Innovation, AI and the Future of Hartford HealthCare with Jeff Flaks

Summary

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Podcast Summary: Innovation, AI and the Future of Hartford HealthCare with Jeff Flaks

Podcast: Becker’s Healthcare Podcast
Date: March 3, 2026
Host: Laura Deardorff (Becker’s Healthcare)
Guest: Jeff Flaks, CEO of Hartford HealthCare

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Episode Overview

This episode centers on the rapid evolution of Hartford HealthCare under CEO Jeff Flaks, highlighting the organization's approach to innovation, technology adoption—particularly AI—and partnerships that are redefining care delivery. Flaks reflects on awards and recognitions for innovation, transformative use of technology, and the organizational culture that prioritizes patient-first, adaptive healthcare. The episode is rich in examples of initiatives that increase accessibility and personalization in care, while Flaks makes a case for optimism in an industry facing well-known headwinds.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Culture of Innovation and National Recognition

• Hartford HealthCare’s Culture: Flaks credits Hartford HealthCare’s large staff and mission-driven culture for enabling cross-system innovation and change.

• Awards as Validation: Flaks discusses receiving the inaugural Press Ganey Innovator’s Award and the Quest for Quality Award, emphasizing these as reflections of system-wide commitment rather than personal accolades.

  “There’s a culture in Hartford Healthcare to innovate, to disrupt the status quo … there's never been a moment we could get better faster than we can right now.” — Jeff Flaks [02:41]

2. Transformative Technology Initiatives

• HHC24/7 via K Health:

  • A digital platform allowing patients to access care at any hour, expanding access for all, including underserved communities.
  • Over 40,000 users since March, with 250-300 daily interactions.

• AI in Imaging (Adoc):

  • Implementation of AI to expedite radiological reads and improve accuracy and efficiency, benefitting both patients and clinicians.
  • Radiologists validate AI interpretations, streamlining workflow.

• Clinical Documentation (Abridge):

  • Generative AI for automatic documentation during patient-doctor interactions—allows clinicians to focus on patients rather than computers.
  • Patients receive immediate, accurate records, increasing engagement and transparency.

• Remote Patient Monitoring (Cadence Health):

  • Devices deployed for conditions like diabetes, hypertension, chronic kidney disease, and heart failure.
  • Enables early intervention, reduces hospitalizations, and enhances quality of life.

  “We’re seeing through products like Adoc, incredible efficiencies … and then, you know, seeing technologies like Abridge is amazing. It’s totally transforming the patient experience … just incredible.” — Jeff Flaks [06:45]

3. Opportunities and Challenges Ahead

• Emergence of AI Assistants:

  • Prediction that chatbots will become trusted, effective navigators, scheduling aids, and personalized information providers.

• Personalization and Coordination:

  • Push toward more coordinated, barrier-free, and affordable care with improved data utilization.

• Change Management as a Core Leadership Challenge:

  • Flaks acknowledges that the hardest work ahead is change management: aligning innovation around both consumers and providers, piloting new models, and ensuring technology serves—not hinders—clinician workflow.

  “A lot of this is change management … making good judgments, good decisions, small tests of change, piloting things properly, failing forward as we think about innovation.” — Jeff Flaks [10:15]

• Policy and Industry Headwinds:

  • Recognition of significant headwinds at state/national levels potentially impeding progress, despite opportunities for improvement.

4. Shifting the Care Model: From Sick Care to Well Care

• Technology Serving Providers:

  • Emphasis on ensuring that technology supports providers to do their best work, rather than adding to bureaucratic burden.

• Utilization of Data:

  • More robust use of data to manage chronic diseases, develop support structures, and promote wellness and prevention over reactive care.

  “The providers don’t work for the technology. The technology has to be there to serve and support our providers, our caregivers … that is one of the things I’m so encouraged about.” — Jeff Flaks [12:34]

5. Landmark Collaboration: Memorial Sloan Kettering Partnership

• Cancer Care Innovation:

  • Hartford HealthCare’s partnership as the first care partner with Memorial Sloan Kettering aims to expand access to clinical trials, leading research, and coordinated disease management teams.
  • Aspires to “democratize” access to world-class cancer care and replicate the model nationally.

