The Trusted Messenger Podcast
There are no more trusted messengers in America than health care providers. But they aren’t trained or supported in communication. We’re here to talk about that. And to change it.
The Trusted Messenger Podcast
Origin Stories & Value-Based Comms
Co-hosts Chad Hermann and Dr. Todd Wolynn talk about their work with the Trusted Messenger Program, consider how (and why) local health care providers are America's most Trusted Messengers, explore why good communication is essential to good health care, and drop a few hints on the focus of future episodes.
0:00 Intro
1:30 The Todd & Chad Origin Story
5:10 Communication Makes Everything Better
6:07 Long Before We Talked the Talk, We Walked the Walk
7:57 A Culture of Communication, Locally & Nationally
9:35 The Difference Between Use & Power
11:15 A Year of Radical Meltdowns
14:25 Trust is Local
17:14 Taking the Social Out of Social Media
20:01 The Only Issue in America on Which Everyone Agrees
22:02 Empowering All Health Care Providers
24:08 When None of the Hands in the Room Go Up
25:02 Your Clinical Acumen Means Absolutely Nothing
26:26 C-Suites, Burnout Data, & Value-Based Care Gaps
30:24 Free CME & Impromptu Comedy Routines
33:41 We Have a Lot of Ground to Cover
34:56 The Rise of Digital Natives
41:39 From Green Day to Jeff Verszyla
43:22 People Who Read People (& Chad’s Happy Face)
45:45 Where We’re Failing
47:35 Good Communication is Essential to Good Health Care
48:22 Quality, Efficiency, & Effectiveness
New episodes drop every Friday. Video versions here.
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http://trustedmessengerprogram.org
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Good communication is essential to good health care.
Hi, and welcome to the first episode of the Trusted Messenger Podcast. I am your co-host, Trusted Messenger Program VP of Communications and Strategy Chad Herman, along with your other co-host, Todd Bolin, Executive Director of the Trusted Messenger Program. Todd, it's been a while since you and I hosted a podcast, a couple of years. Um, I hope it's true, like a bicycle and swimming. You don't forget. Maybe a little wobbly here and there, but I think uh everybody out there will forgive us.
Dr. Todd Wolynn:I uh I think we're gonna be just fine, Chad.
Chad Hermann:I appreciate your confidence. Um we better be just fine because what we're doing here is talking quite clearly, passionately, unabashedly, about the importance, the power, the absolute freaking necessity of communication in healthcare and in public health, in driving quality, in changing behavior, in producing any sort of outcome that any healthcare provider, and that is truly any healthcare provider with a capital H, wants their patients, their customers, their clients, whomever, to do. Um, we have a little bit of experience with that, Todd, don't we?
Dr. Todd Wolynn:We do. Uh for those of you that don't know, Chad was my communication teacher. That's literally how we met in 2009. Um, can I go to the origin story? Can I just uh Yeah, let's do it.
Chad Hermann:Every first episode, yeah, every first episode needs an origin story.
Dr. Todd Wolynn:There was no radioactive insect or spider of any kind, uh, but it went like this. In 2009, there was an article in uh in our local Pittsburgh Post Gazette. It was just medically not accurate. It kind of drove me nuts. I wrote an op-ed. Chad, uh, I subsequently realized responded to the op-ed, and I realized I didn't have communication training, even though not only was I a physician, but I actually went back to school for a business type degree in medicine called a master in medical management, which I got here from our local Carnegie Mellon University. And even there, I still didn't get communication training. So I went to this guy and I said, Would you train me in communication? Uh, as Chad likes to say, it was love over first bagel. Uh, we we met at Smallman Street, Delhi. Yes, we did. And he taught me his communication curriculum, brought him to the practice, realized we started working on healthcare issues with communication, tried to convince my partners we need a full-time communications director. They're like, I don't know about that. We brought him up part-time, but within six months, they said, Oh my gosh, we need this guy full-time. I'll hand it over to you, Chad.
Chad Hermann:That is true. Um, all of that is true. There is no fabrication there, although I do wish there had been at least one radioactive animal of some kind that bit one of us. Um Todd and his partners at Kids Plus Pediatrics here in Pittsburgh brought me into the second sort of act of my career, the first act of my career. I am now, let me do the math, Todd. I am now almost 18 years clean as a recovering academic. I taught communication at Carnegie Mellon University, at the Tepper School of Business, both undergraduate and graduate programs, particularly in the MBA program. It was a tremendous amount of fun, taught some incredible students, at least one or two of whom might actually eventually make their way onto this podcast as guests, but more on them later. Todd brought me into the uh wild and wacky world. Yes, it was wild and wacky in 2009, not nearly as wild and wacky as it is here in 2025. Um, but the wild and wacky world of health and science communication, and I have not looked back. And obviously, we'll talk about what Todd and I are doing now here at Trusted Messenger Program. But at that time, and I can't take any credit for this, it was Todd's vision really, that primary care pediatrics, quite frankly, like primary care everything, needed to get a lot better at communication, both right, Todd, in the exam room and online, two very, very different areas. It was almost as if he could see the pandemic or the current administration coming. But in 2009, he said, if we want to serve our patients and families better, we need to get better individually, collectively, and as an entire sort of professional practice at communication, both internally and externally. And for 15 years, that is exactly what we did.
