Healthcare Growth · Multi-Site Operators · PE-Backed Platforms
Growth strategy built inside the operating company.
I’m Paul Gruensfelder. I’ve spent 13+ years in healthcare marketing, including nearly a decade leading growth for multi-site dental organizations, most recently as Vice President of Marketing for a PE-backed platform. I help healthcare groups find where growth is actually breaking, then build the systems that fix it.
Why It Works
Built from operator experience, not marketing theory.
Most growth advice comes from outside the building: an agency, a deck, a benchmark. I’ve spent my career inside healthcare organizations, where strategy has to survive contact with reality. The phone that doesn’t get answered. The schedule with no capacity. The doctor who hasn’t bought in. The platform nobody adopted.
That experience changes how you diagnose problems. A weak marketing ROI often turns out to be a call conversion problem. Low appointment volume can be a capacity problem. A new-patient record can hide net attrition. The value is in knowing the difference, and then building systems the organization will actually use.
In healthcare since 2013, across health systems, medical groups, and dental support organizations
Nearly a decade leading marketing for multi-site dental groups
VP of Marketing inside a PE-backed platform spanning dozens of practices across multiple states
Hands-on across acquisition, retention, reactivation, reputation, martech, analytics, and internal communications
Ideal Fit
Who I Work With
I’m most useful to healthcare organizations where growth spans more than one location, and where marketing has to connect to operations, capacity, and financial performance to matter.
PE-backed healthcare platforms
For sponsors and executive teams that need marketing to connect clearly to growth targets, EBITDA, and operating priorities. Platform-level growth requires a different discipline than location-level execution, and the two rarely get built at the same time.
DSOs and dental groups
For dental organizations balancing local practice identity, provider capacity, patient retention, and new patient demand across a growing footprint. The challenges are specific enough that general healthcare strategy often falls short.
Multi-site and specialty groups
For MSOs, specialty platforms, and multi-location operators that need a consistent approach to local visibility, reputation, patient communication, and demand generation as locations, service lines, and complexity grow.
Emerging groups preparing for scale
For founders and leadership teams that want the foundation in place before the next wave of growth makes every gap harder and more expensive to fix. Getting the systems right early is far cheaper than retrofitting them later.
Scope of Work
Where growth actually breaks
A campaign can create demand. It cannot answer the phone, open a schedule, win a doctor’s trust, or bring back the patient who quietly left last year. Most growth problems are system problems, so I work across the whole system.
01
Acquisition economics
Clearer, more accountable patient acquisition across paid media, local search, and reputation. The measure that matters is incremental patients, not gross activity a channel wants credit for.
02
Retention & reactivation
The patient base you already have is usually the cheapest growth available, and reactivating existing patients typically costs a fraction of acquiring new ones.
03
Access & conversion
Phone answer rates, call conversion, online scheduling, and lead follow-through. This is where marketing dollars quietly die, and where fixing the leak often beats adding spend.
04
Capacity & operations
Demand plans that respect provider days, schedule utilization, and operational readiness, so marketing isn’t generating demand the organization can’t absorb.
05
Local execution
Scalable systems that still respect local practice identity, doctor relationships, and community reputation. Standardization is not the same as making every practice identical.
06
Measurement & analytics
Dashboards and data definitions leadership can trust, built to improve judgment rather than replace it. Net patient growth over vanity metrics, every time.
Operating Framework
Predictable. Replicable. Scalable.
Growth gets harder when every location, campaign, vendor, and report has to be rebuilt from scratch. The PRS framework is how I pressure-test whether a growth system will survive scale.
Predictable
Can leadership see what is happening, understand what is working, and make decisions before the end of the month? Predictability means the data behind growth is trustworthy and timely.
Replicable
Can the organization take what works in one location and adapt it to another without starting over every time? Replicability is the difference between a win and a capability.
Scalable
Can the system support more locations, more demand, and more operating complexity without creating more noise than insight? Scale is what happens when the first two hold.
This doesn’t mean every location should be marketed the same way. It means the underlying system, the data, the workflows, and the playbook should hold up as the organization grows into new markets and new complexity.
Engagement
Ways to Work Together
Engagements are shaped to the problem, not forced into a package. Most of the work falls into one of three patterns.
01
Growth Diagnostic
A focused assessment of where growth is leaking: acquisition, retention, recapture, access, conversion, capacity, and the data underneath it all. You get a clear-eyed read and a prioritized path, not a ninety-slide deck.
Best when: growth has slowed and nobody fully agrees on why.
02
Supplemental Growth Leadership
Senior operating capacity alongside your existing team: a specific initiative, a transition, a rebuild, or a season where the team needs more experience than headcount.
Best when: the team is good but stretched, or a high-stakes initiative needs an experienced hand.
03
Growth Systems Partner
Ongoing work building durable capability: measurement, patient relationship workflows, martech adoption, local growth planning, and the operating rhythm that keeps it all working.
Best when: the organization is scaling and the systems haven’t kept up.
Every engagement starts the same way: a conversation about your growth picture, where it feels stuck, and whether I’m the right person to help. If I’m not, I’ll say so.
Operating Point of View
An Operator’s View of Healthcare Marketing
Healthcare marketing is strongest when it is close to the business. The work should reflect provider capacity, patient needs, local market dynamics, and the financial reality of the organization, not just what a channel report says performed well.
That is why the most useful focus tends to be the connective tissue: the handoffs between marketing and operations, the data behind the campaigns, the phone call after the click, and the systems that turn interest into scheduled, completed care.
Existing patients matter
Retention and reactivation first
The patient database deserves the same discipline as paid acquisition. Retention and recapture are usually the most efficient growth available, and the most neglected.
Local trust is the asset
Location-level relevance wins
Even sophisticated platforms need location-level relevance: accurate information, strong reviews, real provider pages, and messaging that fits the community it serves.
Marketing has to match reality
Honest messaging holds up
The best messaging represents the care experience accurately, sets the right expectations, and helps the right patients take the next step. Anything else erodes trust and retention.
Growth requires follow-through
Demand only matters if it converts
Demand generation only matters if the organization can convert interest into scheduled care, completed visits, accepted treatment, and lasting patient relationships.
Background
The Path Here
A progression from digital advertising into hospital-system marketing and multi-state DSO leadership, with a consistent focus on growth, patient experience, and the systems behind both.
Select Dental Management
Vice President of Marketing
2021 – Present
A PE-backed DSO with 38 uniquely branded practices. Full ownership of patient acquisition, reactivation, reputation, and the complete martech stack.
Eastern Dental · Smile Exchange
Director of Marketing
2017 – 2021
Group dental and DSO leadership, including a 62-location, 14-brand organization. Deep experience in multi-site patient behavior, local SEO, and the doctor-partner model.
RWJBarnabas Health
Manager, Social Media & Digital Marketing
2013 – 2016
Digital and social strategy for New Jersey’s largest health system: 40+ brand profiles across 11 hospitals, an ambulatory care center, and a medical group.
Recognition
Jersey’s Best Under 40
Marketing & Communications
Regional peer recognition. Speaker, DSO & Multisite Marketing Virtual Event Series, on analytics, ROI, and AI in healthcare.
Let’s Talk
Looking at growth across more than one location?
The next step is a conversation: your growth picture, where it feels stuck, and whether I can help. No pitch, no packaged proposal, no obligation.