The 39 leaders featured in this article are speaking at Becker’s 10th Annual Health IT + Digital Health + RCM Conference. The conference will take place Sept. 30th – Oct. 3rd at the Hyatt Regency in Chicago. If you’d like to be considered for a speaking spot, please reach out to rhaseman@beckershealthcare.com.
Note: Responses have been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Question: Tell us about the most impactful change you’ve made in the last three months. What did you do, and what were the results?
Michelle Tutem Greame, PA-C, MSHS. Assistant Vice President of Revenue Integrity at Inova Health System: The most impactful change I’ve led in the last three months has been the implementation of AI-driven predictive analytics to improve our level-of-care determinations and utilization review process.
We launched XSOLIS to right size our observation rates, address inconsistent P2P attempt rates and inefficiencies in how we engaged payers. We worked closely with clinical, IT and revenue cycle teams to ensure a smooth rollout—including provider training, workflow integration and performance tracking.
Within 90 days, we saw a measurable improvement:
- Reduction in observation rates, driving net financial improvement
- Increase in P2P rates
- Increase in UR RN efficiency rates
This change is not only strengthening our financial performance but is also streamlining operations and empowering our team with better data to effectively advocate with payers.
Deepti Pandita, MD, FACP, FAMIA. Chief Medical Informatics Officer, Vice President of Clinical Informatics and Associate Professor of Medicine at University of California Irvine Health: Over the last three months, I led the enterprise rollout of electronic consents across UCI Health, a critical step in advancing our digital maturity and improving patient safety, compliance and operational efficiency. This initiative required close collaboration with legal, compliance, perioperative leadership and frontline clinical teams to standardize consent language, integrate forms into the EHR and ensure they were accessible across all points of care. An additional step we included was the ability for the patient to read and sign the form via the patient portal or on their device during the discussion with the performing physician.
Andrew Rosenberg, MD. CIO at Michigan Medicine: Michigan Medicine is moving all general-purpose workflows as well as our full Epic production environment and associate applications to the Microsoft Azure cloud including a uniquely diverse and redundant redesign and implementation of our supporting wide area network and overall mixed cloud and hybrid IT to support the incredibly complex technologies supporting our expanding health system and large research-based medical school
Related to this, we are also creating both on premise and cloud infrastructures to test out numerous foundational models for use cases of open source and proprietary LLMs and other advanced AIs. We believe several key workflows in healthcare would benefit from simply using very good, open-source models and avoid the initial wasted expenses for small pilots that may not need more expensive, proprietary AIs to start with. Over time, when these are demonstrating value, such as ones we have created in revenue cycle applications are proven, we are moving these to enterprise grade infrastructure and services for long term use.
Finally, we are excited by the breadth and depth of the data management, engineering, semantic interoperability and diversity of tools within Microsoft Fabric we recently saw at the 2nd ‘FabCon’ meeting in Las Vegas and are looking to reduce the heterogeneity of product and service solutions diver in our enterprise data architectures to simplify and improve the flow of data from the originating source to knowledge creation for the organization.
Charles Emerman, MD. Chair of Emergency Medicine at MetroHealth Medical Center: The most impactful change that we have made over the past three months has been to standardize the ambulatory template. We had close to 100 different templates for the behavioral health providers. We reduce that down to 20. Implementation started this month. We are addressing some unique circumstances that were not considered in the initial rollout. We expect that this will improve access for our patients.
Khalid Turk. Chief Healthcare Information Officer at Santa Clara Valley Healthcare: The most impactful change I led in the last three months was the rapid integration of Regional Medical Center into the County of Santa Clara’s health system following its acquisition. Given only 90 days, we adopted a minimum viable product (MVP) approach—prioritizing critical systems and services to ensure seamless patient care from day one. By shifting from traditional project management to a fluid, outcome-driven strategy, we achieved go-live on time, maintained continuity of care and laid the foundation for long-term operational integration. It was a true testament to the power of agility, teamwork and mission-driven leadership.
