Timothy Zercher 0:00

Well, Shannon, thank you so much for joining us. We really appreciate you taking time out of your busy schedule.

Shannon Werb 0:04

Tim, fantastic. It's really great to be joining you, and I really appreciate your time as well.

Timothy Zercher 0:09

Absolutely. So let's jump right in. You spent years scaling healthcare organizations. What led you into behavioral health and why does this space or why is this space especially important to you?

Shannon Werb 0:21

Tim, I've been at it in a number of different clinical areas for a couple of decades now. I have a technology background by training. And so I've always really enjoyed tech-enabled clinical services. But what's been really rewarding to me has been figuring out how to partner with clinicians to build and scale practices. And fortunately, I've been able to do that at national scale across a number of different areas. And so that really for me is about trying to figure out how do we create the best possible experience for patients or clinicians or partners in the array world. It's health system partners, payer partners, various referral sources as an example. And so that's really what's driven me in general the last couple of decades. I find myself really encouraged about the behavioral health area. I think originally people found my background based upon my telehealth experience. I'm an array as a completely virtual organization. And for me, as I was looking at it, certainly I saw a couple of these aspects really pull through and the opportunity to come and work in behavioral health, i.e., the ability to really execute at scale, execute nationally, work with clinicians. But ultimately, it's a very relevant topic right now, behavioral health in general. We work in the virtual mental health space. But I really just saw an opportunity to practice the things I really enjoy doing and bring it to a place that probably could benefit from it. And I found that to be a really natural connection when I decided to join a Ray back in 2023.

Timothy Zercher 2:01

Makes a lot of sense. A lot of leaders are still talking about virtual care, mostly in terms of access, which I'm sure you're used to, but you've been pushing the conversation more towards outcomes. What do you think the industry still has to prove in this regard?

Shannon Werb 2:15

Yeah, really good question, Tim. We certainly, as the industry really began to expand, a lot of that was lined up around COVID era or more okay for people to talk about their mental health. And I think investors also saw a significant unmet opportunity and invested in this space. And that created a bunch of really incredible organizations that went after solving for very specific, maybe clinical pathways or specific patient conditions or areas that they could focus on. I think that also was very much a recognition of this supply-constrained problem or capacity constrained problem. And the number one drive was how do we make sure clinicians are available to see patients? How do we create this place where patients can more easily get access to care? And by and large, I still think that is a need. And I commend every organization out there that's trying to help to solve for that problem. I would say though, now there are many networks. We have hundreds of clinicians. There are some organizations larger than us that have thousands of clinicians. And I think that looks very different right now, that it's important for us to begin to demonstrate that, certainly in our world, for an all-virtual organization, that we actually deliver really great care. And patients that are in our care actually get better. And I see the conversation transitioning now from access to outcomes and really a mechanism for organizations to really start to demonstrate that their care models are doing a great job. In some places that might connect to payment reform or various ways for us to get reimbursed for our services. And I can't help myself, but to also talk about our recent outcome study where we have now gone and been able to study patients for an entire year. We went live on a new electronic health record from Epic back in late 2024. We did that because most of our patients are connected to health systems. Our partners are health systems and payers. And now we're able to actually look at those patients in our care using our care pathways. How are they improving over time? Connect that to a bunch of the benchmark studies over how patients with similar types of conditions improve over time and demonstrate that in our care, they improve same or better than patients in hybrid or in-person care. And what was most interesting to us, what we didn't expect, is the higher acuity the patient initially presented, the better they are in our care. And I think that connects to higher acuity patients, are able to seek access back to your question through virtual providers more easily than in-person providers. And so therefore we're probably able to better impact or affect them and their care. But we're really proud of the fact that not only do we provide care for them, we will deliver over a half a million encounters this year, but the patients in our care we can prove are actually improving and getting better. And then ultimately at the end of the day, that's what we're in business to do.

