How I Make Photography Easy for 6 Surgeons & 11 Midlevels with TouchMD
Clinical photography specialist Krissy Obeso-Theus shares how she uses TouchMD to create a unique and personalized experience for patients at La Jolla Cosmetic in San Diego, California.
As a medical assistant, a TouchMD power user, and marketing manager in one of the oldest and most reputable cosmetic practices in the nation, Krissy owns the TouchMD experience for La Jolla Cosmetic’s patients.
From creating a virtual version of every LJC office within TouchMD Consult to delivering personalized product and service recommendations to patients with TouchMD Playlist, Krissy shares her power user tips for using TouchMD to its fullest potential.
Learn more about TouchMD Consult, TouchMD Snap, and TouchMD Playlist
Learn more about La Jolla Cosmetic
Are you a TouchMD power user? We want to know your top tips! Send us an email or call us and we would love to have you on the next episode of TouchMD University.
Transcript
Tyler Terry (00:10):
Hello and welcome to TouchMD University. I'm Tyler Terry. I've been with TouchMD for about 11 years and I'm the Director of Sales. My focus within TouchMD is really maximizing the med spa side of our business and also helping dream up new features and benefits and really trying to partner with the practices that we work with.
Tina Brown (00:33):
And I'm Tina Brown. I am the VP of Client Services here. I am really the person that is going to help ensure that your success with TouchMD is optimized in all areas across the business. And you know today there are nearly 20,000 aesthetic professionals that are using TouchMD and hundreds of thousands of patients across the board that are also relying on TouchMD to communicate and stay connected with their practices in a secure manner as well.
Tyler Terry (01:03):
Yeah, and that actually brings us to our special guest today. Her name is Krissy Obeso-Theus and she's from La Jolla Cosmetic in San Diego. She's an absolute power user of TouchMD and for the five plastic surgeons and nine mid-level providers and their two medical spas, she owns the TouchMD experience for their patients. We're super excited and thrilled to have her here with us and to get her best practices and insider tips on how she's made TouchMD work well for the hundreds of patients that visit her practice every week. Welcome Krissy, what is your role at La Jolla Cosmetic And just tell us a little bit about yourself.
Krissy Obeso-Theus (01:45):
Thank you guys for having me on the show today. A little background on me. I have at least 10 years in aesthetics from medical spas and plastic surgery offices throughout Southern California. Recently really working in the marketing department to help providers display their best selves to our patients and also create that ease of access between provider patient, right? One of the reasons why I am the TouchMD power user because I love it, it really gives us that opportunity, what I do at La Jolla Cosmetic. So like I said, I'm a marketing assistant but I have an emphasis on clinical photography management. Tyler mentioned we have a very large practice, there's a lot of photos, a lot of patients coming through. We need something really easy for anybody in our practice to use, right? So we all know that clinical photography photos are very vital in the success of any case you're dealing with.
Tyler Terry (02:46):
Yeah, of course. And Krissy made a couple really great points, um, as they relates to clinical photography and marketing and I'm excited to actually touch on a few of those as we go through this recording. But let's actually start here in a few sentences, what would you tell someone who's never used TouchMD before.
Krissy Obeso-Theus (03:07):
So much, but it's to me the ultimate practice tool to keep your patients engaged throughout their procedure journey. It is not only fun to use, but it makes it really easy for the patient and anybody in the practice to seamlessly use.
Tyler Terry (03:28):
Hey, that's amazing. I do want to just touch on one thing you said there when you said fun to use. What makes it fun to use? What do you love about it?
Krissy Obeso-Theus (03:36):
I mean it's just like using any app on your phone. Uou pick it up, you dial in, you punch a few buttons. So if you could use an app on your phone or a text message, you can use TouchMD.
Tyler Terry (03:50):
Amazing.
Tina Brown (03:51):
And it's so true, like the simplicity of how it's used is amazing. Which kind of brings me to, you also mentioned clinical photography, which we know like is the top priority for so many aesthetic practices. And so let's branch in for just a minute into what we call TouchMD Snap and the photography. Will you show us how you take a patient photo with TouchMD Snap?
