Episode 13: Transforming Patient Experience With Feedtrail

Cara Lunsford (00:01.918)
Are you ready for this, Paul Jaglowski?

Paul Jaglowski (00:04.43)
I'm ready. Happy Monday.

Cara Lunsford (00:05.95)
Happy Monday. We made it happen. And you're in our new podcast studio at headquarters.

Paul Jaglowski (00:12.75)
It's quite the space, it's cool. It's eerily quiet in here.

Cara Lunsford (00:15.912)
I can't believe... I can't believe you're in there before I'm in there. I know.

Paul Jaglowski (00:22.478)
What you get, I live in Raleigh, you don't live here full time, proximity works out.

Cara Lunsford (00:25.65)
I know, I know. You know, don't say that too loud, Kai will hear you. For those of you don't know, Kai Kraft is our CEO.

Cara Lunsford (00:37.15)
He's also, I like to call him the Walmart greeter for Relias and for Raleigh. He's always trying to convince people that Raleigh, North Carolina is the absolute best place in the whole world to live. And he's always trying to recruit new residents.

Paul Jaglowski (00:56.024)
funny after talking to him you feel really good about your choice to live here even though he had no impact on it initially.

Cara Lunsford (01:02.568)
Yeah, I know. It's really strange because he's not from here. He's European. He's from Berlin. And you know, so there you have it. But he...

Paul Jaglowski (01:13.272)
You know, we were chatting though, apparently in Raleigh he lives less than a mile from me, so I feel like we're experiencing the same parts of Raleigh, so I get it.

Cara Lunsford (01:21.246)
Yeah, yeah, he's so I I'm so excited. I always say this and probably every guest is like, but you're excited to see every person because I say that, but I genuinely am.

excited to see you on the podcast, to have you on the podcast. Our relationship goes way back prior to Relias for both of us. So it's kind of interesting that we are here at Relias together.

Paul Jaglowski (01:54.574)
Crazy full circle moment.

Cara Lunsford (01:56.106)
It is a crazy full circle moment for the listeners. Like I love stories of like serendipity and chance. And is there any such thing as coincidence? I don't know. But our story makes you question all of that, I think. It did, it did.

Paul Jaglowski (02:18.286)
Took it to the next level, no doubt.

Cara Lunsford (02:23.38)
So I'll say that you are the founder, one of the founders, co-founders of Feed Trail, a real-time insights platform for patient and employee engagement. I have said that sentence, I can't tell you how many times. I think, no.

Paul Jaglowski (02:39.842)
felt like you either knew it or you were reading it because you nailed it.

Cara Lunsford (02:43.142)
No, I actually know it by heart because I have said it so many times to anyone who will listen to me. You know, captive audiences on a plane, you whoever I can whoever I can whoever I can boast about this incredible platform to. But just for the listeners, I'll just say that we had a really interesting way of meeting

So I'll take them back five years ago. It was almost exactly five years ago. Yeah, because it was 2020 and it was right at the beginning. Yep. Right before everything shut down and I was flying to North Carolina. First time I'd ever been there, by the way, going for a conference. I was

Paul Jaglowski (03:17.87)
Yeah, I'll say either... Yeah.

Mm-hmm. Right before everything changed.

Cara Lunsford (03:35.85)
I had gotten one of those messages that said, know, can take a different, if you can take a different flight, we'll give you a travel credit or we'll give you like a voucher. And I was like, you know what? I really don't have to be at the conference that early. I could take like a later flight and I never do that, never. But I was like, I'm gonna do it. And so I was like, they were like, okay, well, you still have to show up for said flight.

but if everyone shows up, we'll put you on the later flight. Well, one person didn't show up for that flight. So then they ended up putting me on the flight I was originally scheduled for. And it was a window seat. And I was like, well, at least I got a window seat.

So I'm like, well, at least I got a window seat, right? So I'm like, OK, that's awesome. And I'm sitting there, we're in the air now, and I'm on my phone, and I'm using Slack. And the gentleman sitting next to me is like, look, I'm not trying to be creepy and look at what you're doing on your phone. But I noticed you're using Slack, and I.

