ACHE Congress 2026

Leadership Insights: Strengthening the Rural Healthcare Workforce—Strategies for Sustainable Growth

This session focuses on identifying and addressing critical workforce shortages in rural healthcare. Attendees will examine current challenges, explore scalable solutions, and discuss ways to optimize existing resources and roles. The session will highlight real-world examples of capacity-building efforts that improve care access and delivery in underserved rural areas.

• Identify key challenges driving rural healthcare workforce shortages.
• Discuss scalable strategies to strengthen and sustain the rural healthcare workforce.

John Fryer

Chief Growth & Corporate Development Officer

John Fryer leads strategic partnerships, market expansion, and commercialization of Tom™, Lumeris’ AI-enabled Primary Care as a Service platform. A recognized voice on value-based care and AI governance, he works with health systems and payers to drive sustainable transformation. He has helped scale millions of managed lives and over $10B in medical spend, driving billions in revenue impact tied to value-based performance. A co-founder of CHRA, he teaches at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and was recently named a 40 Under 40 honoree by Modern Healthcare and Becker’s Healthcare.

Leading AI Execution in Health Systems: Strategy, Change Management and Tactical Implementation

Artificial Intelligence is rapidly transforming healthcare, but successful adoption requires more than technology—it demands strategic alignment, cultural positioning and operational execution. This session will explore how health systems and physician groups can effectively implement agentic AI tools to automate workflows, augment decision-making and enhance patient outcomes. Attendees will learn how to move beyond concepts and apply practical frameworks for integrating AI into clinical networks, ensuring sustainability and measurable impact.

The session will discuss how to:

• Where AI tools need to be incorporated into health systems immediately, as well as in the mid- and long-term
• Understanding the power of agentic AI: moving from generative to agentic use cases
• Evolving the organization from administrative AI (only) to clinical AI use cases
• Aligning AI initiatives with organizational goals and various business models (traditional fee-for-service and value-based)

• Removing barriers and building trust with care teams (AI as an extension of the clinical team)
• Aligning governance structures and clinical engagement strategies
• Training and upskilling teams for AI-enabled workflows
• Onboarding patients to AI care team members as delegates of the clinician
• Positioning autonomous “best next actions”

• Use cases for automation (e.g., prevention tactics, care coordination across settings, top-of-license triage)
• Steps to test, scale and measure return on investment with speed

• Discuss ways to align AI initiatives with organizational goals and various business models.
• Identify ways to manage change and implement automation tactically.

Rick Goddard

Sr. Vice President, Market Alliances

Rick Goddard leads strategic alliance go-to-market for Lumeris and is a subject matter expert in value-based care execution, payer-provider strategy, and agentic AI deployment in healthcare. Previously, he led Clinical Innovation at Advocate Physician Partners, overseeing population health analytics, ACO administration, and value-based payment strategy. He also held consulting leadership roles at GE Healthcare Camden Group and is a national thought leader in healthcare and technology strategy