This is a preview of the April 2 edition of Access Health—Tap here to get this newsletter delivered straight to your inbox on Thursday mornings.
Good morning, and happy April! I always forget about April Fool’s Day and get tricked by at least one news article. For a few minutes, I was afraid that TSA was actually going to enforce a clear bag policy for carry-ons and was nauseated at the idea of lugging a plastic tote through O’Hare. You got me there, MSN News algorithm.
Unfortunately, misinformation is spread around the clock—not just on April 1—and health care is a hotspot for false or misleading claims.
In last week’s edition, we unpacked the trend of patients turning to AI chatbots for health and wellness advice, despite the abundant research that LLMs can be susceptible to fabricated data (The Lancet) and contain bias (Mount Sinai). This week, the Trump administration issued a warning about Medicare and Medicaid scams that target consumers (more on that in the next section). And, as misinformation swirls on social media, podcasts and even in the upper echelons of government, health care providers are frequently navigating difficult conversations about vaccines.
Health systems and industry professional organizations are working to get ahead of the misinformation firehose, but leaders tell me it feels like a losing battle most days. There’s far too much junk out there and it’s coming at patients from all directions. Sometimes, it’s easier to locate a wrong answer than the right one.
That asymmetry—where bad information is faster, louder and often more emotionally satisfying than the truth—has real consequences inside hospitals and clinics. It shows up as longer visits spent debunking viral claims, delayed care when patients follow advice from anonymous forums and a steady erosion of trust that clinicians have to rebuild one conversation at a time.
Which raises a harder question for health system leaders: if patients are already forming opinions and making decisions before they ever walk through your doors, where does your responsibility begin and end? The answer increasingly lives outside the four walls of the hospital.
That’s one focus of an upcoming conversation I’m hosting on April 21. In a world of WebMD ratings, Reddit threads and alternative TikTok docs, health systems can’t assume that they have credibility with their patients. They have to compete for it as they’re measured not just against one another, but against influencers, algorithms and AI tools that speak in plain language and respond instantly.
In a few weeks, leaders from AdventHealth, CommonSpirit Health and Ballad Health will weigh in with some ways to win patients’ trust and attention. If you want to communicate more clearly and consistently and establish a presence in the places where patients are already looking for answers, I invite you to add our webinar to your calendar. Like all of our health care webinars, this one is free and interactive—so bring your questions, comments and concerns.
Click here to register for the virtual event. I hope to see you there!
In Other News
Major health care headlines from the week
- Hospital markets are overwhelmingly consolidated, according to a new analysis from KFF.
- In 2024, nearly half of metro areas were entirely controlled by one or two health systems, and in most regions, these systems dominated a large majority of inpatient care.
- Ninety-seven percent of U.S. metropolitan markets were considered “highly concentrated” for inpatient care in 2024, when judged against antitrust standards and merger guidelines set by the FTC and DOJ.
- Consolidation has accelerated over time, with four out of five metro areas becoming more concentrated since 2015 or remaining under single-system control throughout the period.
- And the share of hospitals affiliated with health systems was at 69 percent in 2024—up 13 percent from 2010. Read the full report here.
- The U.S. Treasury issued a new warning about Medicare and Medicaid scams on Monday.
- Its Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) urged the public to be on the lookout for phishing messages that appear to be from a health care provider or benefits administrator.
- The information that victims give up could be used to create false or fraudulent medical bills. CMS has seen an uptick in these types of reimbursement schemes, per the Trump administration.
- Get the full story at Newsweek.
- In other government news, the GOP is considering further federal health care cuts to fund a $200 billion bill that would increase the budget for the Iran war and immigration enforcement efforts. Axios broke the news on Monday.
- Another Republican lawmaker introduced new legislation that would axe the H1-B visa program, despite ongoing bipartisan efforts to exclude health care workers from the Trump administration’s $100,000 fee on these visas.
- Neither of these measures are likely to reduce health care costs for Americans. But according to a new Gallup poll, health care access and affordability are Americans’ top concerns right now—10 points ahead of the economy.
- Just about every week in 2026, a major GLP-1 manufacturer has been intensifying efforts to improve weight loss drug access and affordability. Novo Nordisk upped the ante this round, introducing a subscription-based pricing model for Wegovy aimed at self-pay patients.