I can't get onto Slack and I was like, well, it might be like I have like T-Mobile and it might be that. So I'm not sure. But if it is, if that is what it is, I'll give you my wife's phone number and you can log on. They've now since gotten wise to this. And so you cannot use other people's phone numbers. I don't know if you know that.

Paul Jaglowski (05:09.134)
Actually, not true. Yesterday I used your... literally yesterday, flying back from Denver, in my context, you're still up as the most recent because I had to put your phone number in.

Cara Lunsford (05:21.418)
They're like, sorry, lady. That's amazing. It still worked. that's so funny. You've gotten out of getting T-Mobile all this time. Yeah, you're welcome. You're welcome. This is now a T-Mobile exclusive. So.

Paul Jaglowski (05:25.976)
That's serious, literally yesterday. I know, thank you for staying true to it. Verizon doesn't give me those perks.

Cara Lunsford (05:45.606)
you ended up like typing in her number, you were able to use it. And then we started talking. And I found out that you were a founder of a health tech company. And so was I and all of this stuff. And we had all of this stuff in common. And then

we went on to do the very first nationwide nurse survey during COVID and we were on NBC Nightly News together. So that was like way back in the day and then now like full circle five years later, Relias was like, yes, they are awesome. I mean, I'm just saying like I've been telling him for a while and here you are.

Paul Jaglowski (06:25.656)
the same team, officially.

Yeah, it's pretty crazy. It's those little chance moments, right? First we meet, then we get on the internet together, and then you come by our office the next day when you're in Raleigh to hang out for a bit, then we start partnering on projects. Then you all join Relias a couple years later. Turns out we're in similar conversations, and here we are. Who would have thought?

Cara Lunsford (06:50.438)
It's amazing. Who would have thunk? Right? What are the chances? Well, okay, so clearly like we've we've we've built up the suspense. Everyone's now thinking, who are these amazing people? Who is VTrial? And why are you so awesome? So

Let's just go back a little bit and I'm going to take people back to like the time when you first founded it, you and your co-founders. So what was the inspiration behind founding it in the first place?

Paul Jaglowski (07:29.176)
So there was a point in my life, kind of professional career, where I was traveling a ton for work. I was in management consulting, and every couple weeks I was staying in a different hotel in a different city, and I kept getting a generic survey a week after staying in a Marriott while I'm sitting in a Hilton in a different city. And they're always asking the same generic questions about how my experience was. And the same thing happened with...

rental cars, same thing happened with airlines. And then it just got us thinking, how is it possible that these massive brands, these important companies, are choosing to learn from their customers by sending them a generic survey via email or paper and pen? You look at a Chick-Flav-er seat, you can enter the 87-digit code to get a free chicken sandwich raffle. And that was the initial moment where we thought, is...

There's no way this is as efficient as it could be. So myself and a few others on the founding team had similar experiences and set out to build a way to engage with customers in real time, ideally via text message or like NFC, which is how the Apple Pay works, right? You hold it up next to it and contactless paying. And that was in 2016, 2017. And then, you know, two other things happened. One, there was a...

There was an experience in our family where it was a pretty devastating healthcare experience and it made you realize that gosh, that could have been handled a bit differently in a bit more personalized manner. And then I was actually at a gala for a foundation in Haiti with my wife and we're sitting at a table randomly with leadership from Innova Health System and they ask what we're working on, what are we doing live? My wife happened to be an ER nurse or an ED nurse at

the Inova Fairfax, their level one trauma center at the time, so they immediately hit it off. And here I am just a suit wearing consultant, but on the side I'm working on building a company that helps customers engage in real time. And that led us to talking about surveying and healthcare, led us to talking about CMS and their mandated quality patient experience surveys. So a few glasses of wine later I'm convinced that there's a massive.

Paul Jaglowski (09:49.902)
need for this in healthcare and it led to having more conversations with Innova. Learned a ton about the space and realized, wow, think about what business interactions or what customers have the most intimate experiences with an organization, either good or bad, but highly dynamic, impactful experiences. And healthcare became a no-brainer. And that was in 2017, so starting in 2018, we said, you know what?

The bank we're working with, the hotel, the airline, that's not where we're gonna focus. We're gonna really build something for healthcare. And since 2018, we've been healthcare exclusively, and we've grown really nicely in that space.

