Rural Spotlight

Whitepaper: Agentic AI in Healthcare: The Transformational Impact & How to Prepare

March 10, 2026

Whitepaper: Agentic AI in Healthcare: The Transformational Impact & How to Prepare

Traditional automation has improved efficiency, but it remains limited by static rules and predefined workflows.

As operational complexity increases, leaders are expected to make faster, more accurate decisions across revenue cycle, care delivery and population health – often without the real-time insights required to do so. Manual exception handling, delayed claims processing and fragmented data continue to strain both provider and payer organizations.

Agentic AI introduces a different model.

By operating autonomously within defined processes, learning from new information and adapting to changing conditions, agentic AI extends beyond conventional
RPA and generative AI. It can analyze large datasets, identify patterns and guide evidence-based strategies across departments.

However, successful implementation requires careful attention to data security, transparency, workforce readiness and governance structures.

This report outlines how healthcare leaders can move from experimentation to structured adoption.

Key takeaways include:

  • The defining characteristics that differentiate agentic AI from traditional
    AI and automation,
  • Real-world provider and payer applications that improve operational and financial performance,
  • Risks leaders must address, including security, oversight and workforce training, and
  • A step-by-step preparation roadmap, from pilots to enterprise integration.

Click Here to Download Whitepaper

Webinar: Beyond Survival: How Rural Hospitals Can Build Future-Ready IT, Wednesday, March 25

March 10, 2026

Webinar: Beyond Survival: How Rural Hospitals Can Build Future-Ready IT, Wednesday, March 25

Modernizing IT in rural healthcare isn’t easy. Tight budgets, difficulty attracting and retaining skilled talent, and escalating cyber risks make it hard for rural hospitals to move beyond day-to-day survival.

This webinar examines how rural hospitals can modernize IT without breaking the bank. The focus is on how strategic partnerships and flexible leadership models can help organizations stabilize core systems, address risk and plan more effectively for the future.

Through real-world examples, attendees will learn how access to experienced IT leadership, enterprise-level capabilities and guidance on funding opportunities can support more sustainable decision-making. The session highlights practical approaches that help rural hospitals move from reactive IT management to more structured, future-ready planning.

Learning points:

  • Why a long-term strategic IT partner is essential for rural hospitals,
  • How full-time or fractional IT leadership supports expertise and continuity,
  • Turning funding opportunities into actionable IT upgrades, and
  • Real-world success stories in modernization and cyber resilience.

Cost: Free

When: Wednesday, March 25, 1:00 p.m. – 2:00 p.m.

Click Here to Register

Webinar: SEP-1 Is Changing… Are You Prepared for What’s Ahead in 2026? March 19

March 10, 2026

Webinar: SEP-1 Is Changing… Are You Prepared for What’s Ahead in 2026? March 19

SEP-1 has moved beyond a quality reporting exercise. As performance tied to Value-Based Purchasing begins to materially impact hospital reimbursement, sepsis-related decisions increasingly carry meaningful financial, operational, and clinical consequences.

Many health systems continue to manage sepsis through a compliance-first lens, aiming to avoid penalties while balancing complex and sometimes competing operational priorities. These approaches can unintentionally increase length of stay, strain emergency department flow, limit inpatient capacity and frustrate clinicians, while introducing reimbursement risk that is not always visible in real time.

This webinar examines how those challenges are showing up across hospitals today and why long-standing sepsis strategies are being re-evaluated as payment realities evolve. Clinical leaders will unpack where organizations often misjudge their exposure, and how early decision – making at triage including emerging approaches that assess the patients’ host response may influence outcomes well beyond SEP-1 checkboxes.

The discussion will also explore how lessons learned from SEP-1 performance are shaping how organizations prepare for what comes next in federal sepsis measurement.

Attendees will learn:

  • Where compliance-first sepsis strategies create unintended system strain,
  • How early clinical decisions affect throughput and inpatient capacity,
  • The relationship between SEP-1 performance, outcomes and reimbursement risk,
  • What leaders should consider as Value-Based Purchasing stakes continue to rise, and
  • How emerging approaches to early sepsis assessment, including host-response insights, is influencing sepsis strategy.

