See how healthcare finance leaders are re-centering mission, workforce, and operational discipline to guide tech-enabled transformation.
As health systems navigate rising labor costs, inflationary pressure, and accelerating digital innovation, CFOs are reshaping their strategic role. Today’s CFOs must balance the promise of advanced technology (particularly AI), with the realities of workforce constraints, process fragmentation, and mission stewardship. The emerging consensus: sustainable transformation begins with people, process, and purpose.
Jonathan Ma, CFO of Sutter Health, has made that framework central to his approach.
Speaking at HFMA’s annual conference in Denver, Ma cautioned against chasing
“technology as a standalone solution.”
Meaningful change, he said, requires alignment across three interdependent pillars: “A tech fix without the right people and shared purpose won’t deliver sustainable outcomes. All three of those components are interrelated.”
That philosophy feeds directly into Sutter’s capital allocation strategy. With technologies such as AI tools promising efficiency gains but delivering uneven results, Ma’s team applies a multifaceted scorecard that integrates quantitative ROI with mission alignment. The framework isn’t static though. Criteria are regularly updated as market conditions and technologies evolve. In a time defined by cost pressures and value-based care, Ma emphasizes agility by monitoring operational and balance-sheet metrics to balance long-term resilience with near-term realities.
Just as critical is collaboration. Ma maintains tight communication with the CEO, COO, and clinical leaders to ensure that financial discipline supports, rather than compromises, clinical excellence. Within the finance team, he reinforces a culture rooted in transparency and a high “say-do ratio”—a principle his CEO champions.
“Credibility and reliability are how you build trust across frontline teams,” he said, emphasizing direct feedback loops and open dialogue.
Across the industry, other CFOs are echoing similar themes. The push to integrate AI and automation is real, but so are the risks of adopting technology prematurely or without governance. Finance leaders must partner closely with CTOs and CIOs to understand technological trajectories, evaluate development and training costs, and assess legal and liability risks.
As AdventHealth Director of Finance Kaitlyn Anderson put it, “Our goal is not to replace our workforce with technology, but to help our workforce be more effective and efficient… while also improving their experience when taking care of patients.”
That balance, technology as an enabler, rather than a substitute, is becoming a defining leadership competency.
At UChicago Medicine, CFO Chris Allen underscores another essential principle: fix the process before adding the technology.
“More times than not, the problem is really the process,” Allen said. “If you throw new technology on a broken process, it’s still broken.”
Allen also brings attention to the human dimensions of finance. Decisions around expense reductions or labor adjustments must be grounded in compassion.
“You can’t be a finance person in this industry without a heart,” he said.
Compassion, in his view, is not just a moral imperative, it’s foundational to trust, alignment, and organizational stability.
These leaders signal a shift in healthcare finance: technology matters, but people, process, and purpose matter more. And it is the CFO who increasingly orchestrates that balance.
Marie DeFreitas is the CFO editor for HealthLeaders.
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