Madeline Ashley

In late June, Angela Davis was named CFO of Juneau, Alaska-based Bartlett Regional Hospital. 

With nearly three decades of experience in healthcare finance under her belt, Ms. Davis brings a people-centered, purpose-driven leadership style to her work, with an emphasis on long-term stability, transparency and trust.

Becker’s connected with Ms. Davis to discuss the top priorities in her new role, the leadership lessons that have shaped her throughout her career and advice for incoming leaders in healthcare finance.

Editor’s note: Responses have been lightly edited for clarity and length.

Question: With over 28 years of financial leadership experience, what lessons have most shaped your approach to leading financial operations in healthcare? How will you take these lessons into your new role?

Angela Davis: One of the most important lessons I’ve learned is that financial leadership must be rooted in purpose — serving not just the bottom line, but the people and communities behind it. Building trust through transparency, responsiveness, and partnership across departments is essential to aligning resources with meaningful outcomes. I’ve seen time and again that when teams feel supported and operations are clear, strong financial performance follows naturally. In this role, I will bring both financial discipline and a deep commitment to the long view — ensuring that each decision strengthens the organization’s ability to thrive, grow and deliver excellent care for years to come.

Q: What are your top two or three  priorities in your first six months as CFO? How do you plan to ensure financial sustainability while supporting community-focused care?

AD: My immediate priorities include strengthening financial reporting and forecasting, improving cost transparency across service lines and aligning capital and workforce planning with long-term service delivery needs. I believe strong financial operations create the foundation for innovation, staff engagement, and patient-centered care. To that end, I’ll work closely with clinical and operational leaders to ensure financial decisions support both excellence today and sustainability for the future. At Bartlett, our mission to provide excellent care for the people of Juneau and southeast Alaska will guide how we prioritize, invest and lead. And our C.A.R.E. values — courtesy, accountability, respect and excellence — will remain central to how we support one another, grow together and serve our community with integrity.

Q: What advice would you offer to emerging leaders in healthcare finance looking to make a lasting impact in their organizations?

AD: Be curious, be present and always remember that healthcare finance is about people — not just numbers. Take time to understand how financial decisions shape the experience of patients, staff, and the broader community. Build relationships across teams, listen actively and lead with both clarity and empathy. A lasting impact comes from earning trust, being a responsible steward of resources, and consistently aligning decisions with a shared commitment to care. Embrace technology to drive efficiency, transparency and better decision-making while staying informed about emerging trends that shape the future of healthcare finance and governance. These key pillars leave a lasting positive impact on the patients, staff and organization.
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CMS has unveiled a proposed rule for the 2026 Medicare Physician Fee Schedule, including a new ambulatory specialty care model aimed at improving chronic disease management and reducing costs.

“We are taking meaningful steps to modernize Medicare, cut waste and improve patient care,” Mehmet Oz, MD, CMS administrator, said in a July 14 news release. “We’re making it easier for seniors to access preventive services, incentivizing health care providers to deliver real results, and cracking down on abuse that drives up costs. This is how we protect Medicare for the next generation while helping Americans live longer, healthier lives.”

Here are six notes on the rule: 

1. The newly proposed ambulatory specialty model claims to address “significant areas of Medicare spending” like low back pain and heart failure. Specialists who detect worsening chronic condition signs early will be rewarded beginning in January 2027 for avoiding hospitalizations, coordinating better with primary care and early intervention. The model encourages tech-enabled patient engagement and will run through December 2031. 

2. Medicare spending on skin substitutes increased from $256 million in 2019 to more than $10 billion in 2024, the release said, according to Medicare Part B claims data. To tackle this, CMS has proposed treating skin substitutes as incident-to supplies instead of biologicals, which could cut product spending by up to 90% and save billions without foregoing patient access. 

3. CMS proposed removing 10 quality measures that do not improve patient health outcomes and introduced five new ones, with an emphasis on preventive services and expanding Medicare diabetes prevention program access through offering no-cost support, coaching dietary change practical training, behavior change strategies and physical activity to prevent Type 2 diabetes for prediabetic Medicare beneficiaries. 

“CMS is also issuing a request for information to gather recommendations on improving wellness, prevention, and chronic disease management,” the release said. “This includes input on nutrition counseling and physical activity.”