Cost: Free

When: Thursday, March 19, 12:00 p.m. – 1:00 p.m.

Click Here to Register

Webinar: How Health Systems are Scaling Leader Standard Work on the Frontline, March 19

March 10, 2026

Webinar: How Health Systems are Scaling Leader Standard Work on the Frontline, March 19

Leader Standard Work provides a proven operating model for consistently aligning leader behaviors around what matters most – standardized communications, leader rounding, etc. – but has historically been difficult to scale.

In this session, nursing executives from UNC Health and Boston Medical Center will share real-life examples of what it takes to make leader standard work practical and sustainable, with an emphasis on culture, change management, and technology.

Learning Points:

  • Understand how leader standard work can drive employee engagement, patient experience, leader efficiency, and more,
  • Learn how technology helps health systems operationalize and scale consistent leader behaviors, and
  • Gain a practical framework for operationalizing leadership best practices across departments.

Cost: Free

When: Thursday, March 19, 1:00 p.m. – 2:00 p.m.

Click Here to Register

Webinar: The Hidden Patient Safety Risk at Discharge, March 17

March 10, 2026

Webinar: The Hidden Patient Safety Risk at Discharge, March 17

Discharge is one of the most legally and clinically vulnerable moments in care – especially for multilingual patients.

When instructions are unclear, inconsistently translated or poorly integrated into documentation workflows, the consequences extend beyond confusion. Health systems face increased risk of medication errors, non-adherence, preventable readmissions and compliance exposure.

Health systems often depend on translation tools that were not desi9gned for healthcare. These tools can miss context, misinterpret terminology and create gaps between discharge documentation and patient understanding.

In this live discussion, Albert Villarin, MD, vice president and chief medical informatics officer of Nuvance-Northwell Health, shares how his organization is approaching discharge communication risk and what health system leaders should consider when modernizing multilingual workflows.

Key takeaways include:

  • Why discharge communication failures disproportionately impact multilingual populations,
  • Where general-purpose translation tools break down in clinical workflows,
  • How health systems can strengthen documentation integrity for multilingual discharge instructions, and
  • Governance, security and compliance considerations for managing multilingual patient data.

Cost: Free

When: Tuesday, March 17, 12:00 p.m. – 1:00 p.m.

Click Here to Register

Webinar: How Sanford Health is Strengthening Clinician Well-Being and Fulfillment, March 24

March 10, 2026

Webinar: How Sanford Health is Strengthening Clinician Well-Being and Fulfillment, March 24

Sanford Health – the nation’s largest rural health system, serving more than 2 million patients across the upper Midwest – has taken a deliberate, organization-wide approach to clinician well-being by investing in relationships, leadership development and a culture of listening.

This session will highlight Sanford’s initiatives that are strengthening professional fulfillment, including high-impact onboarding; coaching and mentoring as part of career development; and leadership training focused on well-being competencies.

Key takeaways include:

  • An inside look at initiatives that helped drive a 14% reduction in clinician burnout from 2022 to 2025,
  • Highlights from the American Medical Association’s 2025 National Comparison Report, including leading drivers of physician well-being and practical opportunities for action, and
  • Strategies to strengthen well-being across your organization through onboarding, mentoring and leadership development.

Cost: Free

When: Tuesday, March 24, 12:00 p.m. – 1:00 p.m.

Click Here to Register

Webinar: Vernon Health’s Connected Pharmacy Strategy, March 23

March 10, 2026

Webinar: Vernon Health’s Connected Pharmacy Strategy, March 23

Pharmacy procurement is no longer just about purchasing medications.

Rising drug costs, persistent shortages, limited staffing and growing 340B complexity are forcing pharmacy leaders into broader financial and operational decisions, often without connected data or workflows to support them.

In this webinar, leaders from Vernon Health share how they are rethinking procurement decision-making to better align cost, supply and compliance. The discussion explores why siloed, manual processes slow purchasing decisions and limit visibility, especially during shortages and staffing constraints.

