In this episode of the Concierge Medical Marketing Podcast, host Steven Schwartz interviews Tina Patel Gunaldo, founder of Collaborate for Health. Tina shares her journey from physical therapy to focusing on interprofessional collaboration in healthcare. The conversation emphasizes the importance of teamwork in achieving better patient outcomes, the characteristics of high-performing teams, and the role of community in patient care. Tina provides practical advice for small medical practices on building effective teams and highlights the significance of including patients in discussions about their care. The episode concludes with resources for developing high-performing teams in healthcare settings.

 

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Team Building in Healthcare
01:37 Tina’s Journey: From Physical Therapy to Team Collaboration
05:48 The Science of Teaming: Knowledge, Skills, and Application
07:43 Building Healthy Teams in Small Practices
10:26 30 Characteristics of High-Performing Teams
16:09 The Importance of Community in Healthcare
21:41 Understanding Patient No-Show Rates
27:03 Involving Patients in Team Discussions
30:37 Creating Effective Communication Pathways
35:11 Conclusion: The Future of Team-Based Care

 

Steven Schwartz (00:24)
Hello and welcome to the Concierge Medical Marketing Podcast. I’m your host, Steve Schwartz. It’s my privilege and honor to have you along on our discussion today. Today, I’d like you to meet Tina Patel Gunaldo. Tina, thank you for being with us today. Truly, my pleasure. Your company is Collaborate for Health. And we’ve had a wonderful discussion off camera learning more about your business and how you facilitate

Tina Gunaldo (00:38)
Thanks for having me.

Steven Schwartz (00:52)
team building and helping small teams and bigger teams with success and growth and overcoming challenges at the team level. Is that right?

Tina Gunaldo (01:02)
That is absolutely right. My business name is Collaborate for Health. I find it very important to collaborate, to engage in the science of what I call teaming in order to produce better outcomes for the team, which also includes the patient.

Steven Schwartz (01:17)
Awesome. So I love it. Let’s do this, Tina. Let’s first have you share a little bit about your background, your schooling, where you grew up, that kind of background stuff so that our listeners have a chance to get a better idea of your foundation. And then we’ll get in a little more into your business.

Tina Gunaldo (01:35)
Okay, I’ll try to keep this short. So my name is Tina Patel Gunaldo. I’m a physical therapist by training, born and raised in Louisiana and still live here. And so I started out my career as a physical therapist in a health system, moved my way up administratively, then made a shift over into higher education, worked in an academic health sciences center for 18 years, and then more recently switched over back to a health system and am focusing my

work in interprofessional collaboration in health equity. I’ll take a step back for just a second to make that connection for you. So when I was in education,

Approximately 10 years ago, I started to get engaged in something that we call interprofessional education, which provides support for team-based care for our future health care workforce. That’s really where my passion for team-based care, developing teams, developing high-performing teams came along as I was researching and as I was doing the work.

developing high performing teams to support better health outcomes was really of interest for me. And so now I’ve just taken that information from the academic world and then brought it over now into the health system world.

Steven Schwartz (02:50)
Very cool. And somewhere in there, you designed and created your new business. What prompted you to start your own company?

Tina Gunaldo (03:00)
So this is quite interesting. So thanks for asking that question. I don’t really get asked that question a whole bunch. And so probably about five years ago.

I realized that I wanted to make more of a difference than the individuals I was actually guiding and teaching in an academic health sciences center. Some would say I was very fortunate. I had 1,500 students a year where I was able to interact with them and help them support them through their development of an interprofessional identity or just more of a team-based lens. But there was something more that I wanted. wanted one, to make more of a difference. When you’re in academia, you’re not

as close to the patient, but you know that who you’re teaching, eventually will touch multiple patients and that’s how you will make a difference. But then I thought I wanted to get closer to the patient and so coming into the health system was an outcome of that. But also I knew that I wanted to get closer to the community and I say that because as a healthcare provider in any type of environment, it is so important to know who is out there in our community because what we do know from

the science from the research is that 80 % of our health or our patients’ health is made up of those environmental factors and those social factors. And 20 % of their health in a non-acute situation, of course, is from our touch points with the patient. And so that was really how I was, I think how I got interested in what kind of took me in that.

