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Tag: AI in healthcare

Health Tech Solution Aimed at Identifying Clinicians Inclined to Work in Rural Communities

Posted on by Madison Lander

Axuall Explore creates feature to fill some of the most difficult positions in healthcare. 

Cleveland, OH, February 10, 2026 – Axuall, the industry leader in clinical workforce intelligence, announced a new feature to identify physicians and advanced practice providers who are more willing to work in rural communities. Using Axuall Explore, an AI-powered database of 1.5 million clinicians, health systems can now identify information to help recruit for some of their most difficult-to-fill positions. Analyzing clinician data from over 19,000 primary sources and more than 30 billion claims data points, Axuall Explore quickly identifies clinicians who have a propensity to work in rural areas.

Jason Junker, MA, CPRP, Corporate Director of Physician Recruitment, Multi-State Division at Advent Health, said this type of information will be invaluable in recruiting efforts. “With several markets recruiting physicians to serve rural communities, a tool like Axuall Explore is truly transformative. It helps us identify providers who are not only clinically strong but genuinely committed to rural practice—an audience that can be difficult to pinpoint. By connecting with these physicians through messaging that reflects our faith-based mission, we’re able to engage those whose calling aligns with our communities’ needs and ultimately strengthen the care we provide to our patients.”

The launch comes at an ideal time, as access to healthcare in rural communities has been a national focus. Currently: 

      • More than 91% of U.S. rural counties face healthcare workforce shortages.

      • More than 16% of the U.S. population lives within a designated health professional shortage area. 

      • Nearly 9,000 additional clinicians are needed to fill these gaps in care.

    With just a few clicks through Axuall Explore, a physician recruiter can find more than 100,000 physicians and nearly 44,000 nurse practitioners who have practiced in a rural setting for at least three months. 

    “This level of precision leads directly to more efficient recruitment, superior workforce planning, and ultimately, the improved retention needed to stabilize care in these vital communities,” said Charlie Lougheed, the Co-founder and CEO of Axuall. “Solving the chronic staffing shortages in rural America is not just a challenge; it is a deepening crisis driven by funding cuts and the utter failure of conventional, broad-stroke recruitment strategies.”

    The timing of this solution is even more crucial, considering the current rural healthcare workforce is nearing retirement age; the average age of physicians who work in a rural setting is 59 years old. 


    About Axuall

    Built with leading healthcare systems, Axuall is a workforce intelligence company powered by a national, near real-time practitioner data network. The technology enables healthcare systems, staffing firms, telehealth, and health plans to dramatically reduce onboarding and enrollment time while also providing unique, powerful data insights for network planning, analytics, and reporting. To learn more, visit www.axuall.com.


    Media Contact
    Jeff Rusack
    Media Relations Manager
    KNB Communications
    axuall@knbcomm.com

    JPM Healthcare Conference 2026: Charlie Lougheed Shares Key Takeaways for Health Systems

    Posted on by Jessica Diederich

    The era of the ‘bold growth’ narrative has come to a halt. At this year’s JP Morgan Healthcare Conference, the conversations weren’t filled with the usual topics of mergers and aggressive expansion. Instead, industry leaders reverted back to something much more demanding: stability and operational discipline.

    Here are my top 5 takeaways from the event and what they signal for health system leaders who are willing to navigate and embrace these shifts.

    1. Back to Basics: Stability Over Scale

    The most consistent theme among non-profit health systems was a return to the fundamentals. There was a shift in focus from ambitious growth or mega-mergers to stability and consistency being the focal point. This shift reflects a convergence of pressures: roughly $1 trillion in projected Medicaid cuts over the coming decade, labor inflation, persistent claims denials, and regulatory uncertainty.

    In this current environment, the message is clear: before pursuing what’s next, organizations must first stabilize what they have to maintain profitability and demonstrate financial resiliency to bond investors.

    2. Workforce Optimization Needs Workforce Intelligence

    Another key theme indicated that workforce challenges remain front and center, but the conversation is changing. While nursing shortages and contingent labor costs are still major concerts, leaders also discussed recruitment and retention across physicians and advanced practice providers.

    What really stood out was the increasing use of data and AI to drive smarter workforce decisions validating our most recent solution release, Axuall Sync.

    3. Integration as a Value Driver

    For health systems that have recently merged or are pursuing internal consolidation, integration was a central narrative for demonstrating value creation.

    This went beyond their own assets, as Jeff Flaks, CEO Hartford HealthCare, emphasized a care-delivery partnership across the ecosystem. Many leaders emphasized “nontraditional partnerships” to embrace this theme including:

    • One Medical (20 primary care centers)
    • K Health for virtual primary care
    • Uber for patient transportation
    • Google for its AI platforms

    4. Ambulatory Expansion and Portfolio Optimization

    Another clear theme was the aggressive expansion of ambulatory footprints within non-profit health systems. These systems are actively divesting underperforming assets and focusing on convenient, community-based care based on customer preferences and the opportunity to optimize capital allocation.