Krissy Obeso-Theus (04:16):
So this is TouchMD consult, right? This is where you start when you're trying to look up any information or give patients direct access to anything that they need to know for their treatment or their visit that day. Taking a picture is as easy as opening your console app, tapping the little head at the button, logging in and then finding your patient. So here's a test patient. There's really nothing in here, but once you pull up their patient profile, you'll see there's a little button at the bottom that's called Snap. Once you're right here and you touch your little snap button, it automatically pulls up the SNAP app. It gives you a bunch of tools that are very helpful when logging your patient treatment. Specifically I really like to use the session title to name whatever procedure we're doing. Tags in our practice, I generally use for consented photos, which is really awesome for our providers or PCs to look up on the backend, um, to show their patients really quickly without having to scroll through other before and afters. There's also this other button called visible to patient that is very useful when patients wanna see their photos at home. We don't have to email it, we don't have to print out anything. We just click that little button and it sends it right to their iPad app. So that's definitely something that we love in our practice. You open up to this screen where you, you have even more tools. Can you see it?
Tyler Terry (05:54):
Yes, I can see the level on the bottom and some buttons on the left.
Krissy Obeso-Theus (05:58):
All those are really important when you are trying to take consistent photos. These grid lines are very important in our practice. A lot of the times people have different body shapes or other things like that. They might be, you might even be a different room or a different environment when you're taking photos. So those are really helpful just to align the appropriate portions of the face for anybody who's behind the camera.
Tina Brown (06:25):
Yes, and I love that you know, that's again back to the simplicity of TouchMD, but the grid lines, they're paramount in making sure that you get that consistent photo no matter what patient you're with, no matter what room you're in, no matter what provider is taking that photo, whether it's you know, a nurse injector or one of the med spa assistants, they're vitally important. One of the important things about taking photography and another feature of TouchMD is the ability for providers to use drawing tools to educate and to illustrate on the patient's photo themselves. So I know that you're working on getting your providers to be more consistent in using the drawing tools. Two questions for you. Number one, what do you love about drawing tools And number two, how are you encouraging your providers to use these tools?
Krissy Obeso-Theus (07:20):
Drawing tools are so useful in every way from just educating the patient, allowing your patient to take control of their treatment as well and show you what they see, not just what we see as clinicians or anything like that. So one of the ways that I love to do it is we will draw like okay, somebody comes in for Botox, they're like, what's a unit? Where's it going? And especially if they're a new patient, that concept is very new to them. So we'll take a picture of them and touch 'em d snap, then we'll use the drawing tool to draw. This is where we would put two units, this is where we would put three units and then maybe also animate and show them like how that might affect their face. Another amazing way that I was really proud of the providers using it for was laser treatments.
(08:14):
We often do treatments on each other sometimes and <laugh> one provider was like, I don't want you to do my settings, I wanna do my own settings. So we took a picture of her face and she drew all the energy levels on her face that she wanted the provider to do. Not only was that useful for her chart and our record keeping, but it was just easy so that she could enjoy her treatment and they didn't have to like really talk about what she wanted done, what parts of her face, 'cause they were both experts, right? So there's multiple ways that the drawing tools can be used.
Tyler Terry (08:49):
So I actually wanted to just circle back to when you talked about charting and the importance of being able to go back and and see that record on the photo. And we get a lot of practices that don't do that until maybe a couple years after having TouchMD. They realize that they can write on the photo and they can even put an image, a picture of the patient with a document side by side. Yep. So can you talk about that just a little bit before we jump into SNAP Pro? Just talk about how your providers are doing that.
Krissy Obeso-Theus (09:21):
Generally all the tools that are in TouchMD consults, there's illustrations there, there's a lot of information there that you can easily align with a patient's photo in TouchMD consult. So, or in snap so that you can educate them directly based on their anatomy, on their experience, right? So that's one of the things that we love about it. You're not fishing different pieces of information from the internet and giving them all kinds of different paperwork. You're giving them one screen, one platform that really helps them as a patient and making an educated decision about what procedures that they're doing.
