You Said What?

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We communicated. Now what do I do with that information? What's the next step?

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Filling the shift, for example, stuff along those lines, where we're

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going with it because we don't want to be a tool. We want to be

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the core communication platform in the facility where everything goes

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through, where we link the system. It's like your payroll

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system, three hrs and so on.

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Welcome to the Nursing Home podcast, your goto

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source for professional insights in the long term care industry.

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Hear from leaders and experts as they share current and practical

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insights to help make the most of your day. I'm a long term care financial

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specialist. What that means is I help people plan for the inevitable.

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Nobody wants to think about getting old, but it's possible that someday we might need

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a little bit of care. Here's your host. Nursing home Administrator Turnpodcaster

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Schmoel, Septimashptimas.

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Welcome to this live recording of the

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Nursing home podcast, the podcast that you go to to

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listen and to understand and attend the nuances of

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the nursing home industry. In this episode, we have with us

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Ryan Galia. Ryan is the CEO of

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Voice Friend, a company that I've used personally as a nursing

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home administrator, and I'm very curious to hear where the company is

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today. But even before that, I'm going to talk about some of the issues and

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some of the problems as they affect the nursing home space.

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First of all, Ryan, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me. Excited to be

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here. Thanks for making some time for us. So before

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we get started, I know that our listeners know who I am a little bit.

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They don't know you yet. Can you give us the short version

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of how you got to doing what you're doing today?

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Absolutely. As you mentioned, Voice ran has been around for a period of

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time. My background was in investing

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mainly in the private equity space, my start in health care.

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We would acquire businesses and help grow them over

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time. A couple of years ago,

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there was an incident in the family that led me to

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kind of reevaluate my priorities and lead

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me to make the decision to go out and launch my own investment vehicle

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for business. And instead of building from scratch,

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given my experience working with businesses that already have a footprint,

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I decided to go out and actually buy a small business

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from an owner who's looking to retire.

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I focused on the post acute space specifically and we can get into

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why later and acquired boyfriend back

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in August of last year.

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So relatively new, very new to the company.

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So, okay, fascinating. So you went in,

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decided you needed to buy a business. Okay, let's continue down this path just

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for a minute because you can buy any business in

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the world. This is not a business. Was there a personal connection between

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you and this business or is this a business that you decided

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is the right business or both? A bit of both.

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So I wanted to buy something in the post acute space because

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I knew that I wanted to buy a software company.

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The motivation for doing this in the first place was that

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I had a grandparent who was really sick and she was quite young actually,

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and she had a

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poor treatment experience in

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rehab post getting surgery done.

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She ultimately passed and that made me realize you should really spend your time

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doing what you want to do. But it also made me realize that there's a

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lot of issues in the postcard space that needs to be addressed.

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And so I actually searched for over a year

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to find a software company in the space and got both with a

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few but ultimately landed on boyfriend

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where I felt there was just a lot of potential and optionality,

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I thought I had a good foundation. It was more of a

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canvas that I could paint rather than buying a more established business like an electronic

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health record where there's not many places you could take that.

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And as opposed to trying to start something from scratch unproven

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concept and spending years beta testing something which you may or

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may not get anywhere spending other people's money to

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see if your ideas make any sense. So you're taking something in the middle which

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I kind of like. Yeah, my background was in buying businesses

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so it kind of fit what I've been doing as a professional level prior to

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this. Okay, so you have

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the skills and experience to analyze a

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business and to see this is what you've done with other people's money. It's not

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for a chance you can do it yourself and you can get the reward that

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you are bringing to your clients. Okay, so interesting.

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So persecuted care space is on purpose.

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Software. I guess you wanted a software company.

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I mean, you could have bought a nursing home if you wanted to,

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you could have, could have done anything. But I guess you like software.

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Yeah, I've been programming since I was eight

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years old and I've always been a big software guy that

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minor in machine learning and so wanted to marry

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my interests and this seemed like the perfect combination.

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Okay, very interesting. Okay, so let's

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talk about some of the challenges that can exist for

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someone before the, before they bring in any solution,

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whether it's yours or a different one. What is the problem primarily that

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this is addressing? It's primarily a communication

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problem and that problem exists between the facility

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and various stakeholders, those being staff, family residents

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and referral sources. Family members want to stay informed

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about their loved ones. They need to be updated quickly in case of an emergency.

