Chief transformation officers occupy one of healthcare’s most demanding and most consequential leadership roles. They not only envision a better future, but also define the path to get there and lead the people who will bring the vision into reality.
Sharp problem-solvers and bold strategic thinkers, these executives drive initiatives that align culture, modernize digital experiences, streamline operations, and reimagine care delivery models in order to make their organization meaningfully, measurably better.
Note: Becker’s Healthcare developed this list based on nominations and editorial research. This list is not exhaustive, nor is it an endorsement of included chief transformation officers, organizations or associated healthcare providers. Leaders cannot pay for inclusion on this list. Leaders are presented in alphabetical order. We extend a special thank you to Rhoda Weiss for her contributions to this list.
Contact Anna Falvey at afalvey@beckershealthcare.com with questions or comments.
Amy Adome, MD. Senior Vice President and Chief Clinical and Transformation Officer at Sharp HealthCare (San Diego). Dr. Adome provides executive leadership for quality, patient safety, clinical transformation and performance improvement across Sharp HealthCare, which she joined in 2013. Under her leadership, the system established an enterprise office of transformation that identifies, prioritizes and executes initiatives focused on operational efficiency, financial stewardship and sustainable growth. She serves as executive champion of Sharp’s high reliability organization initiative, leading the cultural work to strengthen safety, accountability and continuous improvement across hospitals, medical groups and support services. Dr. Adome also oversees the system’s clinical analytics program and its Lean Six Sigma program, and partners with the information systems department to optimize clinical decision support. Her portfolio includes the Sharp Center for Research, and she serves as institutional official for the system’s institutional review board and provides executive oversight for its continuing medical education program. She is a board member of the California Hospital Association’s hospital quality initiative and a member of the Press Ganey National Patient Safety Council. Dr. Adome received the East County Chamber “Women in Leadership Award” for 2024.
Zach Bork. Senior Vice President and Chief Strategy and Transformation Officer at CentraCare (St. Cloud, Minn.). Mr. Bork is helping shape the future of one of Minnesota’s largest integrated health systems, serving suburban and rural communities with 10 hospitals and more than 30 clinics. During his decade with the organization, he has led enterprisewide strategic planning and transformation efforts that strengthen system integration, advance data-driven decision-making and align investments with long-term organizational goals. Mr. Bork guides both CentraCare’s long-range ambition and the near-term priorities that translate strategy into measurable results, overseeing strategic planning, enterprise project management, analytics, and marketing and communications. Known for his collaborative leadership style and ability to turn vision into action, he has helped foster a culture of innovation, accountability and continuous improvement while positioning the health system for sustainable growth and expanded access to care. In 2026, he was named to the Minneapolis/St. Paul Business Journal‘s “40 Under 40,” recognizing his impact as an emerging leader helping shape the future of healthcare in Minnesota.
Crystal Broj. Chief Digital Transformation Officer at Medical University of South Carolina (Charleston). Ms. Broj leads digital transformation at the Medical University of South Carolina, where she has implemented AI-powered patient engagement tools across the enterprise. MUSC’s voice AI assistant now supports more than 200,000 calls monthly, contributing to about a 40% improvement in speed to answer and a 67% reduction in call abandonment. She has expanded automation, including AI-driven outreach for preventive care and automated prior authorization and pre-registration processes that have generated millions of dollars in financial impact. Ms. Broj has also championed ambient documentation to reduce after-hours clinician workload and advanced digital front door and smart scheduling capabilities. She was one of HotTopics’ “Global Chief Digital Officer 100 Award” winners in 2024 and 2025, as well as a 2025 “Female Executive of the Year Gold Stevie Award” recipient through the Stevie Awards for Women in Business. Her transformation team received a 2026 “Business Transformation World Summit” award, organized by the Process Excellence Network, and she was named a 2026 Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society “Changemaker of the Year” finalist.
