Thought Leaders in Healthcare IT: Relatient CEO Michele Perry (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: Is there any geographical bias in who’s adopting?

Michele Perry: We’re in 49 of the 50 states. Other than South Dakota, we have clients in every state. We see it everywhere from the lone dermatologist to complete health systems. 

Sramana Mitra: If you’re going that broad from a science point of view, how do you sell? Do you sell direct? Do you sell online? How is your channel setup?

Michele Perry: We have three different sales groups within the company. The product is the same, but how it gets used is different. Our provider group sells to individual providers. Our enterprise group sells more to hospital systems or some of these multi-location healthcare rollups. We really shine when you have multiple locations. The third group is our channel group. They white label our product and bring it into their market.

If we do a channel partner, then we do not sell it direct to our provider group. That’s how we make sure we don’t have channel conflict. If an EMR vendor wants a white-label version, we’re happy to be their patient outreach. It’s an easy way for them to add additional value to their platform and to their customers.

Sramana Mitra: What are the open problems from where you sit?

Michele Perry: The biggest issue right now is communicating when the information is changing daily. We sent over 2.2 million messages in the last week on behalf of our providers to their patients. There is such an urgency and there is a lot of unknown. This is an unprecedented period.

All of those people on the frontlines want to get information out to their patients. Some of them are closing their offices and not taking appointments. That’s the biggest challenge. Two weeks ago, that wasn’t the challenge at all. 

Sramana Mitra: If you extrapolate that into a product feature, it’s emergency communication. 

Michele Perry: That’s a huge thing right now. When we come out of this period right now, I think there will be no doubt that patient communication and patient outreach will be a central focus for a lot of groups. The tools are out there and people are seeing what can be done whether they can chat with their patients directly.

In the short term, people are getting their emergency communications out. When we come out to it, there’s going to be a real awakening to all the capabilities that they should be providing patients.

Sramana Mitra: What is the scale of the company? Is it a venture-funded company? Where are you located?

Michele Perry: We’re just south of Nashville, Tennessee. We were originally bootstrapped and then took a little bit of venture capital money. We then did a private equity round in November this past year. We are now majority-owned by Brighton Park Capital.

Sramana Mitra: It was very nice talking to you. Thank you for your time.

This segment is part 3 in the series : Thought Leaders in Healthcare IT: Relatient CEO Michele Perry
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