Tyler Terry (10:05):
I love that. Thank you. And I wanna actually segue, so you have been a beta tester, a beta user for our new TouchMD Snap Pro. So for everybody that's listening, we have TouchMD Snap, which is the photo app. It has grid lines as ghosting. It is amazing. But we now have an elevated version of Snap called SNAP Pro and with Snap Pro comes sequencing a new level. So before you had a a horizontal level, now you have a vertical level and you also have some just elevated tools within Snap to really up your game when it comes to photography. So my question for question would be what specifically have you loved and enjoyed while using Snap Pro?
Krissy Obeso-Theus (10:53):
Not only has it been upgraded to a much more sexy platform, I don't know what to say other than that, but the biggest challenge most practices have is just consistency in their clinical photographs. You guys already had great tools in the original Snap, but it really blew my mind what you guys were able to do with the Snap Pro. Anybody who is behind the camera, whether it's a medical assistant, a front desk person, the doctor, you can use this so easily you the new silhouette orientation, the body orientations were probably my favorite because we're such a big practice and the person behind the camera is never consistent, right? So that on top of the ghosting, but that really blew my mind. Some other things as a growing practice, you know, marketing is huge now social media is really huge now you guys made it really easy for providers to show their results by adding the watermark and direct a social media button, right? That was amazing because what I do is help providers learn how to market themselves and that made it so much easier. And that's just to start, there's a bunch of other things there.
Tina Brown (12:15):
Did you see both of our faces light up when you said social media? Because as social media gurus ourselves, we were like, yes, that's exactly Tyler and I have wanted this forever and now it's here and we're like beaming <laugh>.
Krissy Obeso-Theus (12:28):
No, honestly, I'm beaming. I'm always like, Hey guys, I was like, I already downloaded the watermarks for you. All you have to do is like post it. Yes, <laugh>,
Tyler Terry (12:36):
It's amazing.
Krissy Obeso-Theus (12:37):
It's awesome.
Tyler Terry (12:39):
So I just wanted, for our listeners, I just wanted to elaborate just a little bit on sequencing to kind of give you guys try to paint a visual. So if you think of when you're capturing various angles for, let's just say Botox or full correction. So typically you want to take more than one photo and more than one angle. And some practices they'll have a photo dial, some will have a mat, and then of course the dial or the mat will have the patient stand on the ones, right? So look to your left and stand on the ones on the twos for like a three quarter, 3, 4, 5, let's just say five angles with TouchMD. Now with the new sequencing, the grid line will actually line up to line up the silhouette of the patient's nose and chin. And then as you capture the photo, the grid line flips and flips and flips as you continue to capture the photo with the grid lines. So now you know you have consistency is the common denominator, am I right Krissy? In all things photography,
Krissy Obeso-Theus (13:39):
Yes. Literally my number one favorite thing, <laugh>.
Tyler Terry (13:42):
So now you have capture photos consistently with grid lines, ghosting, sequencing, showcase photos brilliantly and beautifully with the watermarking, like you said Krissy, and being able to now post them directly to social. And then you have the reveal tool and then you actually can deliver them instant, instantly to patients as Krissy alluded to being able to hide or show the pictures so that the patient can see it from home. So I just wanted to elaborate a little bit on that to talk about the importance of it. And then even just one, one extra little nugget here would be watermarking isn't just to watermark your logo. We've actually have, we have practices now that will take a photo of the patient and then in the watermarking section they'll put all of their skincare skus and they'll say, Hey Ashley, everything that I stamp on the left, that's your AM regimen. Everything that I stamp on the right, that's your PM regimen. And they literally stamp the image, like the exact image of the skincare product and then they'll point to it and it looks amazing.
Tina Brown (14:46):
So Krissy, we talked a little bit about getting your providers to use the system system and so we wanna move into the consult part of TouchMD. And I know Tyler had a great question for you there, so I'm gonna let him roll with that.
