Ep. 134: Building a Strong Healthcare Brand - Interview with Mercy Urgent Care

Patient Care Marketing Pros (00:00)
What's up everybody. You're listening to another episode of Walk -Ins Welcome. We're so glad to have you. We've got a great guest today. Yes. But before we get into our guest, we're going to call him number five. So if you hear number five, you're going to hear that a couple of times. But I always want to start with saying that we're here to help you grow your urgent cares by getting more patients, delivering better care, getting repeat visits and scaling your clinic. Michael, what is up buddy? What does this happen? And I'm excited. So there's a couple of firsts here. So this is our first.

Nick Scherer (00:18)
Thank you.

See you.

Patient Care Marketing Pros (00:28)
interview with three other people on the call. So if you are really curious what's going on, you should go watch the video of this because there's a lot of interactions here. But we met Mercy, so the other first is this is our first like original subscriber coming on. He's probably our first real one. Yeah, he said he's number five. Yeah, so like he's like our real first subscriber from years ago. But he's on as well. But we're here talking to Mercy Urgent Care. They're an urgent care out of the North Carolina area. They have eight locations and growing.

Nick Scherer (00:48)
Thank you.

Thank you.

Patient Care Marketing Pros (00:57)
So for those who have multi locations that are listening, this is a good podcast episode to listen to. There's a lot of good information here. But we have on today, we have, I may butcher names. I'll just go ahead and say it now. We have John Medeen. So he's with Director of Growth and Marketing. So he's all about the marketing side. We have Nick Schroer. He's with HR and Executive Assistant. And then Rachel Sausman is the President and CEO of Mercy Urgent Care. Welcome on board, guys. Glad to have you on.

Rachel Sossoman (01:26)
Thanks for having us.

Nick Scherer (01:27)
Great to be here.

Patient Care Marketing Pros (01:28)
Yeah, so I'll always ask an icebreaker here just to get us rolling. And typically it's one -on -one, but anybody who wants to chime in with a good story is great. Tell our audience one thing about you that nobody else knows. I'll let y 'all roll the dice on that.

Rachel Sossoman (01:45)
Well, I got a weird one. I can go ahead and tell you right away, in another lifetime, in another career, I was an opera singer.

Patient Care Marketing Pros (01:53)
No. really? Okay. We need to, we need to get an award for the show with the most unique ones. We've had, we've had some good ones, but that's pretty awesome. Okay. I mean, opera's opera was an Italian. Was it French?

Rachel Sossoman (02:06)
A number of things. So if you major in vocal performance, which I did in undergrad, I double majored, but vocal performance was one of my majors, you have to learn how to sing and pronounce and translate a number of languages, Italian, French, German, or the three primaries. And you also have to take diction classes where they teach you how to pronounce from the other languages, but also English. So you would never know that I

grew up in the Appalachian Hills because those years of diction lessons unwound the accent that otherwise would sound like a haystack.

Patient Care Marketing Pros (02:46)
You're absolutely right. I could not catch any of the accent. I am not saying this to one up you. I'm saying this to connect with you. So I want to say that my background is in jazz performance. So saxophone and music performance and all that, nothing to do with opera because that's like another foreign language within the same. It's a language, but totally different. That's fascinating. Anybody else got a good story?

Rachel Sossoman (03:02)
Elephants?

Nick Scherer (03:06)
Thank you.

Jon Medin (03:10)
I have one in college and shortly after college, I produced a podcast with a couple of buddies and it was like the early days of podcasting. It was like 2010, 2011. so very, very early and it was a Timberwolves podcast. So the NBA team, Minnesota Timberwolves were all from Minnesota. and I was like the quote unquote producer of the podcast. So I take the audio and upload it.

Nick Scherer (03:29)
Thank you.

Jon Medin (03:37)
and we ended up growing to be the number one Timberwolves podcast on the internet. My big marketing change there, it was originally called Two Man Wolf Pack and I changed the name to Timberwolves podcast, you know, as SEO, SEM guys, you can probably appreciate that, but you know, it wasn't huge. It wasn't huge. It was like a thousand listeners a week or something like that. And then, you know, like,

Patient Care Marketing Pros (03:56)
Yeah, absolutely.

Nick Scherer (03:56)
Thank you.

Patient Care Marketing Pros (04:03)
I'm bad.

Jon Medin (04:04)
Life got in the way in 2015, 2016, and we ended up stopping the podcast. But yeah, that's a little fun fact for me.

Patient Care Marketing Pros (04:14)
So I think John, you just gave yourself a new job at Mercy. I think so. It was about to become the Mercy podcast series. That's right. Mercyless Health Care.

