The ASHHRA Podcast

The Hiring Automation Gap No One Is Talking About Featuring Mike DeMarco , Senior Product Marketing Manager, Phenom Healthcare is ranked #2 out of eight industries for overall hiring automation maturity. Healthcare was among the first to deploy voice screening agents. So why are nurses still taking 64 days to fill and internal positions taking 57? Bo and Luke welcome Mike DeMarco — the self-descri...

Healthcare Is Dead Last in Recognition Culture. Plus: AI That Predicts Who's About to Quit & What CEOs Are Betting On in 2026 July 6th, 2026. Bo, Luke, and ASHHRA Executive Director Jeremy Sadlier are back from the long weekend with a deliberately positive episode — three stories built to give you energy heading into the week. 🏆 Healthcare Is Last in Recognition Culture — and the Fix Is...

Inside Advocate Health's AI Strategy — From a Physician Who Builds It Featuring Dr. Andy McWilliams , Clinical AI Product Development Lead, Advocate Health Recorded live at Advocate Health's The Pearl innovation quarter in Charlotte, North Carolina. Dr. Andy McWilliams is a practicing hospitalist — boarded in internal medicine and pediatrics — who has spent 15 years at Advocate Health an...

Hospitals Are Building Their Own Schools, AI Scribes Cut Burnout 13 Points in 30 Days & Healthcare Is the Only Thing Keeping the US Job Market Positive June 29th, 2026. Bo, Luke, and ASHHRA Executive Director Jeremy Sadlier cover three stories this week that all point in the same direction: healthcare HR is not a support function. It is the engine. 🎓 Health Systems Are Building Their Own Tale...

What It Actually Looks Like to Move Beyond Traditional HR Featuring Nakesha Lopez , Chief People & Culture Officer, Advocate Health Recorded live at Advocate Health's The Pearl innovation quarter in Charlotte, North Carolina. Advocate Health is one of the three largest nonprofit health systems in the country — 175,000 teammates across six states. Nakesha Lopez leads the people and culture...

Pay Transparency Hits July 1, Two-Thirds of HR Leaders Don't Know What AI Can Do & 84% of Healthcare Workers Feel Taken for Granted June 22nd, 2026. Luke Carignan is flying solo — Bo and Jeremy are out — and he is not slowing down. Three stories: compliance, technology, and the most human challenge in healthcare right now. ⚖️ Pay Transparency Laws Hit Virginia and Maine July 1 Every job p...

Greenwood LaFleur Is Still Fighting, Medicaid Work Requirements Land July 31 & the Layoff Tracker Is Telling You Where the Work Is June 15th, 2026. Bo and Luke open with a Mississippi hospital that was supposed to close today — and is still open. Then a Medicaid rule taking effect without a real comment window. Then a layoff tracker that, read correctly, is actually a roadmap for HR. 🏥 Greenw...

The Layoff Tracker, Cigna's GLP-1 Cut & What Happens When Compliance Fails June 8th, 2026. Bo and Luke break down three stories connected by the same thread: what happens when organizations wait too long to act. 📉 The Layoff Tracker Keeps Growing — the Pattern Is Now Structural Becker's and Fierce Healthcare updated their 2026 trackers again this week. Care New England, ECU Health,...

Three Things That Escaped the Savannah Convention Center Luke Carignan and ASHHRA Executive Director Jeremy Sadlier are back from ASHHRA26 — and the sessions were too good to leave at the convention center. Bo is out this week, but the content more than covers for it. Three themes from the conference floor that every healthcare HR leader needs on their radar right now. 🤖 AI Hit the Bedside and th...

10,000 Nurses on the Edge, a Union Decertification & the GLP-1 Benefit Bomb Landing July 1 Three stories in one week that cut across labor relations, trust, and total compensation strategy. Bo, Luke, and ASHHRA Executive Director Jeremy Sadlier break down what every healthcare HR leader needs to act on before July 1st — with ASHHRA26 in Savannah just days away. 🔥 Corewell Health: 90% Strike A...

How Parkland Health Grows Its Own Workforce — And Why You Should Too Featuring Stephanie Speights, PhD, SHRM-SCP, Senior Vice President of Talent Development, Parkland Health What if the answer to your most pressing workforce shortage is already inside your building? Stephanie Speights has been proving that thesis for nearly seven years at Parkland Health — one of the most respected health systems...

What a VP of Clinical Efficiency Needs HR to Understand Featuring Katie Abebe , Vice President of Clinical Efficiency, Upstream Rehabilitation If you have ever wondered what it feels like to run clinical operations across 800 clinics in 25 states — and what that VP actually needs from HR to make it work — this is the episode. Katie Abebe took an unconventional path from construction to community c...