- The program, available through telehealth platforms like Ro, WeightWatchers and LifeMD, allows patients to save up to $1,200 annually depending on the duration and formulation of the drug.
- This move signals a direct-to-consumer access strategy beyond traditional pharmacy channels.
Pulse Check
Executive perspectives on key industry issues
In March, I connected with UChicago Medicine President Tom Jackiewicz at his office in Hyde Park. We talked about the challenges he and his organization are facing right now: change management, the pace of new technologies, competing for patients’ attention in a crowded market where convenience is absolutely crucial.
Find a portion of our interview below.
Editor’s Note: Responses have been lightly edited for length and clarity.
So, Tom, what’s been on your mind lately?
I think we’re in a period of inflection. There are some core, structural things going on in health care that are really impacting all of us.
There’s been a significant population growth. From 2000 to today, the population of the country has increased by about 20 percent, and we haven’t really increased the number of doctors. We also happen to have an aging population, so the demand for health care is really going up.
Coming out of the pandemic, I think there has been a lot of delayed diagnosis. It seems like people are sicker and needing more health care than ever before.
The combination of the population growth, the [effects of the] pandemic, the aging of the population and then this doctor shortage…it’s a real issue, and I don’t see it as one that we’re going to solve anytime soon with people. I think technology is going to have to step in and help fill that gap.
I also think people’s expectations around health care have changed. One thing about the pandemic is that everybody got used to getting everything they want from their living room: the Amazon effect, if you will. In health care, thinking about how we’re going to deliver care differently is going to be the challenge for us. When I go to meetings and people summarize polls about Americans’ feelings towards health care, the two issues that I hear are cost and access.
As a health system, you can’t solve the cost of health care on your own, but access is something that, as a provider, you have to really own. This is where technology is going to play a big role. And that’s why I’m kind of optimistic about AI, though I think it’s going to be quite disruptive. I think it does give us some technological solutions here.
How has your AI strategy changed since you first started investing about two years ago?
As an industry, we have been very focused on legacy systems like Epic or Oracle for our enterprise resource planning [ERP].
Because the technology is moving so quickly, we’re beginning to change our mindset. We’re going to make decisions in a shorter time frame, but also realize that these probably aren’t going to be 20- or 30-year decisions. If better software comes out in three to five years, we’ll shift and use a newer software.
But I think that’s going to be the biggest challenge. The board asked me what I worry about at night, and I said, “Change management and pace.” Can we change our processes quickly enough to keep up with the technological developments?
I think that’s going to be a challenge for every health system.
UChicago has a handful of tech partners; Epic, Artisight, Salesforce and Harper are just a few that you’ve mentioned today. Is it difficult to manage all of these different solutions while projecting one cohesive strategy?
This is going to be the leadership challenge that’s going to face us for the next decade—but it actually might be longer than that. We’re adjusting processes and changing workflows all through the hospital, and at the same point, we’re also changing patient engagement. I think the leadership team and all the management teams are going to be very stressed.
I think it’s about preaching flexibility in the organization, because none of the solutions are ever going to be perfect. [For example,] the EMR was this big thing that took us two years [to implement]. But we did it. It was slow. Nobody liked it, but everybody got used to it.
Now the technology changes are coming at us fast and furious, and I think this is going to be one of the core challenges of health care: can we take an industry that has been very slow to change and has not really seen ROI on technology in the past (we’re now starting to realize the ROI), and [change technologically] at a disruptive pace?
That’s to be determined. I feel like we’re so new to this. We’re going to have to continually measure progress, but I think we’ll see it in the satisfaction numbers from our physicians and caregivers, and we’ll all see it from the patients. If we don’t do it well, we’ll have a lot of very unhappy people.
Who are the main groups within the health system that tend to want a slower pace of change? How do you get them onboard with new tools and processes?
There’s 20 percent of your group—maybe 10 to 20 percent—who are very open to new technology. Then you’ve got a big group in the middle, and if [the technology] works well, they’re going to be okay. And then you’ve always got that 20 percent that’s going to be unhappy. So if you’re making a change that’s going to impact the doctors, you have 20 percent that are going to be upset. Nurses, same thing.
You’ll see it in pockets. It won’t be an even distribution. Maybe the floor nurses will be totally happy, but the whole group of ICU nurses will be upset—which makes the change management more complicated, because now you’ve got to work with this whole group to get them “bought in.”
