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touch point podcast

touch point podcast

By: touch point media
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 touch point is a podcast dedicated to discussions on digital marketing and online patient engagement strategies for hospitals, health systems, and physicians' practices. In each episode, hosts Reed Smith and Chris Boyer dive deep into a variety of topics on the digital tools, solutions, strategies, and processes that are impacting the healthcare industry today.touch point media © 2023. All rights reserved. Economics Hygiene & Healthy Living Marketing Marketing & Sales Politics & Government
Episodes
  • TP479: Agile in a Waterfall World (or Don’t Go Chasing Waterfalls)

    TP479: Agile in a Waterfall World (or Don’t Go Chasing Waterfalls)
    Mar 18 2026
    Running sprints inside an organization that hasn't changed anything else isn't transformation. It's double the work. Chris Boyer and Reed Smith examine what isolated Agile adoption actually produces in health systems — and what it exposes about the organizational infrastructure no methodology can fix on its own. Mentions from the Show: Only 23% of Agile-experienced executives say their org can shift resources quickly; only 34% say culture naturally enables Agile: Bain & Company, "How Agile Is Powering Healthcare Innovation" — https://www.bain.com/insights/how-agile-is-powering-healthcare-innovation/ Siloed structures as primary barrier to Agile at scale in large enterprises: Agility at Scale research review, 2025 — https://agility-at-scale.com/implementing/transformation-leadership/ 55% of organizations cite poor leadership as top barrier to cross-functional OKR alignment (prerequisite for Agile): Hyperdrive Agile OKR research, 2024 — https://hyperdriveagile.com/articles/breaking-silos-how-advanced-okr-cross-functional-performance-drives-unprecedented-growth-83 CEO "follow me, I'm just behind you" case study — management stuck in old-fashioned way while development teams ran Agile: Bain & Company, "Agile Innovation" — https://www.bain.com/insights/agile-innovation/ Healthcare structural and cultural barriers to Agile implementation: Rahman et al., SSRN, August 2024 — https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5041524 Real Agile blockers: decisions, load, trust, habits — finance and HR structural changes required: Bee'z Consulting / Scrum Alliance, 2025 — https://www.beez-consulting.com/blog/adopting-an-agile-culture-and-practices-in-healthcare-challenges-and-solutions Agile at scale requires finance, HR, and governance to shift — not just team-level training: Scrum Alliance, Coaching for Transformation microcredential framework — https://www.scrumalliance.org/microcredentials/coaching-for-transformation-sustaining-change Reed Smith on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/reedtsmith/ Chris Boyer on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrisboyer/ Chris Boyer website: http://www.christopherboyer.com/ Chris Boyer on BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/chrisboyer.bsky.social Reed Smith on BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/reedsmith.bsky.social Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    38 mins
  • TP478: The Journey Nobody Told Operations About

    TP478: The Journey Nobody Told Operations About
    Mar 11 2026
    The language of lifecycle engagement, continuous care relationships, and whole-person experience has fully colonized healthcare strategy decks. Marketing invested in journey maps. Leadership signed off on CRM platforms and digital front door initiatives. The consumer lifecycle is drawn on whiteboards in conference rooms across the country. And yet: the scheduling system still fills slots, not relationships. The EMR still closes the encounter at discharge. The call center still routes to availability, not context. The follow-up that fires after a visit is an automated survey, not a clinical touchpoint. The patient who received a personalized "we care about your whole health" email walks into an appointment where the provider has never seen it. Healthcare has rebranded the patient journey. It hasn't redesigned the organization that delivers it. Chris Boyer and Reed Smith examine the specific gap between what health systems promise through their consumer experience strategy and what patients actually encounter when the operational infrastructure hasn't changed: Why "consumer journey" became a marketing framework rather than an operational commitment — and what got left out when it did The post-discharge cliff: why most health systems treat discharge as an endpoint when a journey framework requires it to be a transition How scheduling logic, EMR workflows, and call center scripts were built for encounter resolution — not relationship continuity The channel handoff failure: why patients who begin digitally often restart from zero when they call or show up Who actually owns the seam between departments — and why the honest answer is usually nobody The episode ends with a direct challenge: before your organization launches its next lifecycle campaign or publishes its next patient journey map, someone should be able to answer a basic question. What is the operational commitment behind this? Not the technology investment. The operational commitment. If your CEO asked you today to show them where in the organization the consumer journey is operationally owned, could you give a straight answer? Mentions from the Show: "Value-based care adoption grows, but challenges remain": https://www.hfma.org/reference/value-based-care-adoption-challenges/ "Innovation in Pursuit of Patient-Centered Care": https://catalyst.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/CAT.24.0245 "Reducing Hospital Readmissions": https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK606114/ "Reducing readmission rates through a discharge follow-up service": https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6616175/ "What is Healthcare CRM?": https://www.leadsquared.com/industries/healthcare/what-is-healthcare-crm/ "The continued growth of VBC, in 4 charts": https://www.advisory.com/daily-briefing/2025/06/04/vbc "Engaging Complex Health System Boards in Quality and Safety Governance": https://catalyst.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/CAT.25.0276 Reed Smith on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/reedtsmith/ Chris Boyer on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrisboyer/ Chris Boyer website: http://www.christopherboyer.com/ Chris Boyer on BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/chrisboyer.bsky.social Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    42 mins
  • TP477: The Trust Debt: The Hidden Cost of Automating the Wrong Things