Cara Lunsford (10:36.714)
That's amazing. I did not know that you actually started in some other areas before focusing in on healthcare. So that is pretty fascinating and also just.

It's a testament to your how your finger was on the pulse, right? And actually, used to do kind of like what was it called pulse checks or something like that? Wasn't that like a thing with with customers? yeah.

Paul Jaglowski (11:06.09)
huh, yeah. Yep, yep, you do like a real time pulse check to get a feel on how employees are feeling or patients. Again, this idea that so many of experiences we have in life are just quick, like you walk into a Starbucks and pick up your coffee and you're out of there. But when you think about healthcare, whether you're there for childbirth, you're there for a PCP appointment, or you're with your child at the pediatrician, or you end up in a hospital for a long duration.

The experience ebbs and flows pretty dramatically at times. Hopefully not, but unfortunately it often does. And just thinking about how the little interactions you have in healthcare, whether it be the way the front desk greets you, the way your triage nurse asks you questions, the way the provider looks you in the eye or sits down and talks to you, the way they set expectations for how long you're gonna be there, what to expect next, making you feel prepared for discharge. There's just so many inevitable interactions.

that can have a significant impact on that experience. And when we started thinking about that and we started kind of shadowing healthcare providers and realizing, wow, this really is important. It was a no-brainer for us. Now, was a, relatively speaking, was challenging to gain the confidence of an industry, especially when you're a team of first-time founders who's never built anything, never worked a minute in healthcare. But by rolling up our sleeves and spending a ton of time

on site with our earliest clients, the time we spent at Cedars, which is why we met, because we were coming back from spending time with them, like being in the room with the patient experience teams, with the charge nurses. The number of times I asked my wife for advice on, how does this actually work? Does this really have the intended impact? That's what kind of gave us confidence that this was the right decision, and it's what gave our clients confidence that we really did care and wanted to have an impact in their world.

Cara Lunsford (13:01.758)
Yeah, it's a really, really awesome platform. what I loved about it was the real time nature of it. Because very similarly, as a nurse, I of course took all those surveys too, like the engagement surveys, the employee engagement surveys, but the ones that you took a couple times a year. And I'm like,

Well, this is not really a great way of gauging how I feel on a day-to-day basis, right? Because if I had to just look back over the whole last six months or something like that, it's like, well,

I feel like my responses would be a little phoned in because I'm like conflicted, right? Some days are better than other days. But some of the questions that I always feel like should be asked,

on a daily basis for like for employee engagement is around like, did you feel like you could provide safe patient care today? Like that? If I was asked that on a daily basis, some days you'd you'd get no, some days you'd get yes. But then

the employer could then look at those and aggregate responses, right? And be like, you know, on this day, what happened? why did, you know, 60 % of the nurses in the hospital feel like they weren't providing safe patient care?

Paul Jaglowski (14:48.014)
Or when someone's working from 7P to 7A, maybe those responses are different from somebody who worked the morning shift. it's, you know, the reality, especially as we've learned in healthcare, so many of the challenges, whether it be from a patient's lens or the employee's lens, they're minor operational hiccups or issues that if the organization's simply aware of it, they can be fixed. Or a minor adjustment in how something is communicated or an expectation is set.

can have a major impact on someone's trust in that organization, trust in the healthcare they're providing, trust in their teammates. And that's one of the things that was most eye-opening for us, candidly, when we first started doing this, was realizing what types of complaints individuals were sharing, but also the praises that were being delivered, like what really stood out to patients or employees when you asked them about what was going well rather than what's going poorly. And...

We collect millions of responses to our surveys per year. And we still have about 80 % of all of the data we collect, all the surveys that are responded to, are very positive or complimentary in nature. You don't necessarily think that, right? When you think of a survey, I think a lot of the world immediately goes to, Lord, what could I have done better? What are we not doing perfectly? But the reality is, so much that's being done is actually very positive in nature, but those positive...

those best practices that individuals are exhibiting don't often make it back to the individual who needs to hear it. And that was something that during the pandemic especially was highlighted across our entire client base and across healthcare. You alluded to the survey we did of healthcare providers and nurses across the US. There's such a dramatic impact of sharing positive praise with individuals as it relates to burnout, as it relates to.

satisfaction in their job. There was a very large Microsoft annual work index report that was done, I guess it happens annually, but specifically during the early days of the pandemic, the number one reason frontline workers plan to leave their employers was due to a lack of appreciation. And that shouldn't be the case. like giving them a chance to hear the good work being done has an impact that can't be understated.