Nick Scherer (04:20)
Thank you.

Jon Medin (04:21)
Hahaha.

Rachel Sossoman (04:22)
Yeah, you made the mistake of saying that out loud in front of his boss. Yeah.

Jon Medin (04:25)
I didn't think that through.

Patient Care Marketing Pros (04:27)
Lord. Well, look, let's get into the crux of the interview today. I know Mercy Urgent Care has been around best I can tell since 1985. I don't know what y 'all were doing in 1985. I wasn't alive. I was playing Nintendo, like crawling or not crawling, but hanging out. I'm old enough to have like enjoyed the eighties, but 1985 y 'all built out to eight locations. All of that's great, but y 'all have a whole different spin on Urgent Care. We've looked at a lot of Urgent Care websites.

Right. Yeah. We've done a lot of work with urgent cares, but you guys have a completely different approach to it. So Rachel, as the president and CEO, can you tell me a little bit about the mission, the vision, the values of Mercy Urgent Care and what y 'all are trying to accomplish?

Rachel Sossoman (05:08)
Yeah, Mercy is a unicorn in a number of ways. So not only are we really one of the oldest urgent care systems, I would say in the country, I always joke that we were doing urgent care before urgent care was cool. We also are one of the only independent nonprofit urgent care systems in the country too. And what I mean by that is that most

Patient Care Marketing Pros (05:23)
Mm.

Rachel Sossoman (05:35)
Nonprofit urgent cares are nonprofit by way of being affiliated with the hospital system that's nonprofit, but we are independently nonprofit. So we were five one C three. We have a supporting foundation and our mission is to provide excellent health care and other needed services to all those in our community who seek them. So there's really no strings attached. If you walk through our door, we are committed to taking care of you and.

Nick Scherer (05:35)
Thank you.

Rachel Sossoman (06:01)
our vision is to be the recognized leader for urgent care and related services that are consistent with our values, the values of Catherine McCauley, who's the founders of the Sisters of Mercy, hence Mercy Urgent Care. Our core values are aligned with that. So we really are here to eliminate barriers to care and provide healthcare, which we believe everybody

deserves access to care regardless of who you are, who you think you are, where you come from. So if you walk through our doors, we're going to be committed to you to treating you with with dignity and respect and providing the best health care that we possibly can. And in doing that, Mercy has become and has been for a long time the market leader for urgent care in all of Western North Carolina. With presently eight locations in five counties, we see over

We'll see over 80 ,000 patients this year. We have well over a thousand employer clients across Western North Carolina. And to put that in perspective, four of our eight locations are in Buncombe County, which is where Asheville is located. There are in the city of Asheville, a little over 90 ,000 residents. So you think about half of our organization is located within Buncombe County. We're gonna see over 80 ,000 patients and there's only 90 ,000 people that live in the city. So that really -

Patient Care Marketing Pros (07:27)
Can't escape you.

Rachel Sossoman (07:28)
puts into perspective. The other thing that's really intriguing about it is that Mercy is in a really saturated market. We are not the only urgent care in town, not even close. Healthcare is the number one employer in all of Western North Carolina. So not only are there other urgent care systems here, there are hospitals, specialty care. There's a ton of healthcare options. So it's incredible to us that

Nick Scherer (07:29)
Thanks.

Thank you.

Rachel Sossoman (07:54)
Over the last couple of years in particular, and this year specifically, Mercy has been growing at an exponential clip, even when we've seen other people not grow. So that tells us that we're doing something right and that our mission and vision, our values are resonating with the people that we serve. It's cool, it's a movement.

Patient Care Marketing Pros (08:12)
I mean, I tell you, that to me is the epitome of a strong brand. That's right. When you have that growth and you're not pushing it extremely hard, but it's just people know who you are. And honestly, if you're serving that many people in those type of areas, there's a high trust that you've developed over the years. They're not questioning who they're going to. You guys have a reputation and you're withholding, you're keeping that reputation to where it needs to be, which is pretty fantastic.

Nick Scherer (08:16)
So thank you.

Peace.

Thank you.

Patient Care Marketing Pros (08:40)
I'd be interested to know if y 'all at with that level of mind share in your own marketplace, are y 'all doing more to grow your brand or to protect it at this point? Yeah.

Nick Scherer (08:49)
Thank you.

Rachel Sossoman (08:52)
Well, I would say protection of the brand. I don't ever really think about protecting the brand. Really, the way I think about it and maybe the byproduct of the way we think about it ends up protecting the brand is we are a ministry. We're a service organization first. If we didn't have people who chose to be a part of the brand,

Nick Scherer (09:04)
Thank you.