Timothy Zercher 5:26

I love that. I love that. It is counterintuitive that higher acuity would do better via telehealth services, but it does make sense. I can totally see it. The barrier to entry is a lot lower if you can just pick up your phone versus having to get in a car and go across town and get checked in and a whole nother level of mental burden.

Shannon Werb 5:44

Counterintuitive, but exactly that's the way we're sort of thinking about it now. And we continue to study the data to help improve our models of care as well. Of course. Of course.

Timothy Zercher 5:52

I love that. So as you mentioned, right, you've led across telehealth operations and healthcare technology. What have you learned about building growth in healthcare without creating more complexity for providers and patients? Because often size just means more problems, more complexity.

Shannon Werb 6:10

Yeah. Well, there's a lot to that question, but I'll probably focus on one real specific area. And as I mentioned earlier, my background is in healthcare technology and really trying to build systems and processes that help enable clinicians to deliver care at scale. And of course, as I just mentioned, with outcomes to really do a better job. And I think that has a lot to do with how do you try to find ways to take the friction out of the process and enable clinicians to really do what they're here to do, and that is to deliver care. We talk a lot about reducing administrative burden for clinicians. We talk a lot about bringing them the latest technology tools. At the end of the day, really, what this is about is elevating their ability to practice at the top of their license. And we want them to do that in context of the workflow or engine or electronic health record that's in front of them. We don't want them using multiple different tools. We don't want them logging into other systems. We don't want them to have to do something very specific for one client versus another client. We need to find ways to present that workflow to them in the context of how they work so they can practice clearly and consistently with every patient interaction and deliver really the best possible outcome. I think the magic is how do we make the client feel that as well? So we're interacting with the client in the way they expect, but we're translating it into the way the clinician needs it. So the patient in the middle receives the best possible care. And as a technology leader, I believe that's where technology and workflow and bringing modern approaches to how we deliver care can really help for us to make sure that occurs. And we can become an extension of the health system or payer referral source that's sending their patient our way. We can make the patient feel special and unique in that interaction, and we can have the clinician really feel less burden in delivering that care so they can do the best job possible.

Timothy Zercher 8:14

I love that. That makes complete sense. What have you found is the hardest part about growing your organization as a whole?

Shannon Werb 8:22

I think probably I will focus on an area that people may not expect. I think the natural answer in this area is I can't find enough clinicians. I just mentioned earlier that there are capacity shortages. I find that we can actually recruit, hire, and retain clinicians. Certainly we want to do more of that. One answer might actually be well, I want to be able to sell more clients. And well, I probably could see improvements in that area as well. I think I would say that the area that I spend a lot of time thinking through is how do you build that corporate infrastructure and team to make sure you can actually execute clearly and consistently at scale? And is that this balance of having the right people internally be coached, mentored, and trained? Or is that this balance of bringing in external people with experience that they can bring to the table? And I think it's about figuring out how to mesh that together. When we do that, we can then take our organization out to the market in a way where they can see it presented in a fashion that may not be just we're the largest in one area, or we focus on one very specific outpatient segment. We really are starting to try to think about the full journey of a patient, a patient that might have to try to navigate care in the hospital, or they have to navigate care in an outpatient setting or navigate care in the home. And can we find ways to integrate those capabilities? Because our clinicians take care of patients in all of those settings. How can you do that on a common platform to be a seamless extension of the health system or the payer referring that patient to us to ensure that patient has the best possible interaction? And that's really what we're trying to figure out how to do well now is we win by bringing all of our services together. We don't win by simply being the largest and practicing in the at-home space as an example. That makes complete sense.

Timothy Zercher 10:24

And you can tell you're thinking about it in a much more thoughtful approach than just bigger all the time.

Shannon Werb 10:28

Yes. I think naturally the end outcome is your organization is going to scale, but I really think we win by ensuring that a patient or a partner of ours can more easily navigate the set of services we have to offer. So they don't think about us through the lens of the one thing we do. They think about us as a partner for their mental health needs. They can bring a patient to us and we can best connect them to the right care at the right time. Yeah, which I love.

