On this episode of The Modern Practice Podcast, presented by Rectangle Health, host Gary Tiratsuyan is joined by Vice President of Strategic Partnerships, Chris Poche` and Director of Partner Development, Allyson Thut to discuss partnership opportunities with Rectangle Health.
Chris and Allyson share the latest enhancements, developments, and news from within our organization and why partnering with Rectangle Health can prove highly beneficial and profitable for organizations. Chris and Allyson also share feedback from current partners who have seen revenue skyrocket since establishing an alliance with Rectangle Health.
Learn more about Rectangle Health’s powerful Practice Management Bridge® platform to see how we simplify the business side of healthcare, here>>
Transcript
Gary Tiratsuyan 0:17
Hello, everybody. Welcome back to the Modern Practice Podcast, presented by Rectangle Health. Happy New Year to you all. I hope you had an amazing holiday season. We’re excited to have you back for the first of many new and exciting episodes. 2023 was an incredible year for Rectangle Health and this show. I cannot thank you enough for all your support, feedback, questions and suggestions. And as I mentioned a moment ago, we’ve got some great discussions lined up for you. Kicking off today, with episode two of our Partnering for Success miniseries.
For many businesses, an alliance or partnerships can prove highly beneficial in the short and long term, unlocking new revenue streams, future business contexts and the like. We’re going to dive into this topic and more with guests Chris O’Shea, VP of Strategic Partnerships, and Allyson Thut, Director of Partner Development at Rectangle Health. Chris and Allyson both joined us about a year ago, I can’t believe how fast time flies, to discuss the value of partnering with Rectangle Health. I’m excited to have them both back on the show to discuss the latest enhancements, innovation and integrations transforming the way the healthcare industry manages the business side of care. Allyson, Chris, Happy New Year. Welcome back to the show.
Allyson Thut 1:31
Happy New Year!
Chris Poche 1:32
Happy New Year, Gary. And we are incredibly excited to be here.
Gary Tiratsuyan 1:42
Yeah. Well, I’m incredibly happy to have you and excited to do this show. Thanks for so much for taking the time. And getting right into it, when we initially met to discuss you joining me on the show again, Chris, you, in true Rectangle Health fashion, simplified the foundation of how a partnership with Rectangle Health works with a really great analogy. I think it’s a good place for us to start. Can you speak to our audience about that framework?
Chris Poche 2:11
Yeah, absolutely. You know, so when we think about partnering with Rectangle Health, we want to make it simple. And so, over the past year, we have accepted and brought on board just an unbelievable number of new partnerships that we’re incredibly excited about. But at the same time, you know, as the partner division has evolved and grown, so has Rectangle Health. We’ve evolved and grown our own solution set. And so, what does that mean? Well, for a lot of our partners, they are very good at payments, and specifically where we work exceptionally well together is we help build the value proposition for patient payments. But as our mission statements suggest, we want to simplify the business side of healthcare. So that means more than just payments, right? So, for us, the way that we think about the business side of healthcare, its compliance, it’s how do we engage with our patients? How do we communicate with our patients? How do we make it more efficient for the practice to run the business side of what they do at the same time? How do we give the patients a great experience? So, what we like to tell our partners is, you are great at payments.
The analogy that we all like to use is, we all have these smartphones. And whether you’re an Apple user, or an Android user, it’s the same analogy. Today, you’re going to an AT&T, a Verizon, a T-Mobile. And you’re getting this really cool piece of technology; you’re getting this iPhone. And this is important for AT&T, because they get to monetize data. And that’s their primary business model, they get this really cool piece of technology in your hands, and then they monetize the data that you pull in. Meanwhile, now that you have this really cool piece of technology, what happens? Apple or Google, they have this really cool thing called the App Store. And the value of this device increases exponentially as you download all these apps to help you run your life. So, is it tracking fitness? Is it your ticket to your upcoming flight? You name it, these phones now do it. And so, the value of these phones increases, thereby increasing the value of the relationship between AT&T and their customers. It’s no different with Rectangle Health and Practice Management Bridge.
