Surprising Insights on Healthcare Marketing

Stewart Gandolf

Welcome to the podcast today. I’m Stewart Gandolf, and I’m leading the Healthcare Success Podcast. And this is going to be a really good one. I just know it, David.

David Feinberg

I hope so. I’ll try.

Stewart Gandolf

Our prep call is so much fun, it’s like, oh my gosh, David, you really have to be on this show. So, for those of you who don’t know David Feinberg, he is Senior VP of Marketing and Communications for the Mount Sinai Health System. And, even more importantly, he is Dean of Marketing Communications for the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. So, welcome, David, I’m pleased to have you.

David Feinberg

It’s great to be here, Stewart, looking forward to the discussion.

Stewart Gandolf

I’ve seen you speak multiple times; you are certainly well known in healthcare marketing. I appreciate your reputation, but for the five people listening that don’t know of you, give us a sense of your background really quickly, and we’ll just sort of dive right in.

David Feinberg

So, I’ll do the minute waltz in 30 seconds. I come from a real small town in the middle of Pennsylvania that you’ve never heard of called Shamokin, Pennsylvania. I was born at Geisinger, so that’s interesting. For those of you in the business, you would know Geisinger, you wouldn’t know Shamokin. From there, I went to school in Philadelphia at (and, you know, how people say they went to school in Boston, they don’t want to say Harvard) the University of Pennsylvania at the Wharton School, so I’m not going to cover that up. I’m pretty proud of it, despite some recent things. And then from there, I went right into business school, because I knew I’d never go back, so I went right from there to what was, at the time, the Northwestern School of Business, which is now Kellogg, but it wasn’t even Kellogg. I was there before the Corn Flakes arrived. So I went to Kellogg, and then from there, I chose marketing and went into Procter & Gamble for a little bit, and then I was in consumer packaged goods, Procter & Gamble, and then Clairol. And then I took a jump into healthcare helping start the over-the-counter division of a company that most people have never heard of today called Ciba-Geigy Corp, but it was one of the big pharma companies, back in the early 80s. It was a huge Swiss pharma company, and they hadn’t done over-the-counter pharmaceuticals. So, I took what I knew from regular brand marketing and combined it and we created a division. I was there for about nine years, doing brand management, new products licensing, and acquisitions. And then I took a flyer on a new company in the field of cord blood stem cells, this was the early 90s. Back then my line was, nobody knows a stem cell from a Duracell. Now we know what they are, but back then, nobody knew what they were. And so, I was proud to be part of a company that was the first to commercially store cord blood stem cells and understand that technology. That’s a whole other discussion if you want.

Stewart Gandolf

That’s amazing.

David Feinberg

And then, from there, I was recruited into the agency world for a while. Where I worked for a small boutique advertising agency that handled what then became Novartis, and, then J&J, I was head of their Healthcare Marketing Division. And then from there, I was recruited to be the first Vice President of Marketing for what is now well known as New York Presbyterian, but at the time wasn’t known as anything, it was just the merge institutions. And I was brought on to create the naming, the branding, the marketing capabilities, advertising, all that stuff. And I had a great run there. I was there for just under, just about 19 years, just under 20 years. And then I had the privilege of spending a couple years at Danis-Barber Cancer Institute up in Boston, which was a lot of fun. We did some rebranding there, what have you. And then I was recruited back to New York to become the Senior VP of Marketing Communications for Mount Sinai. So that’s kind of the, as I said, the minute waltz in 30 seconds. I probably took more than 30 seconds, but.

Stewart Gandolf

That’s great. That is awesome. So, that’s quite a background, and you had some preconceptions before coming to Mount Sinai, so I think, and you’re very proud of your institution, but you didn’t really know that much about it, I think. Tell us about what you’re doing.