    TP477: The Trust Debt: The Hidden Cost of Automating the Wrong Things
    Mar 4 2026
    Automation was sold as a way to scale good experiences. It scales bad ones just as efficiently. Healthcare has spent the last decade deploying chatbots, portals, AI-generated content, and personalization engines in the name of patient experience. The ROI case was built on efficiency: lower cost per interaction, faster throughput, reduced call center volume. What was never put on the balance sheet is what happens to patient trust when those systems fail — and they fail regularly, quietly, and without anyone in the organization knowing it happened. That's trust debt. Every time an automated system fails a patient and the patient absorbs the cost silently — closes the portal, hangs up, stops engaging — a withdrawal is made from an account most health systems never knew they had. It doesn't show up in satisfaction scores. It shows up in churn, in rising call volumes that automation was supposed to reduce, in patients who schedule once and don't come back. Chris Boyer and Reed Smith work through where the debt is accumulating right now — and where automation is actually doing the opposite: Why AI-generated health content optimized for fluency, not accuracy, is seeding doubt in the patients most likely to engage with it How portal adoption metrics are measuring the wrong signal — and why enrollment without satisfaction is just a larger audience for your frustration Where DXP personalization crosses from service into surveillance — and how thin consent frameworks are accelerating that perception What trust-building automation actually looks like, and what it has in common with the best human interactions in healthcare The three questions every team should ask before the next automated touchpoint goes live The research is catching up to what practitioners already sense. AI safety disclaimers in patient-facing responses dropped from 26% in 2022 to under 1% in 2025. Sixty-one percent of patients say they'd consider switching providers over a better digital experience. And the 2025 Edelman Trust and Health report found that no institution — not business, not government, not NGOs — is trusted to address patient needs. Healthcare is operating in a trust deficit it didn't create alone, but automation is making it worse in ways that are largely invisible to the organizations doing it. The question isn't whether to automate. It's whether you've been honest about what you're actually scaling. Mentions from the Show: TP456: When AI Speaks for the Patient — touchpoint.health TP460: When Digital Speaks for the Patient — touchpoint.health TP470: When AI Becomes the First Stop for Care — touchpoint.health AI errors in healthcare — Healthcare Brew, August 2025: https://www.healthcare-brew.com/stories/2025/08/20/healthcare-execs-ai-errors Declining medical safety messaging in AI — npj Digital Medicine, October 2025: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41746-025-01943-1 ECRI Top 10 Patient Safety Concerns 2025: https://www.medtechdive.com/news/ecri-patient-safety-report-2025-ai/742114/ ONC Patient Portal Access Data Brief 2024: https://healthit.gov/data/data-briefs/individuals-access-and-use-patient-portals-and-smartphone-health-apps-2024/ Experian Health patient portal switching stat: https://www.experian.com/healthcare/solutions/patient-engagement-solutions 2025 Edelman Trust Barometer: Trust and Health: https://www.edelman.com/trust/2025/trust-barometer/special-report-health 2026 Edelman Trust Barometer: https://www.edelman.com/trust/2026/trust-barometer Reed Smith on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/reedtsmith/ Chris Boyer on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrisboyer/ Chris Boyer website: http://www.christopherboyer.com/ Chris Boyer on BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/chrisboyer.bsky.social Reed Smith on BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/reedsmith.bsky.social Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    38 mins
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