Issue link: https://beckershealthcare.uberflip.com/i/1545394
12 CEO / STRATEGY e organization is now focused on maximizing the value of that platform, particularly as Epic continues to roll out new AI capabilities and bolt-on applications. "We really are relying on our common platform suppliers that are building AI and using all of those tools first and finding out which ones actually deliver the most value," he said. AI is already being deployed across both administrative and clinical functions, with early gains in areas like revenue cycle. "We spend $120 million a year on denial management," Mr. Slubowski said. "So anything that we can do in automating our claims process, in our coding process, in the communication with the payers, we're all in on using AI in revenue cycle." Importantly, he emphasized that adoption — not just technology — will determine success. "Human adoption is going to be one of the biggest challenges that we continue to have with AI," he said. "It isn't going to be that the tools are there. It's people really camping on and trusting and using the tools." at philosophy extends beyond technology to leadership itself. Mr. Slubowski has pushed leaders across the organization to adopt what he calls a "beginner's mindset" — rethinking long-held assumptions and questioning legacy practices. "When you engage 130,000 people in using a beginner's mind to question everything that we do, people come forward with great ideas," he said. "e reality is that with reductions in Medicaid and the expiration of ACA subsidies, more people will become uninsured — and many will end up in our emergency departments. So, we're building processes to better meet people at the ED door and redirect them when possible — through urgent care, primary care, or more efficient inpatient throughput. We're also working on improving payment plans to make care more affordable, and we've focused on the pricing of shoppable services like imaging, making sure we don't apply hospital-based pricing models to outpatient care." Ultimately, he believes that beginner's mindset — combined with disciplined execution — will be critical as healthcare continues to evolve. "We have to get out of our mindset of what we've done up until now and relearn moving forward," he said. n Why Hartford HealthCare's CEO is bucking the status quo By Laura Dyrda J effrey Flaks, president and CEO of Hartford (Conn.) HealthCare, has spent 22 years at the system watching the industry talk itself out of change. He has seen the headwinds used as excuses, the risks of going first cited as reasons to wait, and the status quo defended by people who knew it wasn't working. He is not interested in any of that anymore. "If you can look beyond the headwinds and you look on the horizon, this is the best moment we've ever had in healthcare," he said during an interview with the "Becker's Healthcare Podcast." "We've never been able to get better faster than we can now." Hartford HealthCare recently launched Patient GPT, built in partnership with AI company K Health, rolling it out system-wide after an initial pilot. The tool is designed to answer clinical questions, navigate patients to the right care, and strip out administrative friction — available around the clock, no provider interaction required. Mr. Flaks called it a game changer, though he reached for the iPhone as a frame of reference: the first version was nothing like what it would become, but someone had to create version 1.0. "It takes the courage to start the process, to get it moving, which then will compound over time," he said. "It is easier to go second, third, fourth, or fifth than it is to lead. But we cannot protect the status quo in healthcare. We have to change it, and we have to disrupt it." The ambition Mr. Flaks keeps returning to — becoming the nation's most consumer-centric health system — is a decision-making filter. Every investment, every programmatic choice, runs through it. The organization has structured its work around what it calls the "2E" framework: access, affordability, health equity, and excellence. Mr. Flaks recognized access takes too long; care is too fragmented and too rarely personalized. Health benefits keep rising faster than wages, and life expectancy still tracks with ZIP code in ways that represent moral and operational failure. "People's life expectancies can't be determined by the ZIP code they live in," he said. "The thing we call never events still happen. We know what we're working to accomplish, and we hold ourselves accountable to it." Mr. Flaks talks about culture with the same directness he brings to strategy. Hartford HealthCare's workforce of 48,000 is not, in his telling, primarily a recruitment or retention challenge — it is a culture challenge. People need to feel heard, seen, and capable of shaping their own work. "We have a culture that focuses on innovation," said Mr. Flaks. "We have a culture that's willing to fail forward. We have a culture that doesn't assign blame but sees problems as opportunities. We also have a culture that is really aligned around community and purpose. We know why we exist and we don't have an identity crisis. We value and respect our culture and our people above all else." What keeps all of it oriented, especially in a period when uncertainty has become the baseline condition of health system leadership, is clarity of purpose. Flaks returned to the idea more than once: know what you are trying to accomplish, make sure every decision connects to it, and measure your progress against it every day. Organizations that have that clarity can move with confidence. Those that don't keep waiting for conditions that never quite arrive. "You can't get where you want to go if you don't know where you're going," he said. "In this institution, we know where we're going." n