Marc Perkins-Carrillo. Chief Nursing Informatics Officer at Moffitt Cancer Center: The swift implementation of our inpatient hospice program within a remarkable three weeks exemplifies the power of interdisciplinary collaboration. While our clinical informatics nurses were instrumental in designing workflows, testing the build of the system and educating staff, their efforts were deeply intertwined with numerous other teams. This collective endeavor involved clinical leadership, nursing and physician staff, and IT professionals working in concert. Together, they navigated the compressed timeline to ensure a successful go-live, welcoming our first patient within hours. The positive feedback from the patient’s family, highlighting the smooth process and exceptional care, underscores the effectiveness of this unified approach. This achievement showcases the remarkable outcomes achievable through seamless teamwork and shared commitment to patient-centered care.
Haris Ackerman. Director for Integration and Strategic Operations at Virtua Health: The most impactful change we have seen in the last three months is leveraging our centralized clinical and logistics command center to address opportunities with readmissions.
We have leveraged our centralized patient navigation opportunities and technology enabled post-discharge home-based clinical care to ensure wraparound services for discharged patients with more diagnosis specific precision, and ensuring a cohesive, clinically sound wraparound service to keep patients from coming back to the hospital and ensuring they are cared for safely, and effectively, in the comfort of their own home leveraging various remote monitoring and technology-based tools.
Garrett Olin, MBA. CIO at Shasta Community Health Center: The most impactful change made in the past three months relates to reduction in costs to the organization. We have reached out to negotiate new pricing on hardware, software and services as contracts are nearing expiration. We have also reached out to new vendors to bid on these contracts for additional leverage. Our success has seen a reduction in costs of nearly $250K without a reduction in services, and the potential savings of another $2.25M through AI implementations currently in the pilot phase.
Bryan Graven. CIO and Executive Director ITS at Waterbury Health and Eastern CT Health Network: The PX Service Recovery application has been in place for a year now, and the impact has been remarkable. By capturing real-time feedback during hospital stays, the app enables our teams to address patient concerns immediately. We’ve seen significant improvements in patient satisfaction scores and continue to make patient experience a top priority across our facilities.
Erin McGarry. CFO at Westborough Behavioral Healthcare Hospital: I joined WBHH in August of 2024. The three most impactful changes I have made are:
- Expanded billing for ancillary services that had not been addressed in the past.
- Optimized our front-end UR team, in conjunction with the clinicians, to decrease denials
- Customized our EMR and RCM to accommodate streamlining processes and eliminate duplicate efforts across the organization.
Coming up next: Finalizing the migration from a stand-alone scheduling tool to a fully integrated one. The new application is directly linked with our payroll, PTO and employee HRIS system. This will improve efficiency, accuracy and also enable a reconciliation between hours scheduled and hours worked. Training is done and the framework is set up. Parallel processing in April, final cut over May 31.
Darlene Vendittelli, MSM. Director for Digital Revenue Management at Southcoast Health: One of the most impactful changes our team has made over the last few months was implementing electronic authorizations directly between our EHR software and payer, known as Electronic Medical Prior Authorization. This functionality allows our organization to request authorizations electronically from our EMR and send supporting documentation as needed. This has streamlined the submission process of authorizations which makes the process more efficient for our users. This has reduced the number of manual interactions needed with acquiring authorizations and increased productivity of the interactions that we do have.
Crystal Broj, CPDHTS. Enterprise Chief Digital Transformation Officer at Medical University of South Carolina: One of the most impactful digital transformation wins we’ve had in the past three months was the launch of a new ‘Find a Provider’ website powered by DexCare at the Medical University of South Carolina. This platform is more than just a directory—it’s a consumer-centric access tool that uses natural language processing to help patients search by condition, insurance, location or preferred language. It also offers real-time transparency into appointment availability for both new and returning patients, sorts by first available and promotes virtual care options for immediate needs.
This wasn’t just a tech upgrade—it was a shift in how we think about access. Within two weeks of launching (with no marketing push), we saw over 400 new appointments scheduled. It’s a clear signal that frictionless, digitally-enabled access is what patients expect—and what health systems need to deliver.
Susan Ibanez, DHO, FACHE, CHCIO, CDH-E. CIO at Southeast Georgia Health System: Our most impactful change over the past 3+ months and into the end of April will be the move of our EMR (Oracle/Cerner) to OCI. That is a big part of our cloud smart strategy. We have evaluated several tier 1 and tier 2 systems identifying opportunities to move away from on-prem hardware where it makes sense. The EMR move is one of the biggest projects in our portfolio this year.