Tammy Capretta, RN. Chief Transformation and Risk Officer at Keck Medicine of USC (Los Angeles). Ms. Capretta has played a role in the growth of Keck Medicine of USC for more than three decades and leads enterprisewide initiatives combining strategy, risk management, compliance, patient safety and workforce wellbeing. She created and oversees the office of integrated risk management, the office of integrated credentialing, the care for the caregiver office and the office of healthcare compliance. As Keck Medicine has expanded to more than 100 clinics across Southern California, her work has helped maintain consistent standards of care. Ms. Capretta leads Keck Medicine’s adoption of a professionalism program for physicians and nurses based on Nashville, Tenn.-based Vanderbilt University Medical Center’s Center for Patient and Professional Advocacy model, which Vanderbilt has recognized as one of the strongest implementations in the nation. She also created the “Care for the Caregiver” program, launched during the Covid-19 pandemic to provide housing and mental health resources for frontline staff. The program now includes financial hardship assistance, an emotional support hotline, peer support services and “Schwartz Rounds.” Ms. Capretta was named a 2023 “Los Angeles Woman of Impact” by the American Heart Association and formerly chaired the Association of American Medical Colleges compliance officers’ forum.
Peter Chang, MD. Senior Vice President and Chief Transformation Officer at Tampa (Fla.) General Hospital. Dr. Chang rose through Tampa General from hospitalist and assistant professor at Tampa-based USF Health to CMIO, vice president of care transitions, vice president of healthcare design and now chief transformation officer. His signature program, “TGH at Home,” has achieved readmission rates of about 4% to 5%, compared with 17% to 18% for traditional inpatient care, and patient experience scores 30% to 40% higher than brick-and-mortar units. In March 2026, the program expanded to TGH Crystal River (Fla.) following Tampa General’s acquisition of the Brooksville, Fla.-based Bravera Health network. Dr. Chang built Tampa General’s clinical command center into its care coordination center, which uses Palantir’s AI platform to give care teams real-time situational awareness. The center’s AI-powered sepsis hub has saved more than 700 lives and reduced sepsis patients’ length of stay by 30%. His command center work also supported the enterprise analytics team earning Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society “Stage 7” certification in June 2025, making TGH the first health system in Florida to reach that level.
Amy Cohn, PhD. Chief Transformation Officer for Michigan Medicine (Ann Arbor). Ms. Cohn identifies institutional challenges that span the University of Michigan Health and U-M Medical School. She was appointed to the position in 2021 by Michigan Medicine, academic medical center of the University of Michigan. During the pandemic, her work at the intersection of healthcare and engineering laid a foundation for collaborative connections between University of Michigan’s engineering college and health system. Ms. Cohn is the Arthur F. Thurnau Professor of Industrial and Operations Engineering and faculty director of the Center for Healthcare Engineering and Patient Safety. This dual role utilizes her expertise in engineering techniques to improve operations and problem solving in healthcare.
Sunil Dadlani. Executive Vice President and Chief Information and Digital Transformation Officer at Atlantic Health (Morristown, N.J.). Mr. Dadlani leads digital patient and consumer experience at Atlantic Health, delivering technology solutions to improve care, outcomes and interactions for the 7.5 million people the system serves. A particular focus is the expansion of intelligent automation, including AI, across the health system. His approach to technology decisions weighs the patient experience, a strategic investment model, available data, required resources and existing technology investments. Under his leadership, Atlantic Health was named a 2025 “CIO 100” winner by Foundry’s CIO for using automation to streamline prior authorization. Mr. Dadlani has received “CIO 100” and “Hall of Fame” awards in 2022, 2023 and 2025, and “New York CIO” ORBIE Awards in the healthcare category in 2021, 2022 and 2023. He was named a “Top Healthcare AI Innovator” by Intelligent Health AI in 2023, and received the “Best CISO Award” from Cyber Defense in 2023 and 2024.
Deval Daily. Vice President and Chief Operational Transformation Officer at UChicago Medicine. Ms. Daily developed and leads UChicago Medicine’s operational transformation and integration strategy supporting the health system’s 10-year vision, drawing on 20 years of healthcare leadership. She established a performance infrastructure that governs 23 coordinated workstreams and tracks more than 250 key performance indicators and 100 outcome measures across all entities. Through monthly operating reviews and centralized strategy deployment plans, her execution model has supported growth priorities including cancer care, ambulatory services, patient access and systemwide integration, delivering more than $100 million in financial improvements. In prior roles, Ms. Daily restructured ambulatory practice operations and incentive models to expand annual patient volumes by 10% in neurosciences and 20% in heart and vascular without adding net new faculty. She also coordinated operational and clinical alignment that helped lift U.S. News & World Report rankings in neurosciences and in heart and vascular. Her work also reduced cardiac surgery length of stay by 15% and raised ambulatory patient satisfaction scores from the 53rd percentile to the 99th percentile. Ms. Daily oversaw the activation of three multispecialty ambulatory centers totaling more than 90,000 square feet and secured a $4.2 million philanthropic gift to launch a mobile stroke unit.
