What a VP of Clinical Efficiency Needs HR to Understand

Featuring Katie Abebe, Vice President of Clinical Efficiency, Upstream Rehabilitation

If you have ever wondered what it feels like to run clinical operations across 800 clinics in 25 states — and what that VP actually needs from HR to make it work — this is the episode. Katie Abebe took an unconventional path from construction to community college to a doctorate in physical therapy from Chatham University, and now builds systems for clinical quality and efficiency at one of the top five largest outpatient rehab providers in the country.

⚙️ What Clinical Efficiency Actually Means Clinical efficiency is not just operational throughput. It is eliminating waste, aligning what payers require with what is best for the patient, and delivering high-quality care within insurance-constrained reimbursement models where margins are already thin. One missed clinician can eliminate an entire week's margin at a single clinic. The math is not forgiving.

🧑‍⚕️ What HR Can Do for a Clinical Workforce Right Now Katie's direct answer: flexibility and compensation. Clinical staff carry a unique burden — when they cannot show up, real patients go without care and real revenue disappears. Systems that have built flex clinician pools are absorbing that risk. For PT specifically, reimbursement has not kept pace with inflation, meaning highly credentialed clinicians are often financially stressed. Performance-based earning opportunities — not just productivity bonuses — are a meaningful retention lever.

🤖 AI in the PT Space: The Promise and the Guardrails Upstream is already using AI to reduce documentation burden — the number one reason Katie says she left the clinic. On the horizon: AI-assisted triage at the front of the funnel, helping route patients to providers most likely to deliver results. But Katie draws a clear line. AI for notes and scheduling? Embrace it. AI making the final clinical call without a human in the lead? Not yet.

🔎 The HR Takeaway Build the flex pool. Create performance-based earning paths. And when a clinician's attendance pattern shifts, don't go straight to corrective action — go to the conversation. It is almost never a work problem.

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HealthCare Associates Credit Union partners with healthcare organizations to offer a no-cost financial wellness benefit for employees. Built specifically for healthcare professionals, HACU provides everyday banking, loans, mortgages, and financial education - all with no added administrative burden for HR teams.

Learn more at HACU's Human Resource Benefit or email directly at busdev@hacu.org and we are happy to take you through the process whether it's opening a membership for yourself or bringing us on as your employee benefits partner.

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April 27th, 2026. Three policy hits in the same week, all with direct workforce consequences. Bo, Luke, and ASHHRA Executive Director Jeremy Sadlier break down what HR leaders need to do before July 1st.

💉 RFK Jr. Defends $15.8B in HHS Cuts — His Own Word: Painful After seven congressional hearings, HHS Secretary Kennedy called the FY27 cuts painful and acknowledged his department does not want them: $5B in NIH funding, elimination of the National Institute on Minority Health, $923M in HIV/AIDS reductions, and deep cuts to the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. Bipartisan pushback was visible — Republican Senator Tom Tillis called the NIH cuts handing China our lunch. These are not Washington cuts. They flow directly to hospitals, universities, and health systems. Action: Identify every federal grant, research partnership, and workforce development program your organization depends on through NIH, HRSA, or HHS. Build that list this week. Contingency planning starts now, before FY27 makes the cuts real.

🩺 Nursing Was Excluded From the Definition of a Profession Effective July 1st, graduate nursing students lose access to $50,000/year in federal loans — capped instead at $20,500 — because nursing was excluded from the Department of Education's professional degree definition. Law, medicine, and dentistry made the list. Nursing, PT, OT, PA, and social work did not. 59% of nurses say they are now less likely to pursue a graduate degree. Action: Audit your advanced practice nursing vacancies. Evaluate whether your tuition assistance and loan repayment programs can close the new gap. Connect with academic partners now before fall enrollment is affected.

📋 Medicaid Work Requirements: 80 Hours a Month, Starting Late 2026 HR1 Medicaid work requirements are becoming operational — 80 hours per month of documented work, school, or community service or enrollees lose coverage. 65% of Medicaid recipients already work. Those most at risk are the low-wage frontline workers staffing your EVS, food service, PCA, and security roles. Action: Map your lowest-wage workforce against Medicaid thresholds in your state. Brief your CHRO on your exposure before a coverage gap destabilizes the frontline workforce you cannot afford to lose.