Dr. Todd Wolynn:Yeah, I would say, and Chad's a humble dude, but you know, look, the guy was voted a top, uh, I think top 25 business professor uh by a uh national uh rating. And um, he came into healthcare having taught economists and rocket scientists and a variety of people who is working. Yeah, literally at Carnegie Mellon. And what we realized was communication made everything better. And while Chow pointed out the importance within primary care, all types of primary care, we've subsequently learned it extends to every aspect, specialty care. It doesn't matter the setting. It could be pediatrics, it can be to all the way to geriatrics, it could be a primary care setting, it could be a hospital setting, it could be a nursing uh facility, uh, long-term care facility. This what we've learned in this path that we've journeyed together is just one, how absent communication training and good communication use is in healthcare, and how we have suffered as a result. So I age myself, though I saw on reruns there was this show, Marcus Welby, like a doctor show from the 50s where whatever Dr. Welby said uh just happened. That that didn't even happen in the 70s and 80s or 90s, let alone it sure as heck does not happen now.
Chad Hermann:Where it brings us today is that after doing this work, and one of the things that Todd and I like to say is that long before we talked the talk, we walked the walk, is that we actually, by incorporating communication into everything we did at the practice, we drove quality so much so, in fact, that we were, well, Todd you don't brag much either, but go ahead, let's brag about kids plus.
Dr. Todd Wolynn:I will just say for for our audience out there, of which we believe are going to be, of course, health administrators, healthcare providers, health systems, policymakers, you would understand that uh data nowadays is collected on large population health levels. And our practice was already, I would say, very, very, very good. But once we started implementing top-tier communication at every level, what we did, it took a great practice to an outstanding level. And when we were part of what's called a clinically integrated network with two billion dollar healthcare systems, we were measured on quality measures and pediatrics that is fairly much limited to down to immunizations, well visit screenings. And across every possible category, we led in this multi-group conglomeration of this clinically integrated network. We led across every category, either by ourselves or at worst, tied for quality across immunizations broken by different categories or subcategories, well visits broken by different ages, screenings broken down by different screenings. That happened consistently for over a decade. These systems were certainly had much deeper pockets. We also did things the same as them. There were certainly best practices on how to use communications in a more tactical or operational way. But strategic use of communications, meaning communications, a culture of communications woven through everything you do, was I think the huge differentiator that allowed us to not only succeed year upon year for a decade, but Chad, I believe our practice made a bit of a transition to a more of a national level over these last two years before we started the Trusted Messenger program.
Chad Hermann:They did. That's right. And what we what we we were pretty confident this would be the case, but we had the ability to test it. And what we saw is that the things that we were doing at a local level, uh, mildly regional, but mostly local level, we took to a national level with a national pediatric organization across seven states and many, many practices, many, many providers, and and clinics and patients and families. And we hit we saw the same result. And we saw that you could, again, at scale, use communication. And to Todd's point, and I want to get to this in a minute, it's not just the tactics, but it's the strategy and particularly the rhetorical strategy behind that communication to literally change behavior and to get your patients and families to do more of the things you want them to do more of, to do less of the things you want them to do less of, and particularly in things like, as Todd said, well behaviors, screenings, vaccinations, I'm sorry, well visits screenings, vaccinations, getting them to um stick to those timetables and to those regimens that you want. But it I think it's important to make this distinction, Todd, and we do it all the time. That a lot of the tactics, not all of them, but a lot of the communication tools and tactics we were using are, let's be clear, established best practices. Most practices use them, most certainly all health systems and IDNs use them. But there's a very big difference between using a tool and using a tool as optimally and powerfully as you can. And to Todd's point, a lot of the people who are driving communication right now at practice and system and whole network levels do not have training in communication. They may have training in marketing or they may have training in other things, but they don't have training in communication. And there's a really big difference in how you use that communication and those tools and tactics with the strategy behind it. So we, again, using the example of when we went to the larger group, um, by changing the way we worded some of the SMS messages that we were sending, by changing the language and the strategy and the cadence behind some emails and some recalls, we saw a significantly better result. And those are the kinds of things that over the course of, not this episode, because Todd and I are talking at a pretty high level today, but over the course of the next several and dozen, and we hope hundreds of episodes of this podcast and the work that we're doing will go into many, many more specifics and details about precisely the kinds of strategies and the kinds of rhetorical techniques that you can apply to drive quality in that way.
