“That has been part of a strategy to understand how we can get the best opportunities to be able to pilot and test things as they are coming along, but to do it in an environment where we’ve got the right expertise and are able to scale as we need to,” Mr. Watson said.
Mr. Watson was named permanent CFO in May 2024 after serving in an interim capacity since January.
He said that although they had just completed implementation and were in the early stages of the IT shift to Optum, the transfer proved to be extremely supportive after Allina was hit in July 2024 by the CrowdStrike incident, a global IT outage that affected multiple U.S. hospitals and health systems.
“[To] have a partner that could help us rapidly respond to getting out to individual desktops and making sure we were getting things corrected and remediated so that they could continue to do their work, it was really remarkable to see the two teams working hand in hand with each other and not thinking about anything other than, ‘how do we solve the problem,'” he said.
On the revenue cycle side, Mr. Watson said the team has provided valuable guidance on new regulations and upcoming changes, while also helping the system scale and meet performance targets set before the transition.
Looking toward the future at Allina Health, Mr. Watson said his finance team is working closely with the system’s chief strategy officer to develop a five-year financial plan aimed at ensuring long-term financial stability, optimizing resources and supporting strategic growth initiatives.
One area of growth that Mr. Watson is excited about at Allina is a 10-story surgical and critical care building that was just a hole in the ground when he started at the system. The center is expected to be complete in August 2026 and will bring “significant expansion” to the system’s clinical capabilities, including its cardiac program, oncology programs and neuro programs.
“The investment back into this community has a really meaningful impact on the city and on the community itself,” he said.