Every story this week lands on HR's desk. High five to every practitioner still standing.

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From Our Sponsor(s)...

Optimize Pharmacy Benefits with RxBenefits
Elevate your employee benefits while managing costs. Did you know hospital employees fill 25% more prescriptions annually than other industries? Ensure cost-effective, high-quality pharmacy plans by leveraging your hospital’s own pharmacies. Discover smarter strategies with RxBenefits.

Learn More here - https://rxbene.fit/3ZaurZN

HealthCare Associates Credit Union partners with healthcare organizations to offer a no-cost financial wellness benefit for employees. Built specifically for healthcare professionals, HACU provides everyday banking, loans, mortgages, and financial education - all with no added administrative burden for HR teams.

Learn more at HACU's Human Resource Benefit or email directly at busdev@hacu.org and we are happy to take you through the process whether it's opening a membership for yourself or bringing us on as your employee benefits partner.

HealthCare Associates Credit Union — a healthier benefit for healthcare HR leaders and their teams.

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Featuring Ricky Price, Founder, Game Ready Skills & Development | McDonald's All-American | Duke University | NBA Veteran

Healthcare HR professionals spend their days building cultures where people can do their best work under extraordinary pressure. Ricky Price has lived that challenge at the highest level — growing up in Compton, earning a spot under Coach K at Duke, competing professionally for nearly a decade in the NBA, and now translating every lesson from that journey into leadership development for organizations that refuse to settle for average.

This one hits different.

🏀 Visualize First, Then Do the Work Ricky's number one pillar: visualize and imagine your success before it happens. He visualized game-winning shots, big-time college basketball, and a professional career — and when those moments arrived, they felt like deja vu. For healthcare leaders, the application is direct: if you cannot see where your team is going, you cannot build the culture to get there.

⏭️ The Next Play Mentality Coach K's most transferable lesson: when you make a mistake, you cannot wallow in it. Get to the next play. For clinicians who carry the weight of high-stakes errors, this is not a dismissal of accountability — it is the framework that makes continued high performance possible. The leaders who model this give their teams permission to recover and keep moving.

🏆 Assign Roles. Build the Team. When Ricky arrived at Duke, every player was the number one recruit in their state. Coach K's solution: assign clear roles and hold everyone accountable to theirs. High-performing healthcare teams fail the same way athletic teams do — when stars refuse to subordinate individual brilliance to collective purpose. Role clarity is not a limitation. It is the architecture of a championship culture.

🎉 Celebrate Your Wins — Strategically The goal is not the only moment worth celebrating. Daily discipline, weekly consistency, small process wins — these compound. Teams that only celebrate outcomes miss the habits that produce them.

📖 Resource Celebrate Your Wins by Ricky Price (Foreword by Coach K): https://amzn.to/4mCr874 Connect with Ricky: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ricky-price-1a242438

You do not need a wicked jump shot. You need the mindset behind it.

Enjoying the show? Subscribe to The ASHHRA Podcast on your favorite podcast platform so you never miss an episode.

From Our Sponsor(s)...

Optimize Pharmacy Benefits with RxBenefits
Elevate your employee benefits while managing costs. Did you know hospital employees fill 25% more prescriptions annually than other industries? Ensure cost-effective, high-quality pharmacy plans by leveraging your hospital’s own pharmacies. Discover smarter strategies with RxBenefits.

Learn More here - https://rxbene.fit/3ZaurZN

HealthCare Associates Credit Union partners with healthcare organizations to offer a no-cost financial wellness benefit for employees. Built specifically for healthcare professionals, HACU provides everyday banking, loans, mortgages, and financial education - all with no added administrative burden for HR teams.

Learn more at HACU's Human Resource Benefit or email directly at busdev@hacu.org and we are happy to take you through the process whether it's opening a membership for yourself or bringing us on as your employee benefits partner.

HealthCare Associates Credit Union — a healthier benefit for healthcare HR leaders and their teams.

Support the show