Dr. Todd Wolynn:Yeah, let's just get to the heart of it right now. Here's the deal it's 2025. Public health, as we know, it's kind of melting down. Healthcare by its own right is going through radical shaking because there are changes being made to scientific method-applied guidelines and recommendations that we've never seen before. Here's the key year upon year upon year upon year, when you ask people who do they trust most when it comes to making healthcare decisions, their healthcare decisions, it's healthcare providers, typically always topped by nurses. Chad will even show you a slide based on some of the more recent data looking at most trusted is now really my healthcare provider. That's the kind of data that's absolutely pivotal that we need to be incorporating into our strategy as healthcare providers. And as Chad and I have talked about for well over a decade, healthcare providers are not trained in communication, right? We're trained on our stethoscopes, our otoscopes, all sorts of things. And as Chad likes to say, it's almost this attitude of you guys are highly educated people, just get in there and keep communicating. You've been doing it all your life. That's right. Here's the key we're not so good at it, particularly in 2025, when healthcare providers typically are conflict avoidant, everything seems to feel like a battle. They feel harassed, they feel rushed. It's about generating RVUs. Health systems have not adapted either. In spite of our story, and if you go back to our backstory, our practice was the target of a global coordinated kind of anti-science online attack. So we had been doing this work since 2017 about how to deal with these really kind of um tumultuous times uh when it comes to communication. And yet here we are in 2025. And it astounds me, Chad, that we don't have anyone to point to to say that's how it's done completely right. Matter of fact, we're even stretching right now to find a place to point where we're seeing it's done mostly right. And that's by the admission of their our own health systems that we talk to, professional medical organizations. It's 2025, and I've not seen the necessary adaptations being made, which is training healthcare providers, resourcing them, supporting them, and even positioning them to build upon that inherent trust that healthcare providers have to help steer our patients and our families through the noise that they are just being overwhelmed with each day.
Chad Hermann:Those of you who are just listening to this podcast, just know that you can watch the video version of this podcast on our YouTube channel. It's YouTube Trusted Messenger Program. And also the link is on our LinkedIn page. And of course, we'd be remiss if we didn't tell you to please like and follow us on both YouTube and on LinkedIn. We're doing daily content, weekdays on LinkedIn to give you all sorts of good practical tips, tidbits, um, and information on how better to use communication to drive quality. Speaking of which, Todd, this is 2024 data at the very end of 2024 from the Edelman Trust Barometer, the 2025 numbers, virtually the same thing. And those of you who are watching along with us, what you see here is, first of all, at the bottom, trust in everything and everyone. Well, almost everyone, we'll get to that in a minute, but trust in everything and everyone in 2024 and 2025 is declining. Government, journalism, science, big, once thought unassailable concepts. People are losing trust and they're increasing their skepticism. Um, businesses, NGOs, everybody. But there are two exceptions. One is myself. People are feeling more empowered to dig in to find out information on their own. Of course, the bad news is that there are many, many, many, have I mentioned many sources of uh inaccurate information from which they are getting information. But here's the good news the one other place in which trust is increasing by double digit percentage points is in my primary care provider. Not a primary care provider and not any primary care provider, but my primary care provider. One of the things that Ty we like to talk about is trust is local and it's particularly embedded in relationships, longitudinal relationships that healthcare providers have with their patients.
Dr. Todd Wolynn:I'm gonna I'm gonna stop right here, Chad, and say we have never seen a survey that says trust is with the health system or the health insurer. Trust, as Chad just said, is local, down to the level with a practice. So if not the primary provider that they see or primary specialist that they see, at least to the level of the practice. Hey, I live in this neighborhood, that's my practice, or oh, I identify, I see that nurse or that medical assistant or that uh physician assistant or doc. That's where the trust lies. And while there are health systems that are absolutely revered, and in each each city, there's big healthcare systems that people identify with, that's the system I go to. That is not where the trust is. As a matter of fact, the current wave of kind of this anti-science effort now has not just targeted, for instance, say big pharma or certainly health insurances, because there's outrage. And you know, we've seen stories coming out on social media there, but even the large health systems themselves. So if you think about it, right, these large health systems, which oftentimes I will challenge any of you, including those of you that are from those large health systems, go to your websites right now. Take a look, right? You talk about where you're ranked nationally, or your newest robotic surgeries, or your newest genetic therapies, or your fanciest PET scanner, or the new $2 billion addition you're putting on to your health uh medical center. That does not resonate with the regular person out there that one is struggling, you know, with their rent and their food and their health insurance premiums, but they certainly still, when they they get messaging top down, which I tend to say, just like Chad, that is more marketing when we push the health system brand down to the person who's watching on that particular device. That's not what they're looking for. They want to hear from Dr. Pat or Joe, their physician assistant or, you know, whoever, their, their, their nurse practitioner. That's where they want to see opinions and thoughts to help them make healthcare decisions when they're not face to face. And that's a whole nother issue that we can talk to about the two uses of face-to-face versus digital tools. But I want to point out here that healthcare communication, when done right, is oftentimes bi-directional. It meets people where they're at and it follows best communication practices. That is not what we see from health systems. We see health systems with one Facebook page for a hundred different office sites or one Instagram page for a hundred different office sites. That's exactly, Chad, how you take the social out of social media.