Cara Lunsford (17:14.984)
Yeah, the appreciation side of it and we saw all of the same kind of comments is like an appreciation for management. Even when it's like what would keep you somewhere, you know, obviously like pay and benefits always kind of take take a front seat or hit top of the list. But I would say that that's probably the same for many other or any other profession.

But I think that that appreciation factor and the being able to see what patients are saying about you being able to see what your management is saying about you. It goes along. It goes a long way because sometimes you get into the grind and you just are feeling like I don't know.

I don't know if anyone's noticing all the work I'm doing. I'm killing myself here. And I don't know if they see it.

Paul Jaglowski (18:22.754)
Yeah, know, having, again, I've not spent time working in a hospital as a nurse, as a provider in any capacity, but again, I happened to live with somebody for the last 15 years who's done that as long as I've known her essentially. the, I remember so vividly when she would come home and say, I got nominated for a Daisy Award today, or hey, I got a shout out for one of my patients that the whole company saw and it made her feel incredible about the work that she's doing.

But conversely, you hear about the days where it's horrible, right? You talked about how some days you don't feel like the safety is quite to the level you're hoping. And then again, during, in 2020, 2021, the number of people who got burned out, rightfully so, because of the stressful situations and because it was a bit overwhelming for obvious reasons. It's been really rewarding seeing how our clients have embraced the positive nature.

of collecting this feedback, how they've embraced the power of sharing these compliments, these kudos, on a weekly basis, on a daily basis, instead of just aggregating them and waiting until your annual review to say, Carrie, you got three shout-outs from patients this year. Well, really, you got way more than that, and now they know what those are, and now you're hearing them. So it's been pretty cool to see.

Cara Lunsford (19:43.338)
Yeah, it's an incredible retention tool. For anyone out there that's listening, it's like we talk about the cost of attrition, right? Turnover cost. We know that when you have to replace a nurse, minimum $65,000. Minimum. And it's usually way more than that.

And if you calculate it in soft costs and hard costs and all of that, right, it's it's expensive and it's bad for morale. It's bad for the culture. It's all these things, right? One person leaving usually, depending on who it is, lends itself to other people leaving because we're very team nature. We're a team culture. So you don't want to wait six months to find out that someone is unhappy. You don't want to wait six months.

or yearly to make sure that a nurse knows that they're getting that appreciation that they they know that a patient said something great about them because in that period of time is when you can lose them when you can lose lose that employee and you don't want to do that right so talk I found out recently and I did not know this that

with typical surveys that are utilized inside of health care facilities, HCAP, right, surveys, that those are required, correct me if I'm wrong, to be sent via mail.

Paul Jaglowski (21:24.088)
Mail, yeah, there's a few ways they can be administered. Yes, paper and pen, so you send the mail survey, which means they go out 48 hours up to six weeks post discharge, right? Not considering if you enter the ED for an unplanned reason, end up being admitted to the hospital, you stay for two weeks. You're not asking anything about those first moments of that experience. It's only tied to that discharging unit. So yeah, paper and pen, phone call survey as well, so.

You know, one of those random phone calls you get at 730 when you're wrapping up dinner and you're trying to get the kids ready for bed, asking about your healthcare experience. They're recently allowing some web-based or digital, like, email surveying, but yes, they must be administered in the old school ways in addition to web if they're going that route. And that is really what we were intending to disrupt. Not that, like, it's incredible that in, I think it's 2006, CMS started mandating these.

Surveys be sent to ensure quality lived up to expectations. That's wonderful. But you're right. mean, all of us are sitting here within arm's reach of a cell phone. That's just how people live today, regardless of your age. So why are we not engaging with them via text message, the mode of communication they're likely most comfortable with, or email if that's preferred.

Cara Lunsford (22:41.96)
Yeah, that needs to change. I don't know who the powers that be control that, but that that needs to change. Because even my mother-in-law, who is going to be 94 years old, is using her cell phone, text messages regularly, can easily access like any of this stuff. And I just feel like when you have to do things via mail.

