Hospital leaders must engage directly with AI to set the tone with their workforce and gain more familiarity for the solutions they hail.
CEOs across all industries increasingly view AI as essential to their organizations’ future, but without hands-on experience, leaders risk missing out on how it translates into daily workflows.
Though executives often tout AI as transformative, many have been slow to integrate the tools into their personal routines, according to a recent report by The New York Times. Now, CEOs are pushing themselves and their senior teams to get comfortable with the technology, highlighting a shift that carries lessons for hospital decision-makers.
The underlying challenge is that senior executives are often removed from the daily, hands-on work where AI makes the most immediate impact. While younger employees have grown up applying tools to spreadsheets, presentations, and design, leaders spend most of their time in meetings and approvals. As a result, exposure and experimentation must be intentionally built into executive routines.
Hospital leaders face the same dynamic. AI is advancing quickly in areas such as the workforce and supply chain, but executives who avoid direct engagement may struggle to evaluate its real-world impact. Without firsthand experience, they risk overlooking challenges with AI like flawed data inputs and workflow disruptions, while failing to set an example for their staff.
According to research and advisory firm Gartner, 77% of CEOs view AI as transformative, yet only 44% believe their technology officers are fully equipped to navigate the landscape.
To get their senior teams more engaged, CEOs who have already embraced AI are utilizing creative strategies, according to the Times. Some are instructing leaders to use tools like Google’s Gemini before turning to its traditional search, while others are dedicating time at corporate retreats for executives to experiment with generative AI platforms. These approaches are designed to build familiarity and reduce the hesitation many high-level managers feel toward adopting new technology.
At the same time, CEOs need to solidify their understanding of their organization’s processes to drive improvement through solutions like AI, Fairview Health Services president and CEO James Hereford recently shared with HealthLeaders.
“We’re in this golden era and I don’t know that we fully realize the impact that AI is going to have in large language models and all the things that we will undoubtedly see in the next three to five years,” Hereford said. “You cannot take full advantage of that if you don’t have that level of operational discipline and knowledge to know how this tool, this capability, this new thing can completely transform and change the way that we think about that process. Too often in our history, we’ve just put more technology on top of bad process and that hasn’t worked out so well.”
For hospitals, adoption and acceptance of AI across the workforce is more likely if CEOs and senior teams demonstrate a willingness to learn and tinker with tools.
As providers explore how AI can improve patient care and operations, the path forward begins with active executive participation. Staying hands-off is no longer an option.
