Healthcare Success

Every healthcare organization has a mission statement. Very few truly operate by it. In this episode, Morehouse School of Medicine Chief Marketing and Communications Officer Dorian Harriston explains why mission should function as an organization's operating system—not simply its marketing message—and how authentic purpose influences everything from physician recruitment to patient trust.

Healthcare organizations are under increasing pressure to improve patient outcomes while controlling costs—but doing both requires more than new technology or payment models. In this episode, Stewart Gandolf speaks with Michele Paige, Chief Growth Officer at Strive Health, about how patient-centered design, proactive care navigation, predictive analytics, and AI-powered engagement are helping healthcare organizations deliver more personalized care, reduce unnecessary hospitalizations, and improve the patient experience. Using value-based kidney care as a real-world example, Michele shares practical lessons that healthcare leaders can apply across virtually any specialty or care setting.

Healthcare has spent decades optimizing individual parts of a fragmented system while costs continue to rise and outcomes lag behind expectations. In this episode, Nasim Afsar, MD, MBA, author of Intelligent Health, explains why AI's greatest opportunity may be helping healthcare shift from episodic care to a more continuous, personalized, and consumer-centered model.

While acquiring physician groups is rarely “easy,” successfully integrating them is far harder. In this episode, Synergy Orthopedic Specialists CEO Alex Fernandez shares lessons from decades of physician practice consolidation, explaining why delayed integration undermines growth, why physician alignment matters more than organizational charts, and how healthcare leaders can build platforms that actually deliver long-term value.

Healthcare leaders often focus on staffing, technology, and operations while overlooking one of their most powerful performance tools: the physical environment itself. In this episode, Lorissa MacAllister, PhD, discusses how healthcare organizations can improve patient experience, staff satisfaction, operational efficiency, and financial performance through strategic facility design.

Few healthcare executives have had a front-row seat to the growth of three major multi-location healthcare platforms. In this episode, Matt Hall shares lessons from Pacific Dental Services, Platinum Dermatology Partners, and Smile Brands, offering practical insights on brand strategy, acquisitions, culture, and how successful organizations balance enterprise scale with local relevance.

What can healthcare leaders learn from the COVID pandemic that still applies today? Amy Comeau reflects on leadership, communication, trust, and organizational resilience, offering practical lessons for navigating uncertainty, workforce challenges, and future crises.

In this session, we’ll unpack how and why AI hallucinations occur in healthcare, why the risk is disproportionately high in this industry, and what it means for marketing, compliance, and digital strategy leaders. We’ll explore how organizations can proactively identify where AI is getting their brand wrong by drawing from real-world experience and emerging tools including LLM monitoring systems designed to detect hallucinations and assess sentiment at the service-line level.

As AI-powered search changes how people discover and evaluate brands, traditional marketing attribution is becoming harder to trust. In this episode, Stewart Gandolf, Brandon Schakola, and Richard Wong discuss how AI is compressing the search funnel, why traffic is becoming a weaker KPI, and what marketers should focus on instead. They explore AI visibility, prompt tracking, media mix modeling, SEO measurement, and why authority and retrievability may matter more than clicks in the years ahead.

In Part 2 of Stewart Gandolf’s conversation with Smile Brands CEO Steve Bilt, dentistry becomes the case study for a much broader healthcare leadership lesson: sustainable growth comes from solving enduring market problems, reducing friction, and building systems that work before attempting to scale them.

In Part 2 of Stewart Gandolf’s conversation with Smile Brands CEO Steve Bilt, dentistry becomes the case study for a much broader healthcare leadership lesson: sustainable growth comes from solving enduring market problems, reducing friction, and building systems that work before attempting to scale them.

Rural healthcare systems across the U.S. are facing a growing physician shortage—and traditional solutions aren’t enough. In this episode, Stewart Gandolf is joined by Dr. Kenneth Holmen, President and CEO of CentraCare, to discuss how his organization is tackling the problem head-on by helping launch the first new medical school in Minnesota in over 50 years. From workforce shortages and aging populations to siloed systems and outdated thinking, they explore what’s driving the crisis—and how a new, community-centered model for education and healthcare delivery could help solve it.