We like to tell our partners, ‘Let’s work together to get as many instances of the platform, Practice Management Bridge, into the hands of your healthcare clients. And then, as you get to monetize patient payments, Rectangle Health will come alongside you and build the value of the platform.’ Things like HIPAA compliance or OSHA compliance through things like scheduling integration, or two-way text communication, thereby increasing the value for the practice, which means we’re increasing the value of our partner to that practice.
Gary Tiratsuyan 5:45
Yeah, thanks, Chris. And I love that analogy. And to piggyback off of it, Allyson, I’ll turn to you for this. If I’m an organization that isn’t too familiar with Rectangle Health, or the Practice Management Bridge platform, that has that HIPAA compliance and has that engagement element… Remove the functionalities or capabilities from the picture for a moment, we’ll get to that in a sec. What’s the value of working with Rectangle Health?
Allyson Thut 6:14
Yeah, that’s a good question, Gary—one that we love answering. Rectangle Health, we’re not new to the space. Rectangle Health is a 31-year-old company, and we have been exclusive to healthcare for our entirety. We are really, really proud of that. Our experiential knowledge of the pain points that healthcare providers experience, our experiential knowledge of healthcare practices needing support to simplify the business side of healthcare… that’s our day-in and day-out, that’s our every day, taking feedback from healthcare providers. What do they like? What do they not like? What’s working? What do they need help with? What are they struggling with at their practice? We’re constantly taking that feedback just from healthcare providers. So, at Rectangle Health, the support that we lend our partners with our experiential knowledge in healthcare really sets us apart. I think that’s a game changer for our partners.
Our partners don’t have to be healthcare experts. They don’t need to know the ins and the outs of those pain points. We do. And we’re going to lend our support and expertise to our partners through partnership.
Gary Tiratsuyan 7:37
I love that. Expertise, market expansion, speed to market is something at Rectangle Health is very strong. And that obviously, with all the new layering into the Practice Management Bridge platform, we’re seeing a ton of new innovation, and that I want to shift back to the product, the solution, Practice Management Bridge. It’s Chris, you mentioned, it’s not just a payment platform. And since our last conversation, a ton of changes and enhancements have been made to the software. Based off that analogy you spoke about a minute ago. Can you shed some light on what they are?
Chris Poche 8:16
Yeah, absolutely, Gary. So, since we last spoke, again, Rectangle Health has continued to evolve, continue to grow, continue to expand our reach into healthcare to help practices. And again, I’m going to go back to our mission statement, simplifying the business side of healthcare, not just patient payments. That is an incredibly important component. We want to make sure our practices can actually collect the money that they’re owed for the services that they’re delivering to patients. But it’s more than just that. And so, since we’ve last spoken, we’ve acquired and incorporated HIPAA and OSHA compliance. This is a massive undertaking for most practices, we want to simplify that. We want to take patient engagement and we acquired a patient engagement solution, and incorporated that in the platform, so that with one or two clicks of a button, and office manager can reschedule an entire day’s worth of appointments, if, you know, the need arose. And instead of taking typically half a day and hours on hours to figure out that calculus of who goes where and when and why… Click, click, done. Massive time saving. Just patient communication.
Patient financing—we’ve partnered with a top patient financing company in the marketplace to help patients simply afford the services that that they need. And so, when you when you think about all of these simplifications, all these efficiency gains, the product of simplifying the business side of healthcare should mean that we leave more time for our practices to do what’s most important: patient outcomes, patient care. And so, the humanistic side of what we do, this is incredibly important to us. Because we feel like we can make a demonstrable impact to not just bottom line, dollars and cents, but literal patient care outcomes improving the care of you and I, Gary.
Gary Tiratsuyan 10:30
I love that and I want to bring it back to potential partners now. And Allyson, we just spoke about all these enhancements, layering in tools and functionality to really simplify the business side of the care. And I imagine when you’re looking to form a partnership with any company, it’s got to be strategic and make an impact. So, what are these enhancements mean for an organization that decides to join forces with Rectangle Health?