Chad Hermann:And Todd just hit his one of his favorite lines about social media. And the same thing obviously is true in the exam room. When we used to train um PA students who did rotations through a practice, one of the things that I was always tell them is the impact that you have the moment you walk into an exam room on that patient or on that family member who's taking care of that patient is incredibly powerful. It's tangible. Again, that's where the trust lies. When you're uh when you're sick or when your child is sick, you are never, ever more vulnerable. But there is something about watching that healthcare provider walk into the room, that healthcare provider that you know and that you trust, watching them walk into that room instantly gives you hope. It makes you feel better. It's not because of the brand that's behind them, it's not because of the system they belong to, it's because of that individual provider and the relationship that you have. With them. And I want to show you one more slide that we think here is so wildly important and also really pretty cool, particularly in 2025. A time when it seems that while trust is declining in everyone and everything, the ability to agree on anything is also wildly declining. But this notion of trust in my healthcare provider actually may be the only thing in America that bridges all sides of the political spectrum. Check this out. When asked, who do you trust to tell the truth about medical issues and protect public health? Respondents from the left, center, and right all agreed on something. They all chose my doctor, my healthcare provider, as the number one person, the number one place that they most trust to, again, tell the truth about medical issues and to protect public health. If there is a silver lining to any of the dark clouds over our heads, if there is a shining beacon of hope in the darkness, it is this. It is that even at a time when no one trusts anyone or anything and no one can agree on anything, the one concept that unites everyone, again, left, center, right, is trust in their own healthcare provider. And Todd and I have spent a lot of time the last year going around the state, going around the region, going around the country. Todd's even gone around the world preaching this message, which is that no matter how, particularly if you doom scroll social media, no matter how hopeless you may feel, you are the hope. There is tremendous power in the trust that resides in individual healthcare providers.
Dr. Todd Wolynn:All the information that we are talking about related to communication is directed at empowering healthcare providers, the trusted person, the person or group, right? That when we say healthcare provider, I want to be clear. This could be a doc, an NP, a PA, but it also could be a nurse, a pharmacist, a clinical social worker. It could be anybody that's in a position of people wanting to hear from you because you are their main point of contact. A school nurse could be in this role. There's lots of different people. Where I want to go with this is that the Trusted Messenger program is an is all about empowering those healthcare providers to better engage, connect, and be able to support their patients and their families to get to an evidence-based or best practice health recommendation choice or decision. That's it, right? Because right now there's so much noise out there. People don't know what to do. But again, as Chad's pointed out, they want to hear from their healthcare provider. And there's two places, as we said, you can do this, that precious time you're face to face in the exam room, which is critically important. And we're not trained to do that. But also you can't scale those visits up to thousands per day, which is why you need to use other tools, digital and social. But as Chad pointed out, SMS and email campaigns, everything needs to use best practice communications to be as effective as possible.
Chad Hermann:Amen. Patient portal messaging, signage in the office, phone trees, hold messages, all of those things.
Dr. Todd Wolynn:And Chad, can I just say just because you say you do it, you don't do it. Because you're you you've you've found that out firsthand.