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Residents have varying needs depending on in

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certain situations, an individual might have Alzheimer's and

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require frequent reminders of meal time

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in that sense. And then on the staffing side, I think we all

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know there's a big shortage. And so finding ways to automate communication

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processes that they're doing every day leads to more efficiency, getting more fewer

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people, which is really, I think, the only way at this point that we're going

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to solve that issue. Okay, so from a problem

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standpoint, challenges that exist in the nursing home that they

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are specifically targeting is

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communication with the staff. That I understand. And if anyone who has tried to

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schedule even pre COVID and when people actually want it to work and

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you don't have to beg them to show up and pay them more money than

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you're making just so that they can take care of the residents to

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understand that there's a ton of texting calling,

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reminding all those types of things which can take up quite

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a bit of time and even whatever the method is, as a matter of fact,

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you put a message in a bottle and you send it out. But that's definitely

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a big piece. What about you mentioned communication with

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the residents. So, I mean, usually this is all it's

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in business, right? You can't provide care for the

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elderly remotely for the most part. So what

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does that mean? Many of them are not tech savvy. And what are you alluding

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to there? Yeah, and that's why I think having

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a solution where you meet the recipient at

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their technology level is super important. So we can

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send messages to phone, text, email,

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Amazon, Alexa, so it doesn't necessarily matter

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if they're not tech savvy, they know how to answer the phone and so they

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can get that communication directly to their phone. So if

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you want to use it for wellness and safety, check in. Say there's an incident

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and you want to know quickly, where is everybody in my facility, you can

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have a call place to the rooms for everybody and have them answer

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and click one to indicate that they're safe and there's no issue.

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There is an issue. Let the system alert the correct

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person to go in and check on that person physically in real

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time. Okay, I'm just trying to understand

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that a bit. But you're saying they're going straight,

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but many don't have phones in every room, right? Like sometimes the long

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term residents won't have phones unless they have their own cell phones. Short term

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might have somehow for everybody, but at least for where they have,

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then you can use it that way. But as far as the challenge is

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concerned so let's say there's an incident,

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let's say there's a fire, God forbid, or something, some major incident

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going on in the building. You need to know quickly where everybody is.

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So every nursing has a red book

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or something on all the nursing station. It's going to say,

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this is what we do in case of emergency. Obviously, if there's an emergency,

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nobody opens it up. Everybody panics unless they're really well

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trained, but it can be used as a reference. And one of

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the things obviously is taking account, let's say our fire drill. That's a good example,

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right? So it's done frequently and everybody knows where to

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go. The doors are going to close, they know where to meet, and there's a

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count that happens manually with the paper,

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and it can happen quite quickly.

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Now, is it accurate? I don't know.

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But there definitely is a challenge. What happens if you miss somebody?

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The family, they need to be notified.

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And so I spoke to nursing

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home administrators who would track and excel who the

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correct contact is for this type of in the family. And then they would go

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through and manually make those phone calls to everybody.

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And then rather than doing that, you have the message prebuilt.

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So when that emergency comes, you just click a button that goes to

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Preferred Communication Channel for each family member and resident.

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Now, what about as far as improvement?

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I'm just looking here as far as improving the quality

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of the care. So obviously I understand that as far as letting people know

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if something happened or being in touch with the quality ratings.

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So is there a way that this type of communication can improve the quality ratings,

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which is obviously very important to every nursing home operator?

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Yeah, and I'll give it an interesting and exciting example of

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something that just came out recently, and that's managing patient discharge from the skilled

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nursing facility. There's several issues that factor

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into there. One is your readmission rate from postdischarge

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to hospital will factor in your quality rating.

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There's also a penalty if your rate

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is too high. We've factored into a formula against that. And then there's bonuses

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on your reimbursements if you are in the top quartile.

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I don't know what the exact areas. And so we manage

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the cadence of follow up so a person is discharged

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to the home. It's now on the facility

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to keep track of all these individuals follow

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up, make sure they're okay to prevent them from being readmitted.

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We have a cadence that you can set yourself over the

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first 30 days where the individual will get an automated

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phone call, for example, on the first day, or the family member like a non

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made phone call. And there will be a survey asking, how's your

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appetite today? How are you feeling? And you can respond to

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that electronically. It will record those responses and then

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flag them if there's anything concerning to have a nurse

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reach out along that 30 day cadence, there will also be steps in

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there where it will create a task for a nurse or social worker to actually

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reach out manually. And so it came to that 30 days.

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It's small things that ultimately get people readmitted. They don't have access

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to food. You can get Meals on Wheels or

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something along those lines. They might feel a pain that they think is unrelated to

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why they're in the facility in the first place. But it could be an early

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sign of something and you can catch it with a program like

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this and keep it out. Another thing too is obviously if you do catch it,

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they can be readmitted to your sniff or skilled nursing

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facility within that 30 day window and it counts as

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the same qualifying state. They don't need to go to the hospital again.

