[Podcast] Hospital Crisis Management and Healthcare PR in the Age of COVID-19
Jay Geer, President, Miller Geer & Associates
I (Stewart) love what I do in large part because of the smart people I continually get to meet and befriend. Jay Geer is another case in point. Perhaps ten years ago, his (then) assistant James Chisum reached out to me and said, “You have to meet Jay Geer. He is THE hospital PR guy, and he pretty much knows EVERYONE in healthcare.”
Today, the experts at Miller Geer & Associates (Jay, James and Sandy Nesheiwat), divide their time 50/50 between healthcare public relations and hospital crisis management.
Jay recently provided his expertise to one of our clients, which, despite having followed the approved safety protocols, needed crisis management help in the wake of some COVID-19 related illnesses and deaths. Our client was grateful for Jay’s advice, and Jay and I agreed it was time for him to finally “guest star” on my healthcare marketing podcast.
Hospital Crisis Management and Healthcare PR podcast to discover:
- Why the coronavirus pandemic provides a “silver lining" platform to showcase positive healthcare and “hero” stories, for both internal and external audiences.
- How to address the public concern about hospital safety from COVID-19 and the resulting tendency to avoid necessary care.
- The many types of crises that Hospitals face today - and what to do about them.
- Strategies for healthcare & hospital crisis management.
Play the recording of our entire Healthcare PR & Hospital Crisis Management Podcast conversation below, or listen to our Healthcare & Hospital Crisis Management discussion via your favorite podcast service.
Other streaming services: This and other episodes of the Healthcare Success podcast are also available...
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Podcast Transcript
Note: The following 'Healthcare PR and Hospital Crisis Management in the Age of COVID-19' podcast transcript is computer generated and may not be 100% accurate.
Stewart Gandolf:
Hi everybody. This is Stewart Gandolf. I'm here with another podcast. Today I am interviewing another friend of mine, Jay Geer. Jay is with Miller Geer and Associates, and Jay is a public relations expert and specializes in healthcare. First of all, welcome Jay.
Jay Geer:
Thank you, Stewart. Happy to be here.
Stewart Gandolf:
I'm so excited to have you. We've talked about this forever and we finally got around to it. Before we get started, we're going to talk about crisis management in depth today, but just to give our listeners a context about your background, give us a sense of your firm, what you do, the kinds of work you do just to help our listeners know what perspective you have.
Jay Geer:
Well, our firm has been around since 1979, which is a long time ago, and it was started by a woman named Nan Miller, who was the first woman to open a public relations firm in Los Angeles. And I joined her as an intern out of college. And nine years later, I bought the firm from her and we've been specializing in healthcare, media relations, and public relations for approximately 25 years.
Stewart Gandolf:
So Jay, and then we talked offline a little bit and apparently about half of your work is with ongoing clients. And then the other half is crisis management. But tell us more, are you promoting brands or are you doing feel-good stuff? What kinds of day to day things do you do?
Jay Geer:
Well, typically healthcare systems have particular needs. And so in times like this, during the pandemic, they want to get a positive message out. And a lot of health systems are putting resources behind education and information, as well as using maybe unique case stories or patient stories to humanize the pandemic. Patient that was in the hospital for 90 days, was in a coma for 45 days and is being released and there's a celebration. Or, a CEO of a hospital system that gets coronavirus. I mean, there's a lot of issues that hospitals are facing now as we struggle to move past this.
Jay Geer:
And I think that hospital systems have, for a long time now, four months, five months, had been the focus of a lot of news from the general media. News that they probably don't have a whole lot of experience in managing.
Stewart Gandolf:
Very good. And so you were talking also about the volume of stories you have. I guess the good news is the media is ready and hungry for healthcare content, correct?
Jay Geer:
Yeah, there's really an endless supply. I mean, we have certain hospital systems that say, "Enough, I don't want to talk about COVID anymore. I want to get back to business as normal because our ER volume is way reduced and the heart attacks are not coming in and the strokes and the regular, day to day clinical services that you need to provide to the community." So some people are leveraging the COVID because they become a hotspot or they become kind of an epicenter of care, where their ICUs are just packed. I mean, this is really straining the healthcare system in terms of people and resources.
Jay Geer:
So, they want to make sure that they are showcasing the best of what they are. And I mean, the inspirational stories from people that work on the front lines of healthcare today are just absolutely heartbreaking. And so we want to basically share those with the public, as both a brand statement, as well as an educational and uplifting message.
