Healthcare Success

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.

A practical guide to the channels, messaging, and targeting strategies healthcare organizations need to reach referring physicians, healthcare professionals, administrators, and executive decision-makers effectively.

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.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 search is changing how patients find care—and what digital media has to do to reach them. A strategic guide for healthcare leaders navigating paid search, paid social, and programmatic in 2026.

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.
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.

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.

Steve Bilt, CEO and co-founder of Smile Brands, joins Stewart Gandolf to discuss what it takes to scale a 600-location healthcare organization through disciplined execution, leadership alignment, culture, operational focus, and strategic decision-making. Drawing on 25 years of DSO leadership, Steve shares practical lessons on growth, technology adoption, acquisitions, organizational change, and creating sustainable enterprise value.

When healthcare marketing is working, it often fades into the background—and that's exactly when organizations are most likely to make costly mistakes. In this article, Stewart Gandolf explores why successful marketing programs are frequently underestimated, the risks of replacing specialized expertise with inexperienced resources, and how executive disengagement can undermine growth. He also examines the critical connection between marketing performance and patient access, highlighting how AI-powered call tracking, attribution, and patient access technologies are transforming the way healthcare organizations measure and improve patient acquisition.

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.

AI Overviews and answer engines are quietly changing who shows up as “the answer” in healthcare search. Learn how to adapt your SEO strategy so your website stays visible in AI driven results.

Traditional Google results still matter, but today’s search journey also runs through AI Overviews, generative summaries, answer boxes, and assistants that choose a handful of sources to quote and recommend. For healthcare organizations, that means SEO is no longer just about “getting on page one.” It’s about becoming the source AI and search engines rely on.

AI Overviews and answer engines are quietly changing who shows up as “the answer” in healthcare search. Learn how to adapt your SEO strategy so your website stays visible in AI driven results.

Most healthcare websites act as static brochures and lose high-value patients. Learn how to turn your site into a true patient acquisition engine in 2026—without a complete rebuild.

Most healthcare websites quietly lose high-value actions because their UX was designed for committees, not users. Learn how patient-first UX reduces anxiety and lifts appointments, inquiries, and ROI.

Most healthcare organizations still treat their websites as brochures. It “looks fine,” but leaks high value patients daily. The irony: you may do the hard work—investing in SEO, Google Ads, traditional media, and brand—but lose the payoff at conversion.

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.

Apple Business signals a shift in local search. See how Apple Maps Ads and new discovery tools will impact healthcare SEO and paid media.

Matt Shumer, CEO of HyperWrite, recently described this as “February 2020 for AI”—the moment when the signals are visible, but most people haven’t yet connected the dots.

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.

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.

For healthcare organizations, this shift elevates digital PR from a supporting tactic to a core authority engine. The goal is no longer to acquire links for rankings alone—it’s to earn coverage and citations that teach AI systems, “This organization is credible, visible, and safe to recommend.”

For hospitals, health systems, and multi-location practices, reviews, ratings, sentiment, and broader E-E-A-T signals (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness) now play a central role in whether AI systems are comfortable naming you as an answer at all.

For hospitals, health systems, and multi-location practices, local SEO is no longer just about map pack visibility. It has become a decision layer—one of the primary ways AI determines who to recommend when a patient is closest to choosing care.

AI-driven systems like Google AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Perplexity don’t interpret websites holistically the way humans do. They assemble answers from fragments—pages, passages, entities, and relationships. That means your technical foundation increasingly determines whether your content is summarized, cited, or excluded.

For hospitals, health systems, and multi-location groups, I believe the winners will be organizations that build a smaller number of high-quality, citation-ready pages around their most important conditions and service lines. These pages aren’t written to chase keywords; they’re designed to function as primary sources that AI systems can confidently rely on.

In an AI‑first search world, your brand is no longer just a logo and a tagline—it is a data asset that algorithms use as a shortcut for safety, relevance, and trust. When Google AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Perplexity have to decide which hospital, health system, or medical group to name, they lean toward brands they recognize, understand, and see repeatedly in credible contexts.

This article is the home base for a seven‑part series on “How to Show Up in AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Perplexity” for healthcare brands. It introduces the AI Visibility Stack—six core areas of AI‑era SEO: brand, content, technical SEO and schema, local SEO, reputation, and off‑site digital PR—then links to six deep‑dive playbooks, one for each area. Together, they’re designed so your marketing, digital, and clinical leaders can work from the same framework instead of chasing disconnected SEO tips.

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.

There isn’t one universal answer to “How much does a healthcare marketing agency cost?” A solo practice leasing a website for a few hundred dollars a month, a multilocation medical group hiring a specialized agency and a global pharmaceutical running multimillion-dollar campaigns are all asking the same question—but the economics are completely different. This guide […]

Hiring a new marketing agency can be challenging, even for senior marketing executives who have hired many agencies over the years. While the wrong agency can turn out to be an expensive mistake, the right agency can act as your strategic partner in many areas, from leading successful new growth initiatives, building your brand, leading […]

(Because AI isn’t coming. It’s already sitting in your lobby, drinking your coffee.)  If you’ve been telling yourself, “We’ll deal with AI next quarter,” I have bad news: AI didn’t wait.   Search is evolving FAST, and if your website still looks and behaves like it did in 2019, it’s basically wearing skinny jeans in a […]

Learn why authenticity is a must in healthcare branding. See how organizations can build trust, loyalty, and differentiation in competitive markets.

