The Becker's team is excited to announce the launch of our new CFO and Revenue Cycle podcast. Tune in for conversations with finance experts from the top hospitals and health systems. We'll discuss key trends and ideas to drive meaningful change in the industry. Look for Becker's CFO and Revenue Cycle podcast wherever you listen to episodes. This is Madeline Ashley with the Becker CFO and Revenue Cycle podcast, and I'm thrilled to be joined today by Alice Pope, executive vice president and CFO of Novant Health. Alice, thanks for being on. Well, thank you for having me. I'm excited to be with you. Amazing. So before we kick things off, would you mind just introducing yourself to our listeners? Share a little bit about yourself, your background, and also Novant Health. Sure. So I recently joined Novant Health in February. I've had a wonderful career in health care for many years. It first started in public accounting with Arthur Anderson in Atlanta and I served many clients in the health care space. I then started working for one of those clients and my first CFO role was with the health care system that had less than $1,000,000,000 in revenue and now I'm just so fortunate to serve as the CFO of Novant Health and we just surpassed $10,000,000,000 in revenue in 02/2024. Novant Health is a fabulous health care organization serving communities in North And South Carolina, and our goal is just to bring a remarkable patient experience to every patient that we serve. Amazing career journey. Thank you so much for for sharing that there. Uh-huh. So just to kick things off, I would love to hear maybe two to three trends or topics that you're following in our ever changing world of the health care industry right now. Sure. So I'll start kinda broadly, and it it would be under the topic of revenue source. And what I mean by that is here at Novant Health, about sixty five percent of our patients have government insurance, whether it's through Medicare or Medicaid. And I think like most hospital leaders, we are carefully watching how this new administration may impact the direction of our economy and the future funding of these programs. So it's always a risk factor when so much of your your revenue comes from from those sources. So we're we're gonna be very mindful in watching that trend. I think another trend where we're focused is on technology and AI. Lots of conversation about how we can better use technology and AI to improve the patient experience. So we've seen AI tools that allow our clinicians to provide high quality life saving care faster, which ultimately improves outcomes. We've also seen that technology can reduce administrative burden and improve team member well-being. One of our main use cases that where we've seen success is in imaging. We were one of the first in North Carolina to implement several AI technologies particularly in the emergency department. You know our physicians in the emergency department are well trained to quickly assess triage and care for some of the sickest patients when you add in that layer of AI to help identify critical findings like stroke, brain bleeds, or pulmonary embolisms our physicians can more quickly identify and prioritize these patients. We're also like many other health care systems evaluating how AI can support our business processes like revenue cycle and enterprise planning. I would say a third trend where we're particularly focused here at Novant Health is around unique partnerships. So we're always seeing unique partnerships across the healthcare space. We look for opportunities to collaborate and share knowledge and best practices so we can benefit our patients and we're seeing other organizations do this as well so one example would be Longitude Health so Novant Health is a founding member of that organization and that organization is focused on developing operational solutions for specialty pharmacy services population health management, and other issues. We partner with Baylor Scott and White, Providence, and Memorial Health System to discover new solutions and reimagine health care delivery. So I'm really optimistic that across our industry, we can embrace more partnerships and work collaboratively to truly keep our patients at the center and the focus of their needs. Yeah. Longitude Health, that was launched in late twenty twenty four. So is there anything that you could share? Just any updates there? Definitely a really exciting time for that new, you know, innovative company. Yeah. I would say there's there we're we're on the cusp of making some pretty big announcements of what could happen with Longitude Health, but particularly focused, you know, in those areas that I mentioned as far as specialty pharmacy, population health, and other issues. Wonderful. Well, excited to see what comes what comes out of that. So thank you for sharing those updates. Now this was shortly before you joined Novant Health, but the system completed a a 2,400,000,000 acquisition of three tenant health care hospitals and affiliated physician clinics in South Carolina, I believe, in February of twenty twenty four. So could you share maybe some updates on how that integration process has been and maybe any other updates around that? So we are so excited about entering the South Carolina market and and bringing again that remarkable patient experience to the residents of South Carolina. As you said the first the first step for us was the acquisition of those three hospitals from from Tennant we have expanded and are continuing to grow in South Carolina we are expanding our reach there with our urgent care acquisition some unique partnerships with physicians and we just plan to continue to grow significantly in that market and are just very excited about the growth