December 28: Today on the Community channel, it’s an Interview in Action live from CHIME with Kris Nessa, VP of Product Engineering at Tivity Health. Bill and Kris discuss Tivity’s consumer centered product line including their product for seniors called Silver Sneakers. How does Tivity get feedback from consumers? What are the components necessary for a health system to adopt an agile approach to app and feature creation? What is the potential to help the senior population with technology?

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This transcription is provided by artificial intelligence. We believe in technology but understand that even the smartest robots can sometimes get speech recognition wrong.

At ut I was director of applications, so the whole front end kind. Physician nursing experience front door.

So all the clinical applications. All the clinical applications. And you're doing a, I'm not sure it's a similar role cuz it's a very different company.

It is. we're, We're healthcare adjacent, but it is kind of similar.

I own all of the success and all of the front door experience for all the products that puts out

success and front door of the product. Well talk to us, I mean, we've had Sarah on the show and whatnot. Talk to us a little bit about t that'll set up the conversation.

So t. Three core products you could think of.

So Silver Sneakers that have been around for 30 years. Prime and Whole Health Living. Whole Health Living does a lot of like, acupuncture, chiropractic using data, helping physicians kind of like, I guess encourage people to use alternatives to medications and things like that where prime and silver, We encourage everybody to stay active, live healthy, productive lives, you know, fitness and things like that.

Wow. So, the application side, you went from clinicians Yes. U utilizing the systems to now a little different population utilizing your applications. Yes. Consumers first. Yeah. Consumers first. So you are a consumer centric organization? Yeah. And it's primarily, it's seniors.

It is. It is primarily, yes.

Primarily. The prime application's 18 and higher, but yes. What's funny though, I was thinking about this actually during one of the sessions and where I've sat before. So I worked at Cerner for years as well, and it was one of the things that, like Neil Patterson and even working at the Cleveland Clinic and talking with Judy Faulkner, we still had it ingrained in our brains that the patient, the customer was first, even though we were building.

The physicians and nurses. So same thing. Activity, customers first.

Customers

first and

it's customers first. But a consumer versus a clinician is a very different it is because with the, clinician, you get to have conversations on an ongoing basis. They're more than happy to tell you how the system is not working for you.

How do you get that kind of feedback from the consumers?

Well, we do. So you could do email, video chats. We actually engage with them and have like real conversations. And one thing at the Cleveland Clinic, we actually did this on a monthly rotation. We brought in patients and had them talk to us about their experience at the Cleveland Clinic, which helped us augment even operations in our portal and things like that.

So, so what kind of applications are actually touching the consumer from a activity standpoint?

So silver sneakers. Itself. So the 65 and plus crowd the Prime application and Prime sometimes is rebranded because we support the physical activity and networks for let's say Walmart, hcsc fitness Your Way.

It might be rebranded, white labeled on the front end.

So when you talk Silver Sneakers, tell us about the Silver Sneakers Program. Cause I, I want to go into that a little bit.

So yes 65 plus Medicare advantage. Uh, Benefit that you can add, that's usually available to your health plans.

And our goal is to get people active, take care of their physical health, their mental health, and even like connectivity, just connecting to people in person and even virtually.

So talk to me about the development. So we're at a point where health systems are starting to do some development.

For a long time it was Uh, you know what EHR can do that this can do that. We, we'd let third parties really do that. But more and more are stepping into this. What's the for lack of a better term, what's the DNA that's required for an organization to adopt that sort of agile creating of, applications?

And it's not really a creating of applications, it's really adding features in an agile way as you move along.

I've lived a life cycle throughout my own life and one of the. Is understanding the C-suites even idea or intent of having that business unit, cuz some of them have different mindsets or intents.

I've been one place where they wanted that team to create applications, actually generated revenue for the health system. And that that puts a different like target KPI metrics on your back where a different organization might just want to augment, augment the ehr. Gaps we might have in operations and true up any inefficiencies and streamline this.

And that has different meaning, different intent, and different metrics to hit. So understanding that first can really help guide how your team is formed, what your strategy is, what you need to focus on so that you're meeting the goals and expectations of your seniors, of your boss.

We had gm, Brunos, David, David, gene, Bruno, we all call him G so that's why I forgot his first name.

G. They call me nea. There's a lot of Chrises. So there's G and nea.

G gave me a great quote and it was you know, I only took God seven days to build the world. You've probably heard it cuz he has all these quips and stuff because he didn't have to deal with legacy. Correct. . Um, Do you have to deal with a lot of.

Yes, unfortunately , unfortunately you do.

There's the curtain. Yes, yes, yes, we do. We do. And so sober sneakers been around for 30, 30 years. So much like Chime. We celebrated our 30th anniversary in September and it was great. We did a YouTube, Facebook Live. We had live classes with our instructors and everything like that, and it was great.

