AI Adoption With Trust and Workforce Clarity
Article Summary
Earlier this month I spent several days in Boston at HR Healthcare, the WBR gathering that brings healthcare HR and workforce leaders together to work through what the next few years actually require. I took part in two very different sessions — different rooms, different formats — and yet the same idea kept surfacing in both: the technology is rarely the hard part.
One room was a closed-door boardroom discussion on strategic workforce planning. The other was a main-stage panel on building the next-generation healthcare system with AI. Across both, the throughline held: adoption starts with people, not technology.
Session One: Strategic Workforce Planning
I facilitated a boardroom discussion on strategic workforce planning in large health systems alongside Kam Twitchell, Sr. Director, HR, and Sarah McVea, AVP, Human Resources, at Intermountain Health.
In a health system, workforce planning is not back-office administration. It is a patient safety issue. When we do not have the right people, with the right skills, in the right roles, care gets delayed and quality suffers. The structural headwinds are real: credentialing barriers, long training pipelines, and national shortages in nursing, behavioral health, and imaging. We cannot hire our way out of those overnight, which is exactly why planning ahead matters.
What I keep returning to is that the plan does not belong to any single team. At Intermountain, it lives where three groups meet. Operations owns the near term and deploys the workforce we have against today's gaps. HR clears the path and removes the barriers leaders run into. Workforce Analytics looks downfield at the forces, from cost to AI, that will reshape the work. The shared goal underneath all of it is simple to say and hard to do: the right skill, at the right time, at the right cost.
Session Two: The Next-Generation Healthcare System
On the main stage, I joined a panel on building the next-generation healthcare system with AI and digital innovation, with Ryan Toedtman of UCHealth, Ashley Ridgeway-Washington of JPS Health Network, and Mindy G. Spigel of MGSpigel.
The panel covered the ground you would expect: AI, cloud platforms, advanced analytics, and the practical work of turning all of it into more connected, more resilient care. My contribution was to keep pulling the conversation back to readiness. We can buy the most capable platform on the market and it will still sit idle if our people are unclear, underprepared, or quietly wondering whether they are capable of leading in the age of intelligent work.
Adoption is a leadership challenge before it is a technology rollout. That is not a knock on the tools. It is a recognition that the teams who move from pilots to practice are the ones who invest in clarity, capability, and confidence, not just licenses.
Confidence is not a personality trait. It is an organizational capability, and it is what turns a good plan into execution.
What I Carried Out of Both Rooms
- Workforce planning is a shared discipline: It works when Operations, HR, and Analytics own it together, not when it lives in one team's spreadsheet.
- Readiness is designed, not assumed: The move from pilots to practice runs on clarity and capability, not on the tool alone.
- Confidence is built, not innate: Practice, coaching, and feedback are how organizations turn hesitation into action.
My thanks to Kam and Sarah for a sharp boardroom conversation, to my fellow panelists for an honest exchange on stage, and to everyone at WBR who filled both rooms and kept pushing us deeper. If you are leading people through this shift, I want to hear what is really slowing AI adoption where you are: the technology, or the readiness?
Related Insights
Related Event
Visit the official event page for agenda and speaker details.
Return to Appearances on lancebradshaw.com to view the full speaking portfolio timeline.
About Lance Bradshaw
Lance Bradshaw is a global keynote speaker and Director of HR Workforce Transformation at Intermountain Health. He advises healthcare executives, HR leaders, and transformation teams on AI-enabled leadership, capability design, and workforce strategy.
Visit lancebradshaw.com to explore speaking topics, formats, and collaboration opportunities.