Patti Cuartas, DMSc, PA-C, MBA, PMP, FACHE, ACHIP. Executive Director and Associate Chief Medical Informatics Officer at Mount Sinai Health System: Over the past three months, the most impactful change I’ve led has been a restructuring and realigning of how our technical teams collaborate, improving interoperability across our healthcare systems to better align with our organizational strategy on integrated, patient-centered care.
Recognizing that siloed processes were creating inefficiencies and limiting our ability to scale, I partnered with stakeholders across our EMR product, digital, clinical and operational teams to identify key friction points—particularly around data sharing, decision-making authority and duplication of efforts. From there, we were able to create an improved governance model that clarified ownership, streamlined decisions and approvals, and introduced shared OKRs tied directly to our broader strategic goals.
We are on our way to not only improve data exchange and reduce duplicative efforts, but also to accelerate the delivery of key initiatives like better access to data, better-quality referral workflows and seamless patient data sharing in a more unified approach to delivering high-quality, connected care. More importantly, it is positioning us to scale future innovation in a way that’s truly aligned with our mission and the needs of our patients and community partners.
James J. Matera, DO, FACOI, ACPE. Senior Vice President of Medical Affairs and Chief Medical Officer at CentraState Medical Center: 2025 is the year where I am focused on two distinct issues: 1.) Reduction of variability in the hospital and 2.) Improvement of collaboration among team members. In the last three months I have addressed both of these issues with success. For variability, we have shown that admission to our hospitalist groups results in a significant reduction in the initiation of Rapid Response Teams. I am now looking to have our contracted group cover all admission to higher care levels such as progressive care, step down and critical care.
I also launched a DYAD group (with myself acting as the TRIAD administrator) for all medical directors and service line leaders. This allows operational and clinical collaboration and learning and focuses on several items during DYAD meeting including: review of mission and vision, quality metrics and KPIs (recognizing the need to pivot when necessary), and performance of SWOT analyses to help guide the progress of the service lines in the future and beyond.
Penni Kyte. Digital Care Strategy Officer at Ballad Health: Ballad Health has achieved a significant milestone by implementing a new video platform that aligns with your organizational and clinical needs. Our approach of involving a cross-functional team—spanning operational, clinical and technical leaders and frontline staff—demonstrates a strategic and inclusive method to ensure that the chosen product not only meets but exceeds the diverse requirements of your teams.
- Collaborative decisionmaking: Involving representatives from multiple disciplines helped ensure that the platform was evaluated from all critical perspectives. This not only maximized buy-in across the organization but also increased the likelihood of choosing a product that is both functional and adaptable.
- Detailed transition planning: Mapping out the transition for each affected team likely minimized disruptions during the rollout. This attention to detail is critical in ensuring a smooth changeover, particularly in clinical and operational settings where workflow consistency is paramount.
- EMR integration: Integrating the platform into our EMR system streamlines communication and data sharing, reinforcing the platform’s utility and ensuring that it supports clinical workflows seamlessly.
- Platform agility: The fact that the platform’s foundation is built as a collaboration tool and is nimble enough to adapt to evolving needs positions our organization well for future innovations. This flexibility is key in an environment where clinical and operational demands can change rapidly.
Overall, our digital care strategy not only demonstrates a strong commitment to cross-functional collaboration but also highlights the importance of strategic planning and integration in adopting new technologies. This model of implementation could serve as a valuable case study for other organizations looking to adopt similar platforms.
Robbie Freeman, DNP, RN, Vice President of Digital Experience and Chief Nursing Informatics Officer at Mount Sinai Health System on behalf of David L. Reich, MD, Chief Clinical Officer at Mount Sinai Health System and President at The Mount Sinai Hospital: My Next Steps, an interactive digital to-do list branded by Mount Sinai Health System, empowers patients to take a more active role in their care journey. The platform delivers tailored pre- and post-visit guidance for episodic, chronic and preventive care. Today, over 45,000 patients are enrolled in one of 20+ active care plans—including high-engagement pathways, such as pre-surgical, routine pregnancy, hypertension, COPD and CHF post-discharge. Early internal data shows promising impact in that patients engaging with the tool are demonstrating improved hypertension management, including better blood pressure control and adherence to care plans.