that roadmap of developing my own business because I do want to work with teams all the time and so it’s important for me to stay engaged and so working for someone else and most people and most entrepreneurs don’t do that but I actually love doing that. It’s a part of what I think is just ingrained in me from

learning and researching about interprofessional collaboration. And so staying with an employer is important for me, but then also being able to help others now develop their teams so they can get the results that they want is key because it is so easy. It is not hard to do. And many times as managers and supervisors and owners, we get frustrated with why our teams aren’t functioning well.

So it’s so important for me to let everyone know that it’s not rocket science, but there is a science to it, and I hope to be able to help them all.

Steven Schwartz (05:21)
I love it. Working together as a team can truly help a business, a family, a nonprofit succeed. And obviously, when things are not working well as a team, things can fall apart rapidly. And so I appreciate what you’re doing with your business focus.

Tina Gunaldo (05:37)
Absolutely.

I think it’s, so one of the things I would, I’m sorry, I had to take a little quick swallow, but one of the things I wanted to say about, you know, teaming and it’s fundamental. And I’m so glad that we’re having this conversation today, but there’s many times we enter into teams or groups and we just do not have the fundamental knowledge. And that’s what I think about. it’s knowledge and then skills and then application of that knowledge and skills.

Steven Schwartz (05:45)
Sure, no worries.

Tina Gunaldo (06:10)
But it’s the anatomy and physiology of how to best team or how to best communicate. That’s usually where most people pick up tidbits, right?

or little tips or pearls throughout their lifetime, but really bringing it together with the science to know, you know what, when I use this particular communication skill, this is why it works. I think you come out with a much better outcome because you’re very intentionally utilizing a specific communication style to achieve the outcome that you want. And so many times I believe that we just use what we’ve learned over time based upon experience.

use the science to develop stronger teams, to develop stronger collaborations, to develop stronger communication, I think then our results, the results that we want, I should say, and the positive results that we want will be more fruitful.

Steven Schwartz (07:05)
So obviously, your business is working with coaching and assisting medical practices with creating teams and creating healthy teams for mutual benefit and success and growth. In my dealings with concierge medical and direct primary care practices, we have, I’ve spoken with so many people on all levels of this, you know, say spectrum of business size.

and structure. For example, the one person physician who handles their own phone calls, sees all the patients, doesn’t even have a physical location, but instead is visiting the patients at their home or their place of work. If a person is just themselves, obviously it’s hard to build a team when you’re just by themself.

As businesses wish to grow, perhaps to bring on a nurse practitioner, to bring on someone to answer the phone, to greet people in the front office, a second physician or nurse practitioner or a physician assistant, what are maybe a few bullet points that we could help these micro practices implement or at least have on their radar in order to help them start to help

create a healthy team.

Tina Gunaldo (08:33)
Okay, great question. So I’m going to take just one step back to the single individual owner. And so when I think of a team, especially an interprofessional collaborative practice team,

I think about, or I should say it’s fundamental that we start with what that shared knowledge is. And so an interprofessional team includes the provider, the patient, and then any other individual or organization that helps support the health of that individual living in the community.

So for an individual who has a siloed practice, I call it a one person, what they think is a one person business or team, what I think is important to realize is that you are a part of a team, even though you might be the only person on the payroll. And so.

understanding that there is a community out there that is available to support you and your patient, right, and achieving the outcomes that you want. So being very purposeful. And so let me stop there and just say there we do have teams and siloed practices because we have to think outside of just our own business and who’s on the payroll.

And then we can move towards hiring other people or expanding that practice. And then the team becomes more evident because it’s really the number of people that work in that office, whether that’s in-person or hybrid or virtual. But it doesn’t matter if you’re a one-person, right, internal team or 20-person internal team.

