Speaker 0: This is where health care leadership comes together. Becker's sixteenth annual meeting brings more than 3,500 hospital and health system executives and nearly 800 speakers to Chicago, April the sixteenth. This year's event includes keynote conversations with Dallas Cowboys legend Troy Aikman and former president George w Bush. For the agenda and event details, visit beckershospitalreview.com and click on the events tab in the upper right. We're looking forward to hosting you in Chicago.

Speaker 1: This is Scott Becker with the Becker's Healthcare Podcast, but we're thrilled today to be joined by a brilliant marketer, a brilliant thinker. We're joined today by Seth Turnoff, and Seth's gonna talk to us today about what trends he's watching, what's working, what's not working in marketing, and a lot more. Seth, we're so thrilled to have you on today.

Speaker 2: Yes. Scott, thank you so much. Longtime listener, first time guest. Big day for me.

Speaker 1: Well well, we're thrilled to have you on. Talk about talk about your your your career and and really what you do currently.

Speaker 2: Sure. Sure. I got started in health care in the wonderful, exciting, and dynamic, sexy world of medical billing. Yeah. It's not sexy.

It's not dynamic. It's, it's miserable, but I learned really quickly the game that goes on. And while I was doing that job, I, I was on hold a lot. See, I was on on a denials management team, so it was my job to to fight with, the processors slash payers, trying to get claims paid and corrected for our clients. And so I did a lot of daydreaming at this job, and I tried to figure out a way to move the revenue needle for our physician, our MSO, our private practice clients, that didn't have anything to do with billing.

And so I I ended up doing a real deep dive into marketing and what was available at the retail level in in health care, you know, for private practices. And I saw a huge gap in the market and that, you know, you have an industry that is highly regulated, and marketing was never really part of the health care delivery system. Right? It just if you were a clinician, you know, if you were a physician, a specialist, you you would go to school, and you would get your credentials once you finished, and then you would practice your craft and and practice medicine. And marketing really never played a role in that until, you know, the last ten, fifteen years, everything started to change.

And now you take the most highly regulated industry possibly in the world, next to finance, and you you try to bolt on these marketing components to it in a compliant way. And so so I saw the need that practices had in awareness, in increasing volume, and it's really difficult to do this. You know, marketing works very well. That's why companies it it's a billion multibillion dollar industry. But in health care, it it's sort of a different animal, and it takes someone who understands the, the health care ecosystem, to to be able to do it effectively.

So what we did is my my partner and I, we, we we leverage consumer data to identify most qualified and most highly likely consumers for specific services or procedures. And due to our data, our compliant consumer data, we're able to put ads directly in front of a very specific audience at scale and on repeat, which has proven, incredibly valuable for, for our private practice clients.

Speaker 1: Thank you so much. Take a second, Seth, on this. You mentioned you started your career I'm gonna ask you two follow-up questions to what you just said. You you mentioned you you started your career in denials management. That's gonna be one question how that has not changed over the last twenty, thirty years.

Maybe it's going more electronic, more AI driven, but it still is the battle of all battles between payers and providers. And second, are there specific areas, specific specialties, specific types of patients or procedures that you are most focused on and work with people the most on. So those two questions. Sure. Whether it's really been changes to dials management or that's still the same fight, it's amazing that we're still talking about it twenty years later, whatever month and time later.

And second, what specialties and areas, Seth, do you guys do a lot of work in?

Speaker 2: Sure. Great follow ups. So denials management, it's it it is not surprising that it hasn't changed. They're not payers. We call them payers, but this is not really the case.

They're processors, And it's kind of in their business model to not pay. So the fact that, you know, and now when you have, you know, so many physicians working for payers, the it it feels like the the snowball has grown to a size that it's it's unruly now and and uncontrollable. So, you know, and I'm not here to to just point or identify problems in the industry. You know, we can't solve them all, but it's really hard to exist and not recognize the fact that you have a system that has taken, providers and and pro the the term itself provider, it's an insurance based term. These are physicians.

These are doctors, and we're making them administrators. When when an administrative burden in insurance protocol takes up seventy, eighty percent of a clinician's day, it's a little bit out of formula. And that's just my opinion. Right? I'm a clinical tourist.

I sit better in the in the business office than I do, in in a in in a clinic, but, these these issues that exist are really hard to ignore. And, you know, ask anybody and, you know, yourself, they are they are quite prevalent, and I don't know that they're gonna go away anytime soon. You know, you mentioned AI in denials management. Sure. We have tools now that that make it a little more streamlined, but it's not changing the process.

It's not changing the fact that, you know, little things will cause a delay in in in physician reimbursement. And, you know, it might be a couple bucks here, maybe a $100 there, couple cents over there, but it definitely adds up. So, in terms of specialty focus for our program and our program works great where you have higher reimbursement procedures, that do have that carry patient or consumer choice. You know, when you're talking about marketing and spending money to acquire patients or or create visibility and awareness, you probably want to spend that money where it's most valuably able to return to you. Right?

So, orthopedics has been great for us. That's where we started, and we are heavily leveraged into orthopedics, all subspecialties, as well as, cardiac care and vascular. We the program does work very well with, dermatology, both clinical and, aesthetic as well as, as plastic surgery as well and, you know, gastro and and a lot of other big specialties, ENT, where, where patient choice is at play. Now for a lot of these specialties, you know, you talk to any, talk to any ENT in a major market, and they're like, I don't need more patients. Right?