Judd Hollander, MD. Senior Vice President of Healthcare Delivery Innovation at Thomas Jefferson University Health: One of the most impactful changes we have made is improving access and experience for patients who do not speak English as their primary language. We mapped the patient care journey end to end and began making changes across the spectrum of care. For example, we have expanded the number of languages used for patient nudges, access to the patient portal, modified discharge instructions and developed a methodology to match patients with a discharge agent who speaks the same language as the patient. Of course, we can still use translators, but the more we can match patients, staff and providers, the better the experience and knowledge retention.
Mark Townsend, MD, MHCM. Chief Clinical Innovation Officer at Bon Secours Mercy Health: Over the last three months, using Accrete Health Partners as the venture arm of Bon Secours Mercy Health, we completed two investments. First, we invested in smart-facilities, and we are excited that our first smart-unit will open in our Hampton Roads Market within the weeks ahead. Smart-facilities will help us improve quality of care, patient safety and importantly the experience of our patients. Our ability to ‘work smarter, not harder’ will also be empowered by creating efficiencies for our largest clinical workforce, our nursing teams. Second, we invested in a technology that harnesses price transparency data. By better understanding market dynamics in the regions that we serve, we continuously improve care-delivery for our patients; we have also improved our competitive stance with payers who are using hospital transparency data to maximize their profitability.
Lynnette Clinton. CIO at BayCare Health System: We’ve recently started an internal Automation Council. Some departments have been using various automation tools for years and others struggle to figure out how to move forward, so we created a user group to bring people together to highlight their tools and successes. This sharing of ideas has begun a reinvigoration of low-cost automations across administrative areas.
Regina Foley, PhD, MBA, RN. Executive Vice President, Chief Nurse Executive and Chief Transformation and Integration Officer at Hackensack Meridian Health: An impactful change we have made is a conscious effort to reduce the administrative burden on the bedside team.This includes our ‘Dump the Junk’ effort, which has resulted in flowsheet macros that decrease the amount of time nurses spend in the system documenting commonly charted items; automation of ambulatory specialist notes sent to referring physicians resulting in improved communication and improved patient care; the Nursing Assignment Wizard that makes patient assignment workflows easier by giving charge nurses access to many key deciding factors including nursing workload acuity; and, a 70% overall reduction in interruptive practice alerts shown to nurses and doctors.
Ken Dunham, MD, FAPA, CPE. Executive Director Medical Operations for Behavioral Health at Sentara Health: We’ve made an AI program that predicts safer discharges for patients in our EDs that present with behavioral health issues. The AI is not yet being used clinically. In the past three months, we decided to test the AI’s predicted outcomes against real-world outcomes. The clinicians making decisions are blind to the AI’s predictions. We hope to have results for review and discussion by the end of the year. We are making patient safety a top priority, and we want to make sure that any AI we use is well tested before it is involved in clinical care.
Dirk Steinert, MD, MBA. Vice President and Chief Medical Officer, Ambulatory Care at ThedaCare: At ThedaCare, one of our core principles is Innovation. We seek to improve every day and proactively learn and grow through education and experience. We embrace change and are open to new ways of doing things.
The most impactful change I have made in the last three months includes work our team is leading called, ‘Mingle with the Purpose.’ These are medical director meetings that bring clinical leaders together to help continue building strong relationships across our teams. This includes both employed team members and those closely affiliated with our system. The goal of this is to create a transformational experience for our clinical teams to know each other on a deeper level. We’re confident those connections can help decrease burnout, enhance the joy they feel from their work and more. In the end, this will all lead to the most important aspect of what we do – providing the best care for our patients and families.
Sophia Saleem, MD. Chief Medical Information Officer at Northwell Health Physician Partners: In the past few months and years, I have really focused on data. Bad data sets an organization back from achieving any level of creating transformative experiences, and it’s much truer in healthcare than any other industry. Creating relevant data and maintaining new and existing data in data models that enable us to share intelligence is paramount to enable personalized experiences for our patients and clinical team members. My interest is to continue to support the individual or segmented clinical needs of our patients and optimization needs for our clinical team members. Adopting a product mindset with data will allow us to better use AI, CRM and emerging technologies.