David Feinberg

Well, I knew about it. I had lived in New York, so I knew about it, and I had a high regard for it, but then I had been at New York Presbyterian, and of course, when you’re at the place, one of the things we did to market New York Presbyterian early on was to shamelessly build the relationship with New York Presbyterian and the Ivy League institutions. So, actually, our first tagline, if you will, was the University Hospital of Columbia and Cornell. Mic drop, right? The only place in the world that had two Ivy League medical schools. We were absolutely shameless about it. And then we evolved as the institution became more ability to stand on its own. We evolved into Amazing Things Are Happening Here, which was the campaign that I’m probably best known for. Again, never me, it’s always a group of people, but I was there when that campaign happened. So, then I go off to Boston, and I come back, and they talk to me about Mount Sinai. I go, gee, Mount Sinai. Good place, yeah, it’s not Harvard, Cornell, Columbia, I mean, you know, I had this incredible, complete misunderstanding of what Mount Sinai was. And then when I got here, I realized, and I’m, you know, look, I’m the head of marketing, I’m going to have a bias, but honestly, with all the institutions I’ve gone, and those are great institutions, all of them, they’re terrific. But Mount Sinai is unique in this regard. One is, it’s an institution fully devoted to healthcare. So, when you’re in an institution, you’ve got these big Ivy League, or whatever university. Universities, healthcare is important, but they got law schools, they got engineering schools, they got everything. Mount Sinai is an institution devoted exclusively to healthcare. It also has a medical school that was born from the hospital. The hospital decided to start the medical school a little over 50 years ago, and so the full integration of the medical school with the hospital—it’s in our DNA. So, you know, I was involved in other institutions, again, not to disparage anybody, but like, alright, whose story is this anyway? Is it a school story? Is it a hospital story? Whose is it? We have none of that. We all approach everything, and we’re evolving. Our new CEO, Brendan Carr, has initiated this kind of internal repositioning called One Mount Sinai, and a lot of places have done similar things. But we’re really thinking of ourselves as one fully integrated institution. And there are so many benefits to that, I won’t drone on and on, but I’ll just talk about one. And that is the intellect of the Icahn School. Which is phenomenal. I thought, well, you know, how good are these people going? They’re as good as they get. And one data point around that, we’re 11th in the nation in NIH funding, and we’re not a university. And it’s close to half a billion dollars. of NIH funding, okay? That’s not chopped liver. So that intellect it’s kind of like the intel inside for the hospitals and health system. And we have that baked in. So, I honestly, it’s so wonderful. We’re blessed in New York and in this nation with a lot of great academic medical centers, and it’s a privilege to be working for one of the great ones.

Stewart Gandolf

From my perspective, you know, I’ve known Mount Sinai for a long time, it’s a nationally known brand. It’s in a major market, New York, obviously. You know, one of the things that, being an academic leader, we talked offline about being the research powerhouse that you guys are, and then you were focused as well on the compassionate care, which is what really everybody wants. How do you balance all those things?

David Feinberg

Well, I think the two go hand in hand. I don’t think it’s a balance, I think it’s a synergy. So, Mount Sinai’s DNA is a compassionate hospital. It was founded back in the mid-1850s as actually the first name of Mount Sinai, and just—hold on—it was the Jews’ hospital, literally.

Stewart Gandolf

Oh wow.

David Feinberg

Okay? Because the other places didn’t want to take care of the Jewish immigrants in town. So, a bunch of people got together, and it’s kind of the typical story. They started their own hospital. And then it evolved into Mount Sinai, but it was founded to take care of those who would not be taken care of elsewhere. And that was not just Jews. That was all the poor, all the immigrants, anybody who needed it, our doors were open. And that belief and that core value continues to this day. So, we’re about 70% government pay in terms of our mix. And so even though we’re on 5^th, it’s interesting, we’re on Fifth Avenue, but right behind us, on Massin Avenue, up a block, is a NYCHA, New York City Housing Association project. So, you’ve got some of the most expensive real estate on one side. And a project on our, that’s our main campus. We have seven hospitals, but the one that started all. So, the mix is right there, and we’re constantly trying to Be as sophisticated and as forward-thinking as possible, but at the same time, holding to our roots of being compassionate and caring.

Stewart Gandolf

Yeah, for sure. And we talked about so many different things on our prep call. One of the things was just about being an academic medical center, or having an academic basis, and, you know, if you’re in the know, and you’re sort of in the business, like, oh, it’s academic, okay, that’s going to be the best. But, if you’re somebody and you’re a fair number of your targets, like, academic? What? I don’t want people experimenting on me. Expand on that with your experience here and at the other hospital as well. I’m curious what your thoughts are, and is there any solution to that? Because it’s tough.

David Feinberg

I’m going say something’s going sound a little odd coming from where I am, but I believe it. It’s different needs for different folks, depending on what’s most important to them. And they talk about high tech, high touch, right? Coming to an academic medical center is really important as you’re looking for that kind of latest thinking, the integration of care, the having a lot of people looking at you all the time, and what have you. Maybe you don’t want that. Maybe you want a smaller institution where you’re not going to have a bunch of students and residents floating around. Maybe you want that kind of personalized care. Or you want to go to a place where you’re going to know you’re getting the most forward-thinking, most advanced care. I think people should be able to make that choice, and the choice to not come to an academic medical center is not necessarily a bad choice, depending on your circumstances. But I have a tremendous bias towards academic medical centers, because I think having all those people involved helps make the care better. For the principal reason you’re here, which is to get medical care. However, we’re complicated. We’re hard to navigate. We’re doing everything we can to simplify the process and the access, but I’m not going to kid you, and I think this is true of any places like us, it can be difficult to pull it all together and to make it work well for the patients and their families. We do a lot to try to achieve that, but it’s challenging, given the complexity of some of the things we do, and the complexity of the institution itself.

