At the heart of the U.S. healthcare industry’s evolution is the dynamic interplay between technology, finance, and patient care. To dissect the major trends emerging from the annual J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference, we are joined by Faisal Zain, a veteran expert whose career has been dedicated to navigating this complex intersection. Faisal brings a sharp perspective on how health systems are leveraging innovation to overcome financial headwinds and redefine the future of healthcare delivery.
Our conversation explores several pivotal themes shaping the industry’s trajectory. We will delve into the ambitious push towards a fully autonomous revenue cycle powered by agentic AI, a concept that promises to eliminate administrative friction. We will also examine how healthcare leaders are being called upon to foster collaboration and unity in a divisive social climate. Furthermore, we’ll discuss the strategic and cultural implications of return-to-office mandates, the foundational importance of digital platforms in enabling advanced technologies like smart rooms, and the logistical hurdles and profound patient impact of integrating genomic testing into routine cancer care.
Waystar aims for an autonomous revenue cycle using agentic AI trained on billions of transactions. What specific manual tasks, like correcting coding errors mid-cycle, will this AI automate first? Could you share a key metric that will define success beyond the current 99% first-pass acceptance rate?
What Waystar is building is incredibly ambitious; they’re not just automating tasks but aiming for a truly autonomous system. The first wave of automation will target the messy middle of the revenue cycle, which is where so many denials originate. Think about the manual data entry, the inefficient notations in unstructured clinical notes—these are the things that lead to missing documentation and flawed claims. Waystar is deploying over 150 AI models specifically trained to sift through those unstructured notes, catching errors before they become costly denials. It’s about moving from reactive appeals to proactive prevention, which is a fundamental shift.
As for success beyond that impressive 99% first-pass rate, the ultimate metric will be the complete eradication of preventable denials and the velocity of reimbursement. The company has already used its AltitudeAI to prevent a staggering $15.5 billion in claims that would have otherwise been denied. The new benchmark for success won’t just be clean claims but the speed and certainty of payment with minimal human intervention. The true measure will be when we see a quantifiable shift in providers’ time—less time spent on billing and more time dedicated to patient care, which is the mission CEO Matt Hawkins articulated so clearly.
Intermountain’s CEO called on healthcare leaders to rise above political divisiveness. Beyond internal messaging, what practical, collaborative steps can competing health systems take to “lock arms” on a community level? Please share an anecdote of how this has improved patient care or influenced policy.
It was refreshing to hear Rob Allen of Intermountain address the societal friction so directly. His call to “lock arms” goes far beyond a simple internal memo; it’s a strategic imperative. We’re already seeing this in action through initiatives like Intermountain’s Mindshare Institute. This isn’t just a think tank; it’s a collaborative engine with partners focused on creating entirely new business models for care. A concrete example is the recent launch of AeroTerra Health, a joint venture focused on medical transport. This isn’t a small-scale pilot; it’s a nationwide initiative projected to save patients, payers, and providers several hundred million dollars annually. That’s a tangible outcome born from collaboration.
On the policy front, their approach is equally pragmatic. Instead of resisting disruption from the administration, they’ve chosen to engage directly. They’ve been involved in seven different workstreams with CMS, actively helping shape how the pieces fall on critical issues like drug pricing and value-based care. Their health plan has even helped review and refine the Medicare Star Ratings for Medicare Advantage. This demonstrates a sophisticated understanding that true influence comes not from standing on the sidelines but from being at the table, ensuring that as the world shakes, the new foundations being built are stable and constructive for everyone.
Providence is implementing a strong return-to-office policy for thousands of employees to boost innovation and mentorship. How will the organization measure the impact on these cultural goals, and what specific strategies will be used to retain top talent who may prefer remote work arrangements?
Providence’s decision certainly caused a stir, and it highlights a major tension in the post-pandemic corporate world. CEO Erik Wexler was clear that the goals are to foster innovation, mentorship, and a cohesive culture, especially for younger employees who need that in-person guidance to become future leaders. Measuring the impact will be complex. It won’t be a simple productivity metric. They’ll likely look at things like the velocity of new project development, track employee engagement and sentiment scores specifically around mentorship, and monitor promotion rates among the cohorts they are targeting for development. It’s about seeing if those “in the room” moments translate into measurable creative output and career progression.