Jennifer Dauer. Chief Strategy and Transformation Officer at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center (Columbus). Ms. Dauer has led strategy and transformation at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center for six years, working across the health system, the College of Medicine, the physician practice plan and the university. She leads implementation of the medical center’s enterprise strategic plan, “Impact 2035.” Recent accomplishments include establishing “ARCH,” Ohio State’s Appalachian Rural Center for Health, finalizing a new cancer strategic plan and expanding service line networks in cancer, heart and vascular, primary care and digital consults. Ms. Dauer leads the medical center’s strategic value partnership with Siemens, focused on bringing advanced imaging and treatment technologies to patients and researchers. She has advanced partnerships with Helix through Ohio State Genomic Health efforts and with Optain on oculomics camera technology. She has also built relationships with employers, universities and communities to improve population health in Central Ohio, building on a 2023 partnership with Denison University.
Andrea Daugherty. Chief Information and Digital Transformation Officer at Arrowhead Regional Medical Center (Colton, Calif.). Ms. Daugherty is the inaugural chief information and digital transformation officer at Arrowhead Regional Medical Center, the first executive in the organization’s history to lead its enterprise digital and information strategy. She leads the function across six domains: clinical applications, informatics, infrastructure, data and analytics, cybersecurity, and health information management. Ms. Daugherty is responsible for consolidating three previously separate departments into a single integrated function and for setting its strategy, governance and operating model. She applies a “Four Returns” discipline requiring every technology investment to deliver measurable value across mission, investment, sustainability and experience. Her priorities include ambient listening technology for physicians and modernized telehealth to expand access for patients in rural and underserved communities. Before joining the medical center, she served as inaugural head of digital health at SHI International, CIO at Dell Medical School at UT Austin, and director of security and innovation at Fountain Valley, Calif.-based MemorialCare Health System. Ms. Daugherty has served as treasurer of Healthcare Information Management Systems Society Central Texas, on the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives board and as a founding board member of Inspire CIO’s Central Texas chapter.
David Donovan. Vice President of the Office of Transformation Management for Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center (Buffalo, N.Y.). Mr. Donovan leads strategic planning and project management for major initiatives at western New York state’s only National Cancer Institute-designated comprehensive cancer center. He applies insights on business development, healthcare network-building, supply chain management, revenue cycle, payer relations and marketing to help conceptualize and lead new initiatives, as well as support existing objectives for growth and transformation. Known for his commitment to philanthropic causes, Mr. Donovan was critical to the successful development of the Roswell Park Care Network, which provides comprehensive cancer services to patients and their families at 18 locations throughout the state. Through contributions to many projects, he has helped secure a path of vision-driven, sustainable growth for the freestanding cancer center, founded in 1898 as the first facility dedicated to cancer care and research.
Debra Fields. Executive Vice President and Chief Transformation Officer at City of Hope (Duarte, Calif.). Ms. Fields has spent more than 25 years at City of Hope, helping drive its evolution from a regional cancer center into one of the nation’s largest cancer research and treatment institutions. Her portfolio spans human resources, health access and community enrichment, culture and experience, communications and marketing, enterprise program management, organizational effectiveness, and legal and compliance. She helped lead City of Hope through the acquisition of Boca Raton, Fla.-based Cancer Treatment Centers of America, extending its reach to more than 86 million Americans across four states. City of Hope now serves more than 168,000 patients annually. Ms. Fields led the redefinition of the organization’s mission, vision and values and has brought together more than 14,000 physicians, nurses, scientists and staff across its national system. She has also built a leadership pipeline that pairs emerging leaders with experienced mentors. Ms. Fields was named a Reuters Events “Trailblazing Woman in Healthcare” in 2024.