Kendra Calhoun. Senior Vice President of Marketing, Communications and Digital Experience at Avera Health: Over the past three months, we launched a new Digital Marketing & Consumer Insights vertical—a major restructuring that changes how we engage consumers across the entire marketing funnel. This shift aligns with our system’s transition to Epic and advancements in CRM and AI, giving us the tools to better integrate data-driven insights and implement digital strategies that grow our volumes, increase patient engagement and build loyalty. Though still early, we’ve already started initiatives like expanding our contact database, improving search capabilities, and creating digital communities and focus groups. We’re also developing a new CRM roadmap, launching a brand tracker and building real-time dashboards. These efforts are designed to strengthen our ability to anticipate consumer needs and demonstrate marketing’s impact. While results are still unfolding, the foundation we’re building is setting us up for smarter, more connected growth.
Pam Austin. Senior Vice President and CIO at Ballad Health: Nurse Wellbeing Perspectives: Involvement, Efficiency and Satisfaction (as of February 2025): Ballad Health’s nursing and IT leadership built a partnership represented through the recently launched nursing productivity and satisfaction end user group whose main goals are to optimize Epic in the nursing space and improve nurse wellbeing by focusing on nursing involvement, efficiency and satisfaction with our organization’s EHR.
- Project Success Measures: Implementation of Epic Flowsheet Macros saved nurses, and other clinical staff who utilize flowsheet documentation, 15+ million clicks in just seven months and the number of clicks saved continues to grow!
- An Epic Rover pilot project on two surgical units at our Level 1 trauma hospital enabled the pilot CNAs to file vitals in real-time (one to five minutes) versus longer historical times. A formal project focused on supplying acute CNAs across Ballad Health with Rover devices concludes this month.
- The development and implementation of a ‘Get Rid of the Stupid Stuff,’ or ‘GRoSS,’ initiative—designed to give clinicians an opportunity to identify and report anything in Epic they believe is poorly designed, unnecessary or non-sensical—is enabling all Ballad Health clinicians (not just nursing) to directly participate in the optimization of Epic and its continuous improvement. Since we launched the program in May, we’ve had over 200 submissions, and more than a quarter of those requests have already been resolved! We’re tracking at a high submission rate compared to other Epic organizations with GRoSS programs, which tells us there is great clinical engagement.
Michael Archuleta. CIO and HIPAA and Information Security Officer at Mt. San Rafael Hospital: Over the last three months, one of the most impactful changes I led was the full-scale deployment of AI-powered radiology at Mt. San Rafael where rapid diagnostics can be the difference between life and death. We implemented advanced imaging algorithms that automatically prioritize high-risk findings, enabling our radiologists to focus on critical cases faster and with greater precision. This technology has already flagged life-threatening conditions such as pulmonary embolisms and intracranial hemorrhages that may have otherwise gone undetected or experienced dangerous delays.
But this initiative wasn’t just a technology upgrade it represented a strategic shift toward proactive, data-driven care. In settings where every minute counts and resources must be maximized, AI became a force multiplier enhancing diagnostic capabilities, streamlining workflows and supporting clinical decisions in real time.
The results have been extraordinary: faster turnaround times, increased provider confidence and, most importantly, better patient outcomes. As CIO, I believe innovation must be both inclusive and intentional. My mission is to bring transformative solutions to organizations that are ready to lead and not follow as we define the next era of digital healthcare. At Mt. San Rafael, we’re not just adopting technology we’re aligning it with purpose, proving how leadership and vision can truly elevate patient care.
James Solava, DO, FACP. Medical Director for Clinical Informatics at Allegheny Health Network: In the last six months, we launched a head-to-head pilot of three ambient scribe vendors at Allegheny Health Network, deploying this cutting-edge technology to over 450 clinicians across more than 40 specialties in hospital, outpatient and emergency room settings. This initiative has shown measurable and revolutionary provider efficiency, significantly increased face-to-face time with patients and dramatically enhanced provider satisfaction at work. Patients have benefited from more personalized and attentive care, leading to improved health outcomes and higher satisfaction rates. The life-changing impact on our providers and patients has been profound, and I am excited to expand this technology to all our providers, including our nurses, to further elevate the exceptional quality of care we deliver.