Chad Hermann:That's right. Just because you do it doesn't mean you do it well. And again, these are the kinds of things that with the Trusted Messenger Program and over the course of the episodes of this podcast, we'll be digging into in a lot of practical and helpful detail. And here's the thing Todd has mentioned twice already the lack of, and I may have even mentioned it once myself, the lack of communication training for healthcare providers. When Todd and I go and we present, one of the things we we like to ask is in a room full of healthcare providers, how many of you here, as part of your formal education, for andor your formal training and or your formal professional development, how many of you had had communication training? And the vast majority of the time, zero hands go up. None, not a single hand goes up. You get it. If you're listening to this podcast, you know that already. And here's the problem with that. I mean, there are many problems with that. Obviously, as the communication guy, I think it's it's awful. I want to fix that in every possible way. And that's what we're trying to do with steps small and large here at the Trusted Messenger Program. But the real problem with that is again on this slide and these numbers, when the trust is local and everything comes from that healthcare provider. You walk into a room as a healthcare provider, or if you're a pharmacist and someone comes up to your counter and asks you or your pharmatech a question, or you're a school nurse and a student or a family member comes in or calls you and has a question. If you have the single best possible advice, make the single greatest differential diagnosis, whatever it is, if you know how to help them and you have, is it a treatment plan, is it a suggestion for a vaccination, whatever it might be, you've got it. Your clinical acumen has served you and that person very well. But if you can't convince that patient or that family member who's making decisions for that patient to follow your advice, to believe what you say and to do what you want them to do, all of that clinical brilliance means absolutely nothing. It means nothing if you can't communicate it. It's the most important skill as a healthcare provider that you have. And it's the one of all of the important skills you have as a healthcare provider, it's the one that you almost certainly were not trained in. And again, we are trying to fix that.
Dr. Todd Wolynn:So let's talk to our audience out there that might be in a C-suite or in the finance or the value-based care portion of healthcare. You've heard me previously state that the Trusted Messenger program is about empowering healthcare providers to better connect and engage and support their families and patients to good decision making. Let me reframe that in language that I think will be relevant to you. The Trusted Messenger program is about empowering healthcare providers using value-based communication to drive value-based care gap closure. That basically is still the same thing said a different way, that is relevant, I think, to all audiences across the healthcare spectrum. Because frankly, this is about the solutions we need, Chad. We need evidence-based, provider-focused solutions that are adaptable, that are scalable, and they have to be sustainable. And they're sustainable because healthcare currently is paid for no longer as a fee for service, pay for what you do, but it's now based on value-based care, really, tiers. So, how well are you moving populations of asthmatics up to the next tier for using corticosteroid uh controller meds versus like a beta agonist? Or how well are you driving people to get their blood pressure uh measured for various medical conditions or immunizations or preventative visits? This is all about communication driving good quality care. And in this case, it's by closing value-based care gaps or helping people get to decisions that are being recommended by their healthcare provider. But we have another problem, Chad, because healthcare providers, as we know, tend to be kind of risk-avoidant. It's that change in our paths of our friends that went to business school versus our friends that went to health professional uh professions. The people that go into business are about, you know, negotiation and you know, a little bit of this um bustle in their workplace. That is not healthcare providers.
Chad Hermann:Healthcare providers appreciate an entrepreneurship, right?
Dr. Todd Wolynn:Yes, yes. That is not typically healthcare providers. And in 2025, healthcare providers will tell you that they feel targeted, harassed. They just are the burnout data is real. And they, the data is clear that they're telling us that I go in to that clinic, to that exam room, to that pharmacy on the back of my heels. I have no training. I don't want to get into a fight. I feel like if I make this particular recommendation, it's going to be a fight. So then how do they proceed? You guys need to hear this. They either don't make the recommendation that they should make because they just don't want to deal with it and they got a lot of patients to get through. They make a half-hearted recommendation, or they do a little better than that, but they kind of seed over to the patient. Like, could you imagine saying, you know what, you have a raging, you know, right low bar pneumonia? You know, do you want to take 10 days of antibiotics or do you want to wait and see if you get septic and then come in? Or, you know, Joey's two-month uh well visit was great. Everything looks wonderful. Do you want to put them in the rear seat, in a car seat appropriately anchored, or do you want to put them up in the front seat or on the hood of your car? Healthcare providers look at me like I'm crazy when I say that, right? I wouldn't, I wouldn't say that. But yet, if you feel like it's going to be a fight, um, you know, you would recommend vitamin K for a newborn baby to prevent head bleeds, or you would recommend vaccinations for the 75-year-old patient that's at risk for COVID and RSV and flu. Why do we then start equivocating for those recommendations? It's because they feel there's going to be a fight. They have no training on how to steer through that conversation because they have no communication training, and they are not supported by their own systems with communication best practices. Thus, the quandary we're in, thus, why the trusted messenger program was built.
Chad Hermann:Todd, it sounds like you were articulating a problem to which we have at least the beginnings of a solution. So now seems like a good time to mention that at the Trusted Messenger Program, a few months ago we released our first CME module for healthcare providers, for physicians, both MDs and DOs, for nurses, for pharmacists, for PAs, for NPs. If you're watching, the QR code is on the screen. If you are listening, you We're getting there. We're getting, Phil, we're getting there. One of the things, one of the resounding themes, if you are either lucky or cursed enough to become a regular listener or watcher of this program, is that sometimes Todd doesn't like to let my words get where they're going. And he wants to make sure we get to the important stuff. As if Todd, I would forget that our CME is free. It may be the most important thing. But you know what? I'm gonna hold off on that, even though spoiler alert, it's free. Just one more moment and say those of you who are listening can find it by going to our website, trustedmessengerprogram.org, checking out the training page, and you can find it there as well. But yes, it is one hour, and we've got more modules coming in 2026. But it is one hour of free. It's free, Todd, isn't it? Did you it is free, Chad?
