What happens when a 200-year-old safety-net hospital decides it's had enough of losing revenue to insurance denials and uses AI to fight back? The answer may change how you think about the intersection of clinical care and financial sustainability.

In this episode, we sit down with Jani Rad, Dr. Kito Lord, and Robin Clanton from Regional One Health in Memphis, Tennessee. Together, they walk us through how a historically under-resourced hospital became an unlikely AI innovator — starting not with flashy technology, but with a simple question: can we just see our own data? From breaking down departmental silos to deploying AI that identifies payer denial patterns, generates appeals in bulk, and surfaces the big-picture revenue opportunities that encounter-by-encounter worklists will always miss — this team is actively building and testing a solution that directly bridges the gap between clinical documentation, finance, and patient outcomes.

[00:00] Intro

[00:52] Meet the Regional One Health Team

[03:24] Data as the Starting Point

[04:17] The Physician Advisor Program

[06:00] First Tiptoe into AI

[08:56] Seeing the Big Picture

[10:00] From Data to Action

[11:39] AI Checks and Balances

[13:26] The AI Arms Race

[14:28] Negotiating Denials at Scale