Monique Diaz, MD. Region Vice President, Chief Medical Informatics Officer – California at CommonSpirit Health: At CommonSpirit Health, we’re committed to leveraging cutting-edge technology to empower our clinicians and improve patient care. Over the past three months, we’ve witnessed a remarkable transformation in healthcare decision-making thanks to a focused initiative surrounding our Insightli tool.
Insightli is a sophisticated clinical decision support system designed to provide clinicians with readily accessible, evidence-based insights at the point of care. While the tool itself is powerful, we recognized that its true potential could only be unlocked through comprehensive training and adoption across our diverse user base.
Therefore, we embarked on an intensive training program targeting physicians, advanced practice providers, administrators, and clinic staff. This program emphasized the tool’s capabilities, demonstrated its seamless integration into existing workflows, and highlighted its potential to enhance diagnostic accuracy, treatment planning and overall patient outcomes.
The results have been nothing short of astounding. In just three months, we’ve seen our prompt rate triple, indicating a significant increase in the tool’s utilization. We now have over 10,700 active users accessing Insightli, with approximately 15,000 prompts served weekly. To date, Insightli has delivered over 375,000 prompts, providing clinicians with invaluable support in their daily practice.
This dramatic increase in adoption is a testament to the tool’s value and the effectiveness of our training program. Clinicians are now routinely using Insightli to access the latest medical literature, explore treatment options and identify potential drug interactions, ultimately leading to more informed and personalized care decisions.
At CommonSpirit Health, we’re proud to be at the forefront of this technological revolution, and we’re excited to see the continued impact of Insightli on patient outcomes in the months and years to come.
Jason H. Cherry, MBA. Executive Director, IS Technology Services at Lexington Medical Center: Lexington Medical Center just completed a pilot for ten physicians using ambient listening technology with GenAI embedded into the product. I am excited about the use of this product because it will enable LMC’s physicians to have a much more personal interaction with their patients instead of worrying about documenting in our EMR. Personal interaction and connection is one of the most important aspects of our culture, so this was a big win. We were able to quantify the ROI for their technology instead of relying on the ‘feel good’ factor of helping those physicians reduce their time spent updating their notes. It’s an excellent example of how GenAI can be used to outsource those mundane tasks to technology so that the physicians can focus on caring for their patients.
Nirmit D. Kothari, MD, MPH. Associate Chief Medical Officer at Baptist Memorial Hospital – Memphis: One of the most significant and impactful changes we have implemented recently is integrating the ‘Improvement Kata’ (four-step scientific thinking method) methodology into our patient flow work. Following the development and dissemination of SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-Bound) goals with our team and delineating our current state, we conducted rapid experimentation to improve our existing processes. We utilized real-time data, formulated ‘micro’ goals that the frontline team can relate to and directly influence, and leveraged technology to establish three to four ‘bite-sized’ (i.e., 15-20 minutes) multidisciplinary touchpoints with a primary focus on timely escalation of obstacles and closed-loop communication. Additionally, we prioritized establishing clear expectations, fostering accountability and sharing results in real time to facilitate prompt adjustments to our processes. These modifications facilitated a rapid improvement in our patient flow, augmented capacity, reduced wait times and, most importantly, fostered a culture of continuous enhancement.
Ben Kaplan, MPA. Senior Director for AI Governance and Products at Mount Sinai Health System: Over the past three months, I’ve helped a leading academic health system operationalize its first enterprise-wide AI Implementation and Use Policy—establishing a clear framework for responsible innovation. In parallel, we launched an AI Review Board to evaluate and prioritize all clinical, operational and financial AI use cases, creating a single point of governance for AI investments. These efforts laid the groundwork for end-to-end oversight of AI model development, deployment and monitoring. The result: accelerated adoption of high-impact AI solutions with the guardrails needed to scale safely and sustainably.