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And so it's a good way to also make

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keep those the bed filled. If you need to be filled, the person needs to

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be taken care of. They don't have to go through the whole system again out

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of cost. And so overall in doing that, it improves not only

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the facilities rating and the referrals they're going to get from the hospital systems,

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but also significantly improves the quality

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of care that person's getting by just reducing those small chances,

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going under the radar. And so

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I know that like you mentioned the spreadsheets, I know that many people

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have set and made these calls manually and the

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postdischarge follow ups and incomes, it's also done by a

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highly compensated employee. Which means that

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besides the fact that it's done manually and

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obviously that means that when there's other things going on in the

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building, this is something that's going to be neglected. It's expensive to be

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done. And even if the calls are happening and they're being shared

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or they're being documented in some sort of shared spreadsheet,

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is the social worker being notified when they hear that there's

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no food in the house? Because they were supposed to go home with the daughter,

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and the daughter said that she had enough and ran away to

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whom is there and now the elderly seniors there.

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Like you said, it's very simple things. They can end up back in the hospital.

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And besides for the financial implications and

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for the facility just going to the hospital and

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expose themselves to everything else that's there, I mean, COVID is

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an obvious example, but even without that, a hospital is a place where very

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sick people go. The sickest people go there and we take someone

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who is from the most vulnerable, put them in a place where the most sick

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people are. It's never the best idea if you

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can avoid it. Obviously the best thing would be to get them back in.

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And ultimately what's going to happen is if

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they need to go back, they may end up staying, you know, for an extended

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period of time just so that they could qualify because the hospital doesn't want

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to be stuck with them either. So they could just be sending their languishing away

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while they could have gone right back to the bed that might still be

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waiting for them and continue with a cure right away.

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But that's a process. Also you're

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basically throwing technology at some of the antiquated

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process of what goes on in a typical nursing home. And this is like a

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good nursing home because this is high tech. We're using a spreadsheet. It's not a

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notepad. It's not a stone tablet

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that we're chiseling out this information and then

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using smoke signals to get it across the facility.

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We're using a spreadsheet and we even know how to share a spreadsheet. Yeah,

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but there's still big piece that are missing and a big piece of the automation

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that are missing. And most importantly,

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I love a statement from Steve Jobs. I posted a link to

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this in the show Notes, where someone challenged in one of his

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I don't know which product it was that he was introducing.

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They were asking him, what do you specifically know about

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Java? Something, some nerdy technicality.

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Tell us specifically about the work that you've done for this product.

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And obviously a techie in the audience asks this question.

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I'm not going to tell you the whole thing, although I think I remember a

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word for it because I love it. You can please some of

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the people some of the time. And then he let it go. His point was

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that what he said is that this person the problem with what this guy said

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is that he's right. I don't know everything that goes on in here, but in

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his rebuttal, he said some genius. And I think,

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unfortunately, some technology companies don't get

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he said, we don't start with our engineers and figure

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out what's the best technology that we can create and then go back

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to our customers, to them. I said, we start the

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other way around. We said, what is the best result we can create for our

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customers? What is the absolute best thing, the best experience we can give them?

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Then we go back to our engineers. They make that happen. Imagine having,

16:24.010 --> 16:27.652
I think the ipod was 1000 songs in your pocket or something like

16:27.670 --> 16:31.572
that. Now that sounds so stupid.

16:31.767 --> 16:34.972
I could have a micro SD card. I could

16:35.005 --> 16:38.347
have a billion movies. But that was

16:38.380 --> 16:41.762
like a thing. Imagine such a thing that was like earth shattering.

16:42.862 --> 16:46.337
How many tapes could it fit? Records can you fit in your pocket?

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Even CDs take up a lot of space. So it's like, all right, geeks,

16:50.217 --> 16:53.872
nerds, figure this out. I don't know how to figure it out. We want

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a tiny computer that's going to be able to fold up and still be just

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as strong and powerful as a big tower computer.

17:00.505 --> 17:04.477
Make that happen. I'm sure

17:04.495 --> 17:07.857
you've seen this. Everyone throws software at nursing

17:07.872 --> 17:11.617
homes. Maybe they throw software in other industries too. But I feel like

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for some of the nursing homes are targeted. They're so big and it's a

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big market and they're so behind in technology that everyone

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chose software at nursing homes. And perhaps you've

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looked at other products, other businesses to buy before you

17:26.350 --> 17:29.752
chose this one, but few. And it made

17:29.770 --> 17:33.802
them solve interesting problems. But what's most important

17:33.970 --> 17:38.032
is to make sure that we're starting with the results and

17:38.035 --> 17:41.577
then figuring out how to use the technology for it. So, like, the results.