Thank you.

Rachel Sossoman (09:18)
of this organization and chose to show up at Mercy Urgent Care, then I would basically be in charge of eight warehouses in five counties in Western North Carolina with some healthcare equipment. So we really truly stay focused on, and we have a catchphrase here, put people first. You may have heard some people say put patients first. I believe in patients too. But if you put people first, that means my coworkers are my customers. And that means that my employees who make the choice who are some of the

Nick Scherer (09:25)
Thank you.

Okay.

Rachel Sossoman (09:47)
best and brightest humans I've ever had the privilege to know who are actively choosing to be a part of Mercy Urgent Care. If we truly take care of them, they're going to take care of the brand. It's all a byproduct of that love. And so that's where we stay focused. As far as growing the brand, that's also what grows the brand. It's truly a people business. We're nothing without our people. And if we stay focused on what's important, our people.

Nick Scherer (10:04)
Thank you.

Rachel Sossoman (10:16)
everything else follows.

Nick Scherer (10:19)
And I don't want to jump.

Patient Care Marketing Pros (10:19)
Well, you have a near 40 year legacy of brand at this point. And I don't want to take away from, I couldn't tell who was speaking just now, but you know, with taking 40 years of trying and failing and adjusting and bringing on people and onboarding them and not just the culture of a company, but the culture of a ministry, there's marketing outside to bring in patients, but there's a whole level of marketing internally that has to go down. Yeah, really a lot of training. Right.

I guess that's more of a comment than a question. Any thoughts on that? I'd love to know how you approach bringing on people into that, especially if they're looking like, I want to be a doctor. Okay, but do you want to be a doctor that's on ministry?

Rachel Sossoman (11:05)
Yeah, well the cool thing about mercy too is even though we're a ministry, we consider ourselves a ministry, we're also ecumenical. So you don't, I always joke, you don't have to be Catholic to work here. You don't even have to be, it's not a joke actually. You don't have to be Christian to work here either. You don't, you can be whoever you are because everybody can be a part of something bigger than themselves. And we believe mercy is universal.

Patient Care Marketing Pros (11:21)
you

Rachel Sossoman (11:30)
the concept of mercy is completely universal and everybody can be a vessel of it. So whoever you are, who you think you are, who you want to be, our goal is to just unleash that potential when you choose to be a part of this organization. And we want to do everything in our power to empower our people to do their best work. So it's really beautiful. Now, Nick is our resident expert in all things human resources. So as far as the...

recruitment and selection of the best and brightest and making sure that people with the right fit, he might have some expertise to weigh in on there.

Nick Scherer (12:06)
Yeah, it is one of those things that, I mean, me speaking personally as to why I came to Mercy is I am more of a mission -oriented person rather than somebody who personally cares about my own bottom line. I've grown up in Western North Carolina my entire life. I grew up in a very rural part, I would say a town that you stop to get gas in between Asheville and Charlotte. And just from my interview and learning about...

The entire goal of Mercy was to reduce the barriers to healthcare, to give people some of the highest caliber quality of service that they might not get otherwise. They might get turned away if we weren't a nonprofit. That's just really what drew me. So even working with John, when it comes to recruitment initiatives, marketing, really what comes to our minds is, okay, the people who are with us now, why are they here? How can we shift that to bring in more like -minded people?

into our cause. Because of course working non -profit isn't for everybody, but for some people it is truly a calling.

Patient Care Marketing Pros (13:12)
That's so good. I love the fact that y 'all are intentional about the thought process on that. It's very interesting to me to watch people come into a ministry and then make a mental switch where maybe they have thought in the past, Hey, I'm going to work at Mercy Urgent Care to I get to work at Mercy Urgent Care. And I don't think any traditional job people show up going, I get to work here. You know what I mean? So purpose is huge, especially for the next generation.

Nick Scherer (13:37)
I'm sorry.

Patient Care Marketing Pros (13:42)
these, Gen Z -ers like purpose has to be attached to your work anyway. So I love the way y 'all have developed out the purpose.