Karen Goyette. Executive Vice President and Chief Strategy and Transformation Officer at Hartford (Conn.) HealthCare. Ms. Goyette leads Hartford HealthCare’s long-term strategic plan and growth initiatives, including retail health, ambulatory network development, strategic partnerships, joint ventures, government relations and care alignment. Her consumer access strategy has led to Hartford HealthCare operating 55 urgent care centers and launching “HHC 24/7,” a round-the-clock virtual primary care platform built in partnership with K Health that has served more than 25,000 patients. The system has increased the share of surgical procedures performed outside hospitals from 6% to 43%, with 21 ambulatory surgery centers performing more than 100,000 procedures annually. All five of Hartford HealthCare’s eligible ambulatory surgery centers were recognized by The Leapfrog Group as top ambulatory surgery centers. Under her leadership, the system has also placed a clinic in an international airport, partnered with Walgreens and CVS, and expanded a partnership with Amazon’s One Medical. Ms. Goyette’s strategic planning process supports hundreds of proposals annually through a formalized framework. She was named “Strategist of the Year” by the New England Society of Healthcare Strategy in 2022.
Sanjay Gupta. Executive Vice President and Chief Transformation Officer at Novant Health (Winston-Salem, N.C.). Mr. Gupta oversees a portfolio at Novant Health spanning digital innovation, care delivery, strategic partnerships, marketing and communications, and operational excellence, drawing on leadership experience across healthcare, financial services and insurance. Under his leadership, the system’s virtual care network has grown from 281,565 visits in 2023 to 372,000 in 2024 and 493,430 in 2025, surpassing 1 million total visits. The network offers 24/7 primary, specialty and consultative care, including cardiology wellness, weight management, menopause wellness and “WelcomeCare,” a virtual-first pathway for new patients. Mr. Gupta led the launch of “Aubrey,” an AI-enabled virtual assistant, and spearheaded its first patient use in a perioperative care coordination pilot in the Charlotte, N.C., region. He has also championed “PatientGPT,” a clinical AI tool integrated into the medical record that provides personalized guidance and allows patients to schedule primary or specialty appointments. Through Novant Health’s partnership with K Health, he is integrating clinical AI into virtual primary care to conduct pre-visit screenings and deliver summaries to clinicians before appointments.
Amy Higgins. Chief Transformation and Experience Officer at UNC Health (Chapel Hill, N.C.). Ms. Higgins serves as the chief transformation and experience officer for UNC Health, where she is responsible for leading the organization’s strategy and transformation efforts, championing the system’s “ForwardTogether” 2030 vision and priorities. She oversees several functions, including strategic planning, strategic change management, transformation program management and the ForwardTogether 2030 Transformation Office. Ms. Higgins is passionate about helping individuals and organizations maximize their potential. She joined UNC Health in 2008 as its first vice president of strategic planning and has led numerous teams over the years, always focused on strategy, innovation, change and growth. She came to UNC Health from The Boston Consulting Group, a global strategy consulting firm.
Desert Horse Grant. Chief Transformation Officer for Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center at University of Miami. Ms. Horse Grant is a powerful advocate for transforming and empowering underrepresented minorities at the intersection of science and medicine. She leads innovation and strategy, emphasizing diversity of clinical trials throughout multiple sites in Africa and the Caribbean. She advises key aspects of a new $260 million cancer research building, doubling Sylvester’s research footprint. Previously she was chief transformation officer at UCLA Health in Los Angeles, facilitating translation of discoveries from the lab to the clinical environment. She was also a director at Fred Hutch in Seattle, leading a team whose pioneering work to develop a novel biotool for tissue microstructure was recognized with a social impact award. Early in her career at New York City-based Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, she created the Physical Sciences-Oncology Center for researchers at the intersection of computational medicine and cancer biology.
Penelope “Penny” Iannelli. Senior Vice President and Chief Transformation Officer at UMass Memorial Health (Worcester, Mass.). Ms. Iannelli leads UMass Memorial Health’s Center for Innovation and Transformational Change, managing a systemwide portfolio of nearly 100 projects spanning enterprise analytics, strategic program management and process engineering. She launched the “innovation station” virtual platform that enabled caregivers to implement more than 185,000 ideas with over 95% participation, embedding frontline insights into operating practices. In response to emergency department congestion, Ms. Iannelli’s team created a rapid flow unit that cut discharged-patient length of stay by 249 minutes and reduced “left without being seen” by 4.7%. She also oversaw project management for the $220 million, 72-bed North Pavilion, which eased emergency department strain, expanded capacity for medically complex patients and increased emergency department admissions by five per day year-over-year. Under her leadership, transfer acceptances reached record highs and declines due to capacity fell from 30.7% to 17.9%. She further advanced the system’s data maturity from level zero to level five in two years and is sustaining performance through governance, clinical dashboards and predictive modeling.
