This is a preview of the November 20 edition of Access Health—Tap here to get this newsletter delivered straight to your inbox.
Here in Chicago, we have a Restaurant Week each year (I’m not sure who decided to call it that, because it’s not a week—it spanned 17 days this past winter. I digress.) Hundreds of the city’s most sought-after restaurants run prix fixe menus for brunch, lunch and dinner, giving diners the option to choose off a limited list for each course.
I love a good prix fixe, because unfortunately, I’m a picky eater. I’d be disappointed to show up to a fine dining restaurant and be told I’m having the oysters. I don’t care how good the oysters are. It’s simply not happening.
But the limited menu gives me the illusion of choice while still presenting the most decadent fare: preventing me from ordering the chicken tenders at a steakhouse. It also makes things easier on the kitchen staff, who can polish the presentation for three dishes rather than thirty, making room in their budgets for the highest quality ingredients.
At yesterday’s Newsweek webinar about converting travel nurses into full-time teammates, David Rutherford, senior advisor for HR transformation at OhioHealth, raised an appetizing point. Why aren’t nursing contracts more like prix fixe menus?
Rutherford actually got this idea while at a restaurant. He could choose his appetizer, his entree and his dessert. That’s more choice than most of us have when looking at our job contracts—which is silly, if you think about it. Our dining selections affect us for the evening. Our workplaces influence our income, schedules, social circles and sense of fulfillment for months or years.
Unfortunately, like many employers, health systems tend to take the fixed approach: “You’re having the oysters.” Some nurses don’t like oysters, and they’ll be joining me at the chicken joint down the street.
When Rutherford’s team decided to reduce its reliance on staffing agencies, they examined the contracts travel nurses were taking. OhioHealth noticed that some travelers were renewing their contracts with the system for four, five, even 10 years. Why not just join the staff at that point? What did agencies offer that a homegrown health system didn’t?
OhioHealth hosted listening sessions with traveling nurses and identified a few themes in their decision-making. The pay for contract labor was the highest in the industry, and many nurses saw the job as a means to an end, hoping to pay off their student debt. They also enjoyed the flexibility of these placements, like the ability to take summers off without quitting altogether.
Health systems might not have the resources to offer all of those options, but they could allow clinicians to build a package that was both attractive and practical, Rutherford said. A financially-driven person might choose a lucrative sign-on bonus, but someone who values travel might want to work on the flex team. Nurses who feel burdened by student loans might opt for a repayment plan, while those who’ve paid off their education might want help pursuing a certification.
OhioHealth has always offered these benefits but never presented them in a single package that emphasized choice, Rutherford said. They took all of the scattered information on job boards and websites and compiled it into a “menu” of options.
“At the end of the day, just like that prix fixe menu, we were able to calculate what the cost [of the hire was] going to be, regardless of what choices they made,” he said. “We knew the ROI on the back end, and it made sense to us. If it worked for them, it worked for us, and that’s always a great employment relationship.”
Now, OhioHealth has its lowest nurse vacancy rates since pre-COVID. And that’s why you don’t force seafood on a poultry-eater.
Check out the full webinar here, and stay tuned for more of our virtual health care events in 2026!
In Other News
Major health care headlines from the week
- Advocate Health has launched a National Center for Clinical Trials.
- The Charlotte, North Carolina-based system is calling it “the nation’s largest, most inclusive clinical trial network,” serving nearly 6 million patients across 69 hospitals and more than 1,000 care sites.
- Through a collaboration with Wake Forest University School of Medicine, Advocate Health has developed a technology platform to accelerate and support trial design, recruitment and execution.
- The Center’s technology solution includes two instances of Epic, an enterprise-wide clinical trials management system and a single Institutional Review Board and will use AI to draw upon the electronic health record for patient matching and data support.
- Patients in Illinois, Wisconsin, North Carolina and South Carolina are invited to learn more at Advocate Health’s website.
- AI agents are bringing clinical evidence support to Microsoft Teams, courtesy of Atropos Health. And it could be a game changer, as 84 percent of U.S. physicians use Teams to communicate and collaborate with colleagues.
- The Atropos Evidence Agent launched in the Microsoft Agentic Orchestration Studio at Stanford Health Care this week and will initially be used in its genetic tumor board application, which is hosted in Teams.
- Brigham Hyde, CEO of Atropos Health, gave me a demo ahead of Tuesday’s announcement. Clinicians can invite the agent into their Teams conversation and ask a question about a patient’s treatment. The agent will summarize the available data and present it directly into the dialogue, including recommendations for the specific patient being discussed. Clinicians can click on a link to view the full evidence report and original source material.
- Although Stanford’s tumor board app is the initial site for deployment, this capability is available on Microsoft’s Agent Framework and can be accessed by other health systems.
- Here’s what Hyde told me about the decision to start with tumor boards: “Let’s roll it out to everybody. That’s what I feel. But ultimately, [tumor boards are] a classic collaboration moment amongst different clinicians with different specialties. It’s a great setting to invite in agents that can fill gaps. Every tumor board in the country is meeting because there’s a lot of different information to consume and different perspectives to bring to bear decide what’s best for the patient.”