Rachel Sossoman (13:48)
Yeah, and not just generationally too. What we know in the healthcare space and certainly urgent care is no exception to this is that we have a pending shortage of healthcare professionals and it won't be long before everybody is struggling to find talent. And it's because there's been some moral injury that has occurred in the healthcare space where really bright

brilliant people, talented people who could have done any number of things in their lives chose to enter the healthcare profession. And some of those people have a great number of those people have in exchange for that choice have been met with some of the most difficult challenges that have created burnout over work. There's such, in some cases, a flat out moral injury that has occurred.

in the healthcare space such that healthcare as a function, again, not just urgent care, is seeing an exodus of incredibly talented people that we are all gonna need as we get older, especially to provide the healthcare services for us. So, I mean, it works out well for urgent care, it works out well for business, but at the end of the day too, I think that sense of purpose in this case is asking ourselves,

Are we truly serving the people in our organizations who are choosing to serve the people in our communities? And as a result, if we are doing that well, are we contributing to healthier communities or are we actually harming the communities? Because that's what I think about as my purpose whenever I show up to work every day is I know that the decisions that I'm making are either helping or hurting people physically and emotionally.

And I'm committed to making sure that the decisions that I make and the things that I do on the daily are actually building, healing, and transforming the communities that I have the privilege of serving.

Nick Scherer (15:57)
Something that I want to add to that a little bit of why I find it really interesting of us being a nonprofit is the agility to be able to serve the community's needs in a lot quicker manner than maybe otherwise. But maybe just, okay, we're beginning to see this need in Buncombe County or some more rural areas. What can we do to change that? Or what can we do to meet those needs to help that community? And just with that agility, being able to start up or in some cases, if

there are situations in business where you just miss the mark or you might think that there's a need there and it just isn't. And just being able to change those resources and adjust those assets to meet whatever the needs may be.

Patient Care Marketing Pros (16:43)
Okay. So I want to ask a couple of questions here based on Rachel, what you had brought up. You said moral damage has been done to the industry. you know, I'm trying to, I'm trying to wrap my head around this a little bit, because when I think of moral damage, that means somebody made an intentional or a greedy or some kind of a mistake that was intentional or a focus or a focus or something happened to cause.

maybe either the entire industry or maybe the general public or something to lose faith in the healthcare. Can you help me understand what you're talking about when you say a moral damage?

Rachel Sossoman (17:19)
Yeah, I don't know if I can speak to intentionality of it. I don't think anybody who works in healthcare, well, maybe somebody, I don't know. I can't speak for other people, but I don't know that anybody really intends to hurt other people in healthcare. You get into healthcare to try to help people. But certainly healthcare, there are, nobody would run a business if the business couldn't be sustained and businesses are sustained by profits.

But there is a line with which, over which if you cross that line in pursuit of perhaps a higher profit, then you do tip the scale away from community health and away from team health. And we know that that has happened across the country. We know it because healthcare workers are telling us that. There's been quite an outcry. There's been quite an exodus.

Patient Care Marketing Pros (17:48)
Sure.

Rachel Sossoman (18:18)
There's been study after study. I mean, I'm not just spouting this off. People can Google it and learn more about it. But we know that this has happened in the health care space. And so from an urgent care perspective, or really from a health care leadership perspective, the opportunity that all of us in the bully pulpit have in this particular time in history and health care is to either be a conduit of healing or to intentionally or unintentionally

further exacerbate an already dangerous problem that does pose risk to the communities that we serve and live in ourselves. You can tell I care a great deal about people. That happens to be the lens through which I see things. It's certainly how I lead our organization. I mean, I can talk to you about strategies and profits and such, but...

But this is truly my strategy. My strategy is take care of the people, the people will take care of their neighbors and the business is sustained as a result. At the risk of oversimplifying it, that really is how I see it, you know?

Patient Care Marketing Pros (19:22)
Yes.

Put people first. Yeah, put people first. That's exactly what you're talking about.

Well, you know, we view urgent care through the lens of retail healthcare, which is why I love, and I'm so fascinated by the way your approach is, by the way, because I love ministry too. I'm not going to get into any details, but we like the ministry work that we do with our own company, right? So there's the caveat of that. But when I think of a retail healthcare, it goes down two roads. One can cause damage and one can elevate the industry.

Rachel Sossoman (19:36)
Yeah.

Patient Care Marketing Pros (19:57)
The one that only cares about profit for the sake of profit is going to cause that moral damage, which is where I was hoping you were going, but it's okay that you didn't. I'll say it so that you don't have to be the bad guy. You know, how much you have to build up.

Rachel Sossoman (20:05)
That's what I meant to say. no, you can quote me. You can quote me. That's what I meant to say. And that's exactly right. Because, I mean, for -profit or non -profit at the end of the day is a tax status, right? Everybody can be in ministry and that's a mindset. It's not a tax status, it's a mindset. And anybody can be in ministry to others. So to your point, whether you're

you are a for -profit, non -profit, corporate, retail. I mean, there's a ministry in the retail facet of urgent care. If you are doing something that makes a community member's life easier and you're focused on that patient, then I would argue that that is a ministry. The rest of it is just tax status. So we can, long story short, we can all be doing the right thing.

