Ketul Patel is nearing his first anniversary as president and CEO of Marietta, Ga.-based Wellstar Health System, and he said his first year has focused on strengthening the system’s foundation through strategic planning, leadership alignment, governance improvements and operational discipline.
Mr. Patel, who joined Wellstar in late October 2025 after leading Tacoma, Wash.-based Virginia Mason Franciscan Health, has overseen significant changes at the Georgia system.
In July, Wellstar cut 761 jobs in corporate, shared services and administrative roles as part of efforts to reduce administrative layers and move decision-making closer to patient care. In August, it completed its acquisition of Mountain Lakes Medical Center in Clayton, Ga., its 12th hospital, and opened its 13th hospital in Grovetown, Ga. The system has since announced plans to add Stephens County Hospital in Toccoa, Ga., which would bring its hospital count to 14.
Mr. Patel spoke with Becker’s about Wellstar’s growth strategy, what makes a potential hospital partnership a good fit and how he communicated workforce changes to the system’s 35,000 team members.
Editor’s note: Responses have been lightly edited for clarity and length.
Question: How do you decide which hospitals to bring in? What did Mountain Lakes and Stephens County have that made them worth the investment?
Ketul Patel: We believe very strongly that we will be not only a statewide presence but have a presence throughout the Southeast. That could be through patients coming to us directly, through a physical presence or through scaling our digital care network, which has become so strong across the Southeast. There are a few things we look for. It always has to be aligned with our strategic plan. Do we want to be in a market? Why does that market make sense? Can we influence the health status of a community? That’s a big part of who we are. We always want to make sure we’re improving health status.
When organizations want to be part of us, one thing we look for very specifically is culture. Is it a cultural fit? Do they want to learn from us? Will we be able to find ways to learn from them? Is there cultural alignment around values? Another key part is whether they’re committed to the quality journey like we are, and whether they’re interested in making sure their clinical programs are as robust as they should be.
Q: What makes you say no to a deal?
KP: Since I’ve been here, not a week goes by that we’re not getting inbound calls from hospitals or markets that want to be part of the Wellstar family. I take that as a pretty significant compliment on the journey Wellstar has been on and where we’re going, and that people believe in us. But one area we always look at is whether an organization is looking to us as a way to monetize its future. It takes a lot more than a need for capital investment to be part of our system. Are they committed to quality? Are they a good cultural fit? We have walked away from organizations that were really just looking for us to fund their capital needs for the long term. Even though we have the means to do those types of things, it has to be a strategic fit and a cultural fit for us to do that.
Q: With HR 1 changing the Medicaid and coverage picture, how is the financial environment shaping your planning and where you choose to grow?
KP: There’s no doubt reimbursement is changing, and there’s no doubt we’re facing more financial challenges. We have a community that is growing, and growing exponentially, but it’s aging, and our payer mix is changing dramatically and will continue to do so. The complexity of cases coming to our hospitals is also increasing.
Because of the population growth, we continue to invest deeply in our inpatient capacity. If you look at what we’re doing now, we have more than $2 billion of investment in added inpatient capacity in flight. That includes a new hospital we’re building and a new one we just built. We just finished a patient tower at our flagship, and we’re adding more beds at one of our other hospitals.
The future of our industry is also moving more into ambulatory and digital, and that is a very key priority for us. One question I got from another CEO was, “Are you doing one or the other?” I think it’s really a matter of “and.” We have to invest in our inpatient capacity, and we’re investing deeply in our ambulatory space. We also see our digital care network as a strategic advantage compared with others in the region. It allows us to go into different geographies without bricks and mortar, through virtual relationships. It gives us the ability to take some of our great clinical programs and reach communities that need them, particularly in rural America.
Q: What has the digital care network shown so far?
KP: At hospitals that entered our digital care network, over 70% of patients were leaving their geography for care before they joined. Once they entered our digital care network, over 70% are staying close to home. To me, that’s a huge win for the partnership and relationships we have. At the same time, we’re always finding ways to create access points across the entire state, not just in the Atlanta and Augusta metro areas.
Q: The July workforce reductions focused on corporate, shared services and administrative roles. What organizational challenges were you seeking to address?
KP: As a new CEO does, I spent a lot of time within the organization to see what was working and what was not, and I heard from so many of our employees and leaders. One thing I discovered is that we were a very complex health system. Even though we were doing great things, we needed to move with more agility and speed. Sometimes the bureaucracy that existed in the organization was slowing us down from doing the most important thing, which is what we’re here for: providing resources closer to the bedside.
Anytime you make these kinds of changes, you’re dealing with people’s lives, and I take that seriously and personally. Our culture here is so strong. In fact, it’s one of the reasons I came here. We have a brand promise called PeopleCare, and that’s really who we are.
Q: How did you communicate the cuts to employees while protecting that culture?
KP: I’ve always found that you have to be very open and candid with our workforce. We have 35,000 team members. We had a virtual town hall meeting the day after we announced all these changes, and over 8,000 of our team members took part. To me, it was an opportunity to talk to them directly about the reasons why. The message wasn’t just about the event that occurred that day. It was more about where our health system is going, what the industry is doing that influences the decisions we need to make, how we stay proactive about our journey and, most importantly, how we get more resources closer to the bedside and patient care.
I’ve learned in my career that you can never communicate enough. I’ve had calls recently from first-time CEOs, and I’ve told them: Whatever you’re thinking about communications, triple the amount you’re doing. Nobody is going to shape your voice better than you. Yes, you’ll have a very strong communications team, and yes, there will be rigor around the cadence of what you do and how you do it. But your voice and your ability to connect with team members, particularly on the front line, is something only a CEO can do directly.
Q: What have you learned about bringing smaller hospitals into Wellstar?
KP: Healthcare is local and has always been local. You want to make sure the people in the community are heard, and that the places they’ve been so used to coming to, the doors they walk into, are respected and treasured. At the same time, I tell our team in the Wellstar family that a new hospital joining our system doesn’t mean we’re all exporting our intelligence into that community. We can learn a lot from that community and that hospital. It’s a two-way street. No matter how small an organization is, there’s always something we can learn, particularly when the community is counting on that hospital and it’s the largest employer in town. We have to respect what they bring to that community, and we need to plan for the future to make sure they exist for a very long time.