Anjali Bhagra, MD, MBA. Medical Director for Automation at Mayo Clinic: Over the past three months, we at Mayo Clinic have focused on advancing a critical initiative to transform international patient access through agentic automation. This effort goes beyond traditional RPA by embedding intelligence into the architecture of intake, triage and scheduling workflows.
We conducted a comprehensive analysis in partnership with our clinical and operational leadership as well as technology builders that surfaced 16 high-value intelligent automation opportunities. These include AI-driven agents capable of interpreting clinical and logistical data, making context-aware decisions and initiating next steps with appropriate engagement of humans in the loop. The goal: to shift our onboarding process from a reactive, manual model to a proactive, adaptive system.
Triage automation is one of the first phases of production, serving as a proof point for how agentic systems can significantly compress onboarding timelines—from several days to a matter of hours—while maintaining clinical quality and operational integrity.
This initiative is not simply a technology deployment; it’s a foundational redesign of international patient access. By aligning intelligent automation capabilities with clinical operations and strategic growth goals, we are positioning Mayo Clinic to deliver globally scalable, high-touch care with the speed and precision patients expect in a digitally connected world.
Richard Mulry. President and CEO at Northwell Holdings: Early this year, our leadership team took a strategic pause to reassess how we work and how to best support the organization’s highest priorities. While we were actively managing a range of initiatives—company launches, financings, portfolio support and data infrastructure development—we recognized the need to step back, challenge assumptions and sharpen our focus. This wasn’t just about reallocating resources. It was about making sure every effort tied back to what matters most: improving patient care, strengthening operations and accelerating innovation where it’s needed most. That reflection reshaped how we work—leading to clearer priorities, tighter coordination with our colleagues and a renewed focus on what truly matters. It’s already making a difference: our teams are moving faster, communicating more clearly and staying focused on delivering results that support both exceptional patient care and a better experience for caregivers across the system.
Sitt Paing, MD. CIO at Pun Hlaing Hospitals: Six months ago, I formed a team of five young, enthusiastic developers and data engineers—most of whom had little to no prior experience in AI. With a clear vision and a shared passion for transforming healthcare, we set out to deliver value across different levels of the organization. The result? Tangible, impactful solutions for clinicians, department managers and executive leaders, each tailored to their specific operational needs. What I’ve learned from this journey is that meaningful change doesn’t always require hiring top-tier experts from elite tech backgrounds. When there is a strong team fit, a well-defined objective and a sense of shared purpose, today’s readily available technologies are more than capable of driving transformation in healthcare delivery.
Eric Smith. Senior Vice President and Chief Digital Officer at Memorial Hermann Health System: One of the most impactful changes we’ve made recently is expanding our self-service analytics capabilities for frontline teams and clinical leaders. With the rollout of Epic and other tools, we’ve made it easier for end users to access and explore the data they need without waiting on someone else to build a report. Whether it’s a nurse manager tracking staffing trends or an operational leader reviewing throughput metrics, they can now make faster, more informed decisions in real time. This shift has not only improved efficiency across the board, but it’s also freed up our analytics team to focus on more complex, system-level initiatives. Ultimately, it’s about giving our people the tools to solve problems and improve care.
Anthony Anani. Chief Medical Officer at Cook Children’s Medical Center – Prosper TX: My hospital continues to add services. Over the last three months, we have grown our adolescent bariatric service line and are working on opening our neonatal intensive care unit.
Andre Neal. Director for Revenue Cycle Strategic Partner at Ochsner Health: The most impactful single change we’ve made over the past few months is related to our Inpatient-only procedure process. We were having trouble related to Impella device placements in the cath lab at several of our hospital facilities. We have a very robust process to ensure that IP-only procedures are not downgraded to Outpatient prior to discharge, but that process is only effective when the initial case order includes an IP-only procedure. Impella placement needs are frequently not known until the procedure is under way in the cath lab, so we were at risk on these procedures. We worked with our Epic build team to develop a process to trigger our IP-only workflow when an Impella device supply is scanned during the case. We believe this will result in roughly $200K in revenue capture/write-off avoidance per year.
Rajiv Pramanik, MD. CIO and Chief Health Informatics Officer at Contra Costa Health: We are in the last leg of transforming our IT and Informatics shop into an agile project management shop. This is allowing us to be more coordinated and flexible to meet our various health department needs.