Patient Care Marketing Pros (20:57)
Mm -hmm.

Rachel Sossoman (21:02)
The right thing by our patients, the right thing by our communities, the right thing by our employees.

Patient Care Marketing Pros (21:08)
I love that approach. I think you're spot on. I'm of the opinion, again, I don't want to get into politics or anything like that, but I will express my own from the standpoint of, I think that capitalism without morality, since you had brought up the morality piece, capitalism without morality is dangerous, right? Because you're going to just, you're going to bulldoze people who really are there because they need you and they want the service that you have. What I love so much about the retail healthcare space,

And from that thought process of I'm competing with other medical facilities is I think that a rising tide raises all ships. So if somebody over here is doing things well, serving well, they're going to be compensated because of the work that they're doing through the care they're providing. From a ministry perspective, I'm going to totally switch gears because I really want to get John in on this. John, how do you communicate this? Let's go marketer. Come on marketing.

Nick Scherer (21:52)
Thank you.

Jon Medin (22:01)
Yeah, so it's funny. Recently, we sent out a survey to our staff about what makes Mercy different than other health care organizations. And we got a lot of really interesting responses. I feel like we talked about in this conversation, this is a really critical time for health care. And based on those responses that we received from the staff, we got with our...

Nick Scherer (22:14)
. . . . . . .

Jon Medin (22:28)
creative agency and it was like a hundred different responses of all these different ways that Mercy is different than, you know, your traditional healthcare system. And being the creative geniuses that they are, they took a hundred responses and they boiled it down to three words. Let's heal healthcare. And that is the message that Mercy is projecting out into the community in Asheville, all across Western North Carolina.

Patient Care Marketing Pros (22:49)
Mm. Good.

Jon Medin (22:57)
all across our eight clinics. And I think it's a message that is needed right now. And I couldn't agree more with focusing on the people first. Something that I truly believe in is if you have happy employees and they're treated well, what's gonna happen with the patient interaction and the patient experience? That's gonna go really well and they're gonna take care of patients. The better we take care of our people, the better our people take care of patients.

So that's our current message right now and it's an exciting time. We're updating billboards as we speak. We have ads in the local news channel. Asheville has one local news channel so it's easy to pick which TV spots we want to do. Social ads all over the place. We're even tying Let's Heal Healthcare to a hiring message.

Nick Scherer (23:38)
. .

Jon Medin (23:55)
because it is a recruiting message too. It's a message for the community in Western North Carolina, but it's also a message for healthcare workers in Western North Carolina. So yeah, we have a lot of it. It's an exciting time for marketing.

Nick Scherer (23:59)
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Patient Care Marketing Pros (24:12)
What's been like, yeah, I was gonna say what's been some of the feedback so far that you've kind of pushed your message out a little bit. What kind of feedback are you getting from the general public?

Rachel Sossoman (24:12)
The stated commitment. Yeah.

Jon Medin (24:24)
Rachel, do you want to speak on that?

Rachel Sossoman (24:25)
not likes, but loves, especially from people that have any kind of direct or indirect connection to where we live. This is a lot of folks to healthcare workers or to healthcare systems who've just been through a global pandemic. Certainly Urgent Care has been on the front lines of that. Everybody knows we've all survived a tough chapter and

Patient Care Marketing Pros (24:27)
Okay, good.

Jon Medin (24:29)
Yeah.

Rachel Sossoman (24:53)
So there's a lot of love for it. I couldn't be prouder of John and of the Mercy team for, they essentially created the campaign. It's so cool to be able to share the campaign with our staff and say, hey, look what you created. This is literally your campaign. And I can't wait to shout it from the rooftops and tell everybody what you have to say and give you a voice in changing the communities we serve too.

Nick Scherer (25:05)
Thanks for watching!

Patient Care Marketing Pros (25:25)
Man, ain't nothing better than being edified on a podcast by what I can only assume would be your boss, but she's spot on, man. When you come up with a campaign that resonates with people and it makes a positive impact, your teammates, if they genuinely care about you, can't do anything but help root you on, man. So I'm proud to hear that. Cause that's creating like advocates inside your business, right? Where people are pushing that like.

It becomes like a proud thing. Like if they could have a badge, they wear something saying, Let's Hill Healthcare, like that type of thing. Where now it's just recognized everywhere. Every Band -Aid has Let's Hill Healthcare. Yeah, every Band -Aid, anything that you guys brand that's had Let's Hill Healthcare. Yeah.