Tyler Terry (15:02):
Yeah, so with TouchMD, there's three apps. There's the consult app that's essentially the sales aid for the practice to guide them through a consult. We have the photo app to take pictures, and then we have the patient app that patients download on their phone. So when we talk about the consult app, this is the TouchMD app for patient education, again, it's gonna be your sales aid for, you know, we get practices that get consult and all they do is offer CoolSculpting or all they do is Botox. But Krissy, can you show us how you have customized your consult app for La Jolla Cosmetic to make it special and unique?
Krissy Obeso-Theus (15:41):
So here is our TouchMD consult app for our med spa. I really like to customize it so you feel like you are still in the practice, but at home in your hand. The photo you see is a rendering of our La Jolla Cosmetic Medical Spa in Carlsbad. So if you are a new patient and you happen to join our TouchMD platform, you're already looking and viewing out our office in your hand. We might give you direct information or information about your provider that way. But once you walk into the office, it's taking that virtual experience in real life. It's that one of the ways I like to customize it for our med spa, you'll also see, I really start by highlighting and credentialing all of our providers. That's really important for the patient to know because that's who they're gonna spend the most intimate experience with when they're in the office. On here you'll see that there's various information from videos, little mini bios, and most importantly to patients is usually their before and afters, <laugh>
Tyler Terry (16:50):
Always.
Tina Brown (16:51):
Always the most important. So the really cool thing about this is that you guys are orienting your patients with the office and with the providers before they ever step foot into your practice, right?
Krissy Obeso-Theus (17:06):
Absolutely, absolutely. Yeah. The whole point is making that connection with your patient and holding onto it.
Tina Brown (17:13):
Ah, you just answered my question is I was just gonna ask you. So how do your patients react to that? Like, you know, they, they come into the office already feeling comfortable with where they're at and the provider that they're seeing?
Krissy Obeso-Theus (17:27):
Yeah, we get really excited because they're like, oh this tool's really easy to use, this is also how we're using it at home. They can send us pictures they feel really connected to us versus other clunky clinical softwares that might try to keep you connected with your patients is the best way I could put it. So yeah, I feel like they have a really good experience with TouchMD for that reason.
Tina Brown (17:54):
How do your providers in the office feel about the customization and how have you put that together for them?
Krissy Obeso-Theus (18:02):
They get really excited that, I mean, okay, so there's webpage, we have social media, there's, we have YouTube, there's all kinds of resources that we have specifically at La Jolla Cosmetic too, to educate our patient and keep them connected to their provider. But that's a lot for the patient to go to all those platforms and to do all those things, especially if they may not be internet savvy. So this one platform allows us to direct all that information that they need straight to them without them having to do the extra leg work of whatever. So I think customizing it for our providers, they get really excited that their patients don't have to do that light work basically.
Tina Brown (18:48):
And just to clarify that, like it's straight to their iPhone, which we all have in our hands all the time anyway, right?
Krissy Obeso-Theus (18:54):
Mm-hmm. <affirmative>.
Tina Brown (18:54):
You know, I remember the days of going to the medical provider's office and walking out with like pamphlets or they would say, I'm going to email you all this stuff <laugh>. I know. Well guess what? It's all at the touch of their fingertips with their phones.
Krissy Obeso-Theus (19:08):
Yep.
Tyler Terry (19:09):
Krissy, I love what you said. I mean, when you're really bringing all those pieces of content, because they're all really valuable, YouTube's valuable to watch videos and reviews are valuable to be more confident and comfortable and making a choice. But really what you're doing, correct me if I'm wrong, but you're taking all of that curated content, you're putting it on your platform TouchMD, and essentially it's this blue check mark where you've signed off on this curated content for the patient. And at TouchMD it's something we call the Amazon-like experience where when you think of being on Amazon and you pull up a product, you know, if I pulled up a Tiger Woods hat, I'm on Amazon <laugh>, um, it's gonna show me or tell me everything I need to know about that hat, right? I could read reviews, I could read about it, watch a video, I could see related products, but essentially anything that I need to be confident and comfortable to say, yeah, it sounds like it is a good hat, great fabric, whatever, I can drop that into my cart.
