What does it really look like to lead a hospital when there is no cushion, limited resources, and every decision affects your neighbors?

In this episode of the Advancing Healthcare Innovation Show, host Michael Stamatinos sits down with Aidan Hettler, the CEO of Sedgwick County Health Center, a county-owned critical access hospital serving rural communities.

Aidan became a hospital CEO at 22 years old, taking on one of the most difficult leadership roles in healthcare. In rural healthcare, there’s no hiding behind layers of administration. If a nurse calls out, you feel it that shift. If infrastructure fails, the entire community feels the impact.

This conversation explores the real leadership challenges inside rural healthcare — from financial pressure and staffing shortages to building culture, expanding services, and making decisions in public view.

Michael and Aidan dive into the unfiltered realities of running a rural hospital, including:

• The unique challenges of leading a county-owned critical access hospital

• How rural healthcare leaders make decisions when resources are limited

• Turning around financial performance while increasing wages and improving culture

• Why people and mission matter more than scale in rural healthcare

• Expanding clinical services and opening a new clinic after 26 years without growth

• Implementing a new EMR system and transforming workflows across the organization

• Recruiting leaders and clinicians to a rural community

• The realities of public accountability in small towns

• How healthcare leaders navigate pressure, uncertainty, and difficult decisions

This episode offers powerful lessons for healthcare executives, hospital leaders, digital health founders, investors, and policymakers who want to better understand the realities of healthcare leadership beyond large urban systems.

If you care about the future of healthcare delivery, rural health innovation, leadership under pressure, and building resilient healthcare organizations, this is a conversation you don’t want to miss.

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About the Show

The Advancing Healthcare Innovation Show is hosted by Michael Stamatinos, a nationally recognized connector, strategist, and advocate for innovation with purpose. Each week, Michael interviews healthcare leaders who are driving meaningful change—highlighting stories of access, resilience, equity, and transformation.

The AHI Show started with the idea of wanting to highlight stories of what healthcare innovation truly looks like in action. Our mission, highlight real people who are really innovating within healthcare. Guests include healthcare entrepreneurs, providers, payers, and professionals from the investment community. We showcase little wins as well as valuable lessons learned from setbacks through these interviews. The real innovators in healthcare are often the ones in the trenches doing the work with razor-sharp focus. We find these innovators and bring their stories to light.

🔗 Michael’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelstamo

🎧 Subscribe for more episodes that move beyond theory and into the heart of what’s really possible in healthcare.

Join our group, Advancing Healthcare Innovation Forum on LinkedIn:

https://www.linkedin.com/groups/7056196/

Most people talk about healthcare innovation.

Very few people have to make it work inside a real health system.

In this episode of the Advancing Healthcare Innovation Show, Michael Stamatinos sits down with Justin Brueck, System Vice President of Innovation and Research at Endeavor Health, to explore what it actually takes to move ideas through a complex healthcare organization.

Justin didn’t arrive in healthcare with a master plan. His journey began in rural Iowa, where a chance encounter with a healthcare executive opened a door that would shape the rest of his career.

From starting as an administrative fellow to leading enterprise innovation and research across one of the largest health systems in the Midwest, Justin has spent years learning how healthcare systems actually adopt change.

In this conversation, Michael and Justin discuss:

• Why good healthcare innovation ideas often fail inside health systems

• The hidden complexity of getting new technology adopted in clinical environments

• How frontline clinicians shape whether innovation succeeds or dies

• The role genomics and personalized medicine will play in the future of care

• What startups and founders often misunderstand about selling to health systems

• Why healthcare will always remain a deeply human business despite rapid technological change

Justin also shares the surprising leadership lessons he learned early in his career and the story of how one mentor changed the trajectory of his life.

If you care about healthcare leadership, innovation adoption, digital health, genomics, and the future of health systems, this episode offers a rare inside look at how innovation actually happens behind the scenes.

Timestamps

00:00 Introduction

03:00 What innovation inside a health system actually looks like

08:00 Justin’s unconventional path into healthcare leadership

16:00 Why good healthcare innovation ideas fail

23:00 The future of genomics and personalized medicine

26:00 Building a business case for innovation in health systems

28:00 Leadership lessons from inside large healthcare organizations

31:40 Quickfire questions with Justin Brueck

33:30 The human side of healthcare and the future of patient care

About Justin Brueck

Justin Brueck is the System Vice President of Innovation and Research at Endeavor Health, where he leads initiatives spanning clinical genomics, enterprise innovation, research operations, and emerging healthcare technologies. His work focuses on translating new ideas into real-world solutions that improve patient care, support clinicians, and strengthen health system performance.