Stewart Gandolf:
Well, it's interesting you brought that up about the safety and the fact that elect to chair is down, surgeries are down. People are avoiding care. So I'm assuming part of this is, we'll get into the crisis stuff in a minute, but since that's so timely, a fair number of the hospitals we've talked to are very interested in that message of letting the people know, not just because, "Hey, we're the hospital. We want to make more money." But from a help the public know, so they get the care they need. They don't end up in much big trouble. So what are some of the opportunities you see there to get that message out about safety and [crosstalk 00:04:15]-
Jay Geer:
Well, I think it's very imp-
Stewart Gandolf:
... things like that too?
Jay Geer:
I think everybody is in the same boat. So they're seeing surgical volume, perhaps waning because of the number of elective surgeries or other surgeries that have been put off, people are fearful of going into that environment. But, I mean, as a consumer, I actually, from what I know of talking with doctors every day, I would absolutely go into surgery today. I don't care if it was open heart surgery or having a hip replaced or a knee replaced or even a minor surgery. It's more careful today, safety-wise and infection control-wise, than probably any other time that I could think of. I mean, the precautions and protocols are in place to maintain safety and lower infection risk are, I mean, there are going to great pains to make sure that safety is the number one task.
Stewart Gandolf:
All right. Very good. That totally makes sense. So it's funny, I had a dental cleaning this morning. I thought, it's like they are. They're really, really taking, even in something as mundane as that, because that isn't time-sensitive, really. But I talked to my dentist before and they've taken the precautions and obviously, you're talking about real surgery. And in fact, my wife went through a procedure a couple of weeks ago and it was the same kind of thing. She felt really comfortable. They did a good job with her, which is obviously important today.
Jay Geer:
That's right. I mean, everybody is masked. There's a lot of infection control, autoclaving everything and making sure... I mean, realistically oral health, 64% of oral health providers basically have seen tremendous cancellations and just crazy, but that's what fear does to people. And so you need to educate and you need to show the difference between what safety is and safety is not.
Stewart Gandolf:
Yeah, very good. Okay. So let's talk about the topic de sure. I've been fascinated by your work over the years. We've talked about, we always want to talk about the good stuff, the fun stuff, the build the business stuff, just sort of by nature. And then there's the real world, especially in hospitals, as providers, where there's lots of risks every day, there's always the potential of something going wrong. And we talked offline over the years about some of the mega, mega horrible things you've had to help people solve. You're like the expert that comes in and solves these terrible crisis problems. But, the millions of dollars of marketing to build the brands of these, but even more importantly, the trust of hospitals, even much bigger than just the marketing dollars. It's, in healthcare, and I'd love to get your input on this Jay, to me, it's the marketing is great, but it's about the product.
Stewart Gandolf:
It's always about the product. In almost every marketing endeavor it's about the product. So you can have the best ads in the world, but if you're having accidents or killing people, it's not going to be very effective for you.
Jay Geer:
Correct. You know, it really, and crisis's don't discriminate. They don't just pick on hospitals with a certain set of quality versus the big systems with international reputations. Crisis's are self-selecting. It's almost like a virus. It can affect anybody given the right circumstances and it can do a lot of damage to a brand that you've spent years building up trust with your constituents.
Stewart Gandolf:
Yeah. It is a nightmare scenario. And we've talked about some other ones in the past, but tell us about the kinds of things you're seeing today, whether it's COVID related or employee-related. You talked a little bit offline about some of the various categories, so help us understand the things to be aware of.
Jay Geer:
Well, I think that some of the top crisis's today, or the risk of crisis, where we're seeing a lot come from social media. So a brand that's exposed to an employee that's posting something that's controversial or racist, or conspiracy theory-laden. They post something like that and it can go viral and put the hospital or, and its leadership, right on their heels very quickly. We're also seeing issues regarding on the clinical side. So, patients that are having problems, or maybe you're getting turned away from a hospital or their test is taking too long and they ended up getting a diagnosis way later and they infected a lot of people.
Jay Geer:
So every single aspect of the health care system comes into question when they're basically being asked to do so much for so many.
Stewart Gandolf:
Absolutely. And we've worked together to help a skilled nursing chain that have had some real problems that are obvious for COVID as well. So you've got safety issues, and how do you treat people issues. Then social media is crazy. You mentioned even administration, things like less, maybe, timely, but strikes and employee relations to problems too, correct?