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We want to make sure this patient I'm sorry, I'm going off on a rant

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here a little. We want to make sure that this patient ends

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up if they're home, they need to get back to the hospital, they need to

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get back to the nursing home. We want to make sure that A, we find

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out about it, that it happens right away, that we know about it, they know

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about it, that family members know about it. They want us to stay focused

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on that and ultimately that will make the

18:03.430 --> 18:07.782
product the most successful one is done that way. It's a great cliff.

18:07.947 --> 18:11.677
I know the exact one you're referencing. I was

18:11.695 --> 18:14.377
going to jump in, but I couldn't remember it. So not going to do it

18:14.395 --> 18:18.057
justice. But I mean, that's exactly it. The customers basically designed

18:18.072 --> 18:22.522
this product themselves. We worked with several facilities and

18:22.705 --> 18:26.212
we just kind of watched them and talked them and asked them what would

18:26.275 --> 18:29.797
make their lives easier and then built it and trialed it with

18:29.830 --> 18:33.817
them and went through a lot of iterations. But as you said, non engineering let

18:33.865 --> 18:37.987
we had simple tools that we let them explain

18:38.050 --> 18:41.437
them to them and let them kind of decide and design how they

18:41.500 --> 18:45.662
could be used to automate and speed up and become more efficient.

18:46.162 --> 18:50.077
Yeah. On the other side of the spectrum, you also have

18:50.170 --> 18:53.692
what they say about Henry Ford that if they would have asked them what to

18:53.740 --> 18:55.937
create, they would have asked for a faster horse.

18:56.587 --> 18:59.162
That's got to be good with a grain of salt.

19:01.462 --> 19:05.197
It's more about figuring out the exact problems that

19:05.230 --> 19:10.027
they want fixed and making sure you understand those correctly and then how

19:10.045 --> 19:13.582
the engineers work on the solution. Exactly right.

19:13.735 --> 19:17.427
That would fit, actually for the case of the faster horse

19:17.457 --> 19:21.147
because the end of the day, they wanted speed. They wanted efficiency and reliability,

19:21.267 --> 19:24.622
not have to deal with some of the challenges of having an animal and

19:24.655 --> 19:27.877
whatever else was involved there. I don't recall. It's been a little bit before my

19:27.895 --> 19:31.327
days happened, but nursing homes are not too far behind

19:31.420 --> 19:34.972
in many of these areas. So I mean, that really

19:35.005 --> 19:38.782
is amazing. Maybe tell us a little bit more about or maybe

19:38.935 --> 19:43.017
what is the one feature that you are most excited

19:43.077 --> 19:46.462
about that already exists within Voice Friend?

19:46.600 --> 19:50.497
Or maybe that's in development, something that you think is really

19:50.680 --> 19:54.500
exciting, new, innovative, that you would like to share with us today?

19:55.237 --> 19:58.357
We do have some exciting ones in the pipeline, but I don't think we're at

19:58.360 --> 20:00.952
the point where I could share them. I think a lot of people in the

20:00.970 --> 20:04.852
team would get pretty bad with me if I front random for

20:04.945 --> 20:08.452
the existing platform. When I looked at buying it,

20:08.470 --> 20:11.947
the reason was that the core is phenomenal. It's really easy to

20:11.980 --> 20:15.177
use. And the grouping logic in the backend, which people don't

20:15.207 --> 20:18.792
really recognize how important that is. But the ability

20:18.852 --> 20:22.557
to make as many communication groups

20:22.572 --> 20:25.867
as possible and have those ready to go and build it, to hit a button

20:25.990 --> 20:29.587
and have a message go to 1000 people

20:29.650 --> 20:33.437
and have it go to the exact type of communication that they prefer

20:33.937 --> 20:38.312
phone, text, email, whatever it is in the span of 30 seconds.

20:38.662 --> 20:42.507
It's really phenomenal that core technology is. I don't

20:42.522 --> 20:47.982
want to say anything about what we're working on next but we're

20:47.997 --> 20:53.300
going to build on that same idea but more

20:53.737 --> 20:57.022
automating workflows without getting into too much using

20:57.055 --> 21:00.800
that to automate. Okay, fair enough.

21:01.537 --> 21:04.117
I'm not going to make you spill the beans and want anyone to get into

21:04.165 --> 21:08.382
trouble here. But the concept is to be able to instantly

21:08.472 --> 21:12.532
and almost effortlessly communicate to

21:12.610 --> 21:16.567
exactly the right people in exactly the way that they prefer to be communicated with.