In this episode of the Healthcare Success podcast, Stewart Gandolf speaks with Karen Sussman Horgan, CEO of Val Health, about the critical role behavioral science plays in healthcare—and why AI alone isn’t enough to drive meaningful change.

Steve Bilt, CEO and co-founder of Smile Brands, joins Stewart Gandolf to discuss why team alignment has become essential for scaling multi-location healthcare organizations. Drawing from 25 years of DSO leadership, Steve shares practical lessons on execution, culture, technology adoption, M&A discipline, and building enterprise value.

Healthcare organizations often invest heavily in marketing—but struggle to convert that demand into patient care due to disconnected systems and siloed teams. In this episode, Stewart Gandolf is joined by Nicole Vafadari, Founder of Doret Consulting, to explore how misalignment between marketing, operations, and IT creates friction in the patient journey—and what it takes to fix it. From call center inefficiencies and EMR limitations to the role of data in driving change, they share practical strategies for improving patient access, increasing conversion, and turning these traditionally siloed teams into true collaborators.

AI is transforming healthcare content—but it’s not a set-it-and-forget-it solution. In this episode, Stewart Gandolf is joined by Melanie Wilson and Mary Hayes to break down how AI is actually used inside a healthcare marketing agency, where it adds value, and where human expertise is still essential. From strategy and SEO to brand voice and patient safety, they explore why AI works best as an accelerant—not a replacement—in healthcare’s high-stakes, “your money, your life” environment.

In this episode of the Healthcare Success Podcast, Stewart Gandolf is joined by Brooke Hynes, Anissa Davenport, and Dave Eilers of Possibility Partners to unpack one of the most persistent challenges in healthcare organizations: team dysfunction. From unclear roles and internal silos to cross-functional friction with IT, operations, and administration, healthcare marketing teams are under increasing pressure to perform—often without the alignment needed to succeed. The conversation explores why marketing teams frequently feel misunderstood, how that impacts performance, and what leaders can do to fix it.

In this episode, Stewart Gandolf talks with Kirsten Lecky about how healthcare content strategy is evolving in the AI era—and why balancing discoverability and trust is more critical than ever.

AI is accelerating content creation in pharma—but compliance processes haven’t kept up. In this episode of the Healthcare Success Podcast, Stewart Gandolf speaks with Pushpa Ithal and Nikki Wolfert of MarketBeam about how AI is reshaping social media strategy in regulated industries. They explore the growing gap between content scale and MLR review capacity, the rise of domain-trained AI models, and how pharma teams can use AI to improve efficiency without compromising trust, accuracy, or governance.

Episode of the Organic Growth Podcast series recorded live at the McGuireWoods Healthcare Private Equity & Finance Conference, this conversation explores how healthcare organizations can unlock growth by focusing on financial fundamentals.

Episode of the Organic Growth Podcast series recorded live at the McGuireWoods Healthcare Private Equity & Finance Conference, this conversation explores how lenders evaluate organic growth—and what healthcare organizations must demonstrate to secure capital.

Episode of the Organic Growth Podcast series recorded live at the McGuireWoods Healthcare Private Equity & Finance Conference, this conversation explores how buyers evaluate organic growth—and why it’s becoming a key driver of valuation.

Episode of the Organic Growth Podcast series recorded live at the McGuireWoods Healthcare Private Equity & Finance Conference, this conversation explores why healthcare organizations are shifting from acquisition-driven growth to operational performance and efficiency.

Episode of the Organic Growth Podcast series recorded live at the McGuireWoods Healthcare Private Equity & Finance Conference, this conversation explores how healthcare leaders can evaluate AI vendors in a rapidly evolving—and often overhyped—market.

Episode of the Organic Growth Podcast series recorded live at the McGuireWoods Healthcare Private Equity & Finance Conference, this conversation explores one of the most overlooked drivers of growth: hiring the right people.

