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[Colin Miller] 

Hello, I'm Colin Miller, CEO at the Bracken Group, and this is Fractals: Life Science Conversations. Bracken is the professional services firm for life sciences and digital health organizations. Our intelligence ecosystem fulfils consulting, regulatory, marketing and analytics needs with an integrated and strategic approach. 

Cory, I wonder if you can share a little bit about what makes SimpliFed's story and approach resonate so powerfully with families and with the market. And let's concentrate on the families, because at the end of the day, it's the it's the family themselves that gain from working with you and the virtual team. 

 

[Cory Wyman] 

 Yeah, that's an awesome question. And I think it's there's so many different reasons that makes our approach and our model so impactful. Firstly, we are completely virtual. 

And I think as busy parents, it's so incredibly difficult to take your newborn to an appointment. Or if you're pregnant, we start seeing a lot of families during pregnancy. It's really difficult to like add on more appointments as you're already going to like 12 to 14 prenatal ones. 

Also, it's incredibly difficult to recreate feeding in an office, especially with a newborn and when recreate when you're home and you're like, you've got your little pillow or your favorite chair. I think like the virtual nature of what we do really speaks to baby feeding. I think we also have a window into what's going on with these parents, these moms, these families. 

I know personally, and I know from talking to our patients so much, when you're in a clinic environment, it's not as easy to be honest. And I think when you start developing a relationship and you're in your own environment, and you feel comfortable, you start opening up a lot more. And so we always say our care pathway, the virtual nature of what we do, it's literally like a window into what's going on. 

And I think because of all of that, our providers really develop strong relationships with our patients. And that's why we see them so often. I think that's why it's been so impactful. 

 

[Colin Miller] 

I think a lot of families today are living isolated. And the concepts of breastfeeding and lactation is assumed to be a natural process. And therefore, it will just come naturally. 

We know that's not the case. I think that causes a lot of problems, a lot of issues, a lot of challenges. I wonder how you see it, and maybe some of the other insights that you can provide as to why baby feeding is such a powerful entry point for maternal care. 

 

[Cory Wyman] 

I feel so strongly about this one, for so many reasons, from a marketing and comms perspective, but also clinically and personally. So we always talk about baby feeding as this entry point, like you just described, to the overall maternal health care pathway. And a big reason is we talk about the airplane method, right? 

So if your plane's going down, you have to put your mask on yourself first, right? But when you become a parent, it's nearly impossible to do that. All you think about is, how do I keep this little baby okay? 

Even when you're pregnant, it's so scary to even do any of the things that you used to love, work out, or do this, because you're like, is my baby okay? So most moms and women, and there's data to support this, will completely skip their six-week postpartum visit, myself included, because you do not have time or the energy to bring your baby, figure out how to get them dressed, get out of your pajamas, and go to that appointment. The single appointment, the predetermined, pre-scheduled appointment for a new mom and her OB is at six weeks. 

And I think it's like 40% of women completely skip that, because they don't want to take care of themselves. They are the last person on the list to take care of. But baby feeding, well, that's how their baby survives, right? 

That's the best way to take care of their baby. So they will reach out. They will try to figure out what's going on. 

They will connect with a provider around baby feeding, because that directly helps their kiddo. So that will become a priority. And because of, like I just answered, we are a window into what's going on, developing that relationship. 

Started in baby feeding, we can start talking to the mom and parents and families about what's going on in their day-to-day. Are they feeling stressed? Are they experiencing anxiety? 

How emotionally are they feeling physically? Are they getting up and doing something for themselves? How's their relationship with their partner going or other siblings or other kiddos that they have? 

And I think because they'll open up about baby feeding, they start to open up about other things. So I think that's honestly like one of the biggest reasons. And then also there's so much data to support that baby feeding and mental health are just completely tied together, which is why at SimpliFed, we actually do screen for mental health at every single appointment, which is incredibly unique. 

And they do not do that prenatally in most OB care pathways at the six-week postpartum visit. But because we know it's so tied together, we start screening and then we can have more conversations with these families and then even refer them out to get more care. 

 

[Colin Miller] 

Moving on, what does the role of trust play in building the provider-patient relationship at SimpliFed? You've already commented that you're complementary to the OBGYN, the inpatient support, the structure that's already there for a patient. So there's another layer of trust that you're obviously building. 

And how do your lactation consultants help cultivate that trust and build it? 

 

[Cory Wyman] 

I think it's just that we talk about ourselves as part of your essential care team and we work alongside your referring provider. And just like you go to take your scans or you go to get your blood drawn or you're adding on different levels of care within your hospital system, think of SimpliFed the same way. And I think that's how we first established trust, is that we are actual providers. 

We licensed IBCLCs and nurse practitioners who have worked in care settings before. So I think that's how we first established trust. And then honestly, I think it's because of the care pathway of seeing families at least twice prenatally and then up to four times postpartum. 