Dr. Todd Wolynn:Thank you for remembering.
Chad Hermann:My pleasure. Thank you for reminding me because you're welcome. It's one hour of free CME. And let's let's be clear. I'm not a healthcare provider, though I for a long time played one on social media, and I spend a lot of time hanging out with them. And I know that there are two very few words, very few combinations of words that are more exciting to healthcare providers than free CME, particularly if that CME is in any way interesting or helpful to them. And the kinds of problems that Todd articulated way back at the beginning of this comedy routine that we just laid into, in learning how to, as it says in our title, maximize trust and reduce resistance, to have some strategies and some techniques, some tactics, and also just some confidence walking into the exam room, making those recommendations, and facing potential pushback from folks either well-intentioned or because they have gotten false narratives somewhere online or from friends or relatives, it doesn't matter. We've given you some tools in this CME module to get a start. And again, there are far more tools, far more techniques coming to help you become better communicators. And therefore, we think actually we know better clinicians as well. So, again, one more plug for it, Trusted Messenger Program, our free CME module, maximizing trust, reducing resistance. You can scan the QR code online or check it out on our website, trusted messengerprogram.org slash training.
Dr. Todd Wolynn:And Chad, I have to say it, I have nothing against gastroenterologists, but it's better than another hour of constipation, guys. Come on. I mean, this is something that you can use in every visit, every portal encounter, every email. These are about communication best practices. And as Chad said, this is really just the first of multiple modules coming your way. But frankly, we have a lot of ground to cover. We have ground to cover from multiple aspects, all the communication best practices, of which Chad, I'm thinking you have hundreds of lectures that you've done on these subjects. But let's not forget, yeah, let's not forget the timeline. For all of you out there, maybe you're just listening and you're a pharmacy student or a medical student or a PA student or you know, uh, you're in medical school. Like, do we get any of this teaching in our health professional schools? No. How about our training programs or our residencies? They are in dire need of this. And Chad and I've done tons of grand rounds. Finally, as Chad's pointed out earlier, even in your professional path, once you are a professional in your track of healthcare, you are still not getting this type of training, again, support or resources. So there's a lot to be done. And Chad, you've said it out a million times. The people that are graduating health professional training programs and health professional schools actually already have a leg up on most of us because, as you like to say, they're digital natives.
Chad Hermann:Yeah, they are. I I very clearly remember, you know what, we're gonna name drop her because she's awesome. Dr. Ashley Riley here in Pittsburgh. She was sort of the beginning of Kids Plus the Next Generation. She was the first provider who came in when I was working. Who, when I wanted to take her pictures, she said, sure. When I said we're gonna film a video, she said, Great. And here's my best side. Um they're digital natives. They've grown up with a smartphone in their hand and a tablet or a laptop. And they just know how to manage the digital world. But then, as Todd likes to point out, most often when they are brought into a hospital, a health system, or even just a small practice, that knowledge and that ability is shackled for fear of liability, messing with the brand, some sort of public outcry. Um, and that's something that we're trying to change too. Because again, if you look at in terms of who are pro-science communicators and who are, let's just put it charitably, non-science communicators. There are a heck of a lot more of us than there are of them. But the people who peddle the false narratives do so much more vocally, much more passionately. They're much better communicators. There, there are there's a reason that people will sometimes believe 25-year-old influencers over their local health system. And that's because those influencers are just better communicators.