Paul Jaglowski (22:48.12)
Mm-hmm.

Cara Lunsford (23:11.794)
A, again, if you're engaging with somebody who was seen six weeks ago.

Cara Lunsford (23:25.098)
everything's not going to be fresh in their mind. And usually people remember the bad stuff. I just hate to say it, but they do. They're like, God, you know, I just even like one of my, like a family member, when I ask him about his stay at UCLA, for example, in the moment,

He used to tell me all the wonderful things that he loved about being at UCLA. To this day, if you ask him what hospital he wants to go to, he'll say, I want to go to UCLA.

But every once in a while, like if you ask him like six weeks post or several months post, he'll recount the story of a nurse that pulled his line out. That's the story he'll recount over and over and over again. I'm like, what about that nurse who did this? What about the nurse? What about this happen? What about, you know, how you loved the food? What about how, you know, you loved the room? You didn't have to share with anybody. It was just a private room. Like I'm like, I will remind him of all the things.

that he loved about it. But he'll tell you the story if you ask him about his stay a year ago about the nurse that pulled his line out. So that's not really a fair assessment of the stay.

Paul Jaglowski (24:48.696)
Right, right.

Paul Jaglowski (24:54.902)
It's not. And also think about who, just from a demographics lens, or who is actually taking the time to read that six-page paper and pen survey, fill it out with a pencil and pen, put it back in the mail, back in their mailbox. Now, I think there's no surprise there that it's not likely that we would complete something like that when we'd prefer it be done in a more digital, convenient manner. But CMS is also, I think, aware of that. So...

The other piece of this that's interesting, and again, it's changing, this is always evolving, but when we first started this, the reality was whether you are a small community hospital with 20 beds or 30 beds, or you have a 500-bed massive medical center, you're only expected to get a couple hundred responses per quarter. It's not like you need to have a full representation of your patient body. So that's the other piece of this. It's...

And you think about how does a digital survey that comes while an individual is sitting in a room, immediately after they've seen a new provider for the first time with a picture of that provider or the care team member, right? Obviously, there's a lot of things there that are far more personalized or one that says, hey, Paul, thank you for staying with us at X, Y, and Z. How's your experience going thus far with a few relevant questions based on what I'm going through? All those things, yes, personalize it. But...

we also get so many more individuals responding to it. It's not just volume, but when you think about, you know, one thing we can do is we can monitor a lot of information about the individuals responding because we integrate with an EHR, so we will know that Paul, age 34, Caucasian male who lives in Raleigh and at WakeMed for an unplanned medical appointment is different from Kara who shows up for perhaps a planned surgery. But you can also understand, we, in our...

dashboard, we can see the age of every individual who responds. You made the joke earlier about someone who lives on their cell phone regardless of if they're a bit older than we are. We've had two individuals complete or receive surveys that are over 100 years old. Both of them completed them. We have a 100 % response rate for individuals over 100 years old in our platform, which is kind of funny. It's right. It's not hundreds or thousands, but still it's kind of funny because you assume

Cara Lunsford (27:09.502)
That's amazing!

Paul Jaglowski (27:16.128)
Elderly individuals probably aren't completing this as frequently, but that's not the case at all. People live on their cell phones. Why not engage with them via a mode of communication that they're comfortable with?

Cara Lunsford (27:22.825)
Yeah.

Cara Lunsford (27:26.12)
Absolutely. Absolutely. Did you target the people in the blue zones? Is that what you targeted? Is it Loma Linda?

I love that show, the way. But but all of that, like, so one of the things that.

excited me the most, not just that you're my friend and we know each other. And I was like, this is amazing. And I love the product. And the fact that that Relias, you know, brought your team, your entire team over to Relias. But I felt like it was a moment of truly living our mission. So for those of you who don't know the Relias

Paul Jaglowski (27:59.064)
Yep.

Cara Lunsford (28:13.236)
is to measurably improve the lives of the most vulnerable in society and those who care for them. Now I feel like we've backed into that mission for a really long time and and the reason I say we've backed into it is because we have focused on really making sure that healthcare providers are getting the best education, training,

that they're up to speed, know, current. And that was really pretty much our main focus for a really long time. We had a learning management system that was like our core product.

