Every health system that considers selling directly to employers hits the same wall. The discounted rate lands on patients you may already have, and nobody can prove the trade works.

Nick Stefanizzi says it does. He is the CEO of Northwell Direct, Northwell Health's for-profit direct-to-employer company, where an employer or union agrees on price with the health system and no carrier sits in the middle. Since its first customer in 2022, Northwell Direct reports serving more than 300,000 employee members across more than 75 employers and unions, with a network that now spans more than 55 hospitals, over 125 urgent care centers and more than 5,000 behavioral health providers. In December, it signed the 170,000-member 32BJ Health Fund, the largest direct contract of its kind in the country, with the fund projecting 20% savings in year one. Stefanizzi told HFMA the business contributes more net-new volume and margin than it cannibalizes, and is profitable on its own P&L. Before Northwell Direct, he was chief administrative officer and interim CEO of Formativ Health, and spent eight years in operating roles across Northwell Health.

For CFOs, CIOs and the executives weighing whether to become a network operator instead of a network participant.

Nick Stefanizzi, CEO, Northwell Direct

Megan Antonelli, Chief Executive Officer, HealthIMPACT Live

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When Edmund Siy became chief information and technology officer at Bon Secours Mercy Health in May 2025, he told Becker's his opening move was cybersecurity and infrastructure, with AI to follow. Plenty of systems were pointing at pilots that year. He pointed at the plumbing.

Fifteen months later the foundation is largely built and AI has stopped being a differentiator. Ambient documentation, governance committees, an AI officer on the org chart. Table stakes. Which means the hard call is no longer whether to adopt. It is where a forty seven hospital system spends its own engineering hours, where it co-develops with somebody else, and where it should admit a capability has gone commodity and just buy the thing. This is Edmund's actual test for making that call.

• Audit your build list. Anything three vendors already do well is payroll, not strategy.
• Fix the foundation before you scale AI. Infrastructure sets the ceiling on what you can safely deploy.
• Before signing a co-development deal, write down what you do when their roadmap slips.
• Put a review date on the three-year roadmap and name who is allowed to break it.

Edmund Siy, FHIMSS, FCHIME, CHCIO, CDH-E, Chief Information & Technology Officer, Bon Secours Mercy Health

Megan Antonelli, Chief Executive Officer, HealthIMPACT Live

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Ambient AI earned its early reputation in the exam room, easing physician documentation. The bigger opportunity, and the harder build, is nursing. Geri Hansen, Vice President of IS Applications at Baptist Health and an informatics nurse by training, joins Megan Antonelli to talk about what it really takes to move ambient AI for nurses from early-adopter experiment to standard practice. They get into where it delivers value today, where it still falls short, how to prove ROI inside structured nursing workflows, and what separates a pilot that scales from one that stalls. A candid, operator-level conversation for the CIO, CMIO, and CNIO planning their next move.

Geri Hansen, MSN, RN, NI-BC, Vice President, IS Applications, Baptist Health

Megan Antonelli, Chief Executive Officer, HealthIMPACT Live

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AI in healthcare is starting to deliver on its promise, from Epic's ambient documentation tools to a new AI model pulling fresh insights out of routine sleep studies. Megan Antonelli and Janae Sharp break down the good news in healthcare technology this August, plus a few reality checks along the way.

• How Epic's AI-generated summaries and ambient listening tools are reducing documentation burden at Mayo Clinic, Parkview Health, and Riverside Health
• Why a recent study found burnout reduction from ambient AI wasn't as strong as expected
• How UC Davis is expanding telehealth access with a new tele-nephrology program and an at-home HPV testing pilot with Teal Health
• What Cleveland Clinic's new AI model can detect in routine sleep study data
• Why "AI slop" is becoming a bigger conversation in healthcare content and marketing, and what LinkedIn is doing about it

Janae Sharp, Founder, The Sharp Index

Megan Antonelli, CEO, HealthIMPACT Live

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Every health system has an AI roadmap. Far fewer have a runway. Vendors sell the destination. Getting there, on time and on budget and actually live, is the part nobody demos. Scott Raymond, former CIO at Nebraska Medicine and a longtime health IT leader who still holds an active nursing license, gets specific on virtual nursing, predictive staffing and scheduling, the workflows you have to solve first, and why the gap between promise and production is where most AI quietly stalls.

Scott Raymond, MHA, INF, BSN, RN,, CIO, CDIO Strategist, Prinicipal, Rouleur Healthcare Consulting

Megan Antonelli, Chief Executive Officer, HealthIMPACT Live

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A rapid-fire segment highlighting positive developments in digital health. Janae and Megan share insights on recent innovations, successful implementations, and emerging trends that are driving progress in healthcare technology.

Janae Sharp, Founder, The Sharp Index

Megan Antonelli, Chief Executive Officer, HealthIMPACT Live

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Women's health isn't a cause, it's infrastructure. Med tech founder Marissa Fayer breaks down why closing the women's health gap is worth a trillion dollars a year, and why capital still isn't following.

In this conversation:

Marissa Fayer, CEO, DeepLook Medical

Megan Antonelli, Chief Executive Officer, HealthIMPACT Live

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When the EHR goes down, care doesn't stop, but the chart, the meds, and the allergies do. Chao Cheng Shorland explains why EHR downtime is a patient safety problem, not just an IT one, and how her team is working to end pen-and-paper charting during outages.

In this conversation:

Chao Cheng-Shorland, CEO and Co-Founder, ShelterZoom

Megan Antonelli, Chief Executive Officer, HealthIMPACT Live

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Learn more about HealthIMPACT Live events, virtual forums, and healthcare leader conversations at healthimpactlive.com.

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AI in pediatric healthcare is often talk, not delivery. Joe Egan, CIO of Valley Children's Healthcare, walks through the three layers of AI his team runs today, and how each one turns clinician time back into access for kids.

In this conversation:

Joe Egan, Chief Information Officer, Valley Children’s

Megan Antonelli, Chief Executive Officer, HealthIMPACT Live

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Pediatric access is broken, and parents, payers, and health systems are all feeling it. Lyndsey Garbi, MD, co-founder and CMO of Blueberry Pediatrics, joins Megan Antonelli to talk about what 24/7 pediatric telehealth actually looks like at national scale, what the at-home diagnostic kit changes for families, and why the licensing patchwork is quietly costing kids access to care.

In this conversation:

Lyndsey R. Garbi, MD, Co-Founder & Chief Medical Officer, Blueberry Pediatrics

Megan Antonelli, Chief Executive Officer, HealthIMPACT Live

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Learn more about HealthIMPACT Live events, virtual forums, and healthcare leader conversations at healthimpactlive.com.

Interested in being a guest, sponsoring, or joining the HealthIMPACT community? Visit healthimpactlive.com/digital-health-talks.