Guideway Care Appoints National Clinical and Health System Leaders to Patient Activation Clinical Advisory Board

The new patient activation-centric clinical advisory board team will help Guideway Care advance the clinical, operational, and scientific foundation for Enterprise Evidence-Based Patient Activation across access, referrals, care transitions, chronic care, patient loyalty, and enterprise performance.

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. and SAN DIEGO, May 15, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Guideway Care today announced the appointment of national clinical and health system leaders to its Patient Activation Clinical Advisory Board, strengthening the company's ability to connect Evidence-Based Medicine to Enterprise Evidence-Based Patient Activation across hospitals, health systems, large specialty networks, physician groups, accountable care organizations, health plans, and other risk-bearing healthcare organizations. The board brings together leaders associated with UAB, Fox Chase Cancer Center, Mayo Clinic, Dignity Health/CommonSpirit, RAYUS Radiology, and the American Board of Ophthalmology to help Guideway Care advance a more complete execution model for healthcare performance beyond the encounter.

The formation of the board reflects a growing reality across healthcare: the industry has become far better at determining what should happen clinically than at ensuring patients actually complete the next right step before, after, and between visits. Referrals still fail to close, follow-up still decays after discharge, preventive care still goes unfinished, chronic pathways still drift, and high-intent demand still fails to convert into completed care. Guideway Care was built around that execution gap and defines its answer as Enterprise Evidence-Based Patient Activation, operationalized through Activation Intelligence — an orchestrated human-plus-AI execution system designed to improve patient action, patient experience, patient loyalty, and enterprise performance across the non-encounter layer of healthcare. Guideway Care also increasingly describes the broader delivery model as Activation-Based Care, or ABC — a context-aware extension of patient activation that adapts guidance to the patient's real-world barriers, timing, motivations, and practical constraints so the next right step is more likely to be completed.

The company's point of view is also consistent with a growing evidence base showing that healthcare's largest failures do not arise only from clinical decision-making, but from whether patients can trust, accept, and complete what good medicine requires in the real world. Guideway Care traces part of its intellectual foundation to patient navigation evidence published in JAMA Oncology, including the UAB-led Patient Care Connect research, which demonstrated lower quarterly Medicare costs and declines in emergency department visits, hospitalizations, and ICU admissions for navigated Medicare cancer patients. Edward E. Partridge, M.D. — now Chief Medical Officer of Guideway Care, former director of the UAB Comprehensive Cancer Center, and former president of the American Cancer Society — was a co-author on that work and remains one of the clearest clinical bridges between the Evidence-Based Medicine tradition and the patient activation discipline Guideway Care is advancing.

Guideway Care's Clinical Advisory Board includes:

James Backstrom, M.D., Chief Medical Officer of Foundation Radiology Group, a division of RAYUS Radiology; former Chief Medical Officer of Armstrong County Memorial Hospital; former Chief Medical Officer of Foundation Radiology Group in an earlier leadership period; board-certified diagnostic radiologist with fellowship training in pediatric radiology and pediatric neuroradiology; and physician executive with experience spanning hospital operations, imaging leadership, innovation, and telemedicine.

George Bartley, M.D., Chief Executive Officer of the American Board of Ophthalmology; former Chair of Mayo Clinic's Department of Ophthalmology; former member of the Mayo Clinic Board of Governors; CEO Emeritus of Mayo Clinic in Florida; former Editor-in-Chief of Ophthalmology; former President of the American Ophthalmological Society; and recipient of the American Academy of Ophthalmology's Laureate Award and the American Ophthalmological Society Medal; and one of the most accomplished physician leaders in academic ophthalmology, specialty-board leadership, and professional standards.

Martin Heslin, M.D., MSHA, UAB Health System Chief Medical and Quality Officer, professor of surgical oncology, and gastrointestinal cancer surgeon; former Executive Director of the Mitchell Cancer Institute; former Chief of the Medical Staff and Executive Vice Chair of Surgery at UAB Medicine; and academic health system leader with deep experience in quality, cancer program development, and enterprise clinical performance.

Yagnesh B. Patel, M.D., Chief Medical Officer for Dignity Health's East Valley hospitals and the Arizona market, part of CommonSpirit Health; former Vice President of Medical Affairs for the East Valley market; longtime physician leader in hospital medicine; former Managing Partner of Pioneer Hospitalists PLLC; and an internal medicine physician with a focused practice in hospital medicine and hospice and palliative medicine.

