Today’s healthcare leaders are facing a host of vexing challenges — often at the same time.
Recent Becker’s Healthcare reporting has highlighted crises across staffing — especially among nurses and in specialties like anesthesia and pediatrics — clinician burnout; patient access; capacity; affordability; mental health; violence in hospitals, among others.
Lurching from crisis to crisis consumes organizations and distracts teams from focusing on and executing strategic priorities, such as consolidating applications and implementing AI.
This theme emerged during the 2026 symplr Healthcare Operations Summit, held in partnership with Becker’s Healthcare. The event brought together C-suite and healthcare operations leaders from over 100 leading healthcare organizations, collectively representing over 2,300 hospitals, 1.6 million employees and $477 billion in revenue.
Insights from the summit are summarized below.
From a reactive crisis culture to operating proactively and strategically
The constant stream of crises forces healthcare leaders and teams into firefighting mode.
“We have thousands of projects, thousands of applications, and we have people who are overwhelmed because the changes we’re asking them to make are happening so fast,” said Luis Taveras, PhD, executive vice president and chief digital and information officer with Philadelphia-based Jefferson Health. “From an IT perspective, we’re very reactive to things.”
In a crisis, people and teams become territorial and focus on their own silo. “This is my turf versus your turf,” said Bryan Sisk, DNP, RN, senior vice president and chief nurse executive with Houston-based Memorial Hermann Health System.
To break this cycle, leaders are working to shift their organizations from reactive crisis management to a more proactive, strategic operating model.
Three best practices define proactive, strategic organizations.
First, strategic organizations have alignment, which starts with the executive team. Jamie Wiggins, PhD, executive vice president and chief operating officer at Arkansas Children’s in Little Rock, said alignment starts with setting clear, consistent goals for every department, team and individual, with accountability for achieving those goals.
At Arkansas Children’s, that alignment is reinforced through quarterly reviews where executives support each other’s progress. “We believe we can’t be successful unless we’re all successful,” Dr. Wiggins said. “That type of alignment ripples across the organization and makes sure everyone is connected.”
Second, strategic organizations establish clear priorities. This is challenging because there is no shortage of competing priorities in healthcare. Organizations often fail to make hard choices and elevate a few top, strategic priorities.
Susan Grant, DNP, RN, who brings more than 30 years of clinical leadership experience to her role chief clinical officer at symplr, recounted requesting funding from her health system CIO to support something important in her lane of operations. The CIO explained that the organization had $30 million for IT investments but had requests from across the organization totaling $300 million.
Instead of having different groups compete for resources, the most successful organizations set clear priorities and then allocate resources based on these priorities.
Third, strategic organizations have governance models and structures that enable making decisions systematically, based on goals and priorities, as opposed to reactively and ad hoc.
“We need to make sure we invest our dollars in the best places possible,” Dr. Taveras said. “That’s where the governance model comes in.” At Jefferson Health, he said governance and investment decisions are not made by IT; they are made by cross-functional committees — such as the clinical operations committee — that make collaborative decisions in support of the health system’s goals. It then implements these decisions.
The combination of alignment, priorities and governance enables healthcare organizations to shift from reacting to every crisis in silos to being proactive, strategic, and collaborative. “From a communication and awareness standpoint, it has to start at the top,” Dr. Taveras said.
Effective leadership practices for consistent execution
Leaders use several approaches to cascade communications to the front line, including town halls, newsletters, small group meetings and huddles.
Dr. Sisk described an approach where strategic information is provided to mid-level managers, who review it to ensure the strategies and messages are aligned with their priorities. The managers then interpret the desired communications and use their own language to cascade the key messages to their employees.
“This is a more powerful form of communication because they take it directly to the front line,” Dr. Sisk said. “They are messaging it for us and then telling us how that message should be written, received and then what we should do for follow-up.”
At Arkansas Children’s, Dr. Wiggins said when he fills leadership positions, he now looks beyond clinical expertise — which is table stakes. He wants great communicators. “When I’m looking for executive leadership, I’m looking for communication, change management and inspiring people to greatness,” he shared.
Beyond communication, these leaders see culture as a key to consistent execution of operational priorities. The type of culture leaders are looking to create starts with a shared vision and a sense of collaboration. Leaders want team members who are evidence-based, focused on continuous improvement and willing to try new things.
“The number one thing we’ve done is create a culture where it’s ok to fail. If people feel like they have to be perfect every day, you halt progress. Your organization and leadership team should make it possible for people to fail fast, as long as they identify when they fail, bring solutions and course correct,” Dr. Wiggins said. “I think creating that environment of trust helps with breaking down silos and making sure we maintain quality.”
Applying these principles: Driving the organization to implement AI at scale
According to a study from Bain & Company and KLAS Research, 70% of providers now have an AI strategy in place or in development. However, “Strategy is very different from execution,” noted Todd Jones, director of market intelligence at symplr. While most organizations have an AI strategy, few are executing it effectively.
To assess health systems’ AI maturity, symplr conducted a pre-summit survey among attendees. This survey found that only about 20% of health systems are currently scaling multiple AI workflows across their enterprises. Most organizations have just one enterprise-wide AI workflow or they are still piloting or exploring use cases.
When assessing the barriers to adopting and scaling AI, 30% of survey respondents said AI is cost prohibitive to scale, with 22% responding that it is hard to prove AI’s financial impact.
Dr. Taveras prefers to think about AI as “augmented intelligence” with a human always in the loop. He believes it is important to make AI a strategic priority, to gain alignment for AI across the organization, and to follow the same governance model that is required for any initiative or technology.
While a financial ROI matters, leaders argued the business case for AI should also account for consolidating technology, reducing cyber risk and easing the administrative burden on clinicians and staff.
When readying an organization to implement AI at scale, Dr. Wiggins argued that IT infrastructure is just as important as the physical plant. The technology infrastructure, including a health system’s operational platform, will enable the deployment of AI for a wide variety of operational use cases.
The right infrastructure and platform can improve operational efficiency and effectiveness. It can support consolidating applications, decrease costs, increase capacity and enable scheduling, appointment management, registration, credentialing and more.
“It’s core to the business. We can’t do it without it,” said Dr. Wiggins, referring to the importance of a health system’s foundational IT infrastructure and operational platform.
Building this foundation — using best practices of alignment, prioritization and sound governance — will enable organizations to leverage AI in a proactive, strategic way while moving away from the crisis culture that has defined healthcare.
To learn more about symplr, visit www.symplr.com.
At the Becker's 11th Annual IT + Revenue Cycle Conference: The Future of AI & Digital Health, taking place September 14–17 in Chicago, healthcare executives and digital leaders from across the country will come together to explore how AI, interoperability, cybersecurity, and revenue cycle innovation are transforming care delivery, strengthening financial performance, and driving the next era of digital health. Apply for complimentary registration now.