I think it’s important for everyone to know that as of today, right, and this might change with more research or more science, but there are 30 characteristics.

to high performing teams. And so that’s taking the literature from business, the literature from, and I say business like retail, it’s taking it from nonprofits, it’s taking it from the healthcare industry, it’s taking it from engineering, it’s taking it from organizational psychology. And I know sometimes when we talk about business, we don’t like to talk about research maybe, but you know, when you’re a provider, you’re providing evidence-based practice, right? You’re looking at clinical practice guidelines to support what you do. And I just want to emphasize

we should take that same practice and apply it to our administration, our management, our communication, our collaboration skills.

So there are 30 characteristics of high performing teams. And like I said, and that might change as we develop more research. Many times when I’m looking on social media, I see that there may be five, right? That someone says, here are the five characteristics of high performing teams. And that might just be a great way to digest it, right? Not feel overwhelmed because there are 30. But what I’ve done in Collaborate for Health is package those 30 characteristics into something I call the guide. So G-U-I-D-E.

So G is for goals and planning. U is for unity. I have to think about this sometimes. I is for inclusion and psychological safety. D is for defined roles and responsibilities. And then E is for excellence and continuous improvement. So when we’re thinking about any team, I do believe foundationally you have to start at that goals and planning stage.

So who do you need to bring to the table in order to have your team or your team’s project most successful? And so maybe I’ll just give you an example here. So if I want to be a, if I’m a single person internal team, and that’s what we’ll call it, a single person internal team. If I’m that person and I want to help improve.

the health of my patient, keeping it very global. I need to know what my patient does in their community. So do they socialize? Is that through going to work out or find physical activity? Is that through a faith-based organization? Is that by visiting the library? And so if you want to help your patients become more integrated into their community to support their overall health.

It’ll be very important for you to meet right with the local library, with some faith-based organizations, with some workout clubs.

or any place someone can go get physical activity, right? Integrate physical activity into their life. And so the first thing is getting everyone to the table to try to understand what their role and responsibility is. So that somewhat overlaps to the D, which is defined roles and responsibilities. So I would say to always start there. So start at the goals and planning phase. And the second most important thing I would say about that goals and planning phase is to not negate that it will take time

to make and build those relationships, right? So to create and develop those relationships. So make sure you have time in your schedule, right? And that time initially, you’ll say, is going to be taking away from seeing a patient in revenue. And I understand that and get that. It’s a very balanced thing or a schedule that we have to create as entrepreneurs. And I would consider someone just starting out in this area as an entrepreneur.

but you have to create time for that. And then don’t forget that it’s then up to you to build that trusting relationship and understand that if you refer a patient, right, and it’s your patient, but if you refer a patient to a faith-based organization, that faith-based organization is probably not going to communicate back with you, that I received the referral.

I would say the process looks a little bit different than as we refer from provider to provider. But you have to trust that that patient is going to connect with that particular community organization or that community organization is going to reach out. So you have to be clear and ask that of your community organization, hey, this is how, you know, it’s the first time I’m doing this. If I refer my patient to your organization,

Are you going to wait for them to reach out? Are you willing to reach out to them? Have those conversations because you don’t realize this. Or you don’t realize what they’re willing to do, right, to help support the overall health of their potentially new community member. The second thing I would just like to say is if it’s provider to provider, also,

Go out there and make connections with other health professionals. And so I’ll give the example of diabetes. You have an individual who has diabetes. Well, that person, as you know, will eventually have vision problems, potentially. And I’ll say with time and with age, that might come along. They’re also going to have problems with their hearing or reduced amount of hearing.

They’re going to have decreased sensation. They’re potentially going to have decreased muscle strength or some type of neurosensory problem.

So make sure you have the team members that you can trust in terms of an audiologist. I’m just naming a few, not leaving anyone out, but an audiologist, an optometrist, a physical therapist, right? Don’t forget your dentist and oral care. So making sure that you’re developing those connections with your team members who might not be internal to your particular business. Okay. I’m going to stop there, Steven, before going on to the larger team.

But if there’s any questions you have, let me know.

Steven Schwartz (16:00)
Yeah, I just realized I should have had a pad of paper here on my desk and a pen to take notes because you’ve dropped so many bombs of wonderful information. Like, I should ask about that or that. I love your concept of your guide, the acronym, and then the 30 characteristics. Do you offer this guide to your

consulting customers, your clients, or is it something that anybody can download kind of a snapshot of it? How does that work?

