Automation with integrity: The real work behind healthcare’s digital transformation

HFMA’s Healthcare C-suite of the Future report captures precisely where healthcare leadership must go, and it’s a direction we at Healthrise have been deeply invested in for years. The industry’s challenges are real: unsustainable costs, workforce strain and mounting pressures on ROI. Yet the transformation underway is also an extraordinary opportunity if leaders can align data integrity, automation and trust in the right sequence.

We share Sentara Executive Vice President and CFO Melinda Hancock’s belief that today’s healthcare CFOs must move beyond financial stewardship to create enterprise value. As she said in the report, leaders are asking, “How do I collaborate with my peers to drive enterprise performance?” That mindset defines the next wave of transformation. The organizations that succeed will harness automation and AI not as buzzwords but as disciplined tools built on clean, reliable data. Automation only works when the foundation is solid. Data first, technology second.

That principle is especially true in the revenue cycle, where the quality of data determines the quality of outcomes. Professional billing services, for example, often deliver tighter, more reliable datasets with cleaner denials, audit and compliance indicators, making them ideal environments for AI-driven optimization. The message is simple but critical: garbage in, garbage out. Trust the technology only if you trust what is underneath it.

Hospitals and health systems today cannot afford to stay reactive as cost pressures rise and reimbursement models evolve. Denials prevention must become a proactive, owned discipline, not a back-end correction. Problems are sustainably solved, and denials are prevented before they become revenue losses, often identifying them prior to occurring. It is not about adding technology for technology’s sake. It is about building confidence and clarity in every financial decision.

The same logic applies to how organizations structure their operations. The best automation strategy cannot succeed without the right delivery model behind it. Some health systems need full-service outsourcing to gain scale and cost efficiency. Others prefer a hybrid model that keeps key functions in-house while embedding specialized partners to strengthen performance. What matters is not where the work happens but how data, accountability and insight move together.

In this new era, healthcare CFOs and their peers must think like systems engineers, connecting financial, clinical and technological inputs into one continuous loop of improvement. When that loop is built on clean data and executed through disciplined processes, automation becomes more than a cost lever. It becomes a catalyst for growth and resilience.