This special Organic Growth Podcast was recorded live at the McGuireWoods Healthcare Private Equity & Finance Conference. Revenue doesn’t disappear—it gets stuck. In this episode, Brian Plamondon of SuperDial explains how AI is transforming revenue cycle management by automating payer communication and clearing long-standing bottlenecks.

Organic Growth Podcast: The Patient Is the New Payer: Rethinking Healthcare Payments by Healthcare Success

This special Organic Growth Podcast series is being recorded live at the McGuire Woods Healthcare Private Equity & Finance Conference in Chicago. In this episode, Stewart Gandolf sits down with Roy Bejarano of SCALE Healthcare to explore why scaling healthcare organizations is far more complex than simply adding locations or acquiring practices.

Stewart Gandolf speaks with Andrew Smith, CEO of Association of Dental Support Organizations, about how the industry is shifting beyond rapid deal-making and into a more disciplined focus on operational performance, technology, and patient experience.

In this special Organic Growth Podcast series filmed at the McGuireWoods Healthcare Private Equity & Investing Conference, Stewart Gandolf sits down with Louis Oster of ECG Consultants to unpack why so many healthcare organizations struggle to grow—even after investing in marketing, acquisitions, and infrastructure.

This special Organic Growth Podcast series is being recorded live at the McGuire Woods Healthcare Private Equity & Finance Conference in Chicago. In this first episode, Stewart Gandolf, CEO of Healthcare Success, sits down with Quin Wright, Senior Vice President of Real Rev, to discuss lifetime value.

In this episode of the Healthcare Success Podcast, Stewart Gandolf talks with Steve Page, Founder and CEO of SUN Behavioral Health, about whether private equity and patient care can successfully coexist. Steve shares a behavioral health CEO’s perspective on capital, care quality, governance, misaligned incentives and how thoughtful investment can expand access to essential services.

In this Healthcare Success Podcast episode, Stewart Gandolf interviews Holly Buckley, Chair of Health Care at McGuireWoods, about healthcare private equity trends in 2026. They discuss deal activity, regulatory changes, high-growth sectors, and how AI and operational discipline are driving value creation.

In this week’s podcast, Stewart Gandolf talks with Kelsey Kloss about why PR has become even more valuable in the AI era—and how healthcare brands can use earned media, press releases, and digital PR to influence what AI says about them.

In this week’s podcast, Stewart Gandolf talks with Krista Robertson and Ben Cash about why healthcare RFPs so often frustrate both clients and agencies—and what health systems can do to make the process more strategic, more human, and more effective.

In this week’s podcast, Stewart Gandolf talks with Sean Young, former CMO of Penn State Health, about why healthcare marketing remains misunderstood in many organizations—and what marketing leaders can do to build C-suite trust, use data more effectively, and shape strategy at the highest level.

AI is rapidly reshaping healthcare marketing—but success depends on using it to solve real consumer problems. In this episode of the Healthcare Success Podcast, Stewart Gandolf speaks with Sandra Mackey, Chief Marketing Officer of Bon Secours Mercy Health, about how her team is integrating AI into its broader marketing strategy to reduce friction in the patient journey and improve access to care. Sandra shares how their conversational AI platform helps guide consumers to the right provider at the right time, why AI must be embedded within the overall marketing ecosystem rather than treated as a standalone tool, and how healthcare organizations can balance innovation with trust, governance, and patient privacy.

Air quality is an often-overlooked factor that can significantly impact patient outcomes. In this episode of the Healthcare Success Podcast, Stewart Gandolf speaks with Katy Worrilow, Founder and Chief Scientific Officer of LifeAire Systems, about how unexplained fluctuations in IVF pregnancy rates led to the discovery that airborne contaminants were affecting embryo viability. Katy explains how this insight led to the development of a technology designed to destroy airborne pathogens rather than simply capture them—an innovation now being used in IVF labs, operating rooms, NICUs, senior living communities, and other healthcare environments.

How can healthcare practices use video not just for marketing—but to drive consistency, efficiency, and higher patient conversion? In this week’s podcast, Stewart Gandolf sits down with Dr. Steve Moravec, Orthodontist at Moravec Ortho (Plainfield, IL), and Carol Gifford, Co-Founder of Docs on Video, to explore how thoughtfully planned video content can transform patient education, streamline staff workflows, and significantly improve case acceptance.