Tina Gunaldo (16:32)
Yep,

it’s absolutely free because I want everyone to use it because it is so easy to build a high performing team. So you can go to my website, collaborateforhealth.com and download it there for free. You can message me on LinkedIn or you can send me an email at [email protected]

Steven Schwartz (16:38)
Nice.

Tina Gunaldo (16:55)
So either way you can have it for free and I give it to every single person that I consult with because we use it as a checklist. So it doesn’t matter what phase of team development you’re in. We use this as a checklist to prevent communication errors, to promote collaboration that seems more seamless than frustration if that makes sense.

Steven Schwartz (17:20)
Absolutely. And another point that made me think about a physician, especially in a smaller practice, who needs to have other providers in their tight group, I say power partners, different ways to refer to these folks. I interviewed Dr. Chad Levitt from OnCare. He is an oncologist based in Atlanta.

And his business is a virtual oncology support organization. So where a concierge or DPC practice may somehow identify that the patient has a cancer and they’re dealing with a local oncologist, they could work with Dr. Levitt’s practice to have an extra set of eyeballs and an extra physician holding your hand and walking you through this process.

as an extension of the original concierge medical practice. And I think that’s beautiful. It’s a way that a practice that may only have a few providers, and obviously you can’t have an expert at every single thing in your little concierge practice or DPC, you need to extend your partnerships

with other people that you know, like, and trust with your patients. Right. And I think Dr. Levitt’s company helping walking people through cancer as awful and scary as that is for everybody who’s experienced it is beautiful. An amazing thing. Yes.

Tina Gunaldo (18:51)
Yes.

So you bring up a great point in that

we have many opportunities today than we ever have had before in the past to develop our teams. And I think this is so great to talk about. Honestly, I’m sitting here just thinking in my head where to go with when we talk about teams, usually people are thinking about in-person teams.

unless we were able to asynchronously team. And one of those is that I know if I refer one of my patients to another provider, to another health professional, I am trusting that they’re going to take care of that patient.

in the way that aligns with their particular business, right? And what I’m also hoping and trusting, and sometimes it’s not about hoping, it’s about clarifying. And so you have to actually clarify these days, but especially when we’re thinking about in-person versus virtual, but it’s so important to clarify what type of communication should you expect from these other team members that you’re developing relationships with

that are external to your business. And so when we think about communication, it’s so important when we do not share the same electronic health record system, Facts machines are something of the past. Many people want to text, but we have to be very careful in regards to HIPAA guidelines. And so how are we going to communicate? When are we going to communicate?

are two very important questions that we need to have in our discussions as we’re developing these relationships and we begin to share our patient populations.

Steven Schwartz (20:55)
so many amazing things that you’re sharing here. Could you share a particular story or anecdote of a client that you’ve worked with, maybe a smaller medical practice? This was their challenge. They came to you. You connected with them. Here’s what you implemented. And here’s what the result was.

Tina Gunaldo (21:17)
Okay, I’ll try to keep it global as nothing too specific, there’s a problem internally in regards to patient no-show rates or call and cancel rates.

And so we’re trying to determine why this is happening. And we think that the phone calls that our team members are having with our patients to remind them 24 hours of the appointment to come in and to come in for their appointment and on a timely basis, right, is something that should be happening quite naturally. And whether they’re going to call and cancel and let us know, hey, no, we won’t be able to make it tomorrow, sorry.

or why are we calling to remind them and they are no showing after. And so I’m going to bring it back to some of the basics. So one, when you’re trying to determine why a patient or a family member or a caregiver does not make it to the appointment and they do not call and cancel, or maybe they continuously call and cancel, or maybe they just don’t attend that particular appointment after reminder has been given.