Omkar Kulkarni. Chief Innovation and Transformation Officer at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles. Mr. Kulkarni built Children’s Hospital Los Angeles’ innovation studio, which uses human-centered design to develop digital health solutions spanning virtual care, AI, voice recognition, virtual and augmented reality, and digital therapeutics. Under his leadership, the system launched “MyVisit,” a web-based app giving emergency department patients and families real-time visit details, after which feedback citing wait-time concerns fell 23%. During a pilot of an AI scribe solution, the system observed a 47% reduction in physician burnout scores, along with reduced task load and more same-day note signing. The system is now piloting generative AI to translate discharge notes for Spanish-speaking patients, who make up 60% of its patient population. Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles became the first children’s hospital in the nation to deploy Moxi robots for 24/7 pharmaceutical delivery and the first to offer a virtual rooming experience for telehealth visits. Mr. Kulkarni also created the “Better, Faster, Cheaper” innovation challenge, which gives staff a structured pathway to propose and resource solutions to hospital problems.
Catina Latham, PhD. Senior Vice President and Chief Community Health Transformation Officer at UChicago Medicine. Dr. Latham guides UChicago Medicine’s urban health initiative and a team of nearly 120 staff, overseeing a community benefit strategy of more than $1 billion annually across Chicago’s South Side, the Southland and Northwest Indiana. In fiscal year 2025, UChicago Medicine’s care coordination strategy yielded a 60% increase in patient engagement systemwide, connecting more than 8,300 people to primary care medical homes and community resources. Research showed that patients participating in these programs visited UChicago Medicine emergency departments 45% less often for non-urgent care. Dr. Latham led the extension of the “Medical Home and Specialty Care Connection” program to Ingalls Memorial Hospital in Harvey, Ill., scaling patient navigation services across Chicago’s south suburbs. She serves on the board of the South Side Healthy Community Organization and has helped downstate hospitals replicate UChicago Medicine’s “Violence Recovery Program” model. Previously, she was a director on the U.S. government’s accountability office’s healthcare team, where she directed evaluations of the Medicaid program for Congress and was appointed to the senior executive service. Dr. Latham has taught as an adjunct assistant professor at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and adjunct lecturer at the Harris School of Public Policy.
Euthemy “Kathy” LeBrew. Executive Vice President and Chief Transformation Officer at Fairview Health Services (Minneapolis). Ms. LeBrew built Fairview’s transformation office and a comprehensive operating model, “Discover, Develop, Deploy, Deliver”, that now anchors enterprise execution, continuous improvement and change adoption. In 2024, she and cross-functional partners exceeded system financial targets by 27.6%, contributing to Fairview’s first positive net operating income since before the pandemic. Her transformation office drives enterprise initiatives including length-of-stay optimization, the patient digital journey, virtual capabilities, service transformation, hospital-at-home and the tiered skill acquisition model, yielding measurable gains in outcomes, engagement and financial performance. Ms. LeBrew embedded robust change-management communications and sustainment practices to ensure adoption and durability of results.
Raina Merchant, MD. Vice President and Chief Transformation Officer at Penn Medicine (Philadelphia). Dr. Merchant leads organizational change at Penn Medicine, a $12.5 billion enterprise with more than 50,000 faculty and staff, focusing on shifting mindset, culture and technology to meet emerging challenges in healthcare. Her priorities include advancing treatment beyond hospital settings, using automation to ease clinician workloads, improving workforce wellbeing and mental health, and building healthcare delivery science into health system operations. She is executive director of the Penn Medicine Center for Healthcare Transformation and Innovation, which was founded in 2012 to design, validate and share new approaches to care. The center focuses on four areas: care delivery, efficiency and workforce burden, preventive care, and community wellbeing and equity. It uses design thinking, behavioral interventions and interdisciplinary collaboration to take on those problems. Dr. Merchant is also a tenured professor of emergency medicine at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine and has published more than 200 peer-reviewed studies in journals including The New England Journal of Medicine, Journal of the American Medical Association, Circulation and Health Affairs. She is a member of the National Academy of Medicine and a fellow of Aspen Health Innovator. The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation named her one of 10 people likely to significantly shape the future of health and healthcare in the U.S.
