Founder & Clinical Director
Dr. Richard Herstein
A committed and compassionate sleep specialist bringing together more than fifteen years of hands-on clinical experience, a decade of executive leadership across major hospital systems, and a distinguished international medical education.
About Dr. Herstein
Dr. Richard Herstein is a committed and compassionate sleep specialist who brings together more than fifteen years of hands-on clinical experience, a decade of executive leadership across major hospital systems, and a distinguished international medical education. He founded Stuart Sleep in 2024 after a career that showed him — repeatedly, from the inside — exactly how and why conventional sleep medicine fails the people it is meant to serve.
His career in sleep medicine did not begin in an office. He earned his Registered Polysomnographic Technologist certification in 2010 and his Registered Sleep Technologist credential from the American Board of Sleep Medicine in 2012, and he has spent the years since performing and analyzing thousands of overnight studies — sitting through the nights, watching the signals in real time, and learning to recognize the events that automated scoring misses.
That origin explains the practice he built. He reads studies in 30-second epochs from beginning to end because he knows firsthand how much disease hides in the epochs a hurried reader skips. He is also a published author in academic sleep medicine texts, most recently contributing to Fundamentals for Sleep Professionals.
His Patient-First Philosophy
- Every patient deserves a thorough, epoch-by-epoch review — not a summary.
- Treatment must be tailored to the individual, not a one-size-fits-all prescription.
- Patients should understand their own data and feel confident in their care.
- Transparency and honesty are the foundation of good medicine.
Leadership Background
A Decade Inside Large Health Systems
Understanding why Stuart Sleep exists requires understanding what came before it.
Dr. Herstein spent ten years running clinical operations at scale. He directed one of Tennessee's largest diagnostic and interventional radiology programs — more than 750,000 imaging procedures a year across three hospitals, a 350-person clinical team, and a $250 million budget. He led inpatient and outpatient service lines at Robert Wood Johnson Barnabas Health, including oncology, neurosurgery, women's services, and interventional radiology. As a senior consultant with FTI Consulting and Cannon Design, he built strategic and master facility plans for academic medical centers, community hospitals, and health systems nationally.
From 2020 to 2024 he served as Chief Medical Officer and Chief Hospital Administrator for the State of Florida's entire psychiatric and behavioral health system: eight hospitals, 3,515 civil and forensic beds, 4,500 clinical and support staff, and a $564 million annual budget. He streamlined intake to increase weekly admissions by more than 20%, reduced average length of stay by over a month, led the implementation of a new electronic health record, saved more than $5 million by strengthening acute care capacity, recruited and retained more than 4,100 healthcare workers during a national shortage, eliminated COVID-19 transmission across the system, and earned a perfect score from the Commission on Accreditation of Rehabilitation Facilities.
He was also, throughout, a staunch advocate for transparency and patient safety — challenging systemic issues, bringing attention to gaps in safety protocols, and pressing for meaningful reform. He is not afraid of a challenge when patient care is at stake, and that instinct — put the patient first and work outward from there — has guided every role he has held since.
Why Stuart Sleep Exists
What a Decade Inside the System Taught Him
Since 2024, Dr. Herstein has also served as a healthcare law consultant and strategist with the Mattox Law Firm in Tallahassee, conducting root-cause and trend analysis on complex malpractice and class action cases to identify systemic deficiencies in how care is delivered — documentation gaps, patient safety risks, and the institutional habits that produce them.
Between the executive roles and the legal work, he has now examined failure in American healthcare from nearly every angle: as the administrator responsible for it, as the investigator reconstructing it afterward, and as the technologist who watched individual patients fall through it one night at a time.
The pattern is consistent. Volume wins. Systems optimize for throughput, and the individual patient becomes a data point processed by someone who will never meet them. In sleep medicine this takes a specific and recognizable form: several patients tested per night in a shared lab, raw data shipped to a remote reader who scores it against software defaults, and a summary mailed weeks later to the referring provider. The patient frequently never speaks to the person who interpreted their study. When the result is a CPAP prescription they cannot tolerate, there is often no next step offered at all.
The Practice He Built Instead
Stuart Sleep inverts that model at every point. One patient per night, in a private suite, with protocols set for that individual rather than pulled from a template. Every study reviewed epoch by epoch, scored to AASM standards, and interpreted by a board-certified physician. Results returned within the week and walked through with the patient in plain language. Concierge, direct-pay pricing with no insurance authorization required — which is precisely what makes an entire night and an unhurried review possible.
A significant part of the practice is patients who were already tested, told their study was normal, and still feel unwell. Dr. Herstein re-analyzes the raw data from prior home sleep tests and lab polysomnograms, and frequently finds what was missed.
Within six months of opening, the practice reached positive net financial performance while maintaining perfect patient satisfaction scores — evidence, he would argue, that unhurried and individualized care is not a luxury model but a better one.
Education & Certifications
World-Class Training
Undergraduate Studies
University of Michigan
Master of Business Administration (MBA)
Indiana University — Kelley School of Business
Master's in Healthcare Administration Management (MHA)
Harvard University — later President of the Harvard Club of Indiana and recipient of the Outstanding Contribution Award, one of four given worldwide
Medical Training
Royal College of Surgeons, Dublin, Ireland
Medical Training
RWTH Aachen University Medical School
Medical Training
Windsor University — School of Medicine
ECFMG Certified
Educational Commission for Foreign Medical Graduates
RPSGT + RST Certified
Registered Polysomnographic Technologist (2010); Registered Sleep Technologist, American Board of Sleep Medicine (2012)
Lean Six Sigma Black Belt
Healthcare process improvement; examiner for the NIST Baldrige Performance Excellence Program
Clinical Skills
Areas of Expertise
- Full polysomnography interpretation and epoch-by-epoch review
- Continuous Positive Airway Pressure (CPAP)
- Bilevel Positive Airway Pressure (BiPAP)
- Adaptive servoventilation (SV)
- Supplemental oxygen administration
- Oral appliance and mandibular advancement devices
- Hypoglossal nerve stimulation therapy
- Patent-pending Positional Oxygenated Therapy (POxT)
What He Offers
Services at Stuart Sleep
Private In-Lab Sleep Studies
One patient per night in a private suite, with protocols set for that individual rather than pulled from a template.
Second-Opinion Reviews
Full re-analysis of raw data from prior home sleep tests and lab polysomnograms — for patients told their study was normal who still feel unwell.
POxT — Positional Oxygenated Therapy
His patent-pending therapy for patients who cannot tolerate CPAP: positional therapy plus targeted oxygen, titrated against the patient's own data. No mask, hose, implant, or stimulation; only a discreet nasal cannula.
Results Within the Week
Every study read epoch by epoch, returned within the week, and walked through with the patient in plain language.
Ready to Get Started?
Meet Dr. Herstein in Person
Whether it's snoring, fatigue, a CPAP machine collecting dust, or simply the sense that you're not sleeping as well as you should — the aim is the same: find out exactly what is happening, explain it clearly, and treat it in a way you will actually stay with.