- The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has released a study discrediting “pediatric sex rejecting procedures” for the treatment of gender dysphoria in children and teens.
- The study found “significant, long-term, and too often ignored or inadequately tracked” health effects from gender affirming treatments given to pediatric patients, according to a Wednesday news release from HHS, led by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
- The report’s authors included physicians from Duke University, University of South Florida and Baylor College of Medicine. The American Psychiatric Association participated in the review, but the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Endocrine Society refused HHS’ invitation to partake, according to the report.
- Health systems around the country are caught in the medical and political crossfires. As of August, at least 21 hospitals had discontinued some or all of their gender-affirming care services for transgender patients amidst increased pressure from President Donald Trump’s administration, NBC reported.
- The American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Medical Association released a joint statement on Wednesday, saying, “We reject selective or politically motivated interpretations of data that ignore the totality of research and clinical outcomes.” Click here for the full statement.
- You can view HHS’ report here.
- UMass Memorial Health Care (UMMH) could have saved a maternity center that shuttered in September 2023, according to Massachusetts State Auditor Diana DiZoglio.
- The health system told the state that it used COVID relief grants to pay bonuses to staff—but a recent audit argued that it could have used the money to maintain maternity services at HealthAlliance Clinton Hospital’s Leominster campus, which closed due to understaffing.
- One-fifth of the Leominster maternity ward’s patients were members of MassHealth, the state’s Medicaid program.
- UMMH denied the State Auditor’s allegations but will still undergo a post-audit review in six months and has received “recommendations for improvement” from the state.
- Get the full scoop at Newsweek.
Pulse Check
Executive perspectives on key industry issues
For this week’s Pulse Check, I sat down with Dr. Maria Ansari, co-CEO of The Permanente Federation (Kaiser Permanente’s medical group consortium). She’s also the primary CEO of three of the eight medical groups in the Federation: the Mid-Atlantic Permanente Medical Group, the Permanente Medical Group in Northern California and the Northwest Permanente Medical Group in Oregon and part of Washington.
Ansari oversees about 12,000 physicians caring for a combined 6 million patients. We discussed how she’s preparing to support them into the future—especially as the Baby Boomer population ages, placing additional strain on an already-taxed health care system. Below, find some of her insights on how new care models and AI can lighten providers’ load.
Editor’s Note: Responses have been lightly edited for length and clarity.
How is The Permanente Federation planning to care for an aging population?
We’re using a lot of different care models to look at this population, because [our plan] depends on the state. As an example, in Oregon, the birth rate is really low, and so the growth is in the Medicare line of business. What’s true across [all of our] markets is that we’re aging faster than we’re growing [the workforce], and so we have to really invest in caring for this older population.
We know that for people over 65, close to 90 percent of them have at least one chronic medical condition, and 60 percent have at least two chronic medical conditions. People are living longer and they are carrying more disease burden. And so what we’re looking at from a population perspective is, how do we keep them living their best lives? How do we keep them healthy? How do we support them in this? Because they all look different, right? If you’ve seen one 80-year-old, you’ve seen one 80-year-old, because one might be playing tennis, another might be bedridden, and there’s everything in between.
We have a few different pilots going on, but the general approach is moving care more and more upstream so that they don’t get the late-stage manifestation of their disease. If they have hypertension, [we want to ensure] that it’s under tight control, or if they have diabetes, that we’re controlling it so well that they don’t get hospitalized, because nobody wants to be in the emergency department. Frictionless, convenient access to care and care management systems help keep them healthy at home. That’s a mainstay throughout The Permanente Federation and all of our medical groups: care managers for chronic conditions.
What we are doing differently right now is using AI to [identify patients that are at] the highest risk to be admitted, to have a fall, to have a heart attack, and really put wraparound services around them. We’re calling that Care Plus. We’ve been using that in Northern California, and we’re trying to spread it to some of the other markets. But the Care Plus model is basically a care team that includes a nurse, a pharmacist, a physician, a social worker and a care navigator. There are multiple [of those] groups of five that care for a population of patients that are at risk for getting sicker, and the AI alerts us to get involved, and they direct the right type of person on the team to address it. So if it’s a transport issue or a food insecurity issue, it might be the social worker. If it’s they’re running out of meds, it might be the pharmacist.
Did Kaiser Permanente develop that AI tool internally, or are you working with a vendor?
We do work with vendors on some of our AI tools. This particular AI tool is our own in-house AI tool [that] we use our electronic medical record for. We actually have 12.6 million members across our entire enterprise, and use a predictive analytics model to determine who is most likely to get re-hospitalized, who’s more likely to deteriorate, and then alert the care team on what the gap is in terms of the need so that we can match them to the right member of the care team. It’s almost like AI is part of the care team—so we have a team-based approach, and AI is just one that is trying to match the patient to the right care team member.
For most of their lives, patients over the age of 65 have been receiving care face-to-face, without much technological intervention. Are you concerned about integrating more digital tools into their care journey?
Personally, I am not worried about it. They are not a monolithic group, and many of them are wearing wearables and are very tech savvy. They want real-time feedback. They want to have what we consider asynchronous interactions with their care team, where they can just [ask], “What do you think of this mole?”