21:16.615 --> 21:20.422
I assume we can respond to their responses. It probably depends on

21:20.530 --> 21:24.172
the method of communication. I've seen a very

21:24.205 --> 21:26.750
old version of it so I don't know what it looks like today.

21:28.912 --> 21:31.702
We're on 2.0 but we're going to 3.0 right now.

21:31.795 --> 21:35.472
I've seen the version that you saw and it is definitely quite dated.

21:35.517 --> 21:39.592
But yeah, you can even reply with

21:39.640 --> 21:43.147
images too. Although we don't condone this. We did have one

21:43.180 --> 21:47.002
customer trying to use us to collect coded vaccine cards. So they

21:47.020 --> 21:50.907
sent out saying, hey can we text in your coded vaccine cards? And they texted

21:50.922 --> 21:54.575
pictures of them. Not supposed to do that but

21:56.287 --> 21:59.527
they didn't use it for that use case. That's one example. Why are you

21:59.545 --> 22:02.622
not supposed to do that? Because it's not secure.

22:02.817 --> 22:06.622
Yeah, it's not. Typically you can't over the

22:06.730 --> 22:10.117
SMS. You could if it was over our data because our platform

22:10.165 --> 22:13.602
is to be compliant. But as soon as it goes onto the network it's

22:13.707 --> 22:15.962
out of that kind of bubble of compliance.

22:17.062 --> 22:20.077
Got it. But they did what they needed to do.

22:20.245 --> 22:24.247
There was a software, I will tell you from my nursing scheduling days,

22:24.430 --> 22:27.877
it was considered new then. It does go back a number of where you were

22:27.895 --> 22:31.482
able to text people. You're able to pick up a shift

22:31.647 --> 22:35.322
and you can see the response but you can't respond to their response.

22:35.442 --> 22:38.467
You would have to actually pull out your phone or to call them or text

22:38.515 --> 22:41.647
them once you see that they respond. So it was good if you had open

22:41.680 --> 22:45.327
shift and you had an exact group of CNAs

22:45.357 --> 22:48.757
that pick up on Mondays per diem or whatever so you

22:48.760 --> 22:52.072
could quickly send them. Actually probably wasn't. You probably had to

22:52.105 --> 22:55.627
manually pick each person. But the point is that it was

22:55.645 --> 22:58.777
something that was sold and appreciated even though it was

22:58.795 --> 23:02.067
so primitive that you couldn't respond to their responses. You couldn't pick up the conversation.

23:02.127 --> 23:05.632
I would hope that it's different now. Exactly. And that's exactly

23:05.710 --> 23:08.677
when I talk about workflow automation. It's okay.

23:08.770 --> 23:12.725
We communicated now what do I do with that information? What's the next step?

23:13.312 --> 23:17.052
Taking the shift, for example, stuff along those lines

23:17.082 --> 23:20.152
where we're going with it. Because we don't want to be a tool. We want

23:20.170 --> 23:23.977
to be the core communication platform in the facility where

23:23.995 --> 23:27.622
everything goes through, where we link these disparate systems like

23:27.655 --> 23:30.532
your payroll system, your EHR and so on.

23:30.685 --> 23:33.772
Very interesting. That kind of brought it together for me.

23:33.880 --> 23:37.222
You don't want to be a tool, you want to be a system.

23:37.330 --> 23:41.122
I'll tell you a hesitation that someone can have or maybe I

23:41.155 --> 23:44.412
used to have when constantly being pitched new software

23:44.487 --> 23:47.857
for nursing homes and everybody wants to be pointless care

23:47.935 --> 23:51.502
or some sort of like core system

23:51.670 --> 23:54.725
because obviously if you're in, then you're in a good place.

23:55.837 --> 23:59.632
And a lot of them take too.

23:59.785 --> 24:03.502
They solve too small of a portion of the problem

24:03.670 --> 24:07.417
to make them a core essential tool. And many

24:07.465 --> 24:10.552
times, they may not be friendly to the other tools that

24:10.570 --> 24:14.127
we're already using, and they end up either becoming

24:14.157 --> 24:17.975
a nuisance or just getting rid of them completely to create.