Dr. Todd Wolynn:Yeah, as Chad, as you've said, right? There is that 20-some out, let's just pick in the middle of the country who's convincing hundreds of thousands of people, or at least impacting millions of people, to oftentimes eat horse antiparasitic medication rather than an immunization that is far and away the best possible way to be protected against particular infectious diseases. Here's the key, right? As you talked about being shackled, we have healthcare providers, particularly the younger ones who are being grad who are graduating, who know about what a good hook is on a digital message and how to be engaging because they're very discerning as content uh consumers themselves, except they sign contracts to say, don't get us in trouble with social media. So guess what they do? They're like, hey, I'm not touching that. I don't want to get in trouble. Imagine a day where these younger healthcare providers are signing up with a system for a residency or training or program or their ultimate job. And it says you're a highly educated health professional, again, pharmacist, nurse, PA, NP, doc, whatever. Um we know that you're also a digital native. So get this. We are going to train you further in professional healthcare communication. We're going to provide you with the necessary resources. We got your back. We're going to support you. And we're going to put you in positions where you can reach out and engage your patients, at least at the practice level, in a way that is really likely to impact the community to help them have better health care. And we're going to give you guardrails. Don't go, don't go outside these guardrails. Imagine a day where that happens, because that ain't today. So we are uh we are very much about again, this is more than just digital. It's more than social. It's again the SMS campaigns, texting, email, signage as Chad's brought up. But this all has to work in concert with one another. And again, currently, since healthcare has gotten larger and larger, being owned by fewer and fewer entities, it's become much more about the brand. And while I understand brands are important, particularly to those teams that manage the brand, recognize that people aren't responding to the brand. They want to hear from their healthcare provider.
Chad Hermann:Amen, Todd. And I want to make this really clear. We talk about you and I talk about this a lot. For communication truly to work in any setting, but particularly in a healthcare setting, it has to be foundational, right? You talked about that kind of that integration. Too often, we we joke about this, too often there is this notion of, oh, whether it's consultants or the comms department or just someone, they'll come in and they'll sprinkle the magic communication dust or the magic marketing dust over top. And that'll make things go away, or it'll make it better or more palatable. That's not how good communication works, right? It has to be baked in. We've talked about it already. Our dream scenario is where communication is being taught at a foundational level. In PA programs and NP programs, in med schools, in pharmacy programs, nursing programs, right? Actually learning it and continuing to learn it because it has to be baked into everything that we do to be truly effective. And again, that's why we exist. That's why the TMP is here. And it's the kind of thing that we'll be exploring for weeks and months and years to come.
Dr. Todd Wolynn:For everybody out there listening right now, whether you're a healthcare provider, a health administrator, or you're up in the executive team and the C-suite, you know what the data is showing you. Quality across the board, whether it's vaccinations or well visits or various types of adherence or compliance is decreasing. We're seeing profitability being impacted because the quality of care is eroding in many of those areas. We see that the burnout from healthcare providers is going up. We see trust in many areas, other than my healthcare provider, is eroding. We see suspicion increasing, utilization increasing, right? People are literally being influenced and hearing noise from every direction. My question is, what strategy is being employed to make a difference? Because right now, whether it's vaccination rates or whatever it is, for those of you that are driving along can't see, my arm is painted down. Things are degrading at a risk. And we have not seen any cogent strategy to help healthcare providers to tap into that trust that's already there, that's inherent to make a difference. Chad, we are going to have multiple future episodes coming up, but I don't think we're just going to stay within healthcare or public health to look for some solutions. We'll certainly, and we'll be calling out the successes when we see them, but where else do you think we're going to go?
Chad Hermann:Everywhere. Literally everywhere. When I was teaching communication at Carnegie Mellon, one of the things that I prided myself on was not just reading another business case with the MBA students or with the undergraduates. It was about finding lessons, finding examples, powerful, engaging examples of communication anywhere. So I might use a clip from a Green Day concert to teach the students. I might use something from a TED Talk. I might use an episode of The Simpsons. I might use an example of a local meteorologist. Shout out Jeff Frazella here in Pittsburgh, who, by the way, is a tremendous communicator, the best meteorologist I have ever seen on TV. You know what? Maybe we'll try to get him on too, because there are things that Jeff Frazella, meteorologist at WTAE, can teach us that can be applied in the exam room, face-to-face, online, anywhere else. So communication is a meta discipline, right? It is everywhere. And again, it is foundational to everything. And so we are. We're going to have people on this show from all sorts of spaces: entertainment, law, business, tech, education, academia, anywhere, anywhere we can learn and apply those lessons to healthcare and public health, we're going to do so.
Dr. Todd Wolynn:Yeah. And it, and, and frankly, as Chad hearkened back to the origin story, we have been working for over 15 years developing and refining this work. And I want to point out that the results, again, down to the practice level, ended up being a practice that was nationally and even internationally recognized for its work with communication, right? We were on the cover of the LA Times, the cover of the New York Times Science Times, but apparently that doesn't have the biggest impact, Chad, at least to your relatives, until you make it to People magazine. But the point, yeah, go ahead.