    5. Revenue Cycle Resiliency and Denial Management

    Finally, with margin pressures intensifying, health systems placed significant emphasis on revenue cycle management and claims denial reduction as critical operational priorities. Leaders spoke openly about the impact of improving revenue cycle resiliency and the importance of protecting margins without compromising care.

    Ultimately, the era of ‘growth at all costs’ is over, and we have officially entered the era of operational accountability. The takeaway from JPM is clear: the industry is no longer rewarding size, it is rewarding the discipline to execute. While others are distracted by the noise, the healthcare leaders who will win in 2026 are those ruthlessly optimizing their most valuable asset: their workforce.

    At Axuall, we aren’t just sitting back and watching this shift, we are providing the real world data and intelligence required to lead it. The question for leaders now isn’t how big you can get, but how smart you can move.

    Cleveland Clinic and Axuall Deploy Next-Generation Data Engine to Solve the Provider Data Integrity Crisis

    Posted on by Jessica Diederich

    Cleveland, OH – October 28, 2024—Axuall, the industry leader in clinical workforce intelligence, and the world-renowned Cleveland Clinic today announced a long-term agreement to co-develop and deploy Axuall Sync. This collaboration will dramatically improve the accuracy, recency, and completeness of provider data for health systems, addressing one of the healthcare industry’s most persistent and costly challenges.

    Over half of all healthcare provider directories contain significant errors, according to the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services. Such gaps often lead to missed opportunities for patient care, scheduling breakdowns, and non-compliance. Sync leverages Axuall’s provider data network—built from thousands of real-world sources spanning over 27 billion data points—to create a “super record” for each clinician. This robust profile, aided by machine learning, includes everything from demographics and credentials to specialty, practice patterns, health system alignment, and even an attrition risk score.

    “The challenge of stale provider data goes far beyond a simple database issue; it’s about unlocking the full potential of our healthcare networks,” acknowledged Charlie Lougheed, the CEO and founder of Axuall. “Axuall is shifting the paradigm from a costly struggle to maintain data to a future where intelligent, near real-time information actively enhances care coordination and optimizes our entire healthcare ecosystem.”

    Cleveland Clinic engaged with Axuall Sync to enhance management of extensive provider data. Axuall completed an update of 50,000 provider records within three days, improving accuracy and efficiency. Accurate provider data supports seamless referrals, care coordination, and communication. Axuall is now managing the health system’s complete 200,000+ external provider records.

    “As a destination hospital facility with a significant global presence, Cleveland Clinic manages an extraordinarily high volume of new external provider records daily. The sheer scale of referral-driven patient flow means our provider data needs are constantly expanding,” said Kate Neal, IT Director of Access Innovations and CRM at Cleveland Clinic. “By ensuring provider data is accurate and up to date, we have strengthened our ability to meet CMS Notification of Admissions regulatory requirements while closing critical gaps in transitions of care.”

    Sync is designed to automate the ingestion of curated provider data into core systems via APIs and vendor-specific connectors, supporting platforms such as Epic’s Schedulable Epic Resource (SER) and Provider-on-the-Fly functionality, Salesforce, and more. Future use cases at Cleveland Clinic will include precision scheduling—leveraging real-world practice profiles to more accurately match patients to physicians—and provider population analytics to close healthcare supply and demand gaps in the community.

    About Axuall

    Built with leading healthcare systems, Axuall is a workforce intelligence company powered by a national, near real-time practitioner data network. The technology enables healthcare systems, staffing firms, telehealth, and health plans to dramatically reduce onboarding and enrollment time while also providing unique, powerful data insights for network planning, analytics, and reporting. To learn more, visit www.axuall.com.

    About Cleveland Clinic

    Cleveland Clinic  is a nonprofit multispecialty academic medical center that integrates clinical and hospital care with research and education. Located in Cleveland, Ohio, it was founded in 1921 by four renowned physicians with a vision of providing outstanding patient care based upon the principles of cooperation, compassion and innovation. Cleveland Clinic has pioneered many medical breakthroughs, including coronary artery bypass surgery and the first face transplant in the United States. Cleveland Clinic is consistently recognized in the U.S. and throughout the world for its expertise and care. Among Cleveland Clinic’s 82,600 employees worldwide are more than 5,786 salaried physicians and researchers, and 20,700 registered nurses and advanced practice providers, representing 140 medical specialties and subspecialties. Cleveland Clinic is a 6,728-bed health system that includes a 173-acre main campus near downtown Cleveland, 23 hospitals, 280 outpatient facilities, including locations in northeast Ohio; Florida; Las Vegas, Nevada; Toronto, Canada; Abu Dhabi, UAE; and London, England. In 2024, there were 15.7 million outpatient encounters, 333,000 hospital admissions and observations, and 320,000 surgeries and procedures throughout Cleveland Clinic’s health system. Patients came for treatment from every state and 112 countries. Visit us at clevelandclinic.org. Follow us at x.com/CleClinicNews. News and resources are available at newsroom.clevelandclinic.org.

    Media Contact
    Jeff Rusack
    Media Relations Manager
    KNB Communications
    axuall@knbcomm.com

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