But over that time, if you're, Investing in the technology, the things that you need to run your business, right? You're just kind of putting band-aids on it.

But 30 years ago, was it a technology that they were doing?

They would've told you No. you know, They would've been like, yeah, we're, we're access, we're a gym network company.

We kind of do this. But as we've all evolved, if you truly strip all of us out, the technology that run these businesses, they wouldn't run. I mean, that's, I still. Walmart's ceo when he was on like Squawk Box or something over a year ago, he said, we're,, we're a technology company first, right? And it's like, I'm just telling everybody else that like none of us would be around without technology to help DevOps, spin ops, all the ops.

How do we operate and become efficient and effective and deliver our value to any consumer? So,

direct Defor tells a. When he was at Scripps as the cio, he made that comment. He goes, we're a technology company that happens to deliver healthcare. And he goes, they weren't ready to hear that right back then.

Now he's been outta Scripps for a number of years, but, you know, so you go back about a decade, decade and a half when he is making that comment. It really is true to them. I mean, it's, almost impossible to create the experiences we want to create for the patients without. And to improve quality, improve quality of life and all those things.

But with, it also comes to the complexity of technology you're dealing with. I keep going back to this. You're dealing with seniors. Yeah. There's this misnomer that seniors are technology averse and those kind of things. Mm-hmm. , disprove that I'm,, I'm a, a skeptical board member. Disprove to me that seniors are adopting technology and know how to.

The kind of things that you're trying to roll out?

Absolutely. I think it's just a human mindset. So my grandfather in-law who is 85, uses his iPhone like so efficiently. He texts, he calls and FaceTimes all of it. Whereas my own parents who are. 15 years younger, like early seventies, my dad and mom like, ah, I just know what I know.

You need to fix my computer.

Let me call you from the rotary phone. That's still on the wall.

Exactly. So I think it's more of a mindset and it also, if you think about it, that baby boomer generation is ready and on the heels and already entering my 65 plus core. And they know technology.

They know how to use Amazon, and they expect that same type of interaction, customer experience, and service, and they're ready for it.

Yeah. It's, I think we all have those anecdotal stories. My father, just, my father's 87 just got his first iPhone and now it's a hated me down from my mom who's been on an iPhone for probably six or seven years.

Because she had some friends and they like, oh, you look, I could take a picture and send it to whatever. And then the. I think just accelerated all of it, and now it's accelerated. My father, the reason he got a phone was the cost of a landline. For whatever reason. He's like, I, he calls me up and he says, Hey, look at this bill.

I think I'm paying $75 a month for a landline. And I look at this girl, I'm like, you are. That's insane.

That's insane. That's more than a Verizon or an at and t cell. I,

I know. And I'm like, look, you guys, could you qualify for the senior. With you and mom, it's gonna be 60 bucks, it says 70 bucks. Right? So now you have a whole population.

What's the potential of really helping that population with technology now that they have through the pandemic have really adopted technology?

It did. So activity did have to convert, obviously during the pandemic. We had a lot virtual classes that had a standup virtual atmosphere pretty quickly, like some of the healthcare systems did.

But there's a drive, there's a need. And honestly one of the actual big activity announcements here, maybe a week or week or so ago, we've been working with Apple. So Apple Fitness is expanding and growing and as a part of it, apple worked with US activity. So super sneakers target, United Healthcare and I think mobile health.

So four strategic partners to offer fitness Plus like at a discount or free to. Customers and members and it's been a great experience to work with Apple and even though it's not gonna be like a big probably engagement tool, just that marketing presence, getting it in front of people, reminding them of Silver Sneakers been around for 30 years, or hey, you're 55 or 60 and maybe you haven't heard of us, but you know Apple.

Here we are. Here we are.

Great, great branding by the way. Silver Sneakers is great. What are you looking to get outta the conference?

Chime is like family. Yeah. College of healthcare. So it feels like college and family. It's just great seeing everybody connecting.

Chime actually is college. College,

I know, like, but yeah, just reconnecting with everybody, having conversations, having a coffee and just talking shop, talking, live, talking.

How can we help each other really.

It's great to connect again. , that's what this is all about. Right? Exactly. Chris, thank you. Appreciate it.

I appreciate that.

Another great interview. I wanna thank everybody who spent time with us at the conferences. I love hearing from people on the front lines and it is Phenomen. That they have taken the time to share their wisdom and experience with the community, which is greatly appreciated. We also want to thank our channel sponsors one more time, who invest in our mission to develop the next generation of health leaders. They are Olive, Rubrik, Trellix, Medigate and F5. Thanks for listening. That's all for now.