Timothy Zercher 10:56

So because we're a marketing agency that specializes in mental health, we always have to ask some more marketing questions. So, first one is what works best for you and your team right now in acquiring good new partners, especially outside of word of mouth?

Shannon Werb 11:11

Yes, I think the thing that we are, I don't know that I would answer is working well. We're trying to make sure it delivers the value to us that we think is there. And that is trying to leverage AI tools in marketing. I think the old days of it was really easy for you to send a bunch of emails, those are gone. AI tools are filtering emails and getting the attention of a buyer to an email, and email campaigns are very difficult. I think leveraging or using sort of what I think about as kind of umbrella or brand awareness marketing, that's very hard to get targeted at what we actually do and get the buyers to connect to that at the moment in time that they're thinking about it. We think about sort of trade shows and in-person events. Those are important, they're expensive, they're a big investment. We try to have our thought leaders there so we're part of the conversation, but not all buyers are showing up. And then you need to make sure when they do show up, they think about you and we'll come and see you. But we think adding some of these AI tools in there can help us to better target, raise awareness, really combine these efforts together because a buyer we think now better navigates multiple touch points. And we have to be at the right touch point at the moment in time that they think about the kind of services that we offer. So if they go to a trade show, we can create awareness for them. If they're online doing research, we're creating awareness for them. And certainly, of course, we do send some emails to curated lists and we can make sure that we're targeting correctly. We think some of those AI marketing tools are gonna be really helpful to us in getting our message out there to better connect buyers to not being in their way, but being available to them when they're ready to have a conversation.

Timothy Zercher 13:12

Yeah, yeah. I think probably both AI tools and AI search is gonna be really important for you as executives continue to search more using AI tools as well.

Shannon Werb 13:22

Yeah, Tim, really good question. We have a PR agency. And one of the things they were educating us on was actually, I can recall the days of curating your content for SEO for searching on your website. Now it's curating your content for LLMs because buyers are using LLMs to do research and making sure that the LLMs consider your content as valid in the search is something you have to sort of rethink now. So certainly that's an important part of the process.

Timothy Zercher 13:51

Absolutely. So then last question, and maybe AI is still the answer to this one too, but is what is one marketing tactic that you or your team are is really watching or considering in the marketplace right now?

Shannon Werb 14:03

We have really pivoted from broad awareness, uh more brand level marketing, to very directed, I think the formal terminology in the marketing space is account-based marketing. We are really spending time and curating who we're talking to. So we're driving at them versus sort of chasing everything that's available out there to us or every prospect or opportunity that comes inbound. We've really spent time understanding exactly who our segment is and then which customers we're going to target within that segment. We break it down by region, and then we have individuals, professionals that are trained to target the accounts in that specific segment. And then we use these AI tools to help us make sure that we're building the right content to be available to the buyers in that segment. So it's really being much more direct and less sort of broad-based brand awareness marketing. The only thing I would probably add to that, Tim, is really moving and elevating the conversation to this thought leadership concept. I mentioned our white paper earlier, our all comes-based white paper. I think it's really important that we be a resource for buyers and how we think about the industry, where it's heading, how they can partner with us and help them see that we are not just providing a staffing solution and hiring a whole body to staff a slot. We actually can help them build a clinical program or help them build a better way to evaluate patients or help them triage their patients smartly. And so really elevating our discussion as we target to be much more of the thought readers in the space.

Timothy Zercher 15:49

That makes a lot of sense. I think that'll serve you well, especially when you talk about AEO, which is AI optimization and real first person data, first person information has the highest value by far in attracting attention on those platforms. So it makes complete sense. Thank you, Shannon. I really appreciate you joining us. Appreciate you taking time and appreciate the work that you're doing via a lot of your partners. I know you guys are having a huge impact. So thank you.

Shannon Werb 16:12

Yeah, Tim, great to meet you, and I appreciate you spending time with me today.

Timothy Zercher 16:16

Absolutely. Bye bye.