Jay Geer:
Absolutely. Organized labor is always active in a hospital. And some hospitals have great relationships with their labor partners. And others have contentious relationships. And so sometimes nurses and their unions or other staff members and their unions can use a pandemic like media environment to basically say, "Listen, we're not getting enough PPE equipment or our lives of our nurses are at stake and we're being asked to do too much." And so they have a voice because the radar screen on anything COVID is so large that they get traction. And so then they press it and then it creates not just a one story on one day, but it can actually create a series of stories and put the hospital on its heels quickly.
Stewart Gandolf:
Wow. So there's another thing we talked about, which is... And I still remember this, I can't remember which attorney it was, but an attorney I was talking to a couple of years ago was saying, "You know, it's funny, these PR guys, their motto is to be as transparent with the public as possible. And from a legal point of view... That may be good from a marketing point of view, but from a legal point of view, I don't want them to say anything." So how do you balance that? Because legal is a big issue in your world. And how do you get the right blend of transparency without somehow inadvertently implicating your client? And is that even an issue you have to think about, or how does that actually work in the real world?
Jay Geer:
It works. It works all the time. Let's say it's an issue all the time. Hospitals have lawyers and outside lawyers, and they also have risk department, risk management departments, that monitor for crisis situations, or try to get in front of them and solve things so that they come, they're resolved on campus, so to speak, without anybody ever really making a lot of noise about it. That's what risks does. And risks does a great job for the most part.
Jay Geer:
But it's ironic that, you're in a business of what we would call the caring industry. Healthcare, it's part of our name, but yet, to express empathy or sympathy or express emotion, frustration, to the general public or to the media from a hospital, which is a very typical response to crisis situations, is very hard to do when there's lawyers saying, "No, that might improve their position, or it connotes culpability to express emotion."
Jay Geer:
So it's sometimes all we deal with are the legal ramifications when it comes to dealing with media. Sometimes these happen two or three days into a story where the lawyers will just basically say this would go away. And the next day it escalates, the next day it escalates because there's new cases or there's new situations that add to the story. And so when it doesn't go away for three or four days, and you've got a board of directors of your facility that is saying, "Why are we being attacked so hard for so many days?" Sometimes the lawyers will say, "Okay, we can express a little bit here." Because this is really a tactic that you need to do to manage the response from an institution, is to basically be transparent.
Jay Geer:
If you're a public hospital or a nonprofit hospital, the state has data on you, the government has data on you. So there's always access to a lot of data that you may not know that they know. And so you have to assume that, as a public institution, they have a lot of information at their behest. And there are also the things that happen that hospitals can't believe it, but they have inside sources that leak information.
Jay Geer:
And that's always a risk that you have. And sometimes it starts the crisis, is you have a whistleblower that says, "They did this to a patient, or they did this to many patients, or this was a pattern in a hospital for a long time." Sometimes those come from actual nurses and doctors within the hospital.
Stewart Gandolf:
Oh, that can be obviously disturbing to have the problem at all. And then to have it come from within. So clearly, that's a high stress business. How do you respond quickly? Like right now, COVID, I'm assuming, you're one of the busiest people I know anyway, Jay. So are you even twice as busy now with COVID and all the things that are going on? How do you keep up with these things and somebody new calls and you have a crisis, how do you even deal with these things? Do you have a roadmap or how do you do it?
Jay Geer:
Well, experience gives you a lot of things that you've gone down that road before, and you don't do want to do that again. So you've seen outcomes in different ways. So experience in dealing with a lot of crisis gives you a, hopefully, a feeling of how this is going to play out if you've been through enough. I probably have managed two or three or four or 500 big crisis's in hospitals and health systems. And after a while you see an arc of how these things resolve and what you try to do is basically accelerate the process of going from exposure, or the story that's out there, to management and get it over with. And so the good news is, is that in the COVID news cycle nothing lasts forever. A story today is not a story tomorrow. So you're hoping that the news cycle sweeps it away and brushes it under the rug, or at least gets onto another story. Basically, you want to get it out of the news cycle so that it doesn't get days of momentum that keep the story alive.
Stewart Gandolf:
So then, that actually leads me to the next question then. What are... We've talked about some of the kinds of cases you see, and you've seen some doozies, right?
Jay Geer:
Absolutely.
Stewart Gandolf:
Yeah.