They have a back clog. So, certainly, volume is is critical for certain groups, but they have to have the bandwidth to, to accept and release that.

Speaker 1: So well taken. It's bigger groups with bigger procedures that that that every procedure is worth a decent amount of money so that they really wanna have it. Right? I mean

Speaker 2: Of of course. But when you layer in, operational efficiencies that they're able to look. Just volume on the front end is only gonna get you halfway there. If if it's not appropriately tackled, you're it's gonna create more operational failures, and things will break internally, especially when it's, you know, patient facing, on the the admin side or even, you know, an access issue where, you know, cases need to be rescheduled because of, you know, just, bandwidth issues. So, certainly, it's it's a a balancing act, and it's hard to have one without the other.

You don't wanna create access without, the volume, and you don't wanna create volume without access. So it's definitely, there there's some nuance there.

Speaker 1: No. And you're you're really right on. Because there's a sole added. You never wanna get your sales and marketing too far ahead of your delivery, because then you don't deliver well, and that's no good either. So they they really have to be in sync, don't they?

Speaker 2: 100%.

Speaker 1: So take a second on this year, 2026. What are you most focused on and excited about?

Speaker 2: Yeah. I love this question. So the past eight to twelve months, we've been seeing a pattern that groups are jumping right into an investment, jumping right into new service lines, jumping right into a new location with limited to no intelligence, meaning limited data that validates and backs up and creates a road map for this investment. So, you know, we we've had groups that come to us and and think they want, you know, patient acquisition, think they want, you know, more volume for a specific service line. And when we do our due diligence, it turns out that you look.

If you're making this investment, I hear what you're saying. But in order to handle this, you need to fix this first. So we've seen groups kind of move forward in this, you know, they want this thing or they think this is the move without the data to back it up. So what we've done is we created, a a program called the practice market fit. And, you know, any startup, will not spend a dollar until they establish product market fit, making sure that the dollars are being spent in the right way.

This is the same thing, but for for medical practices. And it's a it's a a cross section of their market and geographic analysis. They're a competitive assessment, including, like, their top competitors and where they could win against them. A digital visibility scoring, patient access analysis, meaning, like, their digital front door. How are there friction points for patients being able to to gain access to you?

Your AI search readiness, how you are positioned to show up where most many consumers are having conversations digitally now, as well as highlighting strategic opportunities based on all of this data. Right? Prioritized actionable growth opportunities that are tailored to a practice's unique position. So moving more from just a a delivery mechanism for for our program to more of a diagnostic analysis and business intelligence position at a a a tremendously accessible price. I was I was actually called stupid the other day when someone heard that we've priced this report at $497 for for the initial report.

And it's, you know, 15 to 20 pages depending on the practice in the market. And they they playfully called me dumb that that I that this was priced too low, but that's the point. Private practices need an edge. They need something so that they can stand on their two feet and compete against these larger systems, these giant, you know, corporate behemoths that have really big marketing budgets, and it's getting harder and harder for the, for the smaller groups to actually compete with that. So this was in response to that.

This was this was a mechanism that's accessible that can help them make better decisions because the last thing we need are small health care organizations making very expensive mistakes.

Speaker 1: 100%. Let let me ask you one final question, Seth. Take a moment on what advice do you give to emerging leaders or people trying to be great on the marketing side? What what advice do you give people?

Speaker 2: I would I would focus on the fact that there is no hack. There is no silver bullet. There is no quick fix. It's just a combination of good thoughtful work and empathy when you're dealing with consumer audiences and and a patient base. You have to see it through their lens, and you have to deliver what they're looking for.

Yes. There's compliance. Yes. There's operational pitfalls and and and clinical nuances, but it comes down to what the patient and consumer is looking for. What I would say is stay focused on your goals.

Don't get distracted by noise or flashy things. Yep. I know everybody's heard of AI. We might all be sick of hearing about it, but we need to get used to it because it's here and, you know, it's going to evolve deeper and and more impactful than than we had thought. But it's not a distraction.

I think it's more like a get on the bus. So my best advice is to stay focused, stay grounded, and always consider what the patient truly wants.

Speaker 1: But but, Seth, I love what you just said because at the end of the day, people are looking for a magic bullet. In my experience, there's almost never is one. There might be levers that you could pull, but almost always those levers and whatever you're doing have to be worked correctly, thoughtfully, and intelligently and with with with with rigor to to make them make a difference. And then you gotta be able to deliver the services. You just can't turn on the marketing spigot without being able to deliver great services because you need both great commercialization and great services.

Right?

Speaker 2: Well, the best marketing can only occur if the experience delivers on what the marketing promises.

Speaker 1: I agree with that more. Seth, let's wrap up. Tell me where people could find you and learn more about what Seth Turnoff does and your and your team does?

Speaker 2: Yeah. Sure. You can go to, practicemarketfit.com. I hang out on LinkedIn. My name is Seth Turnoff.

It's true. That is my real last name. Can tell more about that later. And I post regularly. Please engage with the content, and, yeah, if you wanted to text me, it's 850 Seth.

Speaker 1: Love that. Love that. 850 Seth, thank you so much for joining us today on the Becker's Healthcare podcast. What a pleasure to visit with you. Thank you very, very much.

Speaker 2: Thank you, Scott. Always a pleasure.