This is where the old face-to-face, hearing the issues, talking through the problems and trying to find a mutually agreeable solution is critical. It’s funny: as technology gets more advanced and cooler, some of the old management techniques are going to be even more important, because change management does take a lot of hand holding. You’re putting [something new] in and you’re hearing what people are saying, and you’re kind of adjusting on the fly.
The metaphor for this is that we’re all going to feel like we’re driving 60 miles per hour and trying to change the tires.
I know it’s going to be really disruptive, but I get really excited about this, because for the first time in my career, I feel like the forces of change are so strong that we’re actually going to make the changes. The combination of workforce shortages, increasing demand and reimbursement pressures is, I think, going to actually force change.
Anybody who thinks that they can hunker down and get through without changing might actually go out of business or be in a very bad situation. I don’t think they’ll be able to survive.
There’s also far more competition than there used to with digital and retail “disruptors,” for lack of a better term. Some of them beat health systems to the hypothesis that access would be crucial in the long term (or, at least, they started to act on it sooner).
What do traditional health systems need to do to compete with some of these online, convenient, direct-to-consumer companies?
I think it’s about partnership. We’re really good at certain things. If you’re really sick, you want to be at the University of Chicago.
Convenience, ease of access…some folks can do this really well (CVS’ Minute Clinic is the perfect example.) And the question is, where can we partner and let the people that do that really well do it, and then let’s see how we can be there for the sort of more complicated stuff.
For example, look at our AdventHealth partnership. We’re 51 percent owners of those four hospitals, but AdventHealth runs those hospitals. Part of the logic behind that was that they’re really good at running hospitals. They’re [one of the] largest systems in the country, they run 57 hospitals, they know how to run a community hospital.
We know how to run an academic medical center, but I will tell you, it is different. So we’re playing to their strength in this partnership by letting them run those hospitals, and it’s worked out well for us.
We have to continue to apply that theory. Stay within your sweet spot. Do what you do well. But if other folks have figured out a way to do something, then partner with them, bring your skill and let them do their piece.
For academic medical centers—because we’re training residents and we’ve got all these other missions that are going on—trying to compete with a CVS Minute Clinic would not be good. I’m pretty sure we wouldn’t be successful.
It sounds like instead of trying to do it all or become a “one-stop shop,” you’re doubling down on what you already do well when projecting UChicago Medicine’s identity.
That’s exactly it. And I think it’s really important to play to our strengths.
C-Suite Shuffles
Where health care leaders are coming and going
- Dr. David Zaas is the new CEO of Duke University Health System in Durham, North Carolina.
- Zaas joins the academic medical system from Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist, where he is president and CEO, as well as executive vice president of health affairs at Wake Forest University.
- This is a homecoming of sorts: Zaas served Duke Health for nearly 20 years between 2001 and 2020, working as president of Duke Raleigh Hospital before his departure.
- Central Maine Healthcare replaced its CEO one day after the system was acquired by the Prime Healthcare Foundation, the Sun Journal reported this week.
- Steve Littleson—Central Maine Healthcare’s former CEO—joined the system in 2020 after working as a regional president for Jefferson Health in Philadelphia. He was replaced without fanfare on February 17, according to the Journal.
- Allen Stefanek was appointed interim CEO on the same day that Littleson was ousted. He is also the regional CEO of Prime Healthcare, per his bio on Central Maine’s website.
- In November 2025, Prime’s nonprofit charity received state approval to acquire the three-hospital system. In January—one month before the transition—the partners announced that they intended to maintain local leadership at Central Maine Healthcare.
- Prime Healthcare is the fourth-largest for-profit health system in the U.S., operating 54 hospitals in 15 states, along with more than 360 outpatient locations. It is headquartered in Ontario, California.
- Dr. Robert Steele is leaving Children’s Mercy Hospital in Kansas City, Missouri, to serve as president and CEO of Dayton Children’s in Ohio.
- Steele has been the chief strategy and innovation officer at Children’s Mercy since October 2019.
- He will succeed Debbie Feldman—who has led Dayton Children’s for 14 years—once she retires on June 30.
This is a preview of the April 2 edition of Access Health—Tap here to get this newsletter delivered straight to your inbox on Thursday mornings.