Stewart Gandolf

Yeah, you have the complexity, and you have the soul of the organization, too, so it’s a pretty amazing mix, David, really. I think it’s amazing. So, I’m not going go super political today. We’re obviously in a different kind of healthcare environment than we’ve been in my lifetime that I remember, so we’ll stay away from a lot of this, but the one thing that comes up a lot in conversation when I’m speaking to people outside of the business, and especially people that just don’t follow this stuff very closely, they’re thinking, oh, these hospitals are making so much money after COVID. You shake your head, I know, I know.

David Feinberg

Well, I mean…

Stewart Gandolf

I grab them by the lapel, David, I really do.

David Feinberg

Yeah, I, think I shared with you, this is a descriptor I came up with a while ago, and it always gets a chuckle, but it’s true. We’re not-for-profit and good at it.

Stewart Gandolf

Yeah.

David Feinberg

Our margins are razor thin. Right now, on an operating basis, we’re actually losing money. Right? We have offsets, and I don’t want to give the impression that Mount Sinai is not financially solid. We are. But, we’re struggling to get that, even the operating basis, back to break-even or a little positive.

Stewart Gandolf

Yeah.

David Feinberg

And it’s a struggle for a number of reasons. Let’s talk about the fundamental inflation, of just the cost of stuff, right? So that’s one reason. The cost of people has increased. So, there’s the stuff, And there’s the people. And that fights with the reimbursement. And the goal of everybody in this healthcare ecosystem, if you will, to reduce costs. So, insurers want to pay you less, the government wants to pay—nobody wants to pay more, everyone wants to pay less—but yet they want the same quality, they want the same high tech, so they want the best in care, but they don’t want to pay more for it. And it’s just a very, very difficult formula, and it puts institutions as ours at tremendous challenges. Fortunately, we have philanthropy, which helps, but no amount of philanthropy can make up for the fundamental diseconomies that are baked into the system.

Stewart Gandolf

I totally get it, and I think that’s kind of a universal thing. We, even for our own agency business, you want the best. That doesn’t mean they necessarily want to fund that, and that’s tough, because the best people cost money, and the best places cost money. It all costs money. So, it can be well-intended, but it still costs money. Which actually leads me perfectly into a conversation we were talking about the other day, about hospital beds, and, you know, now the new ones. I think that you should start with the functionality first, then we can talk about the other side of it, because I think it’s pretty amazing.

David Feinberg

I think I talked to you about a new facility. And it’s a great new facility. It’s a wonderful, new, part that was built out for our Mount Sinai South Nassau, and this is brand new. And the people showing me the facility said, yeah, this is our new bed, and I don’t even remember whose it was. And I asked, you know, what’s the cost? I said, well, the bed cost $40,000. And I was like… What? And I understand why. It’s got all sorts of things built in to avoid bed stores. You can make it go this way so you can take a patient out, put it in. It has all the electronics for all the measurements, and it’s got all the bells and whistles. It got a motorized purse, so you can put somebody in that bed and then move them to, radiology let’s say, without taking him out of the bed. I mean, it’s a great piece of equipment. But, how much more healthcare are you getting in a $40,000 bed that you get in a regular bed that tips up, you know, the old-fashioned beds that we had 15-20 years ago. I don’t know the answer to that, I don’t pretend to second-guess the people who make those decisions, but it’s just indicative of the increase in cost. If a state-of-the-art bed today costs $40,000, just add that to every element of healthcare, and you can see how we’ve made things better, but more complicated, and more challenging to fund.

Stewart Gandolf

It is complicated, David, because in the cross-purposes, right? Because everything you just said there, from a patient point of view, it’s like, you know, less bed sores. That’s a healthcare thing that’s preventive.

David Feinberg

It’s really important. Avoiding bed sores is not just great for patients, it’s important for reducing the cost of care as well.

Stewart Gandolf

Yeah, so clinically, the patient’s happier, it’s safer, and then at the same time, nobody wants to pay more. That’s the thing. So, we’re investing in the long term, but it’s harder. So, people that aren’t familiar with hospitals, it’s an insanely complex world where you have so many different things you have to respond to and try to make it all work somehow. So, David we talked a little bit. We’re an agency, but I’ve been, you know, I got invited to speak at Cleveland Clinic’s Patient Experience Summit, like, I don’t know, 12 weeks ago. Yeah, great place. Dr. Jim Molino’s a friend, and I was pleased to be part of that, you know, because that was a big deal. It’s still a big deal, but back then, it was more innovative than it is now. It’s more widely led. So, I think that, you know, the idea of patient experience is much bigger, but, you know, the patient’s expectations continue to evolve. So, I’d love to hear your thoughts about the expectations as they continue to evolve. You know, how does that relate to the experience that hospitals are trying to provide? Any other insights about that topic? Because it’s such a rich area.