Our SEO team is on the leading edge of healthcare AI and digital marketing. Together with Stewart, they’ve compiled insights and recommendations on how health systems and healthcare organizations can leverage AI to supercharge SEO and patient engagement. AI is here and it’s transforming how health systems and healthcare organizations connect with patients, deliver care […]

AI search moved from novelty to mainstream way faster than most of us expected.Like, many lightspeeds faster. After Google I/O 2025, even seasoned digital strategists realized the shift from traditional search to AI Overviews wasn’t years away; it was already here (and stomping all over traditional search analytics). In the past, digital visibility centered on […]

If your paid search conversions have mysteriously dropped (or your dashboard looks too good to be true), you’re not alone. AI is rewriting the rules of paid search. From shifting search engine results page (SERP) visibility to murky performance metrics, AI Overviews and Performance Max (PMax) campaigns are challenging how healthcare organizations measure success. In […]

Google’s new AI Mode redefines how content is evaluated and displayed in search, especially for sensitive, YMYL (Your Money Your Life) categories, like healthcare, that can impact a person’s well-being. The new feature heavily prioritizes content that demonstrates Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness (E-E-A-T), a framework that Google uses to assess content quality. AI algorithms […]

Yes—your traffic and rankings are down. But that doesn’t mean your strategy is broken. Across industries, brands are noticing the same trends: What looks like a drop in visibility isn’t an SEO failure.It’s a paradigm shift. AI-driven search has fundamentally changed how visibility works. At Healthcare Success, we’re watching this shift closely, adapting our strategies, […]

AI Overviews were launched in the U.S. in May 2024, and their impact on analytics dashboards is still taking shape. While marketers and healthcare leaders have been busy speculating about their impact on organic traffic and brand visibility, Google isn’t offering much in the way of clarity. Tools like Google Analytics and Search Console still […]

Find Out How Google’s AI-Powered Search Is Rewriting Healthcare Marketing For healthcare marketers, this isn’t just a minor update. It’s a fundamental shift in how patients search for care and how your brand shows up (or doesn’t). What’s Driving the Shift? Three important things: To stay competitive, healthcare marketers must treat content like a strategic […]

After a speaking with dozens of healthcare executives during my recent conference tour, I’m more convinced than ever— Brand strategy isn’t optional. It’s a business imperative, especially as your business grows. Whether you are a healthcare provider, manufacturer, or other healthcare business, expansion, acquisitions, and new service lines can quickly distance you from the patients, […]

Millennials expect digital healthcare to feel like the apps they use every day: frictionless, fast, accessible, and on their terms. Is your marketing strategy built to meet them there or are you relying on an outdated marketing plan that doesn’t resonate? In this blog post, I share seven proven strategies to help you connect, compete, […]

Is your telehealth business buried on your website? If it is, you’re missing out on a huge opportunity to boost patient engagement and reduce costs. Telehealth isn’t just another service line. It’s a distinct business model with its own users, workflows, and expectations. Your website and UX design must reflect that. By 2026, nearly one […]

Trimming your marketing budget might seem like a quick way to cut costs, but it can hurt your healthcare business more than you think—especially during economic uncertainty. While the U.S. economy remains numerically strong, 53% of Americans think it’s on the wrong track. With uncertainty surrounding impending tariffs, inflation, a tightening labor market, and rising healthcare […]

Forward by Stewart Gandolf, Chief Executive Officer At Healthcare Success, we understand that a patient’s journey often begins with a search query. In this blog, our Technical Program Manager, Victoria Shepherd, explores the critical role of symptom search optimization. She shares how organizations can leverage this healthcare marketing trend to engage potential patients early and […]

Branding is more than just logos, slogans, and colors. It’s a long-term strategy to build trust, credibility, and healthcare brand loyalty across generations. Understanding how to build these values is critical, and it varies between generations. Healthcare consumers have distinct preferences and expectations depending on their age, requiring multilocation healthcare brands to balance digital innovation […]

Although women remain the primary healthcare consumers, 66% of men are now more focused on their health and wellness than they were before the pandemic. This shift is a valuable opportunity for your healthcare organization to connect with this growing audience and address their healthcare needs. Here’s how you can better connect with this audience, […]

As we enter 2025, one thing remains clear: marketing has evolved beyond simply promoting services. Now, it's about connecting authentically, earning trust, and adapting to and meeting the needs of today’s well-informed patients.  With my years of experience navigating this fast-paced industry, I believe next year will be pivotal and demand that healthcare organizations position […]

Your value proposition is more than just a catchy phrase—it’s a vital tool that piques interest, communicates your brand identity, and compels consumers to book an appointment. And, it can increase patient volume and revenue. Here’s why: Your value proposition is, at its foundation, an essential component of your brand messaging. A quick primer: Together, […]

Are you struggling to fill critical positions in your healthcare organization? You’re not alone. With competition for top talent at an all-time high, hospitals and health systems must prioritize employer branding to attract and retain skilled professionals. Why Employer Branding Matters Employer branding isn’t just a marketing buzzword—it’s a critical strategy for healthcare organizations. How […]