When Dr. Gregory Smith walked into the physician’s lounge during one of his first shifts after residency, he had no idea the conversation would come full circle years later.
In 2009, early in his emergency medicine career at Morton Plant Hospital, Dr. Smith met Dr. Tim Brundage.
“At the time, I didn’t think much about it beyond just having a good conversation,” Dr. Smith recalled. “But I always remember him. He was easy to talk to, thoughtful, and clearly cared about people.”
Years later, after building a career that spanned emergency medicine leadership, hospital administration, and the payer side of healthcare, Dr. Smith would once again cross paths with Dr. Brundage, this time as part of the team at Brundage Group.
That full-circle moment reflects much of Dr. Smith’s approach to healthcare today: relationships matter, collaboration matters, and behind every operational challenge are people trying to do meaningful work.
Over the course of his career, Dr. Smith has worked across nearly every corner of healthcare, from paramedic and phlebotomist to emergency physician, department leader, and payer-side physician reviewer. Those experiences gave him something many healthcare professionals never fully see: the perspective from both sides of the system.
Speaking Different Languages, Chasing the Same Goals
After years spent in clinical leadership and administration, Dr. Smith noticed a recurring challenge inside healthcare organizations.
In many cases, teams are not necessarily working against one another. They are simply operating under different pressures, priorities, and expectations.
“Clinical leaders, financial leaders, and operational leaders are often trying to accomplish the same things,” Dr. Smith explained. “But they’re speaking different languages.”
For clinicians, the focus is on delivering quality patient care. For hospital leadership, it maintains operational stability while continuing to serve the community. For financial and utilization management teams, it is ensuring the organization can sustain that care long-term.
The problem, according to Dr. Smith, is that those efforts often become siloed.
Departments can unintentionally end up operating independently, managing their own fires, metrics, and responsibilities without the time or resources to fully align with one another.
That disconnect creates friction, slows decision-making, and often increases the burden placed on already overwhelmed clinical teams.
The Role of a Trusted Advisor
Dr. Smith believes Physician Advisors play a critical role in helping bridge those gaps.
“A trusted Physician Advisor understands both sides, you have to understand what clinicians need at the bedside, but you also have to understand the operational and financial realities hospitals are facing.”
Dr. Smith
That perspective became even clearer after Dr. Smith transitioned to the payer side of healthcare.
“There were so many things I remember thinking, ‘I wish I had known this earlier,’” he said. “Simple things that could have helped hospitals and physicians tremendously if we had understood how documentation and medical necessity were being evaluated.”
Now working as a Physician Advisor with Brundage Group, Dr. Smith uses those experiences to help hospitals navigate increasingly complex payer expectations, patient status decisions, and documentation requirements.
Rather than adding to the administrative burden clinicians already face, he believes Physician Advisors should function as collaborative partners who simplify complex processes and provide clear, actionable guidance.
“If clinicians have trusted support behind them, they can focus more of their attention on where it belongs, on patient care,” he explained.
Turning Insight Into Action
As healthcare continues to evolve, Dr. Smith sees the need for proactive support becoming even more important.
Hospitals today are balancing staffing shortages, growing payer scrutiny, changing regulations, and increasing operational demands, often all at once. Many organizations are forced into a reactive cycle simply because they do not have the time or resources to stay ahead of every change happening across the industry.
That is where the combination of physician expertise and proactive analytics becomes especially valuable.
Through solutions like Certus Radar™, Brundage Group helps hospitals identify patterns, recognize emerging risks, and address issues before they escalate into larger operational or financial problems.
For Dr. Smith, the value is not simply in preventing denials or improving the accuracy of patient status. It is helping hospitals achieve stronger alignment between the people delivering care and the systems that support it.
“As things change, we have to be able to adapt. Hospitals are busy putting out fires every day. Our role is to help them look ahead.”
Building Stronger Partnerships in Healthcare
At the center of Dr. Smith’s philosophy is a simple idea: healthcare works better when people trust each other.
Whether he was leading an emergency department, reviewing cases on the payer side, or supporting hospitals as a Physician Advisor today, Dr. Smith has consistently focused on helping people work together toward shared goals.
Because ultimately, the challenges facing healthcare are rarely solved by one department alone.
They are solved through collaboration, communication, and trusted partnerships that help organizations move forward together.
Interested in Continuing the Conversation?
Connect with Brundage Group to turn complex data into actionable insights and enable a more proactive Utilization Management approach.
