This is where health care leadership comes together.
Becker's sixteenth annual meeting brings more than 3,500
hospital and health system executives and nearly 800
speakers to Chicago
April.
This year's event includes keynote conversations with Dallas
Cowboys legend Troy Aikman and former president George
w Bush. For the agenda and event details,
visit beckershospitalreview.com
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upper right. We're looking forward to hosting you
in Chicago.
Hello, everyone. Welcome to Becker's Healthcare Podcast. I'm
Scott King. Thrilled today to be joined by
a very special guest, Pranita Allegheny, administrator and
assistant professor of healthcare administration
over at Mayo Clinic College of Medicine and
Science. Pranita, thank you so much for doing
this. Appreciate it. How are you?
Hi. Thanks, Scott. Thanks for the opportunity to
be here, and I'm really excited to to
chat with you.
Excited to have you. We have a lot
of big topics and and trends in in
health care to get to. Really gonna lean
on your expertise for those. But, before we
get to those, I was wondering if you
could please just tell us a little bit
about your your background and your experience in
health care.
Certainly. So I'm Prineetha Laginti. I work as
an administrator at Mayo Clinic in Arizona,
where my responsibilities
include supporting our advanced AI and innovation hub
as well as our Arizona
enablement hub.
My world really lives at the intersection of
health care operations,
digital transformation, and AI.
And as far as sort of coming into
this work, you know, honestly, Scott, I I
didn't really come into health care because of
technology. I came into it because of the
people.
Very early on, I was a volunteer at
a safety net hospital and
got to see some some realities of health
care.
I was able to see and witness how
powerful health care can be when systems work
for patients and
also how it can be painful when things
don't work, and that really fueled sort of
my experience. I initially wanted to be a
physician.
And now over a decade later at Mayo
Clinic as an administrator, I've had the chance
to work across clinical practice, so our really
our operational front,
research as well as enterprise
initiatives.
And today, I'm really proud that,
I get to lead the work around digital
health and advanced
AI, and I'm really proud of,
being able to translate those big ideas that
everyone has,
into things that actually make someone's day a
little bit easier, whether that's our patients or
our staff.
Well, thanks so much, Puneet. It's great to
hear about all that that background info you
shared and and great to hear about your
people first focus, you know, even dealing with
all this emerging tech we have now in
health care. So the the first topic I
I wanted to ask you about, the first
question I have for you is what opportunities
and headwinds do you have your eye on
right now in health care?
Yeah. I think one of the biggest opportunities
we have right now is really having
more honest conversations
about how AI should show up in health
care.
At Mayo Clinic,
our approach is very intentional.
It's decentralized,
staff led,
and clinician driven with a focus on
governance,
equity,
ethics, and transparency.
And quite honestly, we're implementing AI to enhance
that clinical decision making, empowering our patient outcomes,
and streamlining care.
Really emphasizing
how
AI empowers, not replaces
our our people,
but really taking the friction out of the
system by reducing burden,
improving our workflows, personalizing
care for our patients,
and expanding access,
to high quality care.
Well, let me ask you a follow-up there,
Pernitha. How involved should the clinician be then?
What what do you have them doing with
the the different AI uses?
Yeah. I think that's very dependent on the
use case of the technology. Right? So if
we're thinking about technology like ambient listening and
documentation,
which was a a huge trend last year,
we certainly want them to be at the
table,
because at the end of the day, it's
their workflow that's impacted. So you want them
to be engaged in both from a product
development design perspective, but also from an implementation,
and where is the right opportunity for us
to engage this within the workflow.
Absolutely.
And I also wanted to ask you, how
are you thinking about growth and adding value
to your organization right now?
So I personally,
think about growth, less is doing
more
and more so of doing the things better
and being more connected.
And, certainly, Mayo Clinic differentiates itself through
discovery, delivery, and diffusion, and my role often
sits right in the middle of that. Right?
A lot of my work is focused on
translation.
And how do you take something that's cutting
edge technology,
whether it's a care enabling
AI model that can predict your likelihood of
a disease
or a digital care capability
and make it usable, make it trusted and
scalable
within our clinical environments. Right?
And when that growth is done right, I
think, really, innovation stops feeling
more of a project and really starts to
feel about how we're shifting the paradigm
of care,
being delivered.
What's one risk for investment that you think
is worth making
this year in 2026
here?
So I think, certainly,
the investment can never be wrong when you
invest in new people, not just technology or
platform.
And I know it's always tempting. We we
love the latest technology, and we wanna focus
on the technology itself. But
you also have to make sure that your
workforce is ready for that, and that includes
things like educating your workforce, having, governance structures
in place,
and bringing your staff and care teams along
in that process.
And, certainly, I think, you know, the the
trend for 2026
is,
with a lot of conversation around agentic
AI.
And
agentic AI will only be successful
when the people
are used to help shape that solution
and can then grow in the adoption
of an agent.
So if I was,
to to comment on the investment, I think
the investment is people.
Yeah. I think that's a good point too
because once, you know, once you
you procure an agent or or use it
somehow, you don't just have it. There's a
lot more work to be done, you know,
to to foster these agents and set them
up in a way to help your system
or or any business. Is that is that
kinda what you're doing too?
Absolutely. I mean, agents or any technology for
that matter is not a one and done.
Right? Like, a product is a living product.
You have to make enhancements. You have to
continue to to grow and evolve as your
needs of your end user, your customer, your
organization change. So I still I I would
strongly say that we need to be able
to be nimble
to meet the needs of health care
today, but also be prepared for the health
care of tomorrow.
And where do you see the best opportunities
for growth in the future?
So I'm really,
excited about air delivery,
that's very human centric in design, and I
think you could probably,
appreciate that from my previous responses as well.
And we're really focused on building capabilities that
span our physical,
digital, and virtual care, but really touching everything
from our three shielded
approach of an institution
as practice, research, and education.
And, again, my personal belief is that the
real opportunity is
when we have insights that form that connective
tissue
between all of those shields and between all
of those capabilities.
And so I think a part of that
growth and the opportunity is really
learning fast,
on how we can personalize care better and
really extend our expertise beyond traditional walls,
while still providing
that
hug and human connection that we're so used
to and and desire from any health care
institution.
You know, since you mentioned that, you know,
that get people first
focus you have and investing in people, I
I wanted to get your take on how
you think you've evolved as a leader and
maybe any any great leadership advice that someone
shared with you in your career so far.
Yeah. No. That's a a great question. I
would say I started off more as that
frontline leader, as a a manager of a
clinical practice,
early in my career. And
at some point in your career journey, as
every leader will tell you, is
health care is about the people for the
people, and, certainly, you can have digital or
any other investments, but you're still serving people
at the end of the day.
But I will share a quick quote
from one of my wonderful mentors that I've
had on the leadership journey, which is hone
your craft.
And that has really rung true to who
I am and my leadership style is
irrespective of whether you're in a clinical practice,
whether you're leading digital, whether you're working with
an AI team. I think it's really important
to hone your craft in that moment
in service of those that you serve, which
is your patients.
I think that's some great advice.
Great quote. Thank you so much for sharing,
Priti, and thank you for joining us on
the podcast and for a great discussion. Look
forward to working with you again soon. Thanks,
Scott.