Kristen Murtos. Chief Innovation and Transformation Officer for Endeavor Health (Evanston, Ill.). Ms. Murtos is Endeavor Health’s chief innovation and transformation officer, a role that entails spurring the organization towards sustainable growth, differentiation, peak performance and transformative patient care. In her role, she oversees system strategy, innovation, community impact and engagement, and government relations. She has been with Endeavor for over 23 years, holding leadership roles of progressive responsibility and building her skillset in transformation, strategy and operations. Ms. Murtos was responsible for establishing the system’s first transformation management office, which has been critical in enabling Endeavor to deliver on its quality, financial, growth and people strategies. In addition, she has been at the forefront of the system’s leadership as the nation’s largest primary care embedded clinical genomics program, the creation of the Endeavor Health Community Investment Fund, and the system’s use of data, technology and AI to transform the care experience.
Mitesh Patel. Vice President and Chief Clinical Transformation Officer at Ascension (St. Louis). Dr. Patel has built an enterprise transformation portfolio at Ascension spanning digital engagement, virtual care, remote patient monitoring and clinical innovation. In the past year, he launched the Ascension Clinical Innovation Institute and established a clinical innovation accelerator to incubate high-priority initiatives, including precision medicine. Dr. Patel led the expansion of patient-reported outcomes for orthopedic surgery across 50 hospitals, increasing preoperative capture from about 10% to nearly 90%, with follow-up above 85% one year after surgery. His team expanded teleneurology and telepsychiatry services to more than 60 hospitals, enabling stroke evaluations in about eight minutes. Digital care plans developed under his leadership increased preventive care-gap closure by 20% and reduced missed appointments by 18%. He also led the development and expansion of “Ascension Connect,” an integrated virtual care program supporting same-day and next-day primary care, on-demand urgent care and post-hospitalization transitions. Dr. Patel received a $25 million Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute award in 2026 for a clinical trial testing whether behavioral nudge gamification can improve physical activity and reduce heart disease events.
Peter Pronovost, MD, PhD. Chief Quality and Clinical Transformation Officer at University Hospitals (Cleveland). Dr. Pronovost leads quality and clinical transformation at University Hospitals, where he also serves as president of the UH Veale Healthcare Transformation Institute and manages one of the nation’s largest ACOs. He developed “Living and Leading with Love,” a systemwide transformation model built on three principles: believe in people, belong together through learning communities and build management systems that enable shared accountability. Since the model’s deployment, UH has reduced surgical complications by 70%, sepsis mortality by 80% and Medicare costs by one-third. Expanded enhanced recovery after surgery protocols across 16 units in 15 hospitals cut average surgical length of stay from 6.2 days to two days. His leadership helped UH become the first health system in the country to achieve ISO 9001 certification for its corporate headquarters and the first in Ohio to achieve it across all hospitals and headquarters. Dr. Pronovost, who has more than 1,000 peer-reviewed publications, is executive sponsor of CDL-Cleveland, the first creative destruction lab site housed inside a health system. He pioneered the patient safety checklist that reduced central line bloodstream infections nationwide and is a MacArthur Foundation fellowship recipient.
Alma Ratcliffe, MD. Vice President and Chief Clinical Transformation Officer at Saint Peter’s Healthcare System (New Brunswick, N.J.). Dr. Ratcliffe focuses on reducing length of stay and resource utilization while improving care quality at Saint Peter’s Healthcare System. She helped formulate the strategic plan for Saint Peter’s Family Health Center, which serves vulnerable populations in New Brunswick, where nearly 32% of residents live below the federal poverty level. Her advocacy, including lobbying state legislators for funding, supported the center’s $12 million expansion and modernization, which increased exam rooms from 36 to 59, added an on-site laboratory and expanded behavioral health programs. Annual visits have grown from 60,000 to nearly 84,000 in two years, with a goal of 91,000 visits in 2026. The expansion also launched The Market at Saint Peter’s, a clinic-based food-by-prescription initiative. Dr. Ratcliffe led the integration of social determinants of health screening across the center and Saint Peter’s University Hospital, and now oversees the use of AI and machine learning to identify at-risk patients. Patients receiving screening and consultation were 7.7% less likely to require an inpatient or emergency department visit within 90 days.