David Feinberg

Well, I put it in the context of the entire rise of consumerism. Right? So, in many fields, every field, the expectations have just gone up. People want higher quality. It could be a restaurant, it could be a hotel, and it’s a hospital, and it’s the same thing. You don’t want to go in, you’re not willing anymore, or patients aren’t willing anymore, to sacrifice basic comforts and even accommodations for the quality of care. They want both, and I think, within reason. It’s right to expect it. But that puts extra burden on institutions who have to provide this complex care, while at the same time, make sure that patients are feeling that their needs are being met in a way that’s, broader and more comprehensive than it might have been in the past. So, this creates I think the good news… the good part of this is… We all think about patience. We all think about what their needs are holistically. It’s not, you should be lucky to be here, because we’re so smart. No. We see you as our customers, and we need to help you understand and appreciate how we’re going to care for you and get that care at the level that it should be. So, we hold ourselves accountable. I think that’s a good thing. But the tough part about it is it requires more resources, better training, so the kind of training—nurses are just amazing, and how they’re able to make ends meet between the needs of the medicine and the needs of the patient is just phenomenal. So, they’re a key element of how this all works. And we like to say that everybody on the chain is a caregiver. If you’re coming in and keeping the room clean, that’s part of giving care. If you’re coming in and delivering a hot cup of coffee, that’s part of giving care. It’s all part of giving care. But, as you allude to, raising those standards makes us have to be more mindful of so many more things. So, it’s a real challenge.

Stewart Gandolf

It’s interesting, because so much has changed over the years. One of the things that you know, patient experience. I remember commiserating back in the day about attitudes may be, like, I don’t care if they light me, I just get them better, which is, you know, missing the point, sort of. And then there was the patient standpoint, where today, you may have just saved their life, and they’re complaining about the temperature of the coffee, and so there’s that. So, things have evolved. I think one of the insights I’ve had from various people I’ve met and worked with over the years is. as patients pay more, they expect more, too. If they’re paying a larger percentage, of the share, I think that’s a real thing. But it’s a crazy world. Things have changed a lot. And so I’m going to pivot a little bit again, because you and I are having some fun talking about the world of doctors, and doctors are important stakeholders at every hospital, and David, I think you may remember I was sharing that, you know, for a number of years, I was flying around the country almost every other weekend teaching about marketing. Doctors would come and pay to see me, speak about marketing, and argue with me the whole weekend. It’s like, wait! You paid to come and see me! It’s not like that anymore as much, but I’d love you to share your, especially your young man, comment. I think that was a lot of fun, so why don’t you share that one for me, because we’ve gotta add some levity.

David Feinberg

Oh, yeah, young men, these are patients. Oh, okay. All right, I had a couple of anecdotes.

Stewart Gandolf

I’ll leave you another one, too.

David Feinberg

I’ll start with that one. So, when I joined New York Presbyterian and I made some of my first presentations to the medical leadership one of the things I did was introduce them to the idea of thinking of patients as customers. And I used that language. I think, so when we’re talking about our customers, and I went on like that, and I made a lot of mistakes early on, this is one of them, right? So, I’m in a room full of academic doctors. And I start talking about our customers, and different ways we think about them, and even segmentation a little bit, what we would recognize as segmentation, who are we talking to, what are their needs? And in the middle of it, a very eminent neurologist, I don’t remember his name, but he was nationally known, says, ‘We have got to stop this meeting.’ And the CEO says, ‘Well, what’s wrong, doctor?’  And he says, ‘This use of the word customer to describe my patients literally makes me sick. Young man, these aren’t customers, they’re my patients and I care for them in a way that is sound based on my thinking and based on how I want to help them medically. The idea that it’s like buying soap, or something, a soft drink, as a customer, is just abhorrent to me.’ And so, he gave it to me pretty good. And I came back and I said, ‘Doctor, I certainly respect your perspective, and you’re absolutely right. But understand, when I talk about customer, I talk about that too, about having to understand how our patients are perceiving the care we give them, but recognizing that increasingly, whether we like it or not, patients have choices, and in that regard, they are customers. And so we need to think of both things.’ So that’s how I tried to answer. I don’t know if I was successful. That was year one, and I made it 19 years, so I guess it was okay.