And then we started to branch out and say, okay, this is we need to attack this mission from several different directions. Right. And so we started with compliance management and we started, you know, branching out into that and going, you know what, we really need to help providers and administrators, managers to really understand and put their finger on, you know, where

Where are there compliance issues? Where do their staff need more training based off of compliance or incident management? so that was kind of our area of expansion. Of course, we had nurse.com, which is really kind of the recruitment retention area of the company, knowing that nurses make up the majority of healthcare professionals.

That's been kind of our multi-pronged approach. But the area that we were missing, in my opinion, and I believe I can speak on behalf of the executive team, is that truly being able to see how all of these things are affecting patients, straight from their mouth.

Cara Lunsford (30:22.152)
You know, not, you know, let's look at your age gap surveys or let's look at your like, but truly being able to see when we change something, when we implement something, when we bring a new solution to the market, how is that in the customers who utilize those solutions? How is that then impacting the most vulnerable members of society being the patients?

And so I just think it was probably one of the smartest moves, aside from acquiring Holly Blue. I'm just saying.

Paul Jaglowski (31:01.464)
You know, that's very well said. We started this company because we believe that every individual deserves a personalized experience, whether you are a patient, a family member of a patient, or an employee. And as we discussed, we do so by collecting a ton of unique data and insights from across the entirety of that journey. And then this data, coupled with the solutions that Relias already has, and will continue to create,

as it relates to workforce management, as it relates to compliance, et cetera, imagine how personalized these training plans will be. Imagine how you can directly validate and confirm, hey, did this training have the intended output? Hey, did this training have the lasting impact we expected it to have? And this is where you think, as clients of Relias are implementing these different solutions,

you can see them having so much confidence that, we are making the right investments. We are prioritizing the right things. know, this shift, people who are on this shift in this unit at this hospital have a slightly different need for X, Y, and Z because the patients are confirming that on a daily, weekly basis. So yeah, we're completely aligned. That's also what got us excited about this. As we consider this, for a while we've talked about partnering. We've come to know many individuals at Relias, leadership team.

And we've partnered on some smaller projects, but this past year it became pretty clear that from a mission lens we were extremely aligned. We loved the people and we trusted the people here. We loved the product and it became a bit of a no-brainer. I don't want to say unexpectedly, but we were pleasantly surprised how well this was going to work out and you know having been one of the co-founders you don't build the company to get acquired.

But you know at some point after you raise venture capital that might end up being an end result. And I could not be more confident that we chose the right partner for that next step in this journey. And the fact that, as you mentioned, our entire team came over, everybody has an opportunity to continue building both personally, building the company, working with our clients who we take a ton of pride in. We couldn't be more excited to further this new partnership.

Cara Lunsford (33:21.428)
I love it.

I'm really so, so excited. you said something really important. think that you and I are both fortunate enough to have built something and sold something. And that doesn't happen all the time. There's plenty of people out there that build and either they continue to do the work or it fails and that's okay. That happens all the time.

Acquisition doesn't always happen for everybody. But finding the right home, I think, is also very unique because there's lots of times where companies get bought and then they get dismantled. And that's unfortunate, but it does happen. And I really felt so fortunate that when

At the time, I had a few acquisition offers on the table. I think any time you've built something that other people are interested in or want, you get a variety of offers, usually. And the thing is is that I thought, how lucky am I?

personally to have built a social media network for nurses and nursing students. And the company that's coming along is Relias who owns nurse.com. I mean, like that seems like you can't get any more fortunate than that.

Paul Jaglowski (35:03.886)
Feels like a pretty good fit there, huh?

Cara Lunsford (35:06.026)
seems like a pretty good fit. You're like, I don't know, like, which one should I go with? Because it's not always about money, right? It's it's it's about being able to continue your personal mission to it's like, I still wanted to do so much to take care of nurses. That's really where my focus had had changed. You know, I had taken care of patients for many, many years. And then I changed my focus and was really like, I feel

like I'm a nurse to nurses, like I'm taking care of nurses, that's my job. So to be able to kind of continue to do that over here was really fortunate. And I feel like you probably feel similarly, like.

Paul Jaglowski (35:50.67)
I absolutely do. And you know this about me and most people in my life know this about me. But the most impactful experience in my life was when my son was born. He was born 26 weeks, micro-aprime. He's three and a half now and doing exceptionally well. Thank you. But spending over 100 days at the NICU with him at the hospital where my wife previously worked in the ED.