As we really care about, we're not just a one and done. So much in healthcare is a one and done. Come to me when you have a problem. 

Come to me when it's painful. Come to me when you think you have mystitis and you have 105 fever and you're in the ER. That is not SimpliFed. 

We care about your entire baby feeding journey. And in fact, we never want to see you when you have 105 fever and are going to the ER, because we're going to see you five times before that to prevent that from ever happening. And I think because of that, we have so much trust with our patients, is we actually are preventing bad outcomes. 

It's all about the journey and not just see me when you have an issue. 

 

[Colin Miller] 

We've heard about the mental health screening that SimpliFed have introduced and the challenges there. Can you walk us through how these services are integrated? And what's the advantages that you're finding from providing this? 

And what are the, do you have any case examples you can provide us where you've identified early on, perhaps, or even late on, when there's a mother going through a postpartum depression or other mental issues, and you've really helped intersect at that and salvaged a major problem and helped both mother and baby? 

 

[Cory Wyman] 

There are a million studies out there that you can read that talk about the correlation between baby feeding and mental health. And like I've said earlier, it is one of the most stressful times for new parents. So because of that, and because of all of the evidence-based science and research that talks about that, we've actually implemented screenings at every single appointment, every single one, even if you've seen us several times, because the way mental health disorder or way anxiety or postpartum depression can manifest is in so many different ways. 

And it isn't, again, just like a, oh, today I feel sad and tomorrow I'm fine. It's really screening over time that can help us get a better understanding of where parents are. Yeah, so we've implemented, we screen at every single appointment. 

We send reminders. If patients haven't taken the mental health screening before their appointment, they take it with their provider. Nobody is ever lost. 

Like we really work really hard to make sure everybody is screened. And then, yeah, so the cool thing about Simplifed and the cool thing about a virtual measure is we work with a lot of outside providers for maternal mental health. And it's some virtual and we can actually directly refer. 

So if we can talk to their provider, we often go back to their referring like OBGYN and make sure everything is great, but we can actually even just refer out to and offer all of our patients a plethora of mental health resources throughout the country. And we also have so much content and that we send patients throughout this journey that talks all about little things like baby blues. What is baby blues or what is nesting? 

And these are all just little things that happen so frequently to all of us that we don't even realize could be the early manifestation of an anxiety disorder, because it's so scary around being early pregnant and in early postpartum. It's just a really scary nerve wracking time. And of course, our care pathway shows this while we screen and we have our providers readily available and we can easily refer out. 

We also send engaging content to these patients throughout this journey to talk about you're not alone. These are such normal feelings. We send patient testimonials and videos that say, hey, I was just like you. 

That helps them even better when they get on that appointment with our provider to be like, oh, yeah, I do want to talk about this. So we send them information. We're coming at it from both from every side. 

 

[Colin Miller] 

So, Cora, you're the director of marketing at SimpliFed. That's a challenge because you have multiple market sectors and segments that you're working towards. How do you think about it within this space, both to the payers, but really to the patients as well? 

And how do you get the messaging out? 

 

[Cory Wyman] 

Such a big question. Yeah. So the cool thing about SimpliFed is that I get to work with every single different persona, I guess I would say. 

So we do work with health systems and health plans where we talk about layering in this service as part of their care pathway from a health system or OBGYN practice standpoint. But then also for the health plan, we talk about why this should be covered 100 percent and why they should be offering this virtual lactation and baby feeding support to their members. And the messaging surrounding that is often outcome based, because we know that there when women feel supported, families feel supported early. 

Early intervention means less bad outcomes, right? Higher breastfeeding rates, higher success rates, higher employee retention rates from a health plan standpoint. One of the biggest reasons why women don't return to work is because they don't feel supported from their employer that they can continue breastfeeding. 

Or one of the biggest reasons why they don't continue breastfeeding. Personally, I say this because I think it's an interesting, just an interesting anecdote is that I always say my breastfeeding journey was successful because of COVID. I worked for a large health system at the time and was constantly traveling, and my daughter was around four to five months when COVID hit and I was pumping. 

And I would never have been able to continue breastfeeding and pumping if it wasn't for COVID and me suddenly going virtual and her being home with me all the time. It's incredibly difficult. So that is a lot of the messaging that we say to health plans and employer groups is you want to keep your employees satisfied, then 100 percent they should be offering this virtual service. 

And the flip side of that is chatting with patients and moms and the way we message them is completely different. And it's more about meeting patients where they're at and trying to get to them very early and talking about this is their right. It is a benefit that is offered to them and they should use it. 

And then it's all about engagement because it is such a journey and they are seeing so many different providers with so many different appointments. And so we try really hard to meet them where they're at, engage with them often, send them content that is meaningful and makes sense to where they're at in their journey. So if they are returning to work, we send them information that's tailored around that. 

