The Beat

In this episode, host Sandy Vance chats with Brad Schoffstall, Vice President of Health and Compliance Programs at CGI, and Dr. James Peake, Senior Vice President and former Secretary of Veterans Affairs and Army Surgeon General. They have a wide-ranging and practical conversation about what it actually takes to modernize data infrastructure at federal health agencies. With Brad's 35 years at CGI and Dr. Peake's 16 years, this is a conversation grounded in hard-won experience rather than theory. Today’s conversation is a refreshingly honest and deeply practical perspective for anyone working at the intersection of government, healthcare, and AI.

AI is advancing rapidly in healthcare, but speed without governance can create serious clinical, legal, and enterprise-level risks. In this episode, Peter Bonis, MD, Chief Medical Officer at Wolters Kluwer Health, explores how his team is developing reliable, evidence-based AI tools to support frontline clinicians without compromising trust or safety. He explains why clinicians are adopting AI faster than health systems can govern it, creating risks like the rise of “shadow AI.” Peter highlights the importance of transparency, human oversight, and trusted source material in ensuring safe clinical decision support. He also discusses how even experts can be influenced by faulty AI output and why governance models must evolve with frontline input to keep pace. Tune in and learn how healthcare leaders can approach AI governance more responsibly while still supporting innovation at the point of care.

Healthcare payments are often discussed as a transparency problem, but the deeper issue is structural fragmentation across contracts, claims, remittances, and workflows. In this episode, Ted Ferrin, Senior Vice President of Payments Innovation at Zelis, explains how the acquisition of Rivet is bringing provider-facing payment intelligence into Zelis’s broader infrastructure. He discusses why achieving financial clarity between payers and providers has been so difficult due to fragmented systems and legacy technology. Ted highlights that true transparency goes beyond simply displaying data and requires meaningful, actionable insights. He also shares how tools like Claims Insights and Zap Edge embed intelligence into payment workflows to reduce rework, improve visibility, and create a smoother experience for providers, payers, and patients. Tune in and learn how better payment intelligence could help turn transparency from a buzzword into real operational trust.

Healthcare is drowning in documentation and fragmented data, but what if the system worked for clinicians rather than against them? In this episode, Dr. Richa Gupta, Vice President of Care Transformation at Ambience Healthcare, explains how Ambience provides a layer of intelligence on top of electronic medical records to optimize clinician workflow and patient interactions. Ambience’s ambient listening system captures physician-patient interactions, supports documentation, and ensures accurate coding and billing, boosting clinician satisfaction and reducing revenue leakage. ROI is driven by high clinician utilization, validated outcomes, and measurable improvements in documentation burden, coding accuracy, and physician retention. In 2026, Ambience is expanding across the full care continuum, including ambulatory, emergency, and inpatient settings, offering a platform that surfaces real-time insights and enhances patient care. Tune in to hear how Ambience is transforming physician workflows and delivering real ROI across the care continuum.