Cara Lunsford (36:07.988)
So cute, by the way. Like just the absolute cutest.

Paul Jaglowski (36:20.174)
We were fortunate for a number of reasons, but that was almost three and a half years ago. And we're at a point where our company's doing well, we're growing well, we're in hundreds of locations across the US and internationally. And I never felt more confident that the product and the company we built was doing something that really made a difference. We've talked about...

both the patient facing side and building trust with patients and treating them as individuals. We've also talked about the provider or nurse facing side of this and reminding them that, you're doing work that matters and makes an impact on so many people's lives in a positive way. There were two times when my son was in the hospital and keep in mind it was in 2021 right in the middle of the second wave of COVID and there was never a moment where

my wife, myself, and anybody else could be in the room at the same time with him. So neither of us got to be in the room with both of our parents and him. Neither of got to be in room with either of each other's parents and them because we'd had to let one in, one out. And every night we left my son there and went home and tried to get some sleep, came back the next morning, and a few times before leaving at night, we would tell the nurse how much it meant to them, how...

We really feel like we're leaving him with family. Thank you so much for allowing us to trust that this is going well and that we can get some sleep at night because we know he's in good hands. And every single time, without exception, a nurse will either tear up or just start crying visibly because you don't hear that often from people. I didn't realize that, but people either aren't commonly as vulnerable, right, sharing something like that. Same way they don't like to be confrontational in person.

But it was such a validating experience for us as we looked back on, the product really have that much of an impact? Yeah, our clients love us. Yeah, we're doing well objectively as a company. But to see the frontline staff respond in that way and realize, you know what, sharing these kudos, getting this information in writing or digitally and sharing with them does have the impact. And

Paul Jaglowski (38:44.554)
I say all that, it's a long-winded way of me saying that, you know, we've talked about the mission of Relias, you talked about Holly Blue and how this was a great landing spot for you. Throughout the conversations we had when we were considering this partnership, the topic that continued to come up organically was this personal aspect of healthcare. And it's just, it's really satisfying that this is where we are.

And I think even the nurses on our team now who are on the customer-facing side of the company or product side, they agree. It's cool to even hear from their lens how impactful this would have been for them if they had this solution in place where they were working. Anyway, yeah, I think we're both very pleased to be part of a list.

Cara Lunsford (39:33.704)
Yeah, it's exciting. I'm really excited to see how we'll have the potential to probably change maybe the infrastructure a bit, or just how things have been done for a really long time. And...

advocate for policy change or really say like this is so important. We really, really have to get away from these old ways of doing things and healthcare is so painfully slow. But I think that

being with the right company, like being able to push some of these things forward, getting that internal buy-in from customers to saying, yeah, this is so much better. We have to internally advocate for this to change so that it can be the gold standard, because I think it should be the gold standard. And...

It's just an exciting time. It's a really exciting time. feel so blessed and grateful to know you, to be able to call you my friend. I'll also say that there's another little piece of serendipity that your COO, Deb Woods, used to work for Relias.

Paul Jaglowski (41:07.556)
yeah, she worked here in a major way. There's no doubt that that had a big impact on us landing here.

Cara Lunsford (41:16.338)
Yeah, and that, you know, so there's just a lot of things that make you think and feel and believe that sometimes things are just meant to work out. Things are meant to to and in their own time. Also, one last thing I wanted to say was that the impact that

being able to partner with you early on in in in COVID when we were able to do all those nurse, we were able to survey nurses on the front lines. And I was able to read and and I committed to reading every comment that

that nurses wrote and some of them were 10,000. There was over 10,000 comments and some of them were very lengthy. But I took a personal interest in saying, if I'm going to ask people to tell me what this experience is like, I'm going to read every single comment. And it took me a period of time to get through them all.

Paul Jaglowski (42:08.782)
There were thousands.

Cara Lunsford (42:38.186)
Partially because it was so overwhelming. It was not light reading before bedtime. It was stories of people saying, I haven't hugged my kids. I'm living in a basement. I'm scared. I'm scared for my family. I am being told to wear this mask over and over again, even though I know that it's not good anymore.