April 27th, 2026. Three policy hits in the same week, all with direct workforce consequences. Bo, Luke, and ASHHRA Executive Director Jeremy Sadlier break down what HR leaders need to do before July 1st. 💉 RFK Jr. Defends $15.8B in HHS Cuts — His Own Word: Painful After seven congressional hearings, HHS Secretary Kennedy called the FY27 cuts painful and acknowledged his department does not want t...

Featuring Ricky Price, Founder, Game Ready Skills & Development | McDonald's All-American | Duke University | NBA Veteran Healthcare HR professionals spend their days building cultures where people can do their best work under extraordinary pressure. Ricky Price has lived that challenge at the highest level — growing up in Compton, earning a spot under Coach K at Duke, competing professio...

Hospital M&A Hits a 6-Year High, a 42,000-Worker Strike Looms & a Rural Hospital Has 56 Days April 20th, 2026. More than 1,000 hospital leaders are in Washington, DC for the AHA Annual Meeting. The urgency they are carrying into that building has never been higher. Bo, Luke, and ASHHRA Executive Director Jeremy Sadlier break down three stories hitting simultaneously. 📉 Hospital M&A Is...

90% of Healthcare Organizations Missed Their Hiring Goals Last Year. Here's Why. Featuring Casey Marquette, Founder & CEO, Covenant HR, which is an active member of the ASHHRA Preferred Partner Program (AP3) . Hundreds of open reqs. Inboxes flooded with applicants. And somehow nine out of ten healthcare organizations still missed their hiring targets last year. Casey Marquette, founder of...

Luke Carignan and ASHHRA Executive Director Jeremy Sadlier take a deliberate step back from the doom and gloom to look at what is actually working in healthcare HR right now — and the data is genuinely encouraging. 🩺 Ambient AI Is Ending Pajama Time A randomized controlled trial published in the New England Journal of Medicine confirms what many have suspected: ambient AI scribe software that pas...

When the Real Problem Is Identity, Not Skill Featuring Dr. Marcia Reynolds , Master Certified Coach, Former Global President, International Coaching Federation What if the leader on your team who keeps struggling isn't missing a skill — they're missing a clear sense of who they are becoming? And what if the most powerful thing you could offer your workforce right now isn't another w...

April 6th, 2026. Three separate policy shocks, all landing at the same time. Bo, Luke, and ASHHRA Executive Director Jeremy Sadlier break down what may be the most consequential week of news healthcare HR has faced all year. 🏥 446 Hospitals at High Risk of Closure A Public Citizen analysis of CMS data identified 446 hospitals at high risk of closing or cutting services due to roughly $1 trillion...

Strike Over, Margins Up & AI Saving Lives at Advocate Health The final Monday News Drop of Q1 2026. Luke Carignan and ASHHRA Executive Director Jeremy Sadlier close out the quarter with three stories that are actually moving in a positive direction — and one significant asterisk on each of them. 🤝 Kaiser Strike Is Over — Now the Hard Part Starts 31,000 UNAC/UHCP nurses and healthcare professi...

What AI Can and Can't Fix About Healthcare Worker Burnout Featuring Dr. Rich Safeer , Chief Medical Director of Employee Health & Well-Being, Johns Hopkins Medicine Two in five healthcare workers say their jobs feel unsustainable. AI is sitting right in the middle of the burnout crisis, the staffing shortage, and the well-being conversation. The question isn't whether it will change...

3,400 Layoffs, No Staffing Floor & Nurses Walking Out — And It's Only March March 23rd, 2026. California hospitals have already cut more than 3,400 healthcare workers in six weeks. CMS just erased the federal minimum staffing standards for long-term care. And this morning, two separate nurse strikes began — one in Massachusetts, one in Maine. Bo and Luke break down what each story means f...

The $6 Billion Influence Machine Targeting Your Benefits Plan Featuring Kyra Hagan, Senior Vice President of Marketing, RxBenefits. Six billion dollars. That is what pharmaceutical companies spend every year marketing high-cost, high-profit prescription drugs directly to your employees — and the clinical and financial consequences are landing squarely on your health plan. Bo sits down with Kyra Ha...

Agentic AI Is Already in Your Building — Do You Know Where? HIMSS 26 just closed in Las Vegas with 24,000 healthcare technology leaders sending one unmistakable message: agentic AI has moved from the exhibit hall into your operations. Meanwhile, the largest nurse strike in US history ended at Kaiser Permanente with a 21.5% wage deal — and that number is now living in the institutional memory of ev...

When the CHRO Has Never Worked in Healthcare Featuring Margie Zyble, SVP & Chief Human Resources Officer, UC Health Margie Zyble came to UC Health by way of GE and a vertical farming startup. That unconventional path is exactly what makes her perspective on healthcare HR worth listening to. 🏥 People Leader Enablement Is the Priority At UC Health, the most fragile piece of workforce strategy r...