Jason Row, MD. Chief Value Transformation Officer at Parkview Health (Fort Wayne, Ind.). Dr. Row leads Parkview Health’s value transformation strategy, focusing on aligning care delivery, improving quality, reducing cost and enhancing affordability across the system’s 14 hospitals and more than 300 physician offices. Appointed as Parkview’s first chief value transformation officer in 2024, he is charged with uniting previously siloed value initiatives into a coordinated, systemwide framework to improve efficiency and sustainability. Drawing on his prior experience as chief medical officer for Parkview Physicians Group, he has advanced efforts to standardize care and reduce unwarranted variation, launching care compacts that streamline referrals, testing and transitions between primary and specialty care. Under his leadership, these initiatives have improved access, reduced duplication and saved patients both time and cost. Dr. Row also co-led Parkview’s Covid-19 response and its sepsis reduction program, which uses predictive modeling to prevent severe cases and has shortened hospital stays by up to two days.
Jesse Souweine. Senior Vice President and Chief Transformation Officer at Boston Medical Center Health System. Ms. Souweine is responsible for strategy implementation and organizational alignment across BMC Health System’s three hospitals, health plan, physician organization, academic partnership and community health center network. She led the integration of Good Samaritan Medical Center, now Boston Medical Center-South in Brockton, Mass., and St. Elizabeth’s Medical Center, now Boston Medical Center-Brighton (Mass.), into BMC Health System in less than a year. The integration transformed the organization from a single academic medical center into a regional health system, preserving access to essential services across eastern Massachusetts. Ms. Souweine has strengthened collaboration with Boston University Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine by aligning shared priorities across research, faculty and real estate planning. She oversees systemwide strategic priorities including the prioritization of IT, and has elevated philanthropy as a strategic component of enterprise governance. Before joining the health system, she held senior leadership positions at Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Broad Institute.
Joshua Strugatz. Senior Vice President and Chief Campus Transformation Officer at White Plains (N.Y.) Hospital. Mr. Strugatz is leading the planning and execution of White Plains Hospital’s campus transformation, the largest capital investment in the hospital’s history. He oversees a capital program of more than $1 billion and leads the hospital’s project management office. The 475,000-square-foot expansion will nearly double the size of the inpatient campus, increasing licensed beds from 292 to 436, adding 240 private patient rooms and nine operating rooms, and more than doubling the size of the emergency department. To gather staff input before construction, Mr. Strugatz and his team built a full-scale mock patient room where clinical and operational staff could share feedback in conversation, on sticky notes or through a QR code. His office of project management has also modernized the cardiac catheterization lab, delivered a 75,000-square-foot multispecialty ambulatory and imaging center, renovated patient care units and modernized laboratory operations, all without interrupting patient care. Working alongside the president and CEO, the executive leadership team and the board, he also set up regular employee updates on construction milestones and operational impacts. Mr. Strugatz serves as an executive-in-residence for Cornell University’s Sloan Program in Health Administration and as longtime board chair of Harlem Grown, a nonprofit focused on youth mentorship and urban farming education.
Tom Sullivan. Chief Restructuring and Transformation Officer of Heywood Healthcare (Garnder, Mass.). Mr. Sullivan stepped into the role of chief restructuring and transformation officer of Heywood Healthcare in February 2024 after serving as the organization’s CFO and co-CEO. In the face of significant financial obstacles, Mr. Sullivan prioritized balancing fiscal responsibilities with the need to improve healthcare access and quality for the community. His leadership efforts in times of complex operational and financial hardship reflect his dedication to making tangible differences in the lives of patients.
Mandy Teeter. Senior Vice President of Transformation at Rochester (N.Y.) Regional Health. Ms. Teeter leads the enterprise transformation portfolio at Rochester Regional Health, a $4.2 billion integrated health system with nine hospitals and about 20,000 employees. She oversees more than 20 enterprise transformation workstreams expected to deliver more than $50 million in sustainable annual margin improvement through revenue growth, operational integration, cost reduction and continuous improvement. Ms. Teeter led the systemwide implementation of the Qventus AI perioperative optimization platform across more than 85 operating rooms, establishing standardized perioperative performance metrics at all acute care hospitals. The initiative increased prime-time operating room block utilization by more than 10%, created capacity for about 100 additional surgical cases each month and generated about $450,000 in incremental monthly revenue. She also leads operational alignment for the system’s $131 million strategic construction portfolio. Ms. Teeter began her career as a behavioral health therapist before serving as chief administrative officer and COO. She serves on the board of directors for Coordinated Care Services.