Paul Jaglowski (42:40.968)
Not the light reading before bedtime.

Cara Lunsford (43:04.35)
You know, I and the and the the messages were long. You know, I felt like this was a place for them to. It was therapeutic, it was cathartic for them, and I want I wanted to be able to say out loud. You know, on this podcast, like I if you filled out that survey, if you're listening to this and you filled out that survey early on, that it was not.

it was regarded as important. And we all looked at this data, we all dug into the data, and we were able to report on some really staggering, scary findings that...

Cara Lunsford (43:58.324)
people kind of balked at too. were like, you know, that not that many nurses are gonna leave. Well, we actually have seen that close to that many nurses have left and have not returned. So I just wanted to say personally, thank you so much for allowing me to utilize the Feed Trail platform. And I wanted to ask you also, where did the name come from Feed Trail?

Paul Jaglowski (44:27.022)
Well, first of all, you're welcome. It was also a pretty rewarding experience for us too as we went through that, right? Seeing, albeit at the time, it was not necessarily the most positive feedback or insight we were getting into the reality of what it was like on the front lines, but it was impactful for our team as well. But the name, it came from the concept of a feedback trail or a trail of like breadcrumbs.

and then you just combine the two words. So, right, it's not the most intuitive, we realized, after committing to it. But that was the original idea.

Cara Lunsford (45:02.154)
Okay, I'm not one to be able to say, like, where did you come up with that name? I mean, like, the name of my company was Holly Blue, for God's sake. Like, you know, like, so people all the time are like, how do you pronounce that? And what does that mean? And how does that relate to what you're doing? So there's no judgment there at all.

Cara Lunsford (45:30.366)
But I was just so curious because I was like, where does that come from? But it makes sense that it's like a feedback, you know, it's a feedback trail. It's a trail. It's and that that makes a lot of sense.

Paul Jaglowski (45:37.216)
Mm-hmm. Right.

It's been fun. Our clients have, as we talk about so many more of them sharing the compliments, a lot of them have a Feed Trail Friday newsletter they send out now. So it's nice alliteration with some words that are relevant to the day of the week, getting a little pick-me-up before the weekend. We've heard our company be used as a verb before. I always share the Feed Trails with everybody. It's pretty cool that it ended up working out just fine.

Cara Lunsford (46:06.874)
see, that's a real success when you become like, when it's kind of like, I'm gonna Uber to you, you know, I imagine that Uber had a similar moment where they're like, my gosh. People are using us in that way. Yeah. Yeah.

Paul Jaglowski (46:13.25)
Mm-hmm.

Paul Jaglowski (46:22.014)
Maybe a little different scale for them, but yeah, probably similar feeling.

Cara Lunsford (46:25.554)
A little bit different scale, but I'm sure there was a moment early on before they were Uber, you know, when they first caught wind that people were saying, I'm going to Uber to you or I'm going to Uber that to you. And, and, know, I think sometimes people say, well, that's such a huge company. And, it's true. mean, but they were once not. And, you know, there's,

Paul Jaglowski (46:35.71)
Mm-hmm. Sure.

Cara Lunsford (46:55.52)
always that opportunity and I think still like Relias with the complement of something like feed trail has the ability to also be just a huge yeah yeah

Paul Jaglowski (47:08.258)
We're pretty excited about it. We feel like there's so much potential. So we're excited that it's start of a new year and we can really hit the ground running with you all.

Cara Lunsford (47:17.908)
Well, thank you so much on so many levels for spending the last hour with me. And I'm really excited for this year. I'm excited to see what's going to come. I just, I love you, man.

Paul Jaglowski (47:34.67)
This was fun, I appreciate you having me on. This is a nice way end the day.

Cara Lunsford (47:38.964)
Well, I'm glad it's an end to your day. It's only one o'clock my time. that's right. That's right. You get to and it's five o'clock somewhere, right?

Paul Jaglowski (47:41.294)
you

Paul Jaglowski (47:44.982)
the perk of being on the East Coast.

Mm-hmm. Well, thanks for having me, Kara. This was fun. I appreciate it.

Cara Lunsford (47:53.982)
You're so welcome. Thank you and I will see you soon.

Paul Jaglowski (47:59.598)
Sounds good.