(20:04):
And that's why Amazon, you know, 78% of people that get on Amazon purchase something on that or at that instance in that encounter. And so with TouchMD, you know, we're not Amazon by any means, but we've taken those same techniques, those same tools, videos for patients to watch. You alluded to the number one thing that patients wanna see before and after pictures for patients to look at. Usually the second thing would be reviews. So we can pull in RealSelf, RealPatientRatings, Google, Yelp, whatever it is. But then even things like you offer patient financing that could be on that same product page, so .
Krissy Obeso-Theus (20:41):
All of that is what we include on our profile. It can be customized to any practice needs, including everything you just talked about.
Tyler Terry (20:52):
I love it. So one of the most loved pieces of TouchMD is the patient app and it's one of the most loved patient apps in the industry. Patients enjoy logging into it so much. So of course to see their photos, they can sign their consents, they can review their pre and post. Over 80% of patients will actually log in within the first 24 hours and five times within 30 days. But can you give us some real feedback on how does La Jolla Cosmetic utilize your My TouchMD patient app and what is that experience like for your patients?
Krissy Obeso-Theus (21:30):
It's generally one of the first things that we introduce them to in the practice. Taking photos is the first thing that we do after they check in and get comfortable. So at that point we talk about their treatment and I let them know these photos are available for you, we do whatever our markings are, drawings, provider comes in and all that stuff. But I let them know, if you download the app now, I'm like, you're gonna have access to all the information going forward, whether it's a treatment that you got done today or a treatment that you didn't get done today. All these notes will be here right in your app for you. So it's really beneficial for them to do it at their first appointment. On the other hand, when it comes to somebody asking for their before and after photos, we often tell them at that point too, so, you know, in order to access your before and after photos, just download this app. So I think it just depends on where your patient is at in their journey and how you would introduce it to them.
Tyler Terry (22:28):
Okay. And just to dive in just a little deeper there, so something we hear a lot from practices is a, a major pain point that we don't talk about is patients texting or emailing photos to the practice, which isn't HIPAA compliant. And something that you can do through the patient app is the patient can take a HIPAA compliant selfie that sends to the practice. Can you talk to, you know, how patients experience that?
Krissy Obeso-Theus (22:54):
One of my favorite things in the practice, there's all kinds of tools for getting patients photos from them, but mainly because of HIPAA, they're mostly wrong <laugh>, <laugh>. So, um, to be honest, it's been a grace that patient could not only have access to all their information, but if we need something like an after photo of them, they can send it seamlessly through the app. They just, just like, they're opening a camera, they open their app, you touch the camera, you take a photo. So like I said, it really, really keeps the patient engaged in real time with the practice without all the extra handy work of downloading, sending an email, uploading to whatever kind of platform that you're working on for your E M R system and all that. So again, one of my favorite things ever. The patients like it also because it's very easy, they don't have to do all that downloading, uploading, where's my email kind of stuff.
Tyler Terry (23:54):
Yeah. Oh for sure.
Tina Brown (23:55):
Because ultimately that takes you a, that could potentially take you a whole nother staff member in your practice to be on the phone with patients all day telling 'em how to upload their photos to their emails. <laugh>,
Krissy Obeso-Theus (24:05):
Right? 100%.
Tina Brown (24:06):
But instead, yeah, you can just say, hey, open up the TouchMD app. It's just like taking a, a picture of your kids at the park, like it's that easy.
Krissy Obeso-Theus (24:14):
Mm-hmm <affirmative> and then your provider gets it. They can give you much quicker feedback than emailing and uploading. <laugh>
Tina Brown (24:23):
Yes, yes.
Tyler Terry (24:26):
Alright, so we're gonna shift gears here a little bit and there's a lot of gears of TouchMD, but this gear is very important and a lot of practices forget that with TouchMD comes the best point of care marketing technology in the industry. And when we talk about point of care marketing, it's actually, there's multiple pieces to it and I'm gonna turn the time over to you here in just a second, but I just wanna paint a picture to our listeners. Essentially, at the point of care in your waiting room, playlist can live on a tv, right? And there's an algorithm that keeps that playlist shuffled and unique. It's never monotonous or annoying. The same thing can happen in any of your rooms. So if you have a HydraFacial room, a CoolSculpting room, you name it, we can target market based on the audience and the room, which is great.