Chad Hermann:My parents bought four copies. But you know, and we love to tell this story, but darn it, I'm going to tell it anyway because plenty of people out there haven't heard it. When Todd and I were in People back in 2021 as their series of vaccine heroes for 2021, we were a little sheepish about it because at that point we had done, as he said, a bunch of bazillion grand rounds. We had written and published peer-reviewed research on communication and on the anti-vaccine movement and responses to it. And so we were traveling in some pretty cool and lofty circles, and we decided that they all would probably maybe look down their noses a little bit at people. But the reaction we got from everyone, including the scientists, the researchers, everybody was like, oh my God, you guys are in people. That's so cool. So we learned that much like much like healthcare providers and trust in my own healthcare provider, apparently the knowledge of and thinking it's cool to be in People magazine transcends all ages, races, classes, professions, socioeconomic levels. It's wild.
Dr. Todd Wolynn:I do have to say, when when for those of you that are able to see the picture, I always do accompany this uh slide by saying that is that is Chad's happy face, but that was only because that photo was taken like late 17, early 18, something like that. Um, after he had just put up with 10,000 attacking posts on our Facebook page. So um he had a right to look like that. So even though this same photo shoot was used for a story in 2021, the point is we've been doing this work for well over a decade, as I said, closer to 15 years, developing and refining and expanding. And again, this idea of I don't care where you are right now. I don't care if you're in a billion-dollar plus health system, an integrated delivery network. I don't care if you're in a singular practice. What we have to talk about and that what the show will bring you is meant to be provocative, but also usable, immediately usable to help you deliver better care. And frankly, this is a critical time right now that we're facing. And it's one skill set that we just are not seeing enough being done. We see great data and great science, Chad. We see, you know, all sorts of very cool tech type things. A lot of people ask us, what about AI? Couldn't AI be uh used here? And what we both come down to say is it's about the trust. And the trust is delivered and connected with communication.
Chad Hermann:That's right. No, no one trusts, inherently trusts Chat GPT, and not just because it has a history of making up fake citations when it's creating bad papers. Um the trust, again, is local, it is profoundly human, and those are some of the things that we're going to be talking about and exploring over the next weeks and months, too. Let's let's let's let's end with this. There are two things that Todd and I like to say. One is that we are not in any way failing at the science or the medicine. Where we are failing, often miserably, is at the communication of the science and of the medicine. There's really good data that says that when patients fail to follow the guidance of even a trusted healthcare provider, the reason is because of how the recommendation was communicated. It's not because of the recommendation or what it recommends, it's because of how the recommendation was communicated. And the second thing we love to remind people is that because of that, good communication is essential to good health care and to good public health. We talked earlier, it is the way, it's where you make contact, it's how you motivate and engage and empower patients, caregivers, whole communities to make the decisions that they need to make to get well and or stay well. And if we get better at the communication, we're going to get better at the health care and at the public health.
Dr. Todd Wolynn:I'll I'll sum things up, Chad, on my side by saying even though we're about empowering healthcare providers, this is really to the people that employ healthcare providers, this is the systems, this is the networks, because they themselves are not going to be oftentimes put into position unless you put them in this position to succeed. So, what what I fear and what I've seen is when leadership hears about communication, it's a little pat on the head, and that's really nice. But you know, we have we're running a big business here. What if I told you when communication's done right, not only does quality go up, but so does efficiency and effectiveness. What if I told you that you can increase things like market share? You can increase all the kind of goals that you have. And interestingly, it helps everybody. The healthcare provider not only is empowered and more confident, but feels more connected to their patients. The patients now feel more heard and you increase and build upon trust. This allows you to reduce turnover, reduce burnout, increase quality scores, and increase satisfaction both from the healthcare providers, the healthcare teams, and those absolutely sought-after patient satisfaction scores, right? Everybody wins when communication is better. This is not some nice feel-good little pat on the head. This is at its core absolutely the right way to do healthcare as a business. My goal here is not about profitability, it's about helping drive better healthcare quality so that the quality of lives of our patients goes up and that healthcare providers feel more fulfilled and do a great job. Like everybody wins when we communicate better. But I want you to know right now what's going on, particularly in large health systems, is more marketing. It is not communication at its core. Communication is going to have to be better face to face. And it's going to have to be better with all those other tools, digital, social, as well as we said, um, SMS, email, hard copy. So I want you guys to keep following along because this show is a window into our lab here at Trusted Messenger Program.
Chad Hermann:I'll sum up Todd's summing up by saying it's an opportunity to do good. And for those of you who worry about the bottom line, also to do well. It is the classic win-win situation. Both of those things are served by better communication. And that, again, is what we are here to do and to talk about for as long as they will have us. For Dr. Todd Willin, Executive Director of Trusted Messenger Program, I am Chad Herman, VP of Comms and Strategy for the Trusted Messenger Program. Thank you for joining us on this. Todd and I are Lord of the Rings fans. So let's go with it. This quest, this absolute mission that we are on to change lives and improve healthcare through evidence based communication. We'll see you next week.
Dr. Todd Wolynn:See ya.