Allyson Thut 11:02
Yeah, good question. I think it means a few different things for our potential partners. First off, an increased revenue opportunity. While we’re able to add on these additional apps, these additional enhancements to the Practice Management Bridge platform, there’s an additional revenue opportunity for our potential partners. We’re bringing in value beyond just payments. And that monetarily can mean that additional revenue stream for partners. I also think that it means happier customers. You know, Chris talked a lot about that patient experience, the practice experience, and a healthcare provider being able to prioritize patient care. Giving them that time back through our platform—it really does simplify the business side of healthcare. It makes them a happier customer for our partners, leading to a longer lifecycle that our partners’ experience when their customers are using Practice Management Bridge.
Gary Tiratsuyan 12:07
I’d like to expand on that. So, I’ll ask you both as you speak to the decision-makers, the existing partners, even… what’s been the feedback you’re hearing when you inform them, ‘Yes, there is payments, but there’s also compliance, patient communication and engagement, and financing’? Chris, I’ll let you go first.
Chris Poche 12:26
Yeah, I think the quick and easy answer is, it’s overwhelming excitement. Our smart partners know that when we layer in this value that wraps around payments, this is expanding their value proposition, right? Which means with an expanded value proposition, you create higher price thresholds. And simultaneously, you protect these clients. So higher value proposition means higher margin threshold and longer-tenured clients. Kind of a no brainer. And that’s the value of wrapping around the whole business side of healthcare using this platform. Just like we all pay an ungodly amount of money for these iPhones today, but we do it. Because there’s this amazing value proposition that makes these phones indispensable. And from our perspective, and again, our smart partners, they get it. We want to make a practice management bridge indispensable to a practice.
Gary Tiratsuyan 13:37
Allyson, what are you hearing?
Allyson Thut 13:38
Yeah, I’d echo what Chris said, a lot of excitement. The only other piece that I’d add on there is our existing partners are sharing with us that they’re no longer intimidated by healthcare. You know, previously, partners before onboarding with us would be intimidated by healthcare. Healthcare can be new for them, it can be scary, it can be overwhelming. There can be a lot that goes into it with different unique pain points, different unique nuances and all the different software solutions in healthcare. But our smart partners that lean on us, trust us for our expertise, and really follow our partner program, they’re no longer intimidated by health care.
Gary Tiratsuyan 14:25
Yeah, and you touched on something. That intimidation, I want to come back right back to you, Allyson… for organizations that are not in the healthcare space, what is that opportunity for those organizations? And I can imagine there’s a probably a higher level of this discomfort when dipping your toes in the healthcare space, right?
Allyson Thut 15:00
Yeah, there is. Like I said, healthcare be so overwhelming, there being so many different software solutions, it’s okay that they’re not an expert. Our partners are experts at deepening relationships, building and creating relationships. They’re associations, they’re referral partners, they’re sales distribution. That’s what they’re experts at, which is just great. So then, partnering with us to lean on us for our healthcare expertise, it’s a win-win.
Gary Tiratsuyan 15:31
Yeah, absolutely. Chris, if you had a potential conversation with somebody not with a decision-maker, not in the healthcare space, How do you guide that conversation?
Chris Poche 15:45
It’s a great question. You said a very important word, and Allyson repeated it as well—intimidation. There is a lot of intimidation in healthcare. But let’s face it; it is a massive industry. It is a fifth of this country’s entire GDP. Oh, by the way, it’s also governed heavily with regulation and compliance, all things that, to the untrained person could be very scary, very intimidating. But at its core, Allyson’s exactly right. It comes down to relationships and gaining access to a conversation. That’s what we tell our partners. Can you gain access to a conversation with a healthcare provider? If yes, we can help. You don’t need to be the expert; you just need to be the person really good at relationships. And we will come in, lock arms with you, and we will be the expert on your behalf. We will help build that value proposition. So, you know, for us, it’s we don’t look for partners in the marketplace that are unbelievably well versed in healthcare or software. We look for partners that have access to healthcare, right? Like Allyson said, through their own partner channels, through their own just sweat equity, they can get access to these conversations, and then we win together at scale.