Rachel Sossoman (26:06)
Well, speaking of branding and we had talked earlier, the question I think was what was your strategy for growing or defense? And we had talked about how our people are doing that. Probably one of the coolest things that I have witnessed since we launched Let's Heal Healthcare is I was scrolling LinkedIn and I saw Mercy had a sponsored post and it was actually, it was Let's Heal Healthcare, but it was,

a recruiting message and to look at the reactions to it and see some of our employees actually being the ones liking and sharing and saying, this is a great place to work. They are they are a part of the marketing team because we treated them well. So it's a it's just a win win. And one other thing I wanted to say, we talked about capitalism and and I would argue one argument I like to make is that.

It is penny wise and pound foolish to focus only on the dollar and not see the dollar as a, as a byproduct of good service. The, the money will come if you stay focused on the people in service. Case in point, in urgent care, anybody in urgent care leadership is going to relate to this. We've seen a degradation of acuity across the urgent care industry in recent years. Part of the reason for that, even if you, let's forget about COVID for a second.

We were seeing that anyway because we were so focused on feet through the door, patients per hour, that we started referring out patients who were gonna be lengthy stays. And we did that in the name of efficiency, right? Well, what ends up happening? You have specialty urgent cares, ortho urgent cares, all of a sudden, all we did was become a glorified referral system in some ways to competing organizations.

I would call that penny wise and pound foolish when what we could have been doing, what we should have been doing if we'd stayed focused on the patient all along is saying, how do we broaden our skill sets? How do we expand our capacity to make darn sure that when somebody chooses to walk through our doors, that we're as equipped as possible to take care of that patient? So I would argue that, you know, that's a really capitalistic way of looking at it, but capitalism.

involves people, you know. So if you forget about that and you and you start looking at the numbers and thinking the numbers are the beginning and not the byproduct, then you you're really well penny wise and pound foolish.

Patient Care Marketing Pros (28:41)
Well, I think there will always be a return on doing the right thing. A positive return, I should say. Yeah. Right. Even if in the short term, just like you're talking about the penny wise and pound foolish, even in the short term, even if for a season you have to do that, if during that season you're looking for a solution and not have to do that long term, then you're making a wise choice in the future of your clinic for sure.

Nick Scherer (28:43)
. . . . .

Rachel Sossoman (29:05)
Absolutely, absolutely.

Patient Care Marketing Pros (29:08)
Well, I want to know specifically about the, the heal healthcare. And it's an initiative. It's more than just a hashtag that you're using or branding that you're putting out there. There has to be something attached to that. That's going on internally. And I would love to know what you're doing. How is this, how is this resonating through your team? Not just saying, Hey, we feel good about what we're doing, but what's the practical application when that patient walks through the door? How is that healing healthcare? What are you doing to do that?

Rachel Sossoman (29:38)
There are a number of initiatives that have been going on simultaneously and that will be happening in the coming months. For starters, we have looked into the sources of burnout. We connect directly with our teams. Leadership rounding is very important to us at Mercy. I am out in the centers as often as I can be, bi -weekly at worst. Connecting with people directly to find out what's going on. We...

We learned that there's great administrative burden happening in our centers that is inefficient for the patient and also soul -sucking for the staff for lack of better terms. So we are in the middle of an EMR transition to ensure that we have the best possible technology available to make the administrative burden as light as possible for our staff.

We also, within the last couple of years, invested more money than ever before in the history of Mercy Urgent Care, and I was really proud of this, in an initiative that we call Mercy University, or Mercy You for short. This is training and development dollars that enable people to cross -train into new skills, to cross -train into promotions, and otherwise become the best that they can be as...

as employees, as clinical staff, certainly, but also to develop the broadest skill sets possible to be able to see as many patients as we possibly can when they walk through the doors. We don't want to be in the business of turning people away or referring people out. We actually want to be able to take care of those patients. And in order to do that, I mean, you have to spend money to make money, right? We had to make that investment in our people to make sure they have the skills that...

that they need to be able to provide those services to the patients. And we're starting to reap that return now. I will tell you our net revenue per patient visit is more than $10 higher per patient than what it was whenever I took over in 2021 as CEO. And I'm really proud of that. I'm also proud to say that we are still and have been on pace for about a year and a half now.

breaking records for most patient visits in the nearly 40 year history of our organization. We are continuing to see more patients than we'd ever seen before. So I've been saying for about a year and a half now, guess what? It's April 23. We've seen more patients year to date than ever before in the history. And I've been saying it now like every month. I think everybody's just tired of hearing me say it. But we're proud of that.