As for retaining talent, this is a high-stakes gamble. The announcement comes on the heels of reducing their headcount by about 5,000 people, which already creates a tense environment. They seem to be banking on a strategy of reinvestment in the remaining workforce. The simultaneous mention of over $600 million in planned pay increases and other workforce development priorities is no coincidence. The implicit message is that while they are mandating a return to the office, they are also making a significant financial commitment to their employees’ compensation and growth. They are betting that a better-paid, more supported, and culturally connected workforce will ultimately be more valuable and loyal than a distributed one, even if they lose some talent in the short term.
AdventHealth has invested over $1 billion in its digital platform and is now deploying smart-room technology. How does this foundational platform directly enable the AI use cases in these smart rooms, and what specific improvements in patient experience or provider workflow do you anticipate?
That billion-dollar investment in their foundational platform is the critical enabler for everything that comes next. You can’t just sprinkle AI into a fragmented system. By standardizing on platforms like Epic and WorkDay, AdventHealth has created a single, consistent data ecosystem. This is the bedrock that allows their AI engine to run 80 different use cases effectively. Without that standardized data structure, deploying something as complex as smart-room technology across 13,000 rooms would be a logistical nightmare. The platform ensures that the data flowing from these new smart rooms can be ingested, analyzed, and acted upon consistently system-wide.
The impact on patients and providers will be profound. CEO David Banks called it a “game-changer,” and I believe he’s right. For patients and families, this technology will create a more responsive and interactive environment, fundamentally changing their experience. For providers, it’s about workflow efficiency and expanding capabilities. The smart rooms will facilitate remote and tele-services in new ways, allowing consultants to interact with patients without being physically present and enabling new models of care delivery right at the bedside. This isn’t just about adding screens to a room; it’s about making the room an active node in the care network, powered by the data and connectivity of their core platform.
With new partnerships expanding genomic testing to more cancer patients, including those with early-stage diagnoses, what are the primary logistical challenges in integrating this into routine care? Please walk us through how this collaboration will concretely change the treatment journey for a patient.
Expanding genomic testing to nearly every cancer patient, especially those with early-stage disease, is a massive undertaking, and the logistical challenges are significant. First, there’s the sheer scale of integrating this workflow into routine care. It requires seamless ordering processes within the EMR, standardized sample collection and transport, and, most importantly, a system to deliver complex genomic reports back to clinicians in a way that is easily understandable and actionable. Second is the data challenge. We’re talking about generating immense volumes of genomic data that must be managed, stored, and analyzed. And third, there’s the educational component—ensuring that every oncologist across a large system like Northwestern Medicine feels confident interpreting these results and applying them to earlier-stage cancers, where this has traditionally been less common.
For a patient, this collaboration completely rewrites their treatment journey. Take the work Tempus is doing with NYU Langone. A patient enrolled in their study won’t just get a one-time genomic test at diagnosis. Instead, they will undergo “serial molecular profiling” throughout their treatment. This means we can watch the cancer’s biology evolve in real time. If a tumor starts to develop resistance to a therapy, we can detect it at a molecular level before it becomes a clinical problem, allowing physicians to pivot to a more effective treatment immediately. It transforms cancer care from a series of static decisions based on initial pathology to a dynamic, continuous process of monitoring and adaptation, giving patients the best possible chance at a positive outcome.
What is your forecast for the adoption of agentic AI in healthcare over the next three to five years?
My forecast is that we are at the beginning of a rapid and transformative adoption curve, particularly in the administrative and financial sectors of healthcare. Over the next three to five years, we will see agentic AI move from a buzzword to a core operational component for major health systems and revenue cycle companies. The initial beachhead, as we’re seeing with Waystar, is the revenue cycle, because the ROI is so immediate and quantifiable. We’re talking about preventing billions in denials and achieving massive time savings—those are numbers that no CFO can ignore.
The evolution will be swift. We’ll move beyond using generative AI for simple tasks like writing appeal letters to deploying end-to-end agentic networks that can execute complex workflows with minimal human oversight. The systems will learn continuously from outcomes, powered by the immense proprietary datasets that companies are now building. The ultimate vision of an “autonomous” revenue cycle will become a reality for early adopters within this timeframe. This will not only create enormous financial efficiencies but will also fundamentally advance the mission of these organizations: simplifying the business of healthcare so that the people within it can focus entirely on the care of patients.
