Kelly Haynie tracks the threat not to artificial intelligence itself but to the health systems that aren’t proactive in defining the real value proposition for their teams.
As CEO of Ochsner Medical Center West Bank campus, part of New Orleans-based Ochsner Health, he came into his first CEO role with a background built across Army medicine, hospital operations and the academic classroom — he teaches change leadership in Georgetown University’s executive master’s program in clinical quality, safety and leadership. That vantage point informs a hypothesis he returns to frequently: the organizations best positioned to disrupt traditional healthcare are already further along on AI than most established health systems.
“I think the real question is whether traditional healthcare organizations will lead that transformation, or will they be forced to respond to it,” he said in a recent “Becker’s Healthcare Podcast” episode.
Over the past decade, nontraditional entrants — consumer-facing companies built for digital, convenience-first experiences — moved into healthcare and became early AI adopters in the process. That compounding advantage is not hypothetical and is already widening the gap between traditional healthcare providers and tech-first companies.
Dr. Haynie described the AI landscape in three distinct phases: machine learning and predictive analytics, which have already informed clinical practice; generative AI, which accelerates data synthesis and analysis; and agentic AI, which introduces the capacity for autonomous action. That third phase is where the transformation becomes structural rather than incremental, and where health systems still sorting out governance frameworks may find the gap harder to close.
“Agentic AI is going to be really transformative for us when we understand the power and figure out how to harness it,” said Dr. Haynie. “It’s not about doing what we’re currently doing faster. It’s actually to figure out how we transform what we’re doing now to meet the needs of the community because the needs are changing. We can no longer build models where we expect our patients to come to us. People want healthcare in their community. They want it close to home. There is a sense of currency and they want it now. We have to figure out how to really harness the power of that technology to transform how we deliver healthcare.”
The healthcare redesign with AI sits at the center of how health systems across the country are reorienting their broader AI strategies. Moving quickly is not the same as moving without discipline. Dr. Haynie has spent significant time on the governance and safeguards he considers necessary for responsible AI adoption — structures that protect clinical judgment, patient privacy and equity. But overcaution carries its own risk. Health systems that move too slowly may allow others to define the future around them.
Ochsner Health already has the assets nontraditional competitors lack: trusted clinical relationships, a large and diverse workforce, deep community connections and extensive data. The opportunity, he said, is to combine those advantages with the speed and technological capabilities consumers increasingly expect — a challenge the system has been working through at the enterprise level.
“I believe AI represents one of the greatest opportunities of the next several years,” he said. “But only, as I mentioned before, if we use it to redesign care rather than to simply automate the work that we’re currently doing today.”
The counterintuitive argument he makes most forcefully is about the human dimension. The common assumption is that more technology makes healthcare less personal. His argument runs in the other direction.
“I think this is truly an opportunity for us to humanize the care that we are delivering by harnessing the power of technology, by reducing the administrative burden and allowing our clinicians and our support staff to spend more time with leaders,” he said. “It’s allowing our leaders to spend more time with their teams as well. I think that is truly what’s going to transform healthcare in the next two to three years.”
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