It’s not just about you and the front desk person or the communication person in your office that’s making those phone calls. It’s very much, you should include, actually let put this another way, you should include the patient or the family member at the table. And the reason I say this is because when we think about once again, 80 % of our health is developed and created

through our interactions in our community. And I’m not saying we have to go through and put a patient on every single one of our meetings or our projects. However, if you are finding that there are problems with not…

I think if there’s, let me, I have to be careful too, because it’s not about blaming the patient. But when you believe that there’s a miscommunication among the team, which includes the patient, you have to start asking your patients sometimes more difficult questions than you would like. bringing everyone to the table, asking them why is it difficult for you to make it to these appointments on a timely basis, right? Maybe this person’s always an hour late. Maybe because they’re taking, depending on where you live,

public transportation and that public transportation might not be so dependable. It might be that they’re relying on a family member to bring them and that family member also has to work or also has to pick up their kids from school or bring their kids to school. And so understanding when we’re talking about teams, we usually go internally to solve our team problems and many times that you can’t, you can’t, but sometimes you need to sit back and really ask your patients what are

the issues that surround you in terms of your attendance. So that’s one. And I will say when you start to ask your patients about why they’re having trouble coming to their appointment or why they’re having to call and cancel, maybe they were afraid to ask their boss for time off, right?

I think you’ll start to uncover a lot of other issues. When I think about complex patients and so patients that have complex medical histories, you’re also not the only person that this patient has to see in a given day, a given week, and a given month. And so I think this is somewhat of a unique situation, but

I guess what I want to relay to anyone that’s listening today is that sometimes your problems do not come internally in terms of a process. Your process might be a great process. It’s more about digging a little bit deeper to the root cause and including the patient or the family or the care in those conversations to really determine why that team process is not working out quite right. Is that helpful, Stephen?

probably typical, but it is one of the unique ones I think was important to mention.

Steven Schwartz (25:22)
It really is. And what I love that you brought up is that you bring, there’s a situation, there’s a method, there’s a structure of how appointments are scheduled, how patients are reminded, and then there’s a disconnect. People are not showing up. And I love the fact that you brought into this, we really should bring

patient into these meetings and a patient and their caregiver with them into these meetings so that you can have a real frank discussion saying this is our process. This is what’s happening. It’s not working as well as we would like it to. What else is not working about this for you? Why do you keep missing your appointments? Not trying to get mad at you or point the finger.

We want to know what the challenge truly is so that we can tweak things so it can be better not just for you, but for all of our patients who may have a similar situation. And I love the fact that you bring the actual patient into those discussions to help illuminate what the challenges truly are.

Tina Gunaldo (26:34)
Yes, and I will give everyone a little tidbit too. I will say sometimes you can uncover this ahead of time by on your first visit with your individual patient asking them who is on their health team. Who do they see on a regular basis, on a weekly basis, on a monthly basis, on an annual basis? Because then you will start to understand and see their picture of what they have to do in order to maintain their health. The second thing I would

also like to say about this, which has to do more about the economic side. And this is obviously if you’re not going out to see a patient potentially, maybe you are. But thinking about who is on the health care team.

and thinking about how many referrals have you made for your particular patient, right? And thinking about potentially maybe if it’s not with your membership or with your particular service, how many copays is this individual having to pay? Because once you start to have a business where you’re asking them people to come to you, this is where you might start to see those social factors impacting your team’s processes, right?

How

does your office staff work together with you in order to make sure that patients are getting what they need? But when we have to include the factor of the patients coming to us instead of us going to the patients, right? We are including not just another team member as our patient, because they’re always a member of the team, but you’re including that environment or that community that that patient lives in. And that environment, I think, is the best way to say it.

is really a member of your team, whether you like it or not.

Steven Schwartz (28:20)
Right, their support system. Right, my wife and I care for my parents who are in their early 80s and don’t drive anymore, as well as an elderly aunt who is going to be turning 90 in less than a month. And so we get it. We are part of her care team, even though neither of us are trained in medical issues. We do the best we can. But there’s so much juggling that we have to do with pick up and drop off and

paperwork and phone calls and EMR systems and which doctor was this and what was that and it gets overwhelming. And I truly appreciate when family members can’t do this alone when they do have other people in their support system, their circle of family or friends that can help them navigate all this. And God forbid if somebody has to reach out to

Medicaid or one of the federal agencies or Florida Blue or one of these, you know, huge companies to try to navigate. It’s painful. so, having having everybody from your patients support team, their structure, their family, their community as part of the care team with the physicians and the staff and whatnot, I think is beautiful and really needs to happen for best outcomes.