24:18.787 --> 24:21.952
You're not really replacing another tool, so you're trying

24:21.970 --> 24:26.537
to create something. You want to say that there's a lot of messy communication

24:26.887 --> 24:29.752
that currently exists within the nursing home,

24:29.845 --> 24:32.727
whether it's staff to staff, staff to residents,

24:32.832 --> 24:36.822
facility to people outside the facility, facility to other facilities,

24:37.017 --> 24:40.902
and it's happening in quite a haphazard fashion

24:40.932 --> 24:44.857
and multiple methods of communication. So basically

24:45.010 --> 24:48.502
you want to create the communication hub where

24:48.595 --> 24:52.212
that brings communication interesting as opposed

24:52.287 --> 24:55.717
to the way it's been pitched in the past.

24:55.765 --> 25:00.487
And the reason why we've used it in the past was it

25:00.625 --> 25:04.372
helped the scheduler sent out a lot of text at the same time. So instead

25:04.405 --> 25:07.722
of picking up your phone and doing one at a time and copying and pasting.

25:07.842 --> 25:11.872
So in the time it would take you to send out 30 texts to

25:11.905 --> 25:15.112
send out one text, you send out 30. And whatever

25:15.175 --> 25:18.772
limitations it had after that, instead of manually sending or

25:18.805 --> 25:21.262
just the amount of the time it takes you to find the context, they're already

25:21.325 --> 25:25.152
there in the groups. Like you said, that was from the core functionality.

25:25.332 --> 25:29.392
It was used mostly as a tool and it was a tool for

25:29.590 --> 25:32.847
if a resident falls. We once got a tag

25:32.892 --> 25:36.787
for that, that somebody fell or some sort of incident happened.

25:36.850 --> 25:40.507
The person was supposed to be notified, they were not notified at

25:40.510 --> 25:43.702
all, or maybe they were notified after the time frame and sometimes you don't want

25:43.720 --> 25:47.002
to notify them right away. Right. So you're hoping that maybe it really wasn't a

25:47.020 --> 25:50.302
fall or whatever, but if you automate the process kind of takes out

25:50.320 --> 25:54.322
the human error or misjudgment factor as long as the process

25:54.505 --> 25:58.147
is set up properly. That's exactly right.

25:58.180 --> 26:01.897
And those use cases will always be part of the product.

26:02.080 --> 26:05.302
We don't want to obviously take away from the way

26:05.320 --> 26:08.572
people use it now. But I think going that extra step of now

26:08.605 --> 26:12.697
taking the communication and doing something with it is

26:12.730 --> 26:16.057
kind of where we want to head. Okay, so a

26:16.060 --> 26:19.317
few things. Number one is that we're not just a tool, we're a hub.

26:19.377 --> 26:23.002
And number two is we're actually going to be part

26:23.020 --> 26:26.437
of doing the work. And we're not just talking about

26:26.500 --> 26:29.697
doing the work. I guess some sort of a project management

26:29.742 --> 26:33.217
software or son of sorts or something like that.

26:33.340 --> 26:36.877
Maybe not getting all as you said,

26:36.895 --> 26:40.372
there's communication coming from every which way. This thing out of you. If it takes

26:40.405 --> 26:43.602
me an hour now, joking, I don't want to spoil

26:43.632 --> 26:47.075
anything because it takes time to develop everything as we go. Of course.

26:49.237 --> 26:52.177
No, I get that. Well, let me ask you another question.

26:52.270 --> 26:56.247
As far as facility physician communication.

26:56.442 --> 27:00.472
I remember way back when Punk Care actually had a separate app

27:00.580 --> 27:03.927
for nurses communicating with physicians, and I'm

27:03.957 --> 27:06.277
not up to date. I don't know if right now is there's a way of

27:06.295 --> 27:09.727
doing it within fungal care, but it's definitely a

27:09.745 --> 27:13.342
problem because a lot of it happens over text,

27:13.390 --> 27:16.467
whether it's supposed to happen or not. Doctors don't want to be cold,

27:16.527 --> 27:20.152
nobody likes to be cold anymore. If you could text right, who likes to talk

27:20.170 --> 27:24.022
to people, is there anything? And if there isn't something to think

27:24.055 --> 27:27.097
about, there isn't anything in the works for that.

27:27.130 --> 27:30.852
I'll say that. But this is interesting. I mean we were thinking about getting involved

27:30.882 --> 27:34.237
with transitions of care, the hand off part

27:34.300 --> 27:37.912
process, but this is actually an interesting application as well.

27:38.050 --> 27:41.452
The idea is to build the core platform and then identify these

27:41.470 --> 27:45.322
other use cases that we haven't thought of and build what is needed for

27:45.355 --> 27:48.912
the affiliate. How that communication? I'm just saying that if you're

27:48.987 --> 27:52.842
sticking to this concept I love the concept of the communication

27:52.902 --> 27:56.722
hub for the facility that when you want to communicate with

27:56.830 --> 28:00.802
anyone, it's always through this one central place.

