Designing Digital Change for Scale: Sutter Health’s Laura Wilt on AI, Leadership and the Human Side of Transformation

About this episode

Growing up on a farm in rural Missouri, and even through college, a career in healthcare was never in the forefront of Laura Wilt’s mind. She studied finance at Tulane and thought she might go into banking, but a decision to take a job at Epic changed everything. What began as an unexpected first step into healthcare IT quickly became a career, as Laura found she could use technology to make a real difference for physicians, nurses and patients at scale.

That path eventually took her to Ochsner Health, where she rose to become system vice president and chief information officer. When Ochsner CEO Warner Thomas left to become Sutter Health’s president and CEO, Laura followed soon after, joining Sacramento-based Sutter in 2023 as executive vice president and chief digital officer. Today, she is helping lead a broad transformation at Sutter built around expanding access, adding ambulatory and advanced-care capacity, and advancing a more unified, people-centered digital strategy.

In this episode of Healthcare is Hard, Laura joined Keith Figlioli to discuss what it takes to lead digital change at a time when technology is moving exponentially faster than health systems can adopt it. In a conversation that steered clear of hype and more towards the hard work underneath real transformation, some of the topics Laura and Keith discussed include:

• Designing pilots for scale. Laura makes the case that a pilot should never exist just to prove something can go live. Its real purpose is to teach an organization what it will take to scale. That means bringing in the people closest to the workflow, building with the broader enterprise in mind, and accepting more upfront work if that is what it takes to make a solution usable for everyone in the long run.
• Principle-based decision making. Looking back, Laura says one of the most important lessons she carried forward from Epic was the value of guiding principles. In a moment when no organization can write rules for every scenario, she argues that leaders need a clearer framework for decision-making – one that asks whether a tool makes work easier, improves care, and serves people first. At Sutter, that mindset has also meant balancing foundational system work with innovation as equally important efforts.
• The AI-informed consumer. With patients already turning to ChatGPT and other AI tools for medical guidance, Laura discussed how health systems need to embrace this shift and make it part of the workflow. Over time, she says the goal should be to create a connected digital experience where patients increasingly turn to Sutter first for guidance, not just to an outside AI tool. She also shared early metrics about a new AI assistant Sutter is in the process of launching.
• Leading with humility. For Laura, one of the most important traits for digital leaders today is humility. As organizations look to IT leaders for answers in a fast-changing environment, leaders need the confidence to admit when those answers do not yet exist. That makes transparency, curiosity, and strong human communication more important than ever.

To hear Laura and Keith discuss these topics and more, listen to this episode of Healthcare is Hard: A Podcast for Insiders.