4. Through use of hospital data and by moving away from outdated practitioner surveys, CMS aims to better align physician payments across settings of care. It is also working to make certain COVID-era telehealth flexibilities permanent and to expand digital mental health tool coverage. 

5. CMS has proposed two separate conversion factors for 2026 to reflect statutory changes and adjustments for proposed work relative value units. Qualifying [advanced alternative payment] participants would see a 3.83% increase to $33.59 and non-QPs would see a 3.62% increase to $33.42.  

6. “For the last four years, powerful interests have targeted independent medical practices,” HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., said in the release. “Thanks to Dr. Oz’s decisive leadership, this rule modernizes CMS payment systems, eliminates perverse incentives and harnesses better data to improve care for patients with chronic disease while protecting the future of hometown doctors.”
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Massachusetts HHS secretary Kate Walsh has stepped down from her position after more than 40 years in healthcare. Kiame Mahaniah, MD, succeeded Ms. Walsh on July 14.

Prior to her role as state HHS secretary, Ms. Walsh served as CEO of Boston Medical Center for 13 years, according to a July 11 news release.

Ms. Walsh will continue to serve Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey as a senior advisor on health and human services matters.

Prior to his appointment, Dr. Mahaniah served as undersecretary of health for the Executive Office of Health and Human Services. He also served as CEO of Lynn (Mass.) Community Health Center. 
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Joanna Weiss, executive vice president and CFO of Tampa, Fla.-based Moffitt Cancer Center, has spent nearly two decades serving in various finance-related roles at the National Cancer Institute-designated center. 

She began her career at Moffitt as director of internal audit, working her way up to vice president of revenue cycle management and then to senior vice president of finance, prior to her current role. Ms. Weiss’ experience in revenue cycle and finance has shaped her leadership approach at the facility, which serves more than 30,000 new patients and 600,000 encounters each year.

During a Becker’s CFO and Revenue Cycle Podcast episode, Ms. Weiss shared her perspective on today’s top healthcare trends, from post-pandemic financial stabilization and capital constraints to the evolving role of AI in operational efficiency.

Editor’s note: Responses have been lightly edited for clarity and length.

Question: What are the top 3 trends you’re following in healthcare today?

Joanna Weiss: I would say financial stabilization. We came out of the pandemic, and it took us several years to sort of recover from that experience. We’ve seen improving margins subsequent to the pandemic, and I would say we’re just now sort of taking a deep breath. As the winds are always changing in healthcare, just that stabilization and that continuation of financial stewardship in such a slim margin industry is always top of mind. Trying to understand how you balance both growth and growing out of those compressed margins, but also finding ways that you can continue to increase those margins in ways that are both good for the patient and good for our faculty.

[The] buzzword that we all know is artificial intelligence, and really trying to understand where we have opportunities. We have a tremendous amount of automation in our current revenue cycle, and it’s in excess of the equivalent of 400 workers. We utilize automation quite a bit, but taking that to the next level, how can we use agentic AI? How can we use AI for other things that [will] make our cost to collect lower? It’s going to decrease our overall cost of providing the service to our patients and to our organization. So that’s the second item. 

I would say the third item is really a deviation from the first. How do we grow in an environment where everyone is so capital constrained because of the margins that we live with? [We need to]  figure out ways to think strategically, scenario plan and be prepared for things such as changing reimbursement, federal regulations or state regulations, getting our operational teams ready for what we would do in case something really catastrophic [occurs].

Q: With all of the technology out there, from a financial perspective, how do you go about choosing the best option?

JW: Under the leadership of our vice president of revenue cycle at Moffitt, she has done a really good job of identifying where our largest financial opportunities are. In oncology care, denials are a big component of that. Our intent is to ensure that we receive all the reimbursement that we are compliantly and appropriately entitled to. That was the first area that we’ve really explored. We’ve just recently implemented a solution that we are extremely excited about that has already started to yield very nice returns for us.

The second is where we have substantial [full-time equivalent] reliance and, not just reliance, but it’s hard to recruit experienced team members. That’s in our coding space. Coding is, particularly in oncology and especially in inpatient oncology, where you have cell and gene therapy. Inpatient coders are very hard to come by. Looking for ways that we can increase their ability to code efficiently, compliantly and appropriately, is the second area that we’re really exploring. We haven’t implemented the solution yet, but we’ve identified it and are in the process. We’re really excited about both of those. 
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