28:00.970 --> 28:04.102
Even within as administrator, you have a WhatsApp group with it,

28:04.120 --> 28:07.312
with the marketing team. You have another WhatsApp group with this. You have a text

28:07.375 --> 28:09.997
group for the people who don't have WhatsApp. You have a Facebook group with these

28:10.030 --> 28:13.475
people. A lot of times you don't even know how to communicate with people because

28:13.837 --> 28:17.352
a lot of it you have to remember this person has WhatsApp this person doesn't.

28:17.382 --> 28:21.232
This person is in the email and that's just within the management team sometimes.

28:21.310 --> 28:24.642
And also have to remember that there's other levels of communication.

28:24.702 --> 28:27.922
There's regionals, there's the owners, there are people

28:27.955 --> 28:31.837
who have access to only certain facilities. So if

28:31.900 --> 28:35.277
sticking to the vision of the communication hub,

28:35.382 --> 28:39.427
I would say that physician to facility communication could

28:39.445 --> 28:42.892
be critical. Transitions of care maybe

28:42.940 --> 28:46.042
doesn't fit into that. I'm just giving my true sense. There's a lot of companies

28:46.090 --> 28:49.297
that do that already. Yeah. I'm not saying you should.

28:49.330 --> 28:52.777
Or shouldn't do it, I guess. Yes. Communication facilities and facilities. I guess

28:52.795 --> 28:56.172
I could fit there too. If you want to communicate, for example, the admissions

28:56.217 --> 28:58.562
process. Right. So every time they get a referral,

28:59.587 --> 29:03.247
that's a big antiquated process that's a bit more

29:03.280 --> 29:07.467
complex than just emailing and texting because you have all the documentation

29:07.527 --> 29:10.207
going back to a lot of competition in that space. I'm just thinking, I know

29:10.210 --> 29:13.777
of a whole bunch of companies I'm thinking of right now that

29:13.795 --> 29:17.722
work there and some of them only do that.

29:17.905 --> 29:21.327
And then you also get into issues with integrating

29:21.357 --> 29:25.167
with the HR platforms and things like that. That's where we're really strong. Our integrations

29:25.227 --> 29:28.522
are phenomenal. We have a two way with point click care.

29:28.630 --> 29:32.217
So for the patient discharge, those survey results

29:32.277 --> 29:34.562
will be pushed into the person's chart.

29:35.887 --> 29:39.457
Interesting. Yeah, that's our big thing. We've been really big on

29:39.460 --> 29:42.382
the integrations because we want to be that layer on top of all the platform.

29:42.460 --> 29:46.777
It's to centralize that communication. These deep integrations are okay.

29:46.870 --> 29:50.077
Very interesting. Okay. I'm excited to

29:50.095 --> 29:53.947
see where this is going to go. For me, it's personally interesting

29:54.055 --> 29:57.862
because like I said, I've used them as a antiquated tool,

29:57.925 --> 30:02.532
but a tool that works nonetheless. Maybe then it was somewhat advanced

30:02.697 --> 30:05.872
and then I'm actually excited to see that you're in here

30:05.905 --> 30:09.532
and taking it to the next level. It sounds like

30:09.685 --> 30:13.252
ready up to 3.0 is on

30:13.270 --> 30:16.702
the horizon before we let you go. I didn't realize how

30:16.720 --> 30:19.597
long this is going to have a good time here. Before we let you go.

30:19.630 --> 30:23.152
Anything in particular that you would want to leave off with our listeners in

30:23.170 --> 30:26.947
regards to voice friend? Any final words about that?

30:26.980 --> 30:29.825
And then we'll let them know where to learn more about you and the company.

30:30.637 --> 30:33.982
Absolutely. I think the one thing I'll say, getting back to

30:33.985 --> 30:38.172
the message when you're talking about Steve Jobs and all that is that we're

30:38.217 --> 30:41.857
building the product for the nursing homes. We're not building it

30:41.860 --> 30:45.642
for ourselves. And so we can create a solution.

30:45.702 --> 30:49.597
You just need to tell us the problems around communication. And so anyone who

30:49.630 --> 30:53.542
has anything that they think is great, come to us and we'll automate it.

30:53.665 --> 30:56.827
Our goal is to make your life easier and solve a lot of

30:56.845 --> 30:59.300
this. Staffing choice. Okay.

30:59.662 --> 31:03.432
Amazing. Very interesting. Very fascinating.