Tina Gunaldo (29:27)
Yes.

Yes, and I’ll bring it back to maybe someone who, and part of the team science piece, because I think this is important. So bringing it back to, you’re just starting out, you’re offering some services, and you’re going to see the patients in their environment, or you have them come to an office.

There are so many other probably blueprints or roadmaps out there that can be supportive and help you like this podcast, Steven, and your services in particular. But what I would like to say is don’t forget that your community is unique. And so you will save so much more time.

after the fact. If you bring your team together before and say, hey, this is what I would like to do. I would like to serve my community in this way. This is my particular goal of my particular business. So who should be at the table? Don’t forget to interview all those people. Sometimes it’s hard to collectively bring them all together. I’ve heard in some cases, in many cases, people write as startups and new businesses, you bring people together.

and you might have to pay them for their time or provide them dinner for their time if it’s after hours, but don’t negate the power of bringing people together so that they can share why they believe it’s important for you to have the mission and vision of your business that you have declared. And why I say that is because…

As a patient, it’s important for me to understand how maybe an office person is going to communicate between myself and the provider.

It’s important for me as a community organization to understand why is it important for the patient to know what that line of communication is, because as a community organization, I might want to help support that level of communication. And so when you truly get your team around the table so that everyone can understand what their role and responsibility is for that particular project, for the startup of your business, you will realize that the processes and then the communication

pathways that you set up after the fact will go along or will move so much more efficiently, less hiccups, less frustrations, because guess what? Everyone understood what their role and responsibility was beforehand and not just they, you know, as an individual I understood what my role and responsibility is. I also was able to understand the role and responsibility of others. So

When people say Tina, that means expanding your team. And I’ll say expand your team to the right people. Once you expand your team to the right people and have them there with a true focus, it’s not called a waste of time. It’s called decreasing your future frustrations.

Steven Schwartz (32:40)
So you’re available to your clients to participate in these initial meetings and helping facilitate that and figuring out the right people to sit in the right seats on the bus, correct? Not just helping them afterward, but helping them from day one or before day one to get this stuff organized and arranged.

Tina Gunaldo (32:57)
Yes.

Yes, I think that was, it’s a blessing that I had the opportunity to work in interprofessional education.

for longer than 10 years in that particular area. And I’ve been able to learn so much about the different roles and responsibilities of different health professionals, different community organizations, different businesses within the healthcare industry, as well as external to the healthcare industry. And so sometimes it’s just brainstorming with them to say who should be at the table and saying, hey, why don’t you invite or consider having this person at the table? I’ll never tell anyone that they have to have someone at the table, but consider

Who should be at the table? And this is why I believe, right, they should be at the table, but you really have to get to know them and need to understand what their role and responsibility is in their eyes. But maybe just from what I’ve learned, this is why I think they should be at the table. And then if they want me there to help them through their actual project, I can. That becomes a little bit trickier in terms of time. But usually once I talk to them about how you establish a process to develop the high performing team,

And it’s, like I said, it’s not rocket science. 30 characteristics, they’re free to you right now. And I would tell anyone, go and grab them, download them, pick up the phone, or I shouldn’t say pick up the phone, but tag me on LinkedIn or message me on LinkedIn. And I can just go over those with you too. I really want for all of our patients to have better team-based care. And if we can have better team-based care and it can go beyond just one profession into interprofessional care, even better.

