couple days are recording this on Tuesday with the eclipse being on Monday. And just what the spike is going to be in terms of er visits. I’ve already seen the Google searches around why do my eyes hurt almost perfectly aligns with the track from about Western Texas all the way up through Vermont and turns of people looking so that kind of alliance with the Airbnb data of people booking out, but it was really interesting seeing a lot of people online talking.
I you know even some of my beloved New York Knicks posting like do I really have to wear glasses and people were making the joke like Josh Hart out two games with I damaged or something like that. There’s been the black dot that you can see after looking at the sun and just saying like that’s what people are seeing as they go back to work and they’re looking at their screens and stuff. Definitely an interesting time to just see so much conversation about I care obviously very tongue in cheek, but with a kind of celestial Moment Like This I guess people take advantage of it. Yeah never so much I care. So just trending there are this week Lesha. Do you want to take us into the second part of our Trend segment? Sure. So we’re going to be talking about another subset of tiktok influencers that focus on autism the search for autism on tiktok brings up more than 37 billion views. It’s not surprising. Then that countless content creators have branded themselves as autism influencers with the goals of educating people about the condition.
As well as using the social media channel as an outlet to help them cope with some of the mental health issues that may be associated with autism.
Morgan Foley is one of these autism influencers with more than 350,000 followers fully Brands herself as an autistic ADHD year who talks about quote neurodivergent stuff. Oh, so you’re an influencer. That’s so cool. Do you do like makeup tutorials and like get ready with me and like Vlogs and like that kind of stuff.
No, not exactly. I I do like autism advocacy.
Like I talked about like my autism and like my mental health issues and just kind of like how my life is going. Oh.
Yeah, fully discusses what it’s like to be autistic in a variety of situations like meeting new people or even opening up Christmas presents.
She discusses her terms like masking or the tendency of an autistic person to suppress neurodivergent behaviors in social interactions in order to come off as more neurotypical which can be quite exhausting.
Autism influencers have helped open up the conversation about people who are not neurodivergent and also helped reduce stigma about the autism spectrum.
Still tiktok is filled with pitfalls like Health misinformation and autism falls into that according to a 2023 study published in the Journal of autism and developmental disorders among the top 133 tiktok videos about autism only 27% were deemed accurate while 41% had inaccurate information about the condition and 32% were deemed over generalized not surprisingly videos created by Healthcare professionals were more likely to have accurate information.
So we know that autism and ADHD are both conditions that have really exploded on tiktok in the last several years. Both conditions have also seen a rise and diagnoses in young people in recent years that a lot of Health Care Professionals have linked to back to the popularity of the content on tiktok and a lot of you know people believing they might have.
Let’s unpack the impact of FIGS’ national campaign: “Scrubs That Don’t Suck,”
A recent 3-day “Scrubs That Don’t Suck” pop-up activation in Philadelphia served as the brand’s recycling trade-in program, a consumer-facing initiative.
Below are some standout elements from the campaign:
- 43,000 pounds of scrubs were saved from ending up in landfills through the recycling program
- $2.15 million was awarded to HCPs in the form of gift cards to invest in new FIGS scrubs
- 3,000+ healthcare professionals attended the Philadelphia pop-up over the course of 3 jdays
- Nearly 40,000 healthcare professionals have participated in the digital component of the campaign, mailing in their scrubs in exchange for a gift card.
Thanks for joining us on this week’s episode of the MM+M Podcast. Be sure to listen to next week’s episode when we’ll be joined by David Traylor, managing partner and co-founder of Golden Eagle Partners, to discuss the state of cannabis policy and marketing.