Stewart Gandolf

It’s funny, because the ability to talk to doctors within healthcare is really important, and if you want to get anything done, you really need to figure that out, how to communicate that. So, I like that. I like the other anecdote you shared with me, too, about the amount of money you’re spending. I’d love you to share that one, too.

David Feinberg

Well, when I presented my first plan. I had been taught from back from my P&G days, that those things are kept under the belt. You don’t just openly talk about how much you’re spending. And then I got up, and I started to talk about the plan, and one of the doctors said. He was from West Texas, ‘How much you spending all this?’ That’s probably a bad version, but you’ll get the point. And I looked around, and the head of the hospital said, ‘Dave, we tell our chiefs everything. Go ahead, share the number.’ So I shared the number, I forget what it was. He said, ‘How much? Give me that money. I’ll make more money on that than you’ll ever—in fact—I’ll pay you not to advertise.’

Stewart Gandolf

That’s like war stories than the old days.

David Feinberg

So, yeah, he eventually became a big backer after time when he understood what we were trying to do, and once we had success, he was one of my biggest supporters over time, but it didn’t start out that way.

Stewart Gandolf

That’s awesome, I love it. So, jumping forward into the future with me, AI is the topic.

David Feinberg

I’ve heard about it, yeah, I think I’ve heard something about it. Like, every day, I mean, it’s like, it’s so ubiquitous. It’s everywhere.

Stewart Gandolf

Yeah, it just is. You’re speaking as a keynote at HCIC, and I just got through with another podcast with Mike and Kathy about, like, what to expect there. But I’d love to hear, you know, from your perspective, maybe some anecdotes about how it’s reshaping things at Mount Sinai in terms of health marketing, healthcare marketing, patient engagement.

David Feinberg

Well, let me back up a little bit and talk about my perspective. I’m going to talk about this at the keynote, but I’m going to give you, again, the CliffsNotes version of it, which is AI is a new technology, and I talk about this. We’ve seen a lot of new technologies over the years. There are things that are unique about AI, for sure. And there are things that make AI perhaps in some ways, more transformational than other technologies, although I’d argue that when you really step back and look on historical terms, many technologies were transformational, including books. It’s going way back, right? So, I try to say, look, it’s going to be great, we are using it in a lot of different ways to help advance what it is we’re doing. But I would encourage people to think of it as a tool—not as an end in and of itself. So, you’re going to use AI to do the things that you’re trying to do to advance your strategy, to hit your targets, keep it working for you instead of you working for it, I guess is the theme.  And I think that’s true of every major technological innovation we’ve seen. Having said that, there are things that are unique about AI, most notably how “I” it is. It’s so intelligent, it’s so capable. The capabilities are almost unbelievable. And so, the ability to harness those capabilities. We’re doing a lot on the health side, and I won’t go into huge detail, but we have a whole department of AI. We were the first medical college in the country to have its own AI-focused department. We have a building that’s devoted to it, and the stuff they’re doing is amazing. I’ll give you one aspect of it. To be able to look at somebody’s healthcare record coming in. And now predict the likelihood of them to have various issues. Everything from bed sores to malnourishment to fall risks, and so it makes us, one of the things we have on Newsweek, they call us one of the world’s smartest hospitals, because we’ve got that technology embedded in what we do. It’s not an add-on, it’s how we do it. So, now we’re able to assess people and help avoid unnecessary complications because we’ve analyzed with AI their medical records and determined with some predictive accuracy what issues may occur. I mean, that’s just.

Stewart Gandolf

That’s a fantastic story. I feel like the world hasn’t changed with AI and we’re all trying to adapt to this. Number one, it’s humbling. Like, I’ve always been, since I was little, I always joke about this, David, like, I’m terrible at so many things. Like, basketball, I was just awful, right?

David Feinberg

I’m the worst athlete, though, on the planet, but yeah.

Stewart Gandolf

So writing was a talent for me. It was easy. It was one thing that I just did forever, and I was told that since fourth, third grade, you know, and, like, the way to put together words, and, you know, I didn’t even take it seriously until I became, far later in my career as an agency owner. That skill that I just take for granted. And I use AI, for—some things I write still the regular way—but there are times where it’s just so much faster. And this is sort of a pedestrian way to use it for writing. Everybody thought of that the first day. But, you know, for example, I was coming up with a new couple landing pages for this podcast, and I just, for fun, as an experiment, put the URL in and said, you know me pretty well, tell me what is my mission, vision, value, what is this touch, and it came back 85% what I would have said if I’d said it. It was amazing. So, I went through and looked at all the transcripts, you know, got a sense of the kinds of guests I have, the topics I cover, like, all of it. And I thought, wow. And then the, but that’s sort of, like, level one to me. But then it’s more as we get, down the path. I think smart people will become even smarter, and probably, you know, sadly, richer, and it’ll increase the gap on the income level and the education level, because if you’re really creative with how you do that, you’ve essentially got a robot. What are you asking it to do?

