S2E9: Fixing Contracting Upstream in Healthcare | HealthTech2Care Podcast With Bert Fernandez

HealthTech2Care (HT2C) Podcast featuring Danielle Haugland, Sr. Director of Global Alliances at Agiloft

Danielle Haugland (Guest):
🔗 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/danielle-haugland-67473a39
🌐 Website: https://www.agiloft.com
📺 YouTube: www.youtube.com/@Agiloft 

Bert Fernandez (Host):
🔗 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bert-fernandez
🌐 Website: https://www.healthtech2care.com
📺 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@healthtech2care  

🎙️ In this episode, Danielle Haugland shares how her background in commercial litigation shaped her perspective on contracts, and why by the time a contract becomes a legal issue, the operational damage has already been done.

We discuss why healthcare systems are rethinking contract lifecycle management as a core operational lever, especially amid reimbursement pressure, rising costs, and financial strain across provider organizations.

Danielle also walks through real-world examples, including Agiloft’s work with Rush University Medical Center, where fragmented workflows, long approval timelines, and process workarounds were replaced with centralized, structured contracting that improved speed, visibility, and control.

This conversation highlights how fixing contracting upstream can reduce risk, improve financial discipline, and create more resilient healthcare operations.

⏱️ Timestamps:

00:00 Intro

01:09 What Danielle’s litigation background taught her about what goes wrong with contracts

04:45 What pressures are driving provider organizations to get a better handle on CLM

09:47 What happened in the Rush University Medical Center case study and what outcomes came from fixing CLM upstream

14:43 Why it is so difficult for health systems to fix this with their existing stack 

17:36 Why centralization matters in disruptions and how it helped organizations like Children’s National respond

22:03 Why configurability matters in CLM and how Agiloft addresses the nuance across provider organizations

26:00 What common sticking points keep coming up and how Agiloft helps address them in the platform

30:26 What other provider use cases come up beyond payer contracting and where CLM fits operationally

33:47 How providers should engage Agiloft and what they should have prepared before starting the conversation

35:43 Whether Agiloft itself provides audits or works through partners

🔑 Highlights:

-Why most contract issues start as operational problems, not legal ones

-How healthcare systems can use contracting as a financial lever

-The impact of fragmented workflows and long approval timelines

-Results from centralizing and restructuring contracting processes

-Why centralization is about resilience, not bureaucracy

👉 Learn more about Agiloft (https://www.agiloft.com)

🔔 Subscribe to the HealthTech2Care YouTube channel for more in‐depth conversations with healthcare innovators: https://www.youtube.com/@healthtech2care

#CLM #HealthcareAI #HealthcareOperations #Procurement #RevenueCycle #DigitalTransformation