Earlier this month, healthcare leaders from across the Southeast met in Atlanta for the US Southeast Healthcare Innovation Summit 2025. The event focused on how payers, providers, and innovators are addressing cost pressures, workforce shortages, and the rising demand for digital care.
Productive Edge joined the discussion as a sponsor. Our Chief Strategy Officer, Raheel Retiwalla, spoke on the panel Revenue Cycle Transformation: Enhancing Efficiency & Payment Innovation with leaders from LCMC Health, Alpine Physician Partners, and Cedar. The session examined how organizations are modernizing the revenue cycle to enhance efficiency and improve payment accuracy.
From Small Fixes to Smarter Systems
A theme that ran through the event was that small process fixes aren’t enough anymore. Health systems want solutions that go beyond manual optimization. In revenue cycle management, that means using AI not just to speed up tasks, but to interpret documentation, reconcile data across systems, and recommend better decisions.
The opportunity is to build intelligent systems that free staff from repetitive tasks, allowing them to focus on higher-value activities.
What We Heard
Three points came up again and again in conversations and panels:
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Sustainability demands bigger moves. Leaders from Emory and Wellstar spoke about the need to find efficiencies that don’t compromise care. They’re open to AI but want results that can be measured and sustained.
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Data is at the center. Whether the topic was cybersecurity, population health, or precision medicine, speakers stressed the importance of clean, secure data pipelines. AI without reliable data isn’t viable.
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Governance is non-negotiable. Leaders highlighted the need for frameworks that make AI adoption safe and transparent. This lines up with our own work helping clients set governance standards so innovation builds trust.
Conversations with Health Systems
We connected with executives from Wellstar, Emory, Northside, Grady, Prisma, Cone, Advocate, Premise Health, and Aledade, among others. The message was consistent: organizations are ready to act. They want partners who can deliver technology and also guide adoption, measure outcomes, and align solutions to strategy.
At Productive Edge, we focus on surrounding existing systems with agentic AI solutions—tools that are modular, scalable, and designed to improve financial and operational performance without forcing rip-and-replace changes.
Looking Ahead
Healthcare organizations are under pressure to cut costs, manage shortages, and improve outcomes at the same time. The Summit demonstrated that leaders are committed to finding solutions that enable them to achieve more with less effort and fewer resources.
We believe the future belongs to agentic AI—systems that can observe, decide, and act across workflows. These agents won’t replace people. They’ll reduce administrative burden, improve accuracy, and give teams more time to focus on patients.
The Summit made it clear: the organizations that will lead in the next decade are the ones ready to adopt this model. Productive Edge is working alongside them to make it real.