David Feinberg

Right.

Stewart Gandolf

And to do something that’s mundane? Or are you asking us to—thinking about what you just said there, think about the impact in terms of the patient experience, in terms of cost, in terms of keeping people out of the emergency room, which we’re always trying to do with value-based care, asset allocation, resource allocation, all that. And that is just amazing. You know, another example, I’m just thinking off the top of my head, I read the book, The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande years ago. And just, you know, all about this stupid checklist. Well, now I can just be programmed. Like, everything, the checklist is there, you know?

David Feinberg

Yeah, it’s just there. Well, one thing that I think, has been true of every new technology you can think of throughout history is there’s going to be a plus and a minus. There’s going to be some things that are going be great, and some things that are going to be god-awful, right? Yeah. And we’re going have to, as a society and as a people, balance those, but let me dive into one thing that’s, I think, somewhat probably controversial, but here’s the way I think we see it, anyway. Is AI going to replace people?

Stewart Gandolf

Yeah.

David Feinberg

And let’s talk about nurses. AI can be used so that nurses are doing nursing, and not all that other nonsense. You can actually replace a lot of the nonsense—we think—so that we are going to be able to restore nursing to more about the patient care aspect of it and the human communication and connection aspect, and free them from the burden of the administrative, which has just piled on. And I think the same is true of physicians as well. So now you’ve got ambient listening. So, doctors are able to create notes instantly, almost, right? And that gives the doctor—so if you have X amount of time to take care of patients during a day, and you used to devote X amount of time to doing your notes. That’s going to be cut, I don’t know what, you know, by orders of magnitude.

Stewart Gandolf

Right.

David Feinberg

Which is going to be able to free up time, so we… I think it’s going to be very liberating as opposed to replacement, but there’s no doubt, I mean, we have to be honest, at some point, and for some certain things, it might be replacing people, but hopefully it’s to enable that staff to be better deployed for a more productive purpose.

Stewart Gandolf

Well, I think in the world of healthcare, where we have shortages of professionals, very long ramp-up times, and then also the advent of things like Telehealth, and remote patient monitoring, and the challenge (to me) is the reimbursement system, because there’s challenges there, and HIPAA’s part of it, but the reimbursement system, because that’s typically lagging. But how do you do remote healthcare? How do you keep people in the Upper Planets of Michigan out of the hospital, for example? And how do you  integrate home visits and all that? And it’s exceedingly complex. So, I think that AI might be helpful for this, too, to leverage the time of the people we do have, right? Those doctors and nurses that we’re short of anyway, I think is really exciting. So, I wanted to finish up here, I want to change our topics a little bit. We spoke last time, and I love this idea, David, of saving lives with healthcare marketing, and so I wanted to do a whole podcast on that today, but, you know…

David Feinberg

I can come back.

Stewart Gandolf

Yeah, we can come back, but let’s touch it today, because I just think it’s a fantastic idea. And, you know, I want to start, you know, I would love you to get your insights. I’ve been doing healthcare marketing for most of my career, and I remember, I lived in San Diego when I was going through grad school, and I remember seeing a hospital, which still has it. I saw a stork out in front with a baby in it, and I thought, that’s hospital marketing? I never even thought about hospital marketing before. Yeah. And I remember seeing that it’s still there. I think it’s Scripps or Sharp, I forget which one. But anyway.

David Feinberg

That’s a problem.

Stewart Gandolf

Yeah. Well, I don’t live there anymore, in fairness. It’s been a long time since I was there.

David Feinberg

Yeah.

Stewart Gandolf

But the idea that, once I got into healthcare marketing, I thought, well, I could be selling Cornflakes or whatever. I really do feel good about being in some, you know, helping people get the care they need. And my team does, too, and a lot of people come to us when we’re recruiting, they want that. And, I’ve never wanted to be a clinician, but I do care about the greater good. So, I’d love to hear more about this topic from your point of view, because I think it’s pretty exciting.