If they're weaning, we send them information that's tailored around that. If they're still pregnant, let's talk to them about why baby feeding and preparing for delivery is important. So we really we get all of this information from them and we tailor all of our messaging and content based on what we know. 

And then I guess the biggest challenge in reaching expectant is that they don't know. And that's crazy is they don't know that it is fully if most health plans cover virtual lactation support for up to six visits and that starts prenatally. And most patients that we talk to, either that have come referred from their OB or from their health system or have been referred or found us through a different method, they don't realize. 

And they have so many questions around health insurance. What do you mean my health insurance covers this? Why do you need to know that? 

What do I have to pay out of pocket? They have no idea that this is actually a right. And like I said earlier, should be considered an essential part of their care plan. 

Just like you go get your anatomy scan at whatever weeks that is, that's when you go see your first virtual lactation consultant. They don't realize that. I think the other biggest challenge is that preparedness is because I feel like as this might be too much, but as a society, we are 100 percent. 

It's ingrained into us. You go to the doctor when you need it. Right. 

You go to urgent care when it's too late. And that is what most of our expectant families assume a lactation consultant's job is to just see them if they're having an issue, which is 100 percent not the case. And so we are almost trying to rewrite that narrative that if you see a lactation consultant early and you prep for baby feeding and it does not have to mean just breastfeeding, like maybe you want to prep for combo feeding because, you know, you'll be traveling a lot. 

Or maybe it's really important for you to have your partner bottle feed at night. Having talked to our team early can prep you for that. And it's just going to make those times much easier. 

But it's been ingrained into us that it's going to be hard. It's just going to be hard. You're going to be in the trenches. 

It's going to be painful. And that just doesn't have to be the case. 

 

[Colin Miller] 

What is the biggest challenge that you face in helping the payers understand the services you offer and how cost effective they're going to be if they employ services of SimpliPay? 

 

[Cory Wyman] 

So it's truthfully all outcome based. So we talk about breastfeeding rates, success rates, retention rates for employers, making sure that their employees feel supported or their members feel supported. Member engagement and satisfaction is really huge. 

So we talk, we talk their language and use a lot of those same terms. And then also because we work so closely with either a referring provider or outside resources, we talk to payers about that too. So women attending their six, for example, women attending their six week postpartum visit is like a hedis measure that payers will like really care about. 

They really want to make sure that women are making those appointments. That's all part of the member, making sure they're utilizing their benefits and success rates and all that good stuff. Because we work really closely with referring providers, we can say, Hey, we'll talk to these moms and make sure that they are going to their six week postpartum visit. 

We'll make sure that they are going to their, their two day, three day, two week pediatric appointment with their newborn. We can help support the care system and health system on that side too, which is really important to health plans for all of their member benefits, et cetera. But it really is truthfully all outcome based and member satisfaction based. 

 

[Colin Miller] 

So I have to ask you, one of our final questions is if you had a hundred million dollars to spend as a grant in the maternal care arena, what would you spend it on and why? 

 

[Cory Wyman] 

Oh man, that's such a big question. And I think the issue that I have with healthcare and maternal health right now is we expect a lot from the parents. We have all of these cool apps and tracking devices and here's this cool thing to like log on, but we expect the mom and the family to know what's going on. 

There isn't, and that's all well and good. And those things are really fun and sexy and marketing is really cool for that, but they're not connected to their actual provider. And I think what's really cool about SimpliFed is like, we are taking those two ends of the spectrum. 

So like you've got your, like your typical care pathway, health system, doctor, et cetera. And these cool, fun apps where you can log in and see what's going on and read your own vitals and read your scores and actually make edits and changes. And we're like marrying it together. 

It isn't just an app that provides you fun content where you say my baby's the size of a mango or whatever, because although there, it is an app and you can do fun things on it. But there's actually backed by like a real provider who's talking to you and can say actually, yeah, this is what's going on, et cetera, et cetera. It's combining those two things. 

Honestly, if I had a hundred million dollar grant in the maternal care space, I think I would just invest in more technology that was directly connected with providers. So what we call it is provider. Or like tech enabled provider services, so cool apps, more engaging content, easier access for patients, but it's absolutely connected to care still. 

And it is not on the parent, woman, whoever to take those cool tech services, interpret them themselves and then make a decision. It should be interpreted by their provider and their provider makes the decision for them. And right now it isn't that it's one or the other. 

 

[Colin Miller] 

Fractals is brought to you by Bracken, the professional services firm for life science and digital health organizations. Subscribe to Fractals via your preferred podcast platform. Visit us at thebrackengroup.com or reach out directly on LinkedIn. We'll be delighted to speak with you. I'm Colin Miller wishing you sound business and good health. Thanks for listening.