About Stewart Gandolf, MBA

Stewart Gandolf, MBA, is both the Publisher of PatientExperience.com and the Co-Founder of Healthcare Success. Stewart has written for dozens of leading healthcare publications and spoken at hundreds of venues on a variety of topics including marketing, reputation management and patient experience. Additionally, he has personally consulted for over 1,500 hospitals and practices. Prior to becoming an entrepreneur, Stewart worked for leading advertising agencies including J. Walter Thompson.

Author Archive | Stewart Gandolf, MBA

patient loyalty emotions

Patient Loyalty: Why People Buy Emotions, Not Things

The secret ingredient in sales—the one thing that every successful leader knows—is to discover the emotional touch point that motivates the prospective buyer. Fundamentally, the individual doesn’t want to buy a car simply to have a car. They will buy a fancy car to boost their self-esteem. Or they will buy a fast, sporty car […]

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Become Best in Class in Patient Experience: Service Lessons from Iceland

Reykjavík, Iceland, is an unlikely place to discover best-in-class patient experience lessons. But the main airport has already established itself as a premier customer service facility. We’ll spotlight their success story shortly—along with a page or two you can use from their playbook. Stick with me on this, but first, here’s a bit of the […]

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Easy Delivers Great Patient Experience

It’s Hard to Be Easy: How to Deliver Great Patient Experience

The world of healthcare delivery continues to change—and the operational watchword is “easy.” This concept—a proven idea that practices can implement today—comes from the retail consumer world. Simply…when you make it easy for the customer, you differentiate yourself from the pack, and your results increase exponentially. “It’s supposed to be hard. If it wasn’t hard, […]

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patient experience score improvement

Have Hospitals Reached the Ceiling for Patient Experience Improvement?

Research suggests has it that patient experience improvements may have reached their peaks. Have improvement rates bumped their head against a ceiling. Rates went flat since the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) connected patient experience scores to value-based incentives. Something about the ceiling observation reminds us of Charles Holland Duell. It’s one of those […]

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The Future of Healthcare Delivery and Patient Experience

A painful counter-current to a positive patient experience is the patient’s wait time. Nobody likes waiting. And the longer an individual waits for healthcare service, the more their level of satisfaction and positive patient experience erodes. Patients are waiting long before they get to the “waiting room.” On average it takes about three weeks to get […]

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Every Hospital Should Have a Presidential Hotline

A colleague told us about his recent stop at a nearby Staples store for office supplies. One unique thing was attention getting. Taking a page from the retail giant, it would be easy for every hospital to have a “presidential hotline” to optimize feedback and the patient experience. Here’s the quick backstory. Our friend’s shopping experience […]

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caring hands

Patient Experience Perfection in 16 Minutes or Less

The secret to improving “the patient experience” is delivering what the patient wants most in every physician encounter. Clinical excellence? Yes, certainly. (That’s sort of a given.) A friendly smile? Sure. Empathy? Naturally. Authoritative confidence? Yep. Eye contact. Connectivity booster. These are all important elements in the patient experience mix. But consider that the typical […]

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patient experience and satisfaction

If You Think Your Patient Experience Delivery is Good, Think Again.

Things are bad, and they’re getting worse. There’s a huge disconnect between the patient’s perception of experience in healthcare and what healthcare thinks it’s delivering. That’s according to a new study of The State of Consumer Healthcare from GE Healthcare Camden Group and Prophet, a global brand consultancy. America’s healthcare consumers have radically transformed from […]

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online appointment dog

Appointments, Patient Experience and the Age of Convenience

It’s far easier for you or me to make an appointment for doggie day care than it is to see a doctor. It’s frustrating. Priorities somewhere are upside-down. It shouldn’t be so, but that’s the facts, Jack. In many (perhaps most) parts of the nation, technologically advanced healthcare providers and medical facilities sadly trail the comparatively […]

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intangible patient experience

Your Real Brand is What the Patient Experiences

Recently, we were talking with a marketing savvy client about the real meaning of patient experience. We agreed with Jill Mathison, VP Ambulatory Services, Pomona Valley Hospital and Medical Center, that it’s a tough concept to define, and a challenge to translate into a hospital brand and branding message. But the hard truth, we concluded, is that […]

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