31:03.597 --> 31:07.237
You're touching on staffing and I can't not respond to that as

31:07.375 --> 31:11.232
being that I work for and manage quality recruitment company for nursing

31:11.247 --> 31:14.722
homes. I have to jump in there. How specifically does this

31:14.755 --> 31:18.802
help for staffing? And so right now in

31:18.820 --> 31:22.102
the current form, the main points is

31:22.120 --> 31:25.972
just communication with potential applicants using the

31:26.005 --> 31:29.167
module so you could schedule messages to send to them,

31:29.290 --> 31:32.697
send them updates on the application process. How that's

31:32.742 --> 31:36.262
proceeding? Staff, the main use cases are

31:36.400 --> 31:40.042
for compliance, keeping track of when their certifications are coming up

31:40.090 --> 31:43.462
and notifying them automatically. The staff open

31:43.525 --> 31:47.987
shift, call out meeting, scheduling, general updates and alerts,

31:48.937 --> 31:52.487
that part I get. But people who don't yet work for the facility,

31:52.987 --> 31:56.122
are you integrating with job boards and becoming an

31:56.155 --> 31:59.212
ATS as well? Or is it just once you already

31:59.275 --> 32:02.600
have them, it's just focusing on the communication piece.

32:02.962 --> 32:06.852
Yeah, we don't want to become an applicant tracking

32:06.882 --> 32:08.987
system. That's not our goal.

32:11.287 --> 32:14.675
People do use us kind of like that already, in a sense,

32:15.037 --> 32:18.447
but we're

32:18.492 --> 32:21.427
much more interested once you get the person there.

32:21.595 --> 32:24.742
It's a problem to tackle. I'm not saying maybe down the road,

32:24.790 --> 32:28.747
but right now it's not necessarily on our horizon. Although the use product has been

32:28.780 --> 32:31.687
used for that use case. We just want the vision to be clear,

32:31.750 --> 32:35.087
because jack of all trade is master of none.

32:35.887 --> 32:39.127
Right. Because a lot

32:39.145 --> 32:43.327
of things can be called communication, but that might not be primarily what it is.

32:43.420 --> 32:47.137
Okay, very interesting. Very fast. I'm very curious to see if someone wants to go

32:47.200 --> 32:49.672
let's say I want to go through a website and I want to see what

32:49.705 --> 32:52.250
it looks like. Is there any video there?

32:52.612 --> 32:56.122
Yes, we're doing a redesign right now, so I'm just trying to think where things

32:56.155 --> 32:59.302
are. There should be videos on there. If not, we have

32:59.320 --> 33:02.737
a video page and they can all be accessed there.

33:02.800 --> 33:05.877
We also do live demos, so you can book that directly

33:05.907 --> 33:08.797
through the website pretty easily. And we're always happy.

33:08.905 --> 33:12.575
Just even curious to see what it looks like to show you.

33:13.312 --> 33:16.942
Amazing. I just see it now and it's definitely

33:16.990 --> 33:19.867
a completely different website since I looked at it.

33:19.990 --> 33:23.377
Amazing. Listen, Ryan, it's been great having you on the

33:23.395 --> 33:26.722
NSA home podcast. It's fascinating to see kind of

33:26.755 --> 33:30.727
check in, I guess, to see what Boyfriend is up to. I'm glad to see

33:30.895 --> 33:34.777
some of the things that you're doing. So if

33:34.795 --> 33:37.612
you want to learn more, then you go to Voice Friends. Looking at the website

33:37.675 --> 33:40.717
right now. Is it voicefront? Net? Voice Friend. Net.

33:40.765 --> 33:44.375
not.com net, unfortunately. Okay.

33:47.587 --> 33:50.922
Voicefront.net is where you'll go to learn more information. Ryan,

33:50.967 --> 33:54.952
you've been a fabulous guest. I really enjoyed chatting with

33:54.970 --> 33:58.282
you today. And for those who are watching

33:58.360 --> 34:02.292
on Facebook, if you're watching on LinkedIn, thank you for joining

34:02.427 --> 34:05.722
and head on over to Voicefriend. Net to learn more

34:05.755 --> 34:09.567
about this. To listen to this podcast

34:09.627 --> 34:13.702
or any of the past and future podcasts can head on over to

34:13.720 --> 34:17.397
the nursinghomepodcast.com or wherever

34:17.517 --> 34:20.577
you get your podcast. All right. Thank you, Ryan.

34:20.607 --> 34:23.150
It's really much for having me. Great.

34:33.787 --> 34:38.307
Now that you've enjoyed this episode of the Nursing home podcast,

34:38.472 --> 34:42.142
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35:04.632 --> 35:07.942
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