JPM25: A look inside Advocate Health's Rewire 2030 strategy

SAN FRANCISCO—In 2022, Advocate Aurora Health and Atrium Health came together to form the massive health system Advocate Health.

Now, the system is looking to its new strategic framework: Rewire 2030. Under this program, Advocate Health intends to "rewire" its operations as it looks to the future of healthcare, CEO Eugene Woods said during a session at the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference on Monday.

Woods said that as Advocate Health came together, it was critical to be intentional in the integration approach as it was uniting essentially four "legacy" organizations under one umbrella. Now that the company's united identity is formed, it's ready to pave its path forward.

"I've been doing this more than 30 years, and every year I say, 'Well, next year is going to be really the most dynamic,'" he said. "I think we all have assessed these next five years are going to be unlike anything that any of us have experienced."

"And so for us, it's important to make sure that we rewire our organization to meet the challenges and the opportunities, quite frankly, that lie ahead," Woods said.

Rewire 2030 is built on "the Advocate Way," Woods said during the presentation. This includes multiple key focus areas: purpose and commitments; talent and leadership; strategy and platform; brand promise and artificial intelligence.

"These are our bets on the future,"  he said.

Also within that strategic framework, Advocate Health is focusing on six strategic differentiators:

  1. Pioneer national service lines
  2. Build the country's leading model for access
  3. Unite healthcare with wellness programs and home health
  4. Develop the "preeminent" model for academics
  5. Establish an ecosystem for innovative partnerships
  6. Curate a "system of systems"

For example, Woods said that if a patient in Georgia develops a rare form of cancer and an expert in that field is based in Minnesota, it's imperative for Advocate to be able to connect those dots to boost access to the highest quality care.

Advocate Health is also the country's largest provider of hospital-at-home services, which puts them in the driver's seat for bringing together more traditional sites of care with services provided in the home, Woods said.

Woods said that Advocate will open the first medical school campus in Charlotte, North Carolina in partnership with Wake Forest University. Around the medical school, the team is building what it calls "The Pearl," an innovation district that's designed to serve as a mixed-use space for people in the community.

Multiple scientific companies have plans to take up residence in the Pearl, which further enhances the student experience, Woods said, adding that the Advocate Health team believes it can "export" a similar experience across its sprawling health system enterprise.

Other bets include continued investments in virtual care, artificial intelligence and other technology, as well as critical plays to benefit its workforce, he said.

"Our focus really is to continue to grow within these next five years with other systems that have like-minded aspirations about transforming the way the care is delivered in the community," Woods said.