  “We will be bringing their clinical trials, their leading edge research … democratizing that type of service and capabilities so they can get to more people.” — Jeff Flaks [14:08]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On culture and change:

  “We work every day not to protect the status quo, but to recognize that we need to disrupt it for us.” — Jeff Flaks [02:18]

• On the promise of technology:

  “Historically, technology and healthcare made things more bureaucratic … but today it’s the opposite. What’s occurring with AI … is making healthcare more human.” — Jeff Flaks [03:15]

• On the pace of improvement:

  “It’s a moment in time for being better today than we were yesterday, but being better next year than we are this year.” — Jeff Flaks [09:33]

• On collaboration:

  “We’re proud to be contributing to it and to be participants at it, and I look forward to being there.” — Jeff Flaks on the upcoming Becker’s annual meeting [15:11]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• [01:13] Introduction and Hartford HealthCare overview
• [02:03] Awards and innovation culture
• [04:45] Specific recent initiatives & technological transformation
• [08:23] Upcoming opportunities: AI assistants, personalization, affordability
• [10:15] Core challenge: change management and centering consumers/providers
• [12:34] Model shift: technology's role in chronic disease and wellness
• [13:43] Expansion: Partnership with Memorial Sloan Kettering
• [14:45] Outro and anticipation for Becker’s Healthcare annual meeting

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Conclusion

This episode offers a comprehensive inside look at Hartford HealthCare’s strategy for innovation and quality-driven transformation. Jeff Flaks’ insights depict an organization intent not on maintaining the status quo but on leveraging emerging technology—especially AI and rich partnerships—to make healthcare more accessible, efficient, and human. With a philosophy of “being the best at getting better,” Hartford HealthCare exemplifies adaptive leadership in an era of challenging headwinds and extraordinary possibilities.

Transcript

[A]

At Vitility, we're transforming health care to improve lives. As a physician owned, multi specialty partnership, we put patients first in every decision. With 6,000 clinicians caring for over 10 million people each year, we lead with innovation to make care more connected, more responsive and more human. Learn [e-mail]

[B]

this is Laura Deardle with the Beckers Healthcare podcast. I'm thrilled today to be joined by Jeff Flacks, Chief Executive Officer of Hartford Healthcare. Jeff, it's a pleasure to have you on the podcast today.

[C]

Thank you, Laura.

[B]

Absolutely. Now I'm excited for our conversation because we're going to be talking a lot about some of the cool things you're doing at Hartford Healthcare and really how you've been able to grow and expand so much over the last couple of years. Some of your key initiatives. I know Hart Hartford now spans more than 500 locations and 185 towns and cities across your catchment area. You have 48,000 dedicated colleagues and looking for a really bold vision for the future. So I'm excited to learn a little bit more about that. But before we dive in, can you just tell us a little bit more about yourself and Hartford Healthcare?

[C]

Yeah. Thank you, Laura. Look, it's such an honor to be here and to be a part of Hartford Healthcare. We have the most amazing people, the best culture as you described. We have 48,500 colleagues who are dedicated, who give such incredible discretionary effort serving our communities. And we're really, really excited to have the honor of doing so.

[B]

That's amazing to hear. And you know, I also wanted to ask really quickly before we get into the questions. I know you were the recipient of the inaugural Press Gainy Innovators Award. So can you tell us a little bit more about that and really love to hear some of the things that went into, you know, doing that as well as the aha. Quest for Quality Award. You know, how are you kind of, what did you do to position yourself to be in such the forefront of everything in the health care space?

[C]

First of all, it was great honor to receive this from Press Ganey, from their chairman and CEO Pat Ryan, who I have such immense respect for as a great innovator in his own right. But I accepted this award on behalf of our organization and all of our people. There's a culture in Hartford Healthcare to innovate, to disrupt the status quo. A recognition that in so many ways this is the best healthcare has ever been and at the same time an understanding how much better it can be and that we have A mandate for change in our health system. Laura we work every day not to protect the status quo, but to recognize that we need to disrupt it for us. This was a really beautiful point of validation because my personal belief is that this is the best moment we've ever had in healthcare. I say that in the context of, look, we have very significant headwinds across the country facing healthcare, and they're legitimate. But if we can look beyond that, over the horizon, you can see that there's never been a moment we could get better faster than we can right now. The opportunities to advance healthcare, to make it more accessible, to make it more affordable, to improve the issues around health equity, to address the issues around consistency of quality, that focus on never events. This is really the best moment because historically, technology and health care made things more bureaucratic, slower, less productive. It made our providers jobs harder, and it made care in many ways less human. But today, it's the opposite. What's occurring with AI, what's occurring with the technology that's being developed on the forefront every day is making healthcare more human. It's making it better, more efficient, it is making the provider's job easier and better. And it's returning kind of people to the top of their license to deliver true health care. So that's why I'm so excited. That's why we were so honored to receive that recognition and to receive, you know, the Quest for Quality prize from the American Hospital Association. It's a reflection of having incredible people working in an aligned fashion who we understand quality and safety is job one, and the results they're delivering are really exceptional.