Jay Geer:
Well, it used to be just all clinical. You operate on the wrong knee, or you took out the wrong kidney or liver, you botched something or there was a mistake in the OR or a patient caught on fire in the OR, or a clinical issue. But today, they're broad. Most crises, you know where they come from. They could come from personnel, they can come from human resources. They can come from a patient that you never saw coming, that has a lot of momentum and a lot of social media following. So you've got not only just mainstream media, but you also have social media that mainstream media follow. So your exposure, in terms of the number of risks that you face, is actually a lot, a lot greater.
Jay Geer:
And then in a COVID world, anything that's COVID related that has some traction to it, whether it... So it's just not numbers every day. It's actually, they're getting into people stories. You got to make sure that you're in front of that.
Stewart Gandolf:
So do you find that the stories that come up, I guess, both for good and ill, tend to follow the national news cycle? If they're talking about numbers of tests, that's what they want to talk about locally with the hospital, or they're talking about numbers of deaths or whatever. Is there a strong correlation there?
Jay Geer:
Well, I think we've gone through that process. So it's not just numbers from a county or a state. I mean, that's still driving the news, but for hospitals, they're really looking for more of the social issues, the social ills or the social good news stuff. So they want to know what's it like being overwhelmed? What's it like when you've got burned out nurses and doctors? Stories of heroism, which every hospital has today.
Jay Geer:
And so if you're a hospital system and you're not showcasing and getting out front some of the unique things that your staff is doing to help patients, you're letting a great opportunity go by because it's a great chance to build on the goodwill and build your brand because you're not going to... This opportunity, it was very rare, where the epicenter is so great, but it also means that you're at risk. If there's an error or if you're caught in a situation that you can't control.
Stewart Gandolf:
Yeah. There's so much good stuff here. I'm bouncing around a little bit, but I'm going to anyway. So one of the things you just said earlier reminded me...my hygienist today went into almost conspiracy theory land. Now, this is somebody who's educated, right? She's a dental hygienist. She had to go to college and the stuff she was saying. And at one point I go, "That's just not true. In fact, that's a scary lie, what you just said, because I work with clinicians all the time and this idea that the numbers are being inflated for politics or this isn't really that bad, it's just, to me, scary." You've got these doctors and hospitals taking risks every day, being heroes, and you've got people that just are... I don't know what they're hearing, but as though this is all a big joke.
Stewart Gandolf:
So, I always think this is, and this is your area, an opportunity for hospitals to build thought leadership too and to help do public good by getting the message out. Do you have clients who do that? Because it just seems like such a need when there's so much confusion and so much lack of trust to have the hospitals take advantage of some of their authority in the marketplace.
Jay Geer:
Well, yeah, you want a trusted source and clearly, it's reached the era where this pandemic has become political, but that really doesn't reach the hospital level. I mean, you're just patient number one, Stewart. They're focused on you. They're not focused on politics. I have seen firsthand the dedication of so many caregivers day in and day out, 24 hours a day. They're so focused. So overworked dealing with all of the both clinical, social and emotional needs that is coming when you've got a full ICU and you've got a step down units and you've got 50 people in your hospital that are positive with COVID. Your focus is on managing and delivering great care to those patients and the randomness of situations once patients come into the hospital and you see older people dying, or you see younger people dying and struggling. You get a dose of reality very quickly. In one day, you will disbelieve any conspiracy theory that is out there when you see the human lives that are trying to manage this as well.
Stewart Gandolf:
That's my point. Exactly, because it feels disrespectful to the doctors and the patients and the families because it certainly is very real and clear and present to them, that's for sure, from the people we both work with. Getting off that for a moment, so let's talk about, oddly human brains seem to work well when we talk about not just what to go toward, but what to avoid, what are the mistakes? So I guess I'd love to get a list of sort of the top mistake-y kind of, just made up a word, mistake-y. Top mistakes that people make when it relates to COVID or any other kind of crisis management. What are some of the things that, if our listeners walked away from the podcast today with nothing else, please don't do this? What are some of those things to avoid?
Jay Geer:
Well, one would be to respond right away, off the cuff, without doing a full investigation or getting the full story. And sometimes hospitals get a call from a reporter that's asking about something, X, Y, Z patient. With the HIPAA today, you can't give a lot of information, but they respond, nonetheless, or they say that's never happened before here. They make some kind of truncated statement to the media to try to sage that reporters request. And then when the story starts exploding or it comes back again that, wait a minute, there's other patients that are coming forward, giving this story life, that's when they start to panic.