Patient Care Marketing Pros (32:18)
I mean, just what you're mentioning. Yeah, I was going to say, I don't think they're tired of it. No, and you were mentioning at towards the beginning, like 80 ,000 patients a year type of thing. If you have eight locations, 10 ,000 per location per year. So you're sitting around 800 or so patients a month per location, you know, depending. I mean, that's not small.

Rachel Sossoman (32:36)
Yeah, and I know it's not. And what's really interesting about that is that of those eight locations, one of them is in a community that has fewer than 2000 residents. If that puts it into perspective, we know that people are driving from long distances to come to see mercy and they're driving past other urgent cares to be a part of mercy.

Patient Care Marketing Pros (32:56)
There's a reason why. I mean, to me, that's so important to know because we work a lot of urgent cares. And what we find is it has to be within two to five miles. Like that's generally how people will travel to an urgent care. If it's much more longer that they'll look for the closest one after that. And then the repeat visits or repeat patients low like it's hard for them because it's just a convenience factor, right? The fact that you guys like now I mean,

Nick Scherer (33:13)
. .

Patient Care Marketing Pros (33:22)
We have, I'm curious, I mean, you may or may not know this answer, but I'm curious of the 80 ,000 patients that you see this year, what percentage of those are repeat patients? Because that to me is a defining percentage, right, of how much people love you.

Rachel Sossoman (33:36)
Yeah, I actually don't know the answer to that. That's a really great question, but I really don't know. I've said quite a few.

Patient Care Marketing Pros (33:42)
Well, y 'all built a different kind of urgent care. Y 'all built a different kind of urgent care. And when you, when you attach that ministry thought process or that philanthropy thought process, however you want to look at it, you know, I can tell you just from a pure church perspective, there's a lot of new people that come on Easter and Christmas and Thanksgiving and all those different kinds of things. And then there's your standard, we come every week. And in urgent care, again, not church, but.

You know, people are going to get sick, what, two to five times a year on average that we've come across in our studies. So if we know that, and if three out of five times they're coming to you, that's good data to have for sure. yeah.

Rachel Sossoman (34:21)
Absolutely. Well, and it really to your, I know you said this earlier, this can really be the mindset that everyone has. Mercy doesn't want to corner the market on doing, doing well by doing good. Everybody can be doing this again, regardless of your tax status. We can all be completely and totally patient focused in our mindset and, and in our business practices. And one example of this, which I'm sure, well, I'm, I'm

positive, I've seen it on the income statement, has contributed to our success is testing out initiatives that further lower barriers to care that provide low cost, lower cost visits, lower cost alternatives to other healthcare facilities in the region. And one of those is in our Mercy Me program or Mercy Team Care programs, which is to date the lowest cost.

Nick Scherer (35:04)
Thank you.

Rachel Sossoman (35:21)
cash pay highest access option that we have ever offered our patients before. And I call it the Amazon Prime of healthcare. It's a flat fee per member per month in exchange for either limited or unlimited access to any of our Mercy locations or unlimited telemedicine. And then access to a long list of super

reduced price prescription medicines that represent roughly 90 % of all the prescriptions that providers typically prescribe in a primary care setting. And in doing this, what we found in Western North Carolina, at least, is that there's a lot of folks who have, say, high deductible healthcare plans, who maybe have that protection against catastrophe and might be able to

go in for that wellness visit one time a year, but then their foot through the door visit to a healthcare facility whenever life happens throughout the year, the two or three times, they're going to be less likely to seek the treatment that they need. And frankly, I think they deserve. So in providing this flat fee membership plan for lack of a better term, we're really eliminating barriers to care. And in doing so also retaining patients. We're

If I have a member of Mercy Me and they cut their finger slicing an avocado and need stitches, are they going to go somewhere else or are they going to go to Mercy when they need help? We want them to come to us. We want them to have the opportunity to be taken care of when the need exists and we want the opportunity to do the same. So a lot of innovation that can come when we just ask ourselves the question, what does the community need and

Patient Care Marketing Pros (37:01)
Mm.

Nick Scherer (37:10)
Thank you.

Rachel Sossoman (37:20)
what resources do we need to provide to eliminate that barrier to care for the community?

Patient Care Marketing Pros (37:26)
I tell you, it reminds me of it's almost like an affordable concierge service. Cause like the concierge model. Yeah. Yeah. So cause like the concierge model is relatively new. Like we were exposed to it three or four years ago because somebody had approached us about it. But most concierge models are like high dollar. Like you're spending thousands a year taking care of your family. But it's the same model. You just pay a fee and you're just taking care of. Well, you're just like,

Rachel Sossoman (37:32)
It is. That is exactly it. Yes. Yeah.