Andrew Watt, MD. Chief Clinical Integration and Transformation Officer at Southern New Hampshire Health (Nashua). Dr. Watt, a board-certified emergency physician and clinical informaticist, returned to Southern New Hampshire Health in 2025 to lead efforts to modernize health system operations. He brings more than two decades of leadership experience, including roles as CMIO and CIO. Since his return, Dr. Watt has overseen strategic planning for the IT department as Southern New Hampshire Health and Manchester, N.H.-based Elliot Health System disaffiliate from the merger that formed SolutionHealth. He has worked with executive leadership and legal counsel to develop the strategy, governance and implementation timeline for new systems. His experience with both Epic and Meditech EHRs spans work as an installer, software developer and executive overseeing enterprise implementations. Dr. Watt serves as a scientific reviewer on the institutional review boards at Southern New Hampshire Health and Manchester-based Catholic Medical Center. In 2025, he was selected as board chair of the Foundation for Healthy Communities.
Jim Whitfill. Senior Vice President of Strategic Partnerships and Chief Transformation Officer at HonorHealth (Scottsdale, Ariz.). Dr. Whitfill, a board-certified physician in internal medicine and clinical informatics, has led transformation at HonorHealth for more than a decade and continues to practice and teach. Under his leadership, HonorHealth developed “H2Go,” a digital platform combining video visits, online scheduling, messaging and patient navigation, and has earned multiple “AVIA” and “Epic Diamond” awards. He established HonorHealth Innovations, co-founded the HonorHealth Innovation Council, and leads innovation partnerships with Arizona State University, CDW and General Catalyst. Dr. Whitfill oversees strategic partnerships and mergers and acquisitions, including the acquisition and integration of Phoenix-based Evernorth Care Group. He evaluates every AI initiative against its impact on clinical outcomes, caregiver experience, patient experience and operational performance. AI-supported initiatives have created the equivalent of 84 virtual inpatient beds, generated a 9.6-fold return on perioperative AI investments, enabled more than 2,700 additional surgical cases and contributed to an estimated $62 million in savings from reduced excess hospital days. Dr. Whitfill was named Millennium Alliance “Healthcare Provider Innovator of the Year” in 2026.
Danielle Wilson. Assistant Vice President of Digital Transformation at Virtua Health (Marlton, N.J.). Ms. Wilson serves as assistant vice president of digital transformation at Virtua Health, where she plays a central role in advancing enterprisewide innovation grounded in measurable impact. She leads initiatives that embed digital tools across care delivery and operations, ensuring technology investments are tightly aligned with patient, clinician and organizational needs. Ms. Wilson is known for unifying stakeholders across IT, clinical operations and finance, accelerating consensus and adoption through a shared vision for transformation. She bridges strategy and execution by translating enterprise goals into prioritized roadmaps, governance structures and key performance indicators. Under her leadership, Virtua has adopted a data-driven “test–learn–scale” approach that embeds continuous improvement into daily operations. Her work has helped position innovation at Virtua as a sustainable, outcomes-driven capability rather than a series of isolated projects.
Ian Worden. Chief Transformation Officer at Wellstar Health System (Marietta, Ga.). Mr. Worden joined Wellstar in early 2026 as the health system’s first chief transformation officer, a newly created role on the executive leadership team. He brings more than 25 years of healthcare leadership experience, including prior roles as CFO, COO and CEO. At Wellstar, Mr. Worden develops data-driven recommendations on system optimization opportunities, including revenue cycle performance, length of stay, management structure, decision-making and the use of Epic and other enterprise systems. He is also part of the team evaluating whether Wellstar’s existing technology aligns with its clinical and operational goals and how digital care can expand access to specialist expertise, particularly for rural communities. Previously at Tacoma, Wash.-based Virginia Mason Franciscan Health, his responsibilities included performance improvement, IT, operational transformation and “Mission Control,” an initiative that used clinical and operational data to improve visibility into capacity, staffing and patient flow. The Virginia Mason Franciscan Health team’s Mission Control Center was recognized by the International Society for Service Innovation Professionals.