Jay Geer:
So, it's best to kind of take a step back and say "One, do we really have a crisis? In other words, is this information already out there? Does it make us look really bad? And what is our tactical response going to be? What things do we need to do statewide with regulators and federal regulators and getting CMS to come in and investigate our hospital and examine, or take a survey? Whatever that might be." There are lots of steps that are involved that typically, sometimes, I would say the number one mistake hospitals make is they speak too soon and they don't speak appropriately. Or they think that if I go on camera as a CEO and say everything is okay, that the story will go away. I would say, that's a number one mistake.
Jay Geer:
I would say 1A, it's a close second, would be they underestimate the potential of a story. They think, "Ah, this is going to go away. Nobody will hear about this. Or it's a situation that'll fly under the radar." Or they don't think a reporter is going to follow up on something. So they underplay a crisis and they don't put the resources or the attention to it until it becomes already white-hot.
Stewart Gandolf:
Wow. So on the side of what to do. So if you're working with a client and they suddenly call you, obviously we don't want to just go spew information that's half-informed. So we've got that. What are some of the things that you can do going forward to help kind of accelerate the news cycle? Be ethical, of course, which is part of this, but to not lose control of this entirely, what are some of the things that you pride yourself and your ability in some of the things that you guide your clients toward?
Jay Geer:
Well, I think, there are certain... Hospitals are really built for crisis response because they crisis response daily through their ER. So they're triaging trauma. I mean, these people are built to respond to risky things. It's in their DNA, but as you go up to administrators and you start talking to executives that run the hospital or board members or leadership of a hospital, you're kind of removing yourself away to risk management. So, maybe you've got a department that handles that and so you're really not that involved.
Jay Geer:
So first step in a crisis is to get your A-team together, your core leadership, and say, "Is this a crisis? Are we really at risk here? What is the potential of this thing?" And to basically lay out a plan to say, "Okay, are we dealing with regulators appropriately? Are we dealing with the media appropriately? Are we dealing with our staff internally, appropriately?"
Jay Geer:
Sometimes hospitals respond perfectly to a crisis on an external basis, but yet, they don't do it internally. You also need to make sure that you include your leadership, like board or external stakeholders, as well as your internal stakeholders. You got to make sure that they're informed. I can't tell you how many times I've been involved in a crisis, and the story comes out, let's say, in the New York Times mentioning a hospital and the doctors and the nursing staff are marching toward administration saying, "What are we going to do about this? This is a terrible story. This is the first I'm seeing of it. How come we didn't know about that? What was going on?" That happens all the time.
Jay Geer:
So you got to make sure that all the audiences that you need to reach are identified and their messages are created and crafted to appropriately deal with it on the internal side. So you have to think about it in terms of the management of all your constituency in terms of communication.
Stewart Gandolf:
Wow. It's a lot there. Any other final thoughts as we begin to circle toward the end here about words of wisdom or how to deal with crisis or COVID opportunities, or obstacles, anything else that you think we should be talking about?
Jay Geer:
Well, I think that there's a checklist you should probably think about. One is, let's ask some questions and do an internal investigation to make sure that our situation is that we understand the situation completely. That may take a day or two sometimes. And so you need to... And yet, you've got reporters and you've got people doing television, live standup television interviews in front of your hospital, that you're, of course, telling the security guards to kick off campus, which makes the media very, very happy when you're telling him to leave the campus.
Jay Geer:
Now, of course media can't be on campus unless you invite them, but they can be on the sidewalk. So you can't really do anything about that. So, one is do your homework and make sure that you identify, okay, are we at risk? Two, let's set up a tactical response. And that means I would never encourage people to talk to the media, both in person. I would only use statements that you write and share with the media. Today, we cannot change headlines in the scope of a crisis just by talking. We have to talk appropriately. We have to take steps that say, "We are investigating this. This is very upsetting to us. This is a terrible situation that we're trying to manage." Expressing empathy goes a long way for a hospital that's in the caring business.
Jay Geer:
I just can't, sometimes I scratch my head when we get up into the directories of leader, hospital leadership, and convincing them to express empathy. Empathy does not mean culpability. It doesn't mean that you did this wrong. It just means that you're expressing a human emotion and institutions can do that. And that's very effective for hospitals to do. That we care about our patients. You say it all the time in your ads, but when it comes to a crisis, you have to expressively make sure that you're expressing that as well.