Anna Liza Rodriguez, MSN, MHA, RN, OCN, NEA-BC, Chief Nursing Officer and Vice President of Nursing and Patient Services at Fox Chase Cancer Center; former Associate Nursing Officer at Vanderbilt University Medical Center and Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center; former oncology and operations leader at Presence Health, Sinai Health System, and Northwestern Memorial Hospital; nationally recognized oncology nursing executive; and a Becker's Hospital Review CNOs to Know honoree for three consecutive years.

Edward E. Partridge, M.D., Chief Medical Officer of Guideway Care, Director Emeritus and Professor Emeritus of the UAB Comprehensive Cancer Center, former president of the American Cancer Society, gynecologic oncologist, former longtime leader of UAB's cancer enterprise, and nationally recognized voice in reducing disparities in cancer outcomes and advancing patient navigation.

"Healthcare does not have an evidence problem at the point of care. It has an execution problem beyond the encounter," said Craig Parker, Chief Executive Officer of Guideway Care. "Referrals still fail to close. Follow-up still decays. Preventive care still goes unfinished. Patients still leave the system because the next step was never made clear, trusted, easy, and completed. Guideway Care exists to solve that execution layer. Our patient activation-centric Clinical Advisory Board team adds extraordinary clinical credibility as we continue defining Enterprise Evidence-Based Patient Activation as a serious discipline for hospitals, health systems, specialties, physician groups, and risk-bearing organizations."

Partridge said the board's work is grounded in a simple but often under-addressed clinical truth. "My work in cancer care and patient navigation has reinforced a simple truth: when patients are supported in ways that remove barriers, build trust, and sustain follow-through, clinical and economic outcomes improve. Evidence-Based Medicine remains essential, but it is not sufficient by itself. Healthcare also needs a repeatable method for helping patients complete the next steps that good medicine depends on. That is why Guideway Care's mission matters, and why this activation-centric Clinical Advisory Board is important."

The board's combined background spans academic medicine, oncology, nursing leadership, radiology, specialty medicine, enterprise quality, health system operations, professional standards, and cancer-center leadership. That breadth is especially relevant to Guideway Care's category expansion, which increasingly ties patient activation to enterprise priorities such as referral closure, nurse triage execution, care transitions, chronic condition stability, digital front door conversion, service line growth, loyalty, and risk-based performance. Guideway's current materials frame Activation Intelligence not as generic AI, but as execution infrastructure that integrates structured activation science, longitudinal barrier intelligence, human activation specialists, AI activation agents, workflow orchestration, and measurable completion definitions tied to enterprise value.

That broader framing also helps explain why the Patient Activation Clinical Advisory Board matters strategically. As health systems invest more heavily in enterprise AI, digital tools, nurse triage, and workflow automation, the market is increasingly recognizing that technology alone does not guarantee trust-sensitive, high-friction patient follow-through. Guideway Care's position is that healthcare's missing answer is not artificial intelligence as a stand-alone solution, but Activation Intelligence: the governed human-plus-AI system required to improve completion across access, referrals, care transitions, chronic care, patient loyalty, and the broader patient action opportunity layer beyond the encounter.

About Guideway Care

Guideway Care is the Enterprise Evidence-Based Patient Activation company, delivering a comprehensive Activation Intelligence solution that governs behavioral execution across the patient journey. Guideway helps health system participants convert clinical intent into completed patient action across nurse triage, patient access and conversion, find-a-physician programs, referral management, referral leakage reduction, post-discharge follow-up, readmission reduction, preventive care acceleration, care gap closure, chronic care management, care transitions, specialty growth, patient retention, patient loyalty, population health performance, avoidable utilization reduction, and enterprise financial performance.

Guideway Care is also advancing Activation-Based Care, or ABC — a context-aware extension of Evidence-Based Patient Activation focused on whether patients can and will complete the next right step in the reality of daily life. ABC applies behavioral science, longitudinal barrier intelligence, timing, practical ease, and human-plus-AI orchestration to make recommended actions more relevant, more feasible, and more likely to be completed. It is not generic engagement, passive outreach, or AI-first automation. It is activation designed around real patient context.

Activation Intelligence aligns health system strategy with measurable Activation Objectives and ensures that the next right step is completed across the full care continuum. Rather than relying on generic outreach or layering technology onto existing workflows, Guideway applies patient activation science to produce measurable completion — the real unit of enterprise value. Its solution integrates structured patient activation science, proprietary activation data, longitudinal barrier intelligence, human activation specialists, and AI activation agents into one unified execution system, with artificial intelligence operating as an amplification layer rather than a stand-alone answer.

To learn more visit https://guidewaycare.com.

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SOURCE Guideway Care