Gary Tiratsuyan 17:22
Sounds a lot like that consultative approach we spoke about last year. I love that. And thank you both. So last question before we wrap up this episode… last year, when we connected, I asked what sets Practice Management Bridge and Rectangle Health apart from others. What’s the game changer? Because so much has changed since then, I’d like to get your unique takes on that 12 months later. Allyson?
Allyson Thut 17:52
Yeah, I would still stick with, it’s our platform, it’s Practice Management Bridge. It is the software solution that simplifies the business side of healthcare for our healthcare customers. We can give our users time back in their day to focus on patient care, our experiential knowledge of what they need, what they need help with, pain points that they struggle with day to day within their practice, we’re solving for that. Our innovative team, just continuing to enhance Practice Management Bridge, our platform… that is the game changer. And we’re continuing to evolve and expand. And so much has changed in the last 12 months, which is super exciting. And just wait to see what the next 12 months bring.
Gary Tiratsuyan 18:44
That’s for sure. Chris, what’s your take on that?
Chris Poche 18:47
Yeah, so we you know, we’ve talked a lot about the platform and its advantages and benefits in the marketplace. And we’ve talked in the past about Rectangle Health’s history and 30-plus years of an exclusive healthcare focus, which is what’s informed the solution to this point. Because we’ve been highly attuned to the pain points in the marketplace. But I’m going to stick on a concept that we’ve said multiple times. And I’m going to take a very simplistic approach here of what sets Rectangle Health apart. It’s the people. It’s the people like the Allyson Thuts that are out there, holding the hands of new partners and bringing them into this opportunity. It’s developers that are continuing at a lightspeed pace, redeploying new solutions and increasing the value proposition of our platform in the marketplace. It’s our healthcare business consultants that again, act as extensions of our partners to become experts. It’s the hundreds of people across the entirety of Rectangle Health, even like yourself, helping us evangelize what we do, why we do it and how we do it. That is what sets Rectangle Health apart—people.
Gary Tiratsuyan 20:14
Yeah, couldn’t agree more. Thank you so much for that both. And, again, thank you for your time. And for listeners tuning in today, if you missed the first episode with Chris and Allyson, I’ll have a link in this episode’s description for you all to listen in. You’ll get a really good sense of how quickly Rectangle Health, in the past 12 months, has evolved by listening to that episode and now tuning into this one, and continues to move onward and upward in providing value to the healthcare industry.
I’d love to have you both back on in the near future, to give our listeners more insight into the innovation coming from Rectangle Health, because we know it’s coming. But in the meantime, what’s the best way for our audience to get in touch with you to learn about partnership opportunities?
Allyson Thut 20:56
Yeah, I would say LinkedIn or email. In the show episode notes, we’ll display our contact information. But Chris and I are both on LinkedIn and would love for y’all to reach out and inquire and learn more about partnership opportunities.
Gary Tiratsuyan 21:14
Perfect. I’ll be sure to drop those profile links in this episode’s description. And I highly encourage you all to reach out and connect with Alison and Chris. As you heard today, they are a wealth of knowledge and leading the Rectangle Health team in building mutually beneficial relationships. Thanks again to you both for taking the time.
Allyson Thut 21:34
Thanks, Gary.
Chris Poche 21:36
Thank you, Gary. This was great.
Gary Tiratsuyan 21: 37
The pleasures all mine. And for our audience tuning in today. As always, if you enjoyed the episode, hit that subscribe button on your favorite streaming channel. Leave us your comments, feedback, and questions. We love hearing from you. And be on the lookout for more great episodes of the Modern Practice Podcast coming soon. Thanks for tuning in. Til next time, everyone.
Editor’s note: This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