(25:12):
The next piece of playlist, and it's multifaceted here, the next piece of playlist would happen on the iPad. And so what happens there would be you would actually put that iPad on a gooseneck stand, like a beautiful, you could choose the color, gold, rose, gold, silver, black, nice stand in the room. The cool thing about that is you can actually choose the positioning and there's different studies based on, you know, should the marketing device be at the left side of the door when the patient walks in on the right side of the chair. But essentially playlist will take over the iPad, that same iPad that you're using to take photos to give a consult for the patient to hold and browse through a menu. If nobody's touching the iPad, playlist takes over and essentially TouchMD is always working for the practice. And then the last piece of playlist lives within the patient app. So when the patient is on that patient app, TouchMD playlist is subliminally and subtly marketing to the patient. So the point of care isn't just in the consult room or in the treatment room or in the office. The point of care actually extends outside of the walls of the practice into the hands of the patient on the app. So now Krissy, I want to turn the time over to you to talk about what you love about Playlist, how you're customizing it, and how it's just been for your practice.
Krissy Obeso-Theus (26:32):
Amazing. At first I was like, what is this playlist? And obviously this is great, but then we really started capitalizing on our use of it. Obviously it has great manufacturer content. That's one thing I love. So if you're not somebody that's a creative person or you have a home marketing team to do things for you, you can just play it. You know, TouchMD works with these companies to actually give your clients what they need, which is great already without the extra work, but we use it for much more than that. Um, we put QR codes on there, we put our Yelp reviews on there, we display before and afters announcements. Like it's kind of endless. I'm still trying to find different ways to use it, but yeah, we really, really love it.
Tina Brown (27:22):
Ooh, I love how you said like it's endless because the possibilities are endless. Like we see practices use it so differently, like you said, Yelp reviews or marketing. What other services do you offer in your office? I, the list goes on and on and on when it comes to playlists. So in your office are, do you have it on like a smart tv? Is it on the, the actual iPad devices? How do you use playlists in the office?
Krissy Obeso-Theus (27:51):
Specifically at our office, we have it obviously in our opening waiting rooms, not that we typically have people waiting a lot, but when they are, you know, they're getting that direct information right there. Obviously, like Tyler said, it plays on their playlist, which is personally one thing that I love. It's the first thing that they see when they open up their app, um, next to their photos. So it's really, really engaging. It allows 'em to look at their photos and the playlist at the same time. So it's like, ooh, maybe this is for me or maybe it's not right, whatever procedure is playing at the time. Another useful area we keep it in is our CoolSculpting room and I would say treatment room, but CoolSculpting is typically the one where patients are sitting there mildly bored for a while, so we'll just have that playing in the background. We also use it at our events, which is awesome. We make sure we upload and put the right content that we want our patients to get on this feed and we change it for every event. So I, like I said again, endless possibilities here.
Tina Brown (28:55):
Ooh, another beauty piece of it is that you can change it as often as you need. So yeah, if you have an event coming up, I love that you're customizing it to that event so that it's constantly changing. For those patients that are coming in often for treatment, it may not be the same today as it is tomorrow. The customization is, is endless.
Tyler Terry (29:17):
Krissy, you are amazing and you've been a wealth of knowledge and you know, on behalf of TouchMD, we just want to thank you for taking time to be with us today to share your pearls, your insights, your wisdom. But I want to give you the last word here. Is there anything else, you know, as we've had this great episode, I'm sure you've had a lot of things you know, that you're wanting to talk about. Is there anything else that you'd like to share with our listeners?
Krissy Obeso-Theus (29:45):
Oh, thank you so much for having me. Um, I really am a power user. I'm a passionate user of TouchMD and honestly, I would just get with them to customize it the way that you need it. There's so many tools and improvements that they're making regularly get with your TouchMD and they'll make TouchMD an experience for you.
Tyler Terry (30:09):
Amazing. Thank you so much. If you're listening today and have questions about TouchMD, want to see a demo for yourself to experience it or need help and assistance to make your TouchMD experience even better, reach out to us or book a demo at touchmd.com/demo.