When does a healthcare app actually improve patient experience—and when is it a costly distraction? In this week’s podcast, Stewart Gandolf sits down with Erin Rollenhagen, Founder of People-Friendly Tech, to explore how healthcare organizations can decide whether to build an app, what it should do, and how to design it so patients actually want to use it—especially in high-stress healthcare moments.

In this week’s podcast, I sit down with Matthew Pinzur, Chief Marketing & Growth Officer at Jackson Health System, to explore how a large public health system aligns mission, operations, and marketing through disciplined planning, measurable accountability, and data-driven patient engagement. Jackson is a rare organization with a dual identity: it’s both Miami-Dade County’s safety net hospital system, providing the same level of care regardless of insurance status, and South Florida’s primary academic medical center, powered by its partnership with the University of Miami. That combination shapes everything—from brand strategy to growth priorities—because the high-margin, highly differentiated services help fund the mission-driven work that serves everyone.

In this week’s podcast, Stewart Gandolf sits down with Duane Forrester—renowned search and AI discovery strategist, author of The Machine Layer, and former Microsoft leader behind Bing Webmaster Tools and Schema.org—alongside Brandon Schakola, Senior Director of Digital Services at Healthcare Success. Together, they unpack what “AI visibility” really means, why traditional SEO metrics are no longer enough, and how healthcare organizations must rethink discovery as AI systems increasingly summarize, cite and answer on behalf of brands.

What does real innovation in healthcare actually look like—beyond buzzwords and recycled ideas? In this episode, Stewart Gandolf speaks with Bobak Salehi of Biotronik about how meaningful innovation starts by asking better questions, deliberately doing what others aren’t, and iterating quickly. Through memorable case studies—from a human-powered aircraft to a violin built from a medical device—Bobak shares practical lessons healthcare leaders can apply to marketing, product strategy, and engagement, including how AI can act as a powerful creative partner without replacing human judgment.

When does a healthcare app actually improve patient experience—and when is it a costly distraction? In this week’s podcast, Stewart Gandolf sits down with Erin Rollenhagen, Founder of People-Friendly Tech, to explore how healthcare organizations can decide whether to build an app, what it should do, and how to design it so patients actually want to use it—especially in high-stress healthcare moments.

Why should healthcare organizations prioritize specialist agencies—and what can they borrow from specialization to grow faster themselves? In this week’s podcast, I sit down with Corey Quinn, President & CEO at Corey Quinn, Inc. to explore why specialization is more than a preference—it’s a practical strategy for reducing risk, accelerating results, and building durable marketing partnerships in healthcare.

For years, I’ve had the privilege of calling Dr. Michael Leon both a close friend and a professional collaborator on some of the most fascinating brain-and-behavior science I’ve ever encountered. In this episode of the Healthcare Success podcast, we dig into what might be one of his most exciting contributions yet: how a simple, consumer-friendly device on your nightstand could dramatically improve memory and support better brain health while you sleep.

What happens when your healthcare marketing succeeds, but your teams aren’t trained or scaled to keep up with patient demand? In this episode, I sit down with Aqeel Shahid from IntelePeer to explore how healthcare leaders are using AI phone agents to improve access, reduce staff strain and modernize the patient experience.

New Insights from gSight’s 10-year, 400,000-survey dataset on real visitor journeys reveal how AI is changing everything for hospital and health system websites. In this week’s podcast, I sit down with my friends Mike Schneider, VP and Co-Founder at Greystone.Net, and Rob Klein, Founder & CEO of Klein & Partners—the co-founders of gSight™, a healthcare website visitor feedback and insights platform.

How can hospitals and health systems use podcasts to humanize their brand, showcase provider expertise, build trust, engage communities and maximize content ROI? In this episode, Stewart Gandolf sits down with Bill Klaproth to explore the strategic value of podcasts for healthcare organizations.

Healthcare CEO Vasanta Pundarika shares how behavioral health and women's health organizations can scale effectively while maintaining clinical mission and patient trust.