opportunities. How has, you know, Novant ensured a smooth transition and integration process for, the employees at those hospitals? Yeah. So anytime you do a major acquisition, it's important to have a team who is focused on making sure that acquisition, that transition, that it all goes smoothly especially for the team members so I would say that the focus has been on making sure the integration teams understood where we were going, how we were gonna go about it and making that experience very seamless for the team members we're so excited that the team members really have embraced Novant Health and are really excited about the future of being part of Novant Health. Wonderful. Now I've I've kinda always been curious about this next question. But when systems do see, you know, expansion particularly into new states, How does that affect your role, the CFO's role, just in terms of, you know, your priorities and tasks? You know, it's a great question. And I would say that as our health care system continues to grow, that we need to make sure that we have the capabilities, the leadership structure, the processes to support that growth so I've always been of the mindset that as, you know, as a leader my role isn't always to lead my role is to develop really good leaders and so the focus has been on making sure that we have that level of leadership within the organization that continues to partner with operations and support our future growth so it's really about just processes, teams, and getting all of that configured so that that we can move with the organization as it grows. So there was obviously a lot of exciting growth from Novant Health in 2024. So now that we're in 2025, what are you most excited about right now for the system? I know you mentioned Longitude Health. Is there is there anything else that you'd like to share? So we have big plans at Novant Health. We're only beginning. So, yes, we have crossed 10,000,000,000, but as we've shared in other forums, we have plans to grow to be a $30,000,000,000 organization. So I would say what I'm most excited about is and I think this is important is really our organic growth so while we're expanding in and doing things differently we also want to stay focused on our core markets and make sure that we continue to experience organic growth in our existing markets. However, we're also turning our attention to growth in new regions. So there's the organic growth that we have in our existing regions, but we're gonna grow into new regions. Obviously, South Carolina is a big part of that. We're also working to grow our presence in Western North Carolina, in Raleigh, Durham, and other parts of the state. We're focused on partnerships. So we wanna stay ahead of the constant change and disruption in two ways. We wanna lead into transformation, and we also wanna establish unique partnerships. Novant Health Enterprises is a key component to those unique partnerships and new business ventures. Part of this work includes developing a strong partnership network with our physicians and other providers. We also want to continue to make sure that at the core of what we do is bringing that remarkable patient experience to even more communities. So all of this kind of part of the road to the $30,000,000,000 organization goal? That's right. Wonderful. And that's gonna be really exciting for you as this oh, I mean, just in terms of planning and strategizing. Can you share a little bit more about about how on that aspect of things for this growth plan? Yeah. So a big part of our growth is, you know, how do we fund our growth? And, you know, we talk a lot about our strategy, where we're gonna grow, how we're gonna grow. And then obviously the big part of the strategy is how do we fund that growth and and looking at alternative sources of capital but also looking at traditional sources of capital to really fuel that growth and then a big part of it is making sure that when those acquisitions or those partnerships become part of Novant Health that there is a seamless integration into our organization a warm handoff if you will from after the deal is closed and then it becomes part of Novant Health so that's where we spend a lot of time in the finance area is is you know, participating in the strategy and then ensuring that we have sources of capital to fund that strategy. Last question for you here. As a female CFO in a predominantly male dominated role, what advice do you have for other women hoping to work their way up to a hospital or health system CFO position? It's a great question, and I'm really glad that you asked. Here's what I tell female leaders who want to grow their career. The first thing that I say is speak up. You have to make your career goals known, and they need to be communicated. And that's because if an opportunity presents itself and you're not in the room, there's someone there to advocate for you. I'm not particularly big on mentorship because sometimes I think people mentor people to be like them, and I want people to lead the way they lead. I want them to be leaders and be true to their own voice. What I am big on is advocacy and giving people opportunities. And where that shows up for female leaders in particular is, again, to speak up and make your career goals known. Ask for those opportunities and don't hold yourself back. I think that's incredibly important. Most importantly, I think as we women, we need to support other women. There's room for all of us at the table. Thank you so much for that very insightful response, and I think that will really resonate with with many of our listeners. Well, again, Alice, it was such a pleasure chatting with you, and I look forward to connecting with you again down the line. Great. Thank you so much.