David Feinberg

Well, let me try to cover a few things quickly, starting with the last thing you said. It was very rewarding to me to—I started out selling toothpaste, right? And then eventually shampoos and conditioners and stuff, and like, you know, how good does a shampoo need to be, right? I mean, right? coming up with different fragrances, or different, like, at one point, we’re putting different ingredients in, you know, all that kind of stuff that you do in CPG to help differentiate yourself. So, it was gratifying for me. I would love to say that I did this purposely, I kind of fell into it, but two-thirds of my career has been spent in healthcare, and it’s been very gratifying, because you know you’re doing good for people. And I tell my team, one of the things that I told my team when I came on board at Mount Sinai, got everybody together. I said, ‘I want you to all know something. Marketing saves lives.’ And they’re kind of like, what do you mean? And I put it in terms, when you’re dealing in institutions such as ours, you know, you’re dealing with this great clinical enterprise and research enterprise who are just making new discoveries, and people are taking care of patients, and they’re putting hearts in them, and doing all this kind of stuff. And so, if you’re not directly a part of that, you do wonder, well, what am I doing to help? Am I just running ads, or doing brochures, or what am I doing? And my perspective was, you’re connecting people to either the information or healthcare they need to be better, to get better, and to have fuller, more successful lives. In general, you’re actually enabling people to get health, and to stay and be healthy. And we play a key role in that, and I’ll share with you a very personal anecdote. You know, being in my role, and everybody in our roles, people will call you up, I need a doctor, I need a doctor, I need a doctor. So, several years ago, close friends of mine, a loved one was getting care, and they just called me and said, David, does this sound right to you? And it was a very complex situation. I said, no, it doesn’t. And I don’t like what that doctor is saying to her. Let me see if I can get you a better situation. And I made some calls, and I spoke to people, and I put this woman in touch with some physicians at Mount Sinai to help her care for her condition. That was, like, several years ago, and when I do this, I remember what the condition is in the short term, but then I forget it because I don’t really want to know people’s stuff, right? Not my job. So, a year ago, I go to a wedding. It’s my friend’s wedding, the same friend who I referred. It was his son getting married. Beautiful wedding, gorgeous place, and I sit down at my table, and up this little woman comes up to me. ‘Are you David Feinberg?’ And I say, ‘Yeah?’ And she says, ‘You saved my life.’ That’s awesome. And I go, no, I didn’t save your life, what do you mean. She explained that I was the person who put her in touch with the physicians and the Mount Sinai expertise that did save her life. But it’s just a small example of, if we can get people connected to the healthcare they need—or often, we get close to 100 million people coming to our website. They’re not all looking for doctors. A lot of them are, but a lot of them aren’t. A lot of them are looking for information. So that information, and I think in today’s environment, again, not to get political. But the more good, solid information we can put out there, the more good we’re doing for more people.

Again, that’s saving lives. And that information becomes available because of the teams that we have that make it available, that publish it, that put it together, that write it, that format it, whatever it is, that do the magic on the internet that gets people to find it, all of that stuff is very meaningful, it’s not trivial at all. And it also helps frame what a good marketing investment means. And I think that’s what it means. So that’s how we see things, and it’s really very important and fulfilling, not to overstate our role, but to at least appreciate our role as part of a greater system that’s helping people get and stay healthy.

Stewart Gandolf

That’s terrific insight, and that might be a topic for another day, for a more in-depth dive in. As we’re wrapping up here, I would, you know, one of the things that people in my experience that listen to this podcast, are always looking at, okay, well, you’re… the people you have on there are so smart, and everything’s so great, and it’s always fun to share some challenges. So, I don’t know if you have any challenges you feel comfortable sharing, but you’re a highly visible job at a highly visible system, and people’s lives are at stake. Any challenges and success stories you think would be fun as we wrap up here?

David Feinberg

Yeah, let me start with—I don’t feel smart when I’m at Mount Sinai, I can tell you that.

Stewart Gandolf

That’s a great answer. That’s a good answer.

David Feinberg

It is the most humbling thing. I sit in a room of people who think about stuff. you know, can I spend one minute to talk about one of those instances? So, I’m talking with somebody at Mount Sinai. You know, there’s the brain-computer, and BCI has become a thing, brain-computer infant. Somebody at Mount Sinai figured out that you can take stents, you know, stents that go in to keep—alright. Suppose we take those things, and instead of putting drug-eluding, you know, stuff that keeps it open, suppose we cover them with electrodes. And then we put them into the brain. And then we connect those electrodes in the brain to a device that magnifies the small electronic signals that are coming out, and we magnify it, and we begin to organize it. And through doing that, we hope to be able to put those electrodes in the brain and have the brain talk to a computer, or talk to a device, and tell it what to do. What! Not just think about it but do it. So, we’re doing experiments in BCI, no, we’re not the only ones, but I mean, the whole idea of coming up with that idea is humbling.

Stewart Gandolf

Yeah, that’s amazing. That’s amazing.