[B]

I love that. And I think it just really speaks a ton to what you've been able to do with the health system and as a team, what you've been able to accomplish, to serve the community, have that great patient care and experience and just truly, truly impressive, especially given the challenges and very real challenges that are in the healthcare space today. But I wanted to zero in on that just a little bit and think about the last year or so. Can you tell me about projects or initiative that, you know, you led that had great results? What did you do and how did you make sure that you were pulling these things through the finish line?

[C]

Laura, this moment, this is the art of the possible. You know, this, this recent experience. We and so many other organizations similar to ours are doing things that would have been unimaginable, and we're addressing problems that were in many ways intractable historically that can be solved today. So I could just give you a few examples. One, you know we launched with K Health hhc24.7. So today we have patients, consumers making appointments with our providers Sunday night at 2:00 in the morning, Wednesday afternoon, 2:00pm from their conference room. We have stay at home parents who are making appointments at all hours of the day, never leaving their home. Right. Never needing to go to bricks and mortar centers and are able to see their providers and get their health care that they need and desire in the comfort of wherever they are. It's completely changing access to health care. We're serving underserved areas now in ways that we never could before because we're able to apply 247 in that in our HHC app and make it available to all people under all circumstances. So we're now, We've seen over 40,000 people since March who in more than 250 to 300 people every single day who are getting this level of healthcare. We're seeing through products like adoc, incredible efficiencies in acceleration of healthcare within our emergency departments where all patients are having their images now read more comprehensively faster through artificial based technology where it can then be validated by our radiologists. So accelerating health care, improving efficiency, expanding in this case the level and capability of the service that could be available, you know, based on the, on the size and scope of the imaging. It's revolutionary. And then, you know, seeing technologies like a bridge, like what we're seeing with a bridge is amazing. It's totally transforming the patient experience. When they go to their provider, their physician, they're now talking to the physician. The physician is no longer entering data in the computer and they abridged technology is able to ensure proper documentation, proper recording accurately of the conversations and of the symptoms and of all of the patient needs and experiences. Completely transformative and it puts the power of that information back in the hand of the patient immediately. Just incredible. We're seeing things with Cadence Health where we're putting remote patient monitoring now in all of our patients homes who have specific issues like diabetes, high blood pressure, chronic kidney disease, heart failure so that we can monitor these patients real time early intervention. We can eliminate expensive hospital visits, return people to higher qualities of their life. I'm telling the Lord I can go on and on. I have so many wonderful examples to give you. But I'm respectful of not overwhelming ourselves on this podcast. But that's why I'm so excited and that's why I see so many great things happening. This is the dawn of an incredible moment in health Care. And it's happening. It's happening all across America. It's certainly happening here in Hartford Healthcare.

[B]

Absolutely. That's amazing, you know, and I really appreciate you calling out all the different technologies and partnerships, that mindset of, you know, being ready to change so quickly and evolve and have an organization that can do those things, because I know it's not easy, but it's an exciting time for sure in healthcare. And, you know, when you look into the next year or so, what are some of the biggest opportunities that you're seeing, as well as headwinds that, that you're thinking about and keeping top of mind as you're developing your strategies and next steps forward?

[C]

First of all, we're going to see chatbots, right, start to become really trusted assistants and help navigate health care more effectively, help people, you know, schedule, help people coordinate, eliminate friction in health care, provide customized personalized information more effectively. So I'm very excited about those types of developments. You know, I see health care getting more personalized. I see it being more well navigated, more well coordinated. I see us eliminating barriers to health care, accelerating access, being able to manage total cost of care, making it more affordable by being able to manage care. So we get the health care early, early interventions in the right place. We ensure better compliance with things like medications, faster and better response times. So, again, that's why I'm saying these are difficult times, and I don't want to not be respectful of that. And we have real issues from a public policy standpoint that have to be worked through and we've got to find good solutions to. But at the same point, this is such a great moment, right? There's so many things happening. There's so much opportunity to make healthcare better. And, you know, Laura, we've said this before at Becker's many times. Hartford Healthcare's mantra is we work to be the best at getting better, right? Not to be the best. To what end, to what purpose? It's a moment in time for being better today than we are than we were yesterday, but being better next year than we are this year. And I do think as you look at the outlook for this coming year, healthcare will be significantly better next year. There's much to be done. But I also want to be respectful. There's also really significant issues at a national and state level that have to get worked through that could, if not well addressed, significantly impede the progress I'm describing.