Steven Schwartz (34:38)
I love it. So many wonderful things that you’ve shared today. I had just one thought from a discussion a while ago here with regards to the reminder calls. Part of our business is Concierge Medical Marketing, where we literally help our clients with their digital marketing and their digital processes to help streamline their practice and help them reach out more people, get more patients, have better success and outcomes. And one of the tools that are available

marketing automation software, something called high level is a great program and there’s others. But with there, you can literally schedule the appointment time of your patient Tuesday at 3 p.m. Let’s say. And that system can then email and text message that patient at specific times prior to the appointment. For example, emailing them three days before.

emailing them two days before, texting them two days before, texting them the same day of, texting them an hour before, whatever the practice wants to do without being too annoying. But in doing so, you have a digital tool that’s doing the work of these reminder calls so it doesn’t have to be a human taking their time to do it. Another tool that’s part of that or feature, I guess, is you can actually record

an audio message that will go directly into the voicemail of your patient. You know, hi, this is Dr. Smith. Looking forward to seeing you at your appointment coming up tomorrow. If you have any questions, please call us back right away. If you need to change or cancel, thanks so much. Click. And so it can be a generic message like that. But when somebody receives the message, they think Dr. Smith or whoever I said is actually calling and leaving a message for them.

So that may help push that a little bit more for better no-show reduction or perhaps they say, yeah, I’m not going to make it. Let’s call and move that appointment. As I mentioned, our business offers marketing services for concierge and direct primary care practices. We offer three distinct programs to help our clients succeed with whatever challenges they’re facing. The first we call transition, which is helping

an existing insurance-based practice transition to a concierge or DPC model and transitioning a bunch of those patients from the old to the new. The second we call growth. The focus there is obviously to do the digital marketing services to help expose the practice to people out on the internet who may or may not know that it exists, may or may not know what cash pay, healthcare, and direct access to your doctor exists and what that looks like.

and educate them on that, encourage them to schedule their meet and greet appointment. Third and final is what we call Nurture. And the Nurture program is all about sending emails and texts and messages and appointments and all these different things, even events, to help an existing patient of a practice and even those on a wait list to feel good about the practice, to stay in touch with those people.

so that in addition to great care that the provider is giving them, they’re also getting access and nudges and ads and emails and texts and whatnot to show that they’re important and help them remember and keep the practice top of mind. So we call that Nurture. And we know that Nurture is working well when the patients write their check and renew for another year. So those are the three programs that we offer. I wrote a book called The Definitive Guide to Winning with Digital Marketing.

for Concierge Medical Practices, and that book is available for free. Anybody who wants it, please come and take it with my compliments. Visit conciergemd.marketing, scroll down the page and look for the place where it has the picture of the book cover, and enter your email address, click the submit button, and our system will send you a copy of the email, basically an email. You click a link on there and downloads the PDF. And through there, there’s over 100 pages of truly actionable,

information that practices can implement into their businesses right away with their existing digital marketing vendors or their existing team members to help them grow and succeed. And obviously, if you have any questions after looking through the book, don’t know how to do this or that, maybe questions, struggles, whatever, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me. I’m happy to spend a few minutes with you and try to explain or answer some questions you may have.

You can in fact book a quick time with me cmmkg.com slash schedule and that gives you a chance to schedule on my calendar. So Tina Patel Gunaldo, thank you so much for taking the time to share your heart with us today, your business and how you can help build effective and rocking teams that can make it so much better for the healthcare practitioners as well as the patient outcomes. I appreciate you being on the podcast.

Tina Gunaldo (39:42)
Absolutely.

Thank you so much for having me. And yeah, I hope to be able to help out lots of people to develop and build high performing teams. So in the end, we’re all successful and we decrease our frustration related to teamwork.

Steven Schwartz (40:08)
I love it. Give your website one more time, please.

Tina Gunaldo (40:10)
Okay, so it’s Collaborate for Health and four is F-O-R, so or catch me on LinkedIn.

Steven Schwartz (40:18)
Absolutely. This has been Steve Schwartz with the Concierge Medical Marketing Podcast. Thanks for being along with us on our journey today and we’ll see you on the next episode. Be sure to like, subscribe, follow, click, share and all that good stuff that we do to help get the message out to more people because we know that the best way to help this entire industry excel is by putting out great content and then for people in this industry to share it to their circles so that everybody wins.

Thank you so much for that, and we will see you on our next episode. Bye, everyone.

Tina Gunaldo (40:51)
that work.

Steven Schwartz (40:51)
Alright!