Learn:

  • The operational risks created by manual, siloed procurement processes,
  • How disconnected data limits visibility during shortages, and
  • Ways connected insights support compliance and financial oversight.

Cost: Free

When: Monday, March 23, 12:00 p.m. – 1:00 p.m.

Click Here to Register

Whitepaper: The Future of Payer-Provider Collaboration: Balancing Reimbursement Pressures & Value-Based Progress

March 10, 2026

Whitepaper: The Future of Payer-Provider Collaboration: Balancing Reimbursement Pressures & Value-Based Progress

Health system technology leaders are being pulled into the center of payer-provider conflict. Rising denials, growing administrative workloads and tighter reimbursement timelines are forcing organizations to rethink how data, infrastructure and platforms support collaboration.

This report promises a clearer view of what is actually driving friction between payers and providers today and what leaders believe could ease it. Rather than positioning collaboration as a catch-all solution, it examines where alignment breaks down and what realistic improvements look like from the provider perspective.

The analysis draws from a closed-door session at Becker’s 13th Annual CEO + CFO Roundtable and features candid input from health system leaders across the country.

Learnings include:

  • How reimbursement pressure is reshaping provider technology priorities,
  • Why current payer-provider processes create operational drag,
  • What leaders see as realistic paths to better collaboration, and
  • How regulatory changes could elevate the role of shared platforms.

Click Here to Download Whitepaper

Webinar: CDI + AI at Cape Fear: An Integrated Blueprint for Clinical Excellence and Revenue Integrity, March 24

March 10, 2026

Webinar: CDI + AI at Cape Fear: An Integrated Blueprint for Clinical Excellence and Revenue Integrity, March 24

Hospitals deliver complex care every day – but when documentation, coding and revenue cycle teams operate in silos, financial and quality performance suffer.

Incomplete documentation, reactive CDI workflows and disconnected systems can lead to case mix inaccuracy, preventable denials and delayed reimbursement. At the same time, clinicians face mounting documentation burden that limits engagement and productivity.

Cape Fear Vally Health took a different approach.

By integrating AI-enabled CDI and revenue integrity capabilities into everyday workflows, the health system built a model that connects clinical care with financial stewardship. AI-powered prioritization, evidence sheets, auto-suggested DRGs and advanced code sequencing help teams reason across the full patient record, surface documentation opportunities and strengthen performance before claims are submitted.

Attendees will learn:

  • How to operationalize AI across CDI, coding and revenue integrity workflows,
  • Ways to improve case mix accuracy while easing clinician burden,
  • How proactive safeguards can help prevent denials and revenue leakage, and
  • Tactics to break down silos and accelerate reimbursement.

Cost: Free

When: Tuesday, March 24, 1:00 p.m. – 1:00 p.m.

Click Here to Register

Webinar: The Future of Healthcare Leadership: OU Health, Wellstar Talk Risks, Realities & Readiness, March 18

March 10, 2026

Webinar: The Future of Healthcare Leadership: OU Health, Wellstar Talk Risks, Realities & Readiness, March 18

Healthcare leaders are navigating margin pressure, workforce instability and rapid technology change while maintaining operational stability across their organizations.

In this session, leaders from OU Health and Wellstar Health System discuss findings from a national survey of more than 700 healthcare executives. The conversation examines where leadership pressure is intensifying, which executive and director roles are under the most strain and how health systems are adapting their talent strategies.

Panelists will share perspectives from their organizations alongside national survey insights to help healthcare executives better understand emerging leadership risks and opportunities.

Insights include:

  • How executive and director turnover affects stability, performance and continuity,
  • Which leadership capabilities are becoming most critical as system pressures grow,
  • How AI and technology are influencing leadership decision-making, and
  • Where healthcare organizations are adjusting leadership and talent strategies.

Cost: Free

When: Wednesday, March 18, 12:00 p.m. – 1:00 p.m.

Click Here to Register