David Feinberg

Right. But some of the things we’ve been most successful at… when I say Mount Sinai not-for-profit and good at it. In our marketplace, we spend a fraction of what our competitors do. A fraction. I mean, we were just talking about this the other day, and there’s a lot of reasons for that. And I’m not saying that, bragging about it, I hope to, you know, convince the organization to invest more. But necessity’s a mother, right? So, what we’re able to do is do a lot of very targeted, focused efforts. We can’t talk to everybody. So, we identify a segment of people who we really want to talk to and try to do that at a level that makes a difference. And we’ve shown that to be very effective. So, it’s segmentation, it’s targeting And then being able to execute it. And one of the beauties of the digital technological revolution is the ability to do that kind of targeting and also measure it. So that’s been a big success for us, and so we punch well above—look, I’m not saying we’re the only ones doing it, of course, everybody’s doing some version of it, but we’re able to punch well above our weight class by really working to specifically target what we do and make sure it’s being effective.

Stewart Gandolf

You know, Dave, I want to finish with that thought. I mean, I think all the time, I don’t know if this is how my brain works, I stumbled into marketing, I thought I was going to be an engineer  because I was good at science and math, and my family said, be a doctor, an attorney, or an engineer. I decided to say, no, I’m going to do none of that, I want to be in marketing, because I just loved it. But I still remember my Marketing 101 class, and so much of what good marketing is are in those concepts, the idea of targeting, the idea of price, place, product, promotion. For example, I often talk about amateur marketers focus on promotion. It’s like, wait, let’s go back to product. What’s our product? We don’t even think about promotion until the last step of this thing. And I think what you’re saying there is, marketing strategy, it sounds basic, but it’s really fundamental to being good at ‘who’s our target? How can we reach them efficiently?’ because you can get caught up in all the noise of all these other things that everybody wants to do, but especially on a limited budget, you just have to be really clear.

David Feinberg

Can I just take a minute, Stewart?

Stewart Gandolf

Yeah.

David Feinberg

And I brought this up before this, just so I’d have it referenced. I’m going to read to you one of the first things I did when I came to Mount Sinai was identify, defining the role, and I looked at all kinds of marketing definitions, and as you know, they’re all over the place, and some of them are fine, but I wanted to have, what is the role of marketing at Mount Sinai? Let me just read it to you. Marketing communications are the sum of all activities promoting Mount Sinai to our target audiences in relevant ways that drive people to either take action or change attitudes and beliefs.

Stewart Gandolf

I love that.

David Feinberg

So, it’s that simple. I wrote it myself, okay? Didn’t ask AI. No, but it helps because when you’re talking to leadership, and especially physicians, they think of marketing as advertising. You know, it’s a very unsophisticated, so you break that down, and it’s not only take action, but change attitudes and beliefs.

Stewart Gandolf

Yeah.

David Feinberg

Right? It’s how you think about us, as well as what you do. And both are important. So anyway, that’s kind of a little…

Stewart Gandolf

I guess that comes back to, both of us have had that experience of working with healthcare professionals for years, and you do have to translate it. You know, they’ll say, I’ve got a marketing person. The first question is, what does that mean? Is that a physician liaison? Is that a PR person? Is that a digital marketer? Is that a brander? Is that a writer? Like, no, a marketing person.

David Feinberg

Yeah. The other thing is, I’ve never met a doctor who didn’t want more marketing.

Stewart Gandolf

Yeah, that’s true, but, the, other thing is, I don’t know of any other field, David, I don’t know if you’ve ever experienced this, but, you know, nobody goes and second-guesses the architect about the bridge of this construction.

David Feinberg

Right, right. Totally. Everybody does. You know, MD stands for marketing degree, doesn’t it? You’ve heard that one? You must have heard that one.

Stewart Gandolf

Yeah, I love it. David, it’s been—I told you, was it fun? Did you have fun?

David Feinberg

It was a lot of fun. Thank you so much. This was great, and I’m happy to do it again on any specific topic or whatever. You’ll be at HCM?

Stewart Gandolf

Yeah, sure, I’m going to come and see. I was just thinking how much fun it’s going to be. I’ll say hi when I’m there. I’m really looking forward to it, and for those of you that are listening, I will publish this before HCIC so that hopefully some of our, listeners will, suddenly go—I’ve got to sign up for HCIC and go see David.

David Feinberg

So now, those of you who have listened to this have a choice, right? You can come to HCIC and hear more of me, or you can go, I’ve heard enough. But that’s not the point. The point is actually, hopefully, you’ll come here, and many other people who know so much more than I do. I love HCIC, it’s such a great forum for meeting and talking about the stuff we love, so please come.

Stewart Gandolf

I agree. David, thank you so much.

David Feinberg

Alright, take care. Thank you.