📣 LIKE, COMMENT & SUBSCRIBE

If this conversation moved you, challenged your thinking, or sparked an idea, share it with someone who needs to hear it. Subscribe for more episodes with healthcare leaders who are not just thinking differently, they’re building differently.

About the Show

The Advancing Healthcare Innovation Show is hosted by Michael Stamatinos, a nationally recognized connector, strategist, and advocate for innovation with purpose. Each week, Michael interviews healthcare leaders who are driving meaningful change—highlighting stories of access, resilience, equity, and transformation.

The AHI Show started with the idea of wanting to highlight stories of what healthcare innovation truly looks like in action. Our mission, highlight real people who are really innovating within healthcare. Guests include healthcare entrepreneurs, providers, payers, and professionals from the investment community. We showcase little wins as well as valuable lessons learned from setbacks through these interviews. The real innovators in healthcare are often the ones in the trenches doing the work with razor-sharp focus. We find these innovators and bring their stories to light.

🔗 Michael’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelstamo

🎧 Subscribe for more episodes that move beyond theory and into the heart of what’s really possible in healthcare.

Join our group, Advancing Healthcare Innovation Forum on LinkedIn:

https://www.linkedin.com/groups/7056196/

Leadership in healthcare is often framed in headlines. Big strategies. Big bets. Big promises.

But most of it does not look like that.

In Episode 175 of the Advancing Healthcare Innovation Show, Michael Stamatinos sits with Regine Villain, Chief Supply Chain Officer, Oschner Health for a conversation about the part of leadership that rarely gets named.

The pressure.

The energy drain.

The moral weight of knowing that if something breaks, a patient feels it.

Regine grew up in Haiti. She thought she would become a pediatrician. Life moved her toward engineering instead, and eventually into healthcare operations. Early in her career, she walked into a CEO’s office unannounced and asked what it would take to sit in that chair one day. Not out of ego. Out of hunger to understand how systems work.

That instinct still drives her.

This episode is not about supply chain mechanics. It is about healthcare leadership as stewardship.

Regine speaks plainly about:

• The difference between title and expertise

• The mistake of making decisions without the right voices in the room

• Cultural misalignment that quietly erodes trust

• Burnout at the executive level

• Learning to say no in a field that rewards overextension

One of the most striking moments in the conversation comes from a loading dock.

To most people, it is inventory. Boxes. Movement.

To Regine, it is a pacemaker inside cardboard. A grandmother waiting for surgery. A clinical team depending on reliability.

“It’s not just a box.”

That line is not metaphor. It is operating philosophy.

Healthcare innovation often centers on technology. This conversation centers on responsibility. On the discipline required to stay steady when systems strain. On protecting energy so leadership does not become martyrdom.

Viewers will leave with something more durable than tactics.

* A clearer lens for resilient healthcare leadership.

* A deeper respect for culture as infrastructure.

* And a reminder that access is not a slogan. It is operational.

This episode is for:

* Healthcare executives absorbing pressure that no one sees

* Women stepping into rooms where they are still underestimated

* Health system operators responsible for access and reliability

* Leaders wrestling with culture that does not match the slide deck

* Anyone who has felt the cost of always saying yes

If you are a healthcare executive, clinician, operator, founder, or investor trying to understand what steady leadership actually requires, this episode is worth your time.

Learn more about Regine:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/reginehonorevillain/

📣 LIKE, COMMENT & SUBSCRIBE

If this conversation moved you, challenged your thinking, or sparked an idea, share it with someone who needs to hear it. Subscribe for more episodes with healthcare leaders who are not just thinking differently, they’re building differently.

About the Show

The Advancing Healthcare Innovation Show is hosted by Michael Stamatinos, a nationally recognized connector, strategist, and advocate for innovation with purpose. Each week, Michael interviews healthcare leaders who are driving meaningful change—highlighting stories of access, resilience, equity, and transformation.

The AHI Show started with the idea of wanting to highlight stories of what healthcare innovation truly looks like in action. Our mission, highlight real people who are really innovating within healthcare. Guests include healthcare entrepreneurs, providers, payers, and professionals from the investment community. We showcase little wins as well as valuable lessons learned from setbacks through these interviews. The real innovators in healthcare are often the ones in the trenches doing the work with razor-sharp focus. We find these innovators and bring their stories to light.

🔗 Michael’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelstamo

🎧 Subscribe for more episodes that move beyond theory and into the heart of what’s really possible in healthcare.

Join our group, Advancing Healthcare Innovation Forum on LinkedIn:

https://www.linkedin.com/groups/7056196/