Nick Scherer (37:37)
Thank you.

Patient Care Marketing Pros (37:56)
not near as expensive, but just as effective. But you've listened to your community about it. Like your community would have a much better response to this style than like an act like then the traditional concierge model. Right.

Nick Scherer (38:10)
Thank you.

Rachel Sossoman (38:10)
Absolutely. You said it perfectly because I hate the concierge model. I hate anything that feels elitist at all. Maybe hate is too strong a word, but anyway, I don't like it. And so when we started talking about this, I said, well, I want it to be accessible to everybody. I want people that are living paycheck to paycheck to be able to afford this. They deserve to get the care.

Patient Care Marketing Pros (38:20)
Thank you.

Nick Scherer (38:25)
Thank you.

Rachel Sossoman (38:33)
And so I want us to make the commitment to be the low cost leader for this type of service. And let me tell you, that is really spooky when you're thinking about, you know, charging people pennies on a monthly fee in exchange for potentially unlimited access to health care. And you think, wow, this is, this is going to be a race to the bottom. This could very well be a risk that you can't recover from, or, you know, you, you go down the rabbit hole of

all the different ways that this altruism can blow up in your face. But we did, I'm thrilled that everybody went along with this, that we took the risk, we went the low cost route. And in doing so, we've seen exponential growth in this program. And it's kind of like Let's Heal Healthcare. It's starting its own movement, you know, because word gets out and small nonprofits in town who...

aren't large employers under ACA, so they can't provide their own healthcare coverage, say, well, wait a darn minute, I can't pay for Sally's health insurance, but I can surely afford to pay this flat fee so Sally has unlimited access to Mercy Urgent Care if and when she needs it. And so you get those connections with other people that are doing good in the community. They tell their friends that are doing good in the community and all of a sudden you're building a movement. All of this stuff, by the way, is...

it really translates into word of mouth and that is so powerful and way cheaper than spending boatloads of money on billboards and commercials and everything else. Not that we don't do those things, but if you can light a fire in the people that you interact with, then the growth will come, the protection will come.

Patient Care Marketing Pros (40:22)
Nothing spreads better than word of mouth. No, not at all. Well, so we're definitely up on our time, but it's been a really good conversation. Yeah, I've enjoyed this tremendously. Absolutely. Is there any parting words you want to give to our audience or ways they can connect with you guys?

Nick Scherer (40:31)
Thank you.

Rachel Sossoman (40:39)
I would just say a movement is all inclusive. So we welcome everybody in the urgent care space to join Mercy in this movement to build, heal and transform communities.

Patient Care Marketing Pros (40:45)
Good. Yeah.

How about I do it this way for taking us out. If you want to talk about how to create a movement within your urgent care, reach out to Rachel. We'll drop her LinkedIn profile. If you want to talk marketing strategy and how to grow from one location to eight while adding a philanthropy approach to this, reach out to John. If you want to learn more about how to attract the right kind of people to your business as employees and team members, reach out to Nick. We'll drop all three of those links.

Nick Scherer (41:07)
Okay.

Patient Care Marketing Pros (41:21)
to their LinkedIn profiles. I like that approach a lot better. They'll connect with you directly. That way they don't have to, they can ignore you if they want to. But they don't have to. There could be a good connection there. And I do want to encourage everybody listening to this podcast to go check out, I want to say it's called mercy urgentcare .org. I want to make sure that I put that out there. Either way, it's going to be in the link below in the show notes. And I just want you to go and read their mission, their vision, their values, their approach. And I want to encourage you to steal.

And I say it in the most genuine way from like, these are people who genuinely care about healthcare, not people who just own urgent care clinics. And when you add a level of care into a business organization, you're going to get better as a clinic, clinician, a business owner, whatever. So Rachel, John, Nick, I really appreciate y 'all coming on the podcast today. I'm encouraged by what you're doing. I can't wait.

to see the response to this episode. I think it's going to be very, very positive. Yeah, it will be.

Rachel Sossoman (42:22)
Thanks so much for having us.

Patient Care Marketing Pros (42:24)
Absolutely. I hope there's an opportunity for you all three to come back on again in the future. I'm just going to consider that a yes without even asking. And from there, I hope everybody has a great week. We'll see you on the next episode. Go out and.

Jon Medin (42:24)
Thanks guys, appreciate you.

Nick Scherer (42:26)
Thank you for your time.