Leadership in Healthcare: Leaning Into Change and AI

This week’s announcement of the CMS $50B Rural Transformation Fund represents more than just a new funding stream. It’s a call to action. Rural health leaders, and all healthcare leaders for that matter, now face a choice: do we use this as a short-term lifeline, patching over the cracks — or do we treat it as an investment to reimagine the future of care?

From my nearly 20 years in leadership and observing leaders, real leadership means leaning into change, even when the path ahead is uncertain. With the rise of AI and advanced analytics, we have unprecedented tools at our disposal. Data-driven approaches can help us:

• Avoid costs before they occur — predicting surges, preventing unnecessary hospitalizations, reducing readmissions.

• Redesign workflows — optimizing staffing, supply chain, and capacity management.

• Expand access — using remote monitoring, virtual care, and AI-guided models to bring services into underserved communities.

• Creating systemwide efficiencies — aligning as one health system across the continuum and eliminating entrenched silos that no longer serve patients.

  
  

The transformation won’t be easy. It requires courage, vision, and partnerships. No organization should feel like they need to do this alone, in fact that will only lead to failure. External perspective is often the difference between maintaining the status quo and unlocking new models of care.

This is where I can help. I’ve been fortunate to work alongside providers, policymakers, and technology leaders on national capacity systems, AI-enabled home care pilots, and state-level transformation projects. My role has been to map strategies forward: connecting the right players, aligning with policy, and ensuring that innovation is not just shiny but sustainable.

Let’s not miss this moment. The $50B Rural Transformation Fund can be more than a budget line. It can be the catalyst that changes healthcare delivery for generations. But only if we lead boldly, embrace AI, and invest in new models rather than replicate old ones.

If you’re a health system, policymaker, or rural provider thinking about how to make this real

or another firm working with these types of organizations and leaders— let’s talk. Together, we can chart a strategy that not only uses this funding, but multiplies its impact.