Stewart Gandolf:
One thing that you said, before we wrap up here, that caught my ears was a checklist. And literally, last week I was talking to my team about a book called Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande. And I'm not sure [inaudible 00:28:44] that book, but the idea of the book is that, the premise is, that he was asked to help improve surgery worldwide. And the previous efforts had these enormous 500, 600-page volumes that they're trying to ship off to Africa or wherever to please follow these instructions for your surgery. And of course, nobody read them. And what they ended up coming to was the idea of a checklist. And so, in the military, I have a friend of mine whose helicopter went down and they just follow the checklist under stress or sully in Long Island with the geese that got caught in the engines. And the plane went down a few years ago, and it just comes back to these crisis moments. You don't have time to think.
Stewart Gandolf:
So, when you're working with your clients, just say you take on a new retainer client, do you work with them on this kind of stuff, to the extent that is possible in advance and create...
Jay Geer:
Exactly [crosstalk 00:29:30]. Advanced planning is, I mean, hospitals are just great at developing efficient protocols that are just solid. And they do these for the clinical care, for every aspect of a hospital. And you can do the same for a crisis. Actually run a drill. Let's just say that you've got a bad crisis. You operated on a... One of your orthopedic surgeons operated on the wrong knee today, even though you did all the fail-safe mechanisms, human error caused a problem. And you've got a high profile patient. Well, get your checklist out and say, "Okay, let's investigate. Let's formulate our response. Let's put these other checklists in play in terms of security and HIPAA."
Jay Geer:
I mean, you're confined to what you can say. And so, there's a lot of things to go through and a checklist is perfect. And then not only to take that checklist, but to then run an exercise with it. And it will... Hospitals to do that are so well oiled when it comes to a crisis that they don't even flinch when they have a problem. They just know here's what they're going to do. And so they have a response and that response comes from confidence rather than fear. And so I think that there's a whole mindset that develops when you're prepared for any crisis, from an administrative or branding or marketing standpoint of protecting your brand.
Stewart Gandolf:
That's fantastic. I can just imagine. The human emotion can get away from you if you're not prepared for this and you don't have a checklist. You don't have a Jay. You're just sort of trying to figure this out on your own. And they want answers now, and you don't even have a plan. That must be exceedingly stressful. And I can see where having a plan is better-
Jay Geer:
Well, because you think you're under assault, and you need to formulate a response immediately to get all these people off your back and once you realize that, wait a minute, we communicate on our timeline. Just because a reporter wants to talk before 5:00 about a story that they're doing on our hospital doesn't mean that we have to respond before 5:00. We can use some tactics to manage this thing appropriately under our control. And so, a lot of times when they feel that pressure from the media to do things that urgently, now there's things you can do urgently. You could just craft a statement that says, "We are very concerned about this. We are launching a full-fledged investigation, and that's all we can say at this point."
Jay Geer:
I mean, there are ways to deal with the media that don't have to say a whole lot. All you have to prove is that you are aware of it and you are taking action. Action is probably the most key word in all crisis response protocols.
Stewart Gandolf:
Well, that's fantastic. Yeah. I can see the... It's really funny you brought that up too. It's like, wait a minute. This is your timeline. This isn't my timeline.
Jay Geer:
That's right.
Stewart Gandolf:
Why am I jumping through hoops for you and risking our reputation without thinking, having a chance to think this through? That totally makes sense. Well, Jay, I know you are probably one of the busiest people on the planet, and you're certainly not begging for business anywhere. But I'm sure some of... Our company, we're a marketing company. And when it comes to PR, I reach out almost always to my friend, Jay here. And so Jay, what's your contact info in case any of our listeners/readers are interested in either broad PR support or crisis management more specifically? How would they begin a relationship with you or an exploratory call?
Jay Geer:
They could go to our website www.MillerGeer.com. Or they can email me at [email protected] or they could call my cell at 562-883-0375. I work 24/7.
Stewart Gandolf:
All right, fantastic. Jay, this was fun. I knew it would be. And it was super insightful. And, it's funny, we always, we hate to have to come to you when we have a crisis client. It doesn't happen very often in our world, but I'm glad that you're on our team when we need you. So thank you for your help, for not just this call, but for helping us occasionally as well with our clients.
Jay Geer:
Oh, you're very welcome Stewart. And I think your team is very experienced and very well versed in both traditional marketing, as well as this new age thinking of getting people to respond and to grow business. Because I think every hospital in the country right now is saying, "Man, okay. Enough with COVID. We want to get back to taking care of our whole community." And I hope that people don't avoid the doctor or the dentist just out of fear.
Stewart Gandolf:
Yep. Excellent. Thank you, Jay.
Jay Geer:
Thank you, Stewart.
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