We piloted a [dermatology] app and had people send in pictures of their moles, and the AI algorithm helped tell them [if they were] going to have to see a doctor or if this could be managed with over-the-counter treatment. We had just as many older patients engaged in that as younger. In fact, the older patients are more likely to have some lesions that they’re more concerned about.
So I’m very optimistic about our seniors embracing AI. We use AI in most of our clinic visits because we use Abridge (that’s our vendor that we use for ambient AI scribe technology). And our older patients love it because the doctor is looking at them to do the visit, not at the computer, [because] the AI is documenting the conversation. Our older patients just love that, they feel they get a lot more attention that way.
Are there specific specialties or services that you’re looking to expand in the coming years to meet needs in the senior population?
For sure. we’re seeing, because of the aging population, a lot more demand on our orthopedic surgeon and musculoskeletal service line for total joint conditions and replacements, wear and tear, arthritis and Obviously, cardiology, with congestive heart failure and heart failure is often managed in primary care as well, but just additional cardiology support for this aging population.
How are you planning to extend your capabilities in these areas?
Obviously hiring is going to be important because this population base is growing, but there’s a shrinking workforce, and maybe even less people going into medicine. So how do we bridge that divide? It is through looking at a team-based approach that’s not just centered on the specialist.
Let’s take congestive heart failure [as an example], because it’s the number one diagnosis for people over the age of 65 in a hospital setting. We’re looking at ambulatory treatment centers—and we have about 15 of them in Northern California—where we are trying to care for patients who have heart failure that are not sick enough to be in the hospital but are too sick to be at home. We are seeing them every day in the ambulatory treatment center and managing them with hospitalists and primary care physicians to help care for their condition without having to go into the hospital where they get sicker.
We also have a lot of digital support that we are experimenting with right now. We’re doing [a pilot] with digital twins and diabetes care, where [patients use a] wearable device that tells us their weight and fitness activity, and they log their nutrition. There’s both an AI coach and a regular [human] coach giving them advice to try to keep their diabetes under control. It’s a way to partner with technology to care for patients in case we don’t have the workforce to do it going forward.
C-Suite Shuffles
Where health care leaders are coming and going
- Penn State Health tapped Dennis Sutterfield as senior vice president and chief information officer.
- Sutterfield joins the Pennsylvanian academic health system from SUNY Downstate Health Sciences University in Brooklyn, New York, where he also served as CIO. Read more at Newsweek.
- Trinity Health has named Mandi Murray its executive vice president and chief legal officer.
- Murray has spent 37 years with the Livonia, Michigan-based system, starting her career as a registered nurse and later obtaining her JD to practice employment law.
- Erin Cassidy is the new CEO of Nexus Health Systems, which provides specialty care, including behavioral and psychiatric care, in Texas.
- Cassidy has served the health system for more than two decades, serving in various executive positions—helming a specialty hospital in Shenandoah, Texas, and leading the development of new inpatient facilities in Dallas and San Antonio. Get the full scoop at Newsweek.
Executive Edge
How health care execs are managing their own health
The skies are getting gloomier, and the sun is setting earlier up here in Chicago. I’m breaking out my light therapy lamp for Vitamin D (nearly two-thirds of Americans are deficient!) and supplementing by looking for the metaphorical sunshine.
Health care professionals are confronted with a lot of problems in their day-to-day: ill patients, declining reimbursement rates, staffing shortages. Naturally, a lot of our conversations focus on these issues; you have to examine them closely to find the solutions.
But lately, I’ve really enjoyed hearing what industry leaders are excited about—what they feel is going right. This week, I saw some of those bright spots in my conversation with Dr. Alexa Kimball, president and CEO of Harvard Medical Faculty Physicians.
Kimball told me that she sees progress when reflecting on her time in medicine, and that helps her keep a positive outlook. Here’s what she said:
Editor’s Note: Responses have been lightly edited for length and clarity.
- “It’s been an incredible journey of watching the progress that medicine has made over the past 25 years, and an amazing privilege to be able to have been a part of it.
- “There are diseases that were so common and so problematic years ago, and today, this next generation of physicians has never even really seen the disease because it almost doesn’t exist anymore.
- “It’s been extraordinary to watch that, so I am very optimistic about the care that we bring to patients. We have to figure out how we support the physician enterprise effectively to bring the best care to patients, and AI has also made me optimistic about reducing some of doctors’ burdens to make them more effective. But we’re all in this together at the end of the day, and we’re not going to optimize the health care system unless all parts of it are really pulling the same direction, which, at the end of the day, should be about the care of the patients.”
CEO Circle
Insights from health care thought leaders around the world
“A quiet paradox is unfolding in health care,” according to Dr. Lawrence Rosenberg, president and CEO of the Integrated Health & Social Sciences University Network for West-Central Montreal, and a member of Newsweek’s CEO Circle. Governments are focused on centralizing their health systems—but Rosenberg argues that they could become vulnerable to “intelligence bottlenecks” in the age of AI. Click here to read his thoughts.
This is a preview of the November 20 edition of Access Health—Tap here to get this newsletter delivered straight to your inbox.
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