[B]

Absolutely. I think that's such a great point. And, you know, when you look into this next year, Thinking about the technologies, thinking about everything else that is coming down the pipe. What do you think the hardest thing you'll have to do in the coming year will be?

[C]

Look, a lot of this is change management, right? A lot of it is making good judgments, good decisions, small tests of change, piloting things properly, failing forward as we think about innovation. But I certainly look at some of the great challenges it's trying to create alignment in ensuring that these things are being well coordinated and being coordinated around the consumer and around the people we care for. I mean, people are always consumers and they're sometimes patients. So we have to figure out ways to make certain that we do this with the consumer and the patient at the center of everything that we do. And we have to make healthcare better for our colleagues over the course of years, the compounding impact of layering on technologies that made their jobs harder, more bureaucratic, more difficult. This is the moment in time where we can start rolling that back and returning people to working at their highest nature of their license and creating that human interaction where the people who are with the highest level of training can care for the people who need help and need these services. And to do it in a more personalized way. So, you know, to, to coordinate this, to roll these types of things out, requires a great deal of very specific and purposeful effort. But to me, it is about the ultimate purpose of making healthcare more consumer friendly in helping people get what they want, when they want, and need it on demand, so to speak. And to drive the cost of care down and raise quality at the same time.

[B]

Absolutely. Then that's, you know, kind of the golden ticket, I guess, in healthcare is figuring out where that quality meets the cost compression too. And that happy medium and something you said earlier in the conversation and looking at how you're connecting folks, getting ahead of diseases and issues and trying to get through prevention, working with patients, you know, in all of these different things that you can tell now with the sophistication of data and information in healthcare. So I guess I'm curious, when you're looking at all of these things in the way that your teams and healthcare, the model is evolving, what do you think are some of the biggest changes for clinicians in the health care system in general as they're thinking about the model of care shifting from the way it always had been in the past, from sick care into this. More of like, how do we keep the patients well?

[C]

Yeah, well, first of all, it begins with the technology. The providers don't work for the technology. The technology has to be there to serve and support our providers, our caregivers, so that they can do their jobs more effectively and deliver better health care. And that's what is starting to happen. And that is one of the things I'm so encouraged about, I'm so excited about. But look, we have a lot of data. We've historically had a lot of data, but it hasn't been well utilized and it hasn't helped us at the level it can optimize and help us manage healthcare better. So one of the things that is happening right now, health systems like ours are starting to be able to use information to care for people with chronic disease more effectively, to build systems and processes and deploy coaches and other types of support structures and infrastructure to help people live their healthiest lives.

[B]

Right?

[C]

And we're starting to have the evidence that we can do it. It's the right thing to do and it's really the necessary thing to do.

[B]

I love that. Makes a ton of sense. You know, it is so such a helpful lens to look into next couple of years. And speaking of that, where else do you see some of the big opportunities for growth and development?

[C]

I'm excited. So we just joined Memorial Sloan Kettering, so we have become their first care partner. And it's a wonderful advancement for Memorial Sloan Kettering. It's something I'm very excited about. We're honored to be the, effectively the quote, unquote, co founder with Memorial Sloan Kettering in terms of building this together. But I think this can change cancer care across America. You know, with Memorial Sloan Kettering now, we will be bringing their clinical trials, their leading edge research, we will be building kind of disease management teams that will oversee and manage and coordinate care to ensure that the tremendous capabilities of Memorial Sloan Kettering, the best in the world in so many ways, that those capabilities can be more well deployed and really democratizing that type of service and capabilities so they can get to more people. We're doing it here and I hope it'll happen and expand in other parts of the country as time goes forward as well. So, look, there's so many new ways to do things. There's new ways to unlock potential. And that's what this is about. And this is but another good example of it.

[B]

I love it. Jeff, thank you so much for joining us on the podcast today. This has been such a fascinating conversation. I can really tell you're passionate about what you do and really being on the cutting edge. That optimistic outlook for this moment in healthcare is not like nothing else. So I'm excited about that and looking forward to seeing you as well at our annual meeting. I know you'll be speaking, doing a fireside chat with us, and really just digging deeper into a lot of the themes we talked about today. So I'm excited about that, too.

[C]

Oh, Laura, we love being at the Beckers meeting. So many great people coming together, the convergence of so many ideas, so much to learn. So we're proud to be contributing to it and to be, to be participants at it, and I look forward to being there. Thank you so much.