Jennifer Eslinger will become president and CEO of Akron, Ohio-based Summa Health on Sept. 21, marking the first permanent CEO appointment since Health Assurance Transformation Co. acquired the system and converted it to a for-profit organization. She told Becker’s she plans to spend her first 90-plus days in listening and learning tours before finalizing her priorities.
Summa fully transitioned to a for-profit system Oct. 1, 2025, when it was acquired by Health Assurance Transformation Co. The General Catalyst-backed firm purchased Summa for $485 million with an explicit mandate to redesign the healthcare experience. Daryl Tol, president and CEO of HATCo, has served as acting president and CEO of Summa since Jan. 1, when Cliff Deveny, MD, transitioned to CEO emeritus and strategic advisor. Ms. Eslinger, a seasoned leader with 30 years of healthcare experience and who most recently served as president and COO of Rochester (N.Y.) Regional Health, was selected through a national search.
“This is an organization that is really embracing the art of the possible and what healthcare can and should look like ahead, really embracing the fact that it can’t continue to look the way it has historically for 100 years now,” Ms. Eslinger said. “I’m just thrilled to be a part of helping to shape and create and really drive that vision.”
She plans to enter the role without a fixed agenda. She said her first moves will be seeking perspectives from across the organization and testing assumptions from the interview process against what staff and clinicians say they actually need.
“I intend to spend my first 90-plus days onboarding through listening and learning tours, getting out into the organization,” she said. “The work is typically much better informed when folks at the front line have a voice in it.”
Among the challenges she is already confronting: how to staff a healthcare system serving a community that is aging faster than the workforce can grow. She sees technology as the lever, not to replace workers but to reduce the burden on those who remain.
“Really thinking about how we take the tools, how do we take innovative thinking and innovative strategies, and really help ensure that we’re asking the workforce to work smarter, not harder, because there are not enough resources looking ahead as that aging demographic grows,” Ms. Eslinger said.
Ms. Eslinger said the near-term AI opportunity is in the back office, with the longer-term goal of supporting front-line clinicians.
“Back office is always probably the easiest solution, but then really thinking about how to support the clinicians, because that’s where the shortages are really going to be compounded, especially as the demographic ages,” she said.
Mr. Tol, speaking with Becker’s in the same interview, said close to a year on the ground in Akron has sharpened a priority he didn’t fully anticipate going in: the community’s exposure to Medicaid cuts and coverage reductions runs steeper than average, and the emergency room is still the default access point for too many patients who shouldn’t need it.
“If anything, this community is as stressed or more stressed than the average community across the country around reductions in Medicaid coverage and reductions in subsidies for the exchanges, and we see that tangibly playing out here,” Mr. Tol said. “One of the areas of innovation I’ve become more excited about since learning how this community thinks and where the struggles are is applying access and innovative concepts to individuals who don’t have rich coverage, and who need care and who don’t want the emergency room to be their only pathway for care.”
Mr. Tol also spoke to something he said didn’t come through in diligence.
“The physicians here generally grew up here and are passionate about Summa Health,” he said. “Many went to medical school so they could return and be physicians in the community where they grew up. People don’t want this to struggle or fail. They want to make it successful for their hometown and their parents and their kids, and that’s something that I’ve not seen everywhere I’ve been.”
Mr. Tol will continue as president and CEO of HATCo and will work with Ms. Eslinger as she assumes leadership. Summa Health encompasses hospitals, community medical centers, a health plan, an accountable care organization and a multispecialty physician organization.
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