# Blake Madden

Blake Madden writes and hosts about healthcare technology and health-system operations, including AI in revenue-cycle work and care delivery. The posts point readers to deep dives and episodes of the Claims Denied podcast.

- Profile: https://b2binfluencer.marketing/creators/blake-madden/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/blakecmadden
- LinkedIn followers: 28,797
- Topics: artificial-intelligence, healthcare
- Based on 11 dated posts, latest 2026-10-07

## Summary

Most useful for sponsored deep dives and podcast segments on healthcare IT and revenue-cycle operations.

- Best for: B2B campaigns for healthcare IT vendors selling coding, revenue-cycle, or utilization software to hospital leaders.
- Not for: Consumer wellness apps, patient-facing product reviews, lifestyle videos, or patient acquisition campaigns.
- Check first: Confirm audience job titles, seniority, geography, and organization type before a sponsored partnership.

### Takeaways

- AKASA post explains inpatient coding complexity, AI intended workflow, and third-party accuracy measures.
- OhioHealth post reports hospital days saved, cost savings, and staff hours automated.
- R1 post focuses on catching revenue-cycle risk earlier while keeping physician expertise central.

## Main ideas

- **Buy systems that act, while keeping control with the health system**: Madden distinguishes a system of record from a system of action, and argues that the latter is worth paying for. Autonomy, they say, is configured by the health system, not switched on by the vendor: health systems set the rules for which encounters proceed without human review and which go to an expert. Automated coding decisions also carry evidence back to the source documentation.
- **Vendors should bring receipts; guaranteed ROI is becoming the bar**: The posts treat measurement as part of the story. Accuracy is tied to the evaluation design, while a health system’s decision to expand a deployment is offered as stronger proof. Madden also argues that AI vendors should be thinking about guaranteed ROI, raising the burden on vendors rather than buyers. The accuracy and scale figures are vendor-attributed.
- **Move revenue-cycle work upstream to catch risk before it becomes a denial**: The post argues that utilization review should happen continuously and earlier, intercepting problems before they become appeals. Its position on labor is specific: clinical judgment stays central, while routine review work is removed. That combination is aimed at hospital finance and utilization-management readers.
- **Access is a differentiation lever health systems still control—and often give away**: After following Lumeris and its AI-native primary care platform, Tom, for 18 months, Madden argues that every health system needs to differentiate away from its EHR—and that most leaders do not yet believe it. Ambient documentation and autonomous coding are table stakes, they say; access is the one lever health systems still control, yet often cede through MyChart. The argument pairs an analogy with a promised financial model.
- **Value-based care policy and the physician enterprise belong in the same conversation as product news**: The podcast coverage extends beyond vendor mechanics to regulation and workforce questions; the positions in these episodes belong to the guest, not Madden. Topics include the end of voluntary participation, the first weeks of a mandatory bundle and the role of specialists. AI’s effect on burnout is framed as broader than ambient scribes, tying the technology discussion to operations rather than novelty.

## Work to read

- [AKASA's autonomous inpatient coding launch](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/blakecmadden_autonomous-inpatient-coding-akasa-activity-7511821158141587457-c_86)
- [Lumeris and Tom: why health systems should differentiate from their EHR](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/blakecmadden_meet-tom-part-2-hospitalogy-activity-7510689459235889153-xBVn)
- [OhioHealth and Qventus: what one AI deployment returned](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/blakecmadden_how-ohiohealth-turned-one-ai-win-into-an-activity-7510319062648901632-qqwf)
- [R1 RCM and Phare Utilization Management: shifting risk left](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/blakecmadden_shift-as-much-left-as-you-can-thats-activity-7513576656763047936-weY3)
- [Claims Denied podcast with Navvis CEO Tim Elliott on mandatory value-based care](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/blakecmadden_this-week-on-the-pod-i-welcome-back-navvis-activity-7509231794819371008-Xjsi)

## Brand relationships

- **Qventus** (disclosed_partnership)
- **R1 RCM** (disclosed_partnership)
- **AKASA** (disclosed_partnership)
- **Lumeris** (disclosed_partnership)
- **Navvis** (mention)

## Partnerships

Blake Madden's posts show disclosed commercial partnerships with four healthcare technology companies—Qventus, Lumeris, AKASA, and R1 RCM—across three recurring formats: a written deep dive on a partner's product or strategy, a recorded executive conversation, and a structured product-launch breakdown. Each post carries an explicit disclosure, such as "Written in partnership with Qventus, Inc, but as always, 100% my thoughts" or "(in partnership with R1)," showing how sponsored work is labeled and framed. The posts also feature Claims Denied, an owned podcast where Blake interviews health-system executives. Those episodes are not labeled as partnerships, so buyers should confirm sponsorship availability and terms directly. The posts show no official partnership policy, rate card, or inquiry page; buyers should ask directly about pricing and availability.

## Alternatives

- Justin Nicols: Choose Nicols when the campaign's spine is the strategic argument rather than a product walkthrough. Nicols makes the case a revenue-cycle buyer has to defend upward: AI's clearest return right now sits in shared services such as the revenue cycle and finance, where work is high volume, rules heavy, and overdue for change. A McKinsey figure puts potential productivity gains in those functions at up to 50%. Nicols's sharper point is that revenue cycle is automating inefficiency faster than it is eliminating it, so a faster broken workflow is still broken. A vendor whose differentiator is removing unnecessary work before automating what remains has a ready-made argument here. A July 27, 2026 post extends that point to AI adoption generally, drawing on a Stanford and Harvard report: the hard problem is no longer access to capability but proving in live settings when the technology helps. Accuracy is not the same as outcomes, and documentation, coding, and data management carry the clearest early return. That makes Nicols a fit when the sponsor wants a sober, current, strategy-level voice for hospital finance and innovation readers.
- Ahmed Omar: Choose Omar when the campaign should land as arithmetic for a hospital finance leader. Omar writes prior authorization as a cost line: clinical staff spend 7 to 14 days on each authorization across thousands a month; every one of those hours is paid at clinical wages for clerical work; prior authorization is now a leading reason physicians leave; and a burned-out physician costs roughly $500K to replace. The framing that the cost problem and morale problem are the same problem is a line a revenue-cycle or utilization-management vendor can build a segment around. Omar also states the buying reality bluntly, quoting Taha Kass-Hout: hospitals will adopt the AI that makes them more money, and the AI that saves society money is a different product, because avoiding unnecessary procedures does not get rewarded when payment runs per procedure. That quotable framing suits a brief about denial prevention or administrative staffing where the sponsor wants the economic argument stated without hedging.
- Michael Belkin JD, MSHA, FACHE, CMPE: Choose Belkin when the campaign shifts from coding and revenue-cycle software to clinician supply. Belkin writes physician workforce planning as an operational discipline: forecasting demand by service line, tracking retirement and attrition, and building pipelines before coverage gaps become urgent. They claim that 80% of clients over 22 years fell into a reactive trap. An April 28, 2026 post turns to burnout data, citing roughly 50% of physicians reporting burnout in 2024 to 2025, with emergency medicine above 60% and OBGYN, oncology, anesthesia, and radiology around 50%. They argue that the structural drivers are unpredictable schedules, high acuity, rising demand against limited capacity, and administrative burden. Their conclusion—that flexible models such as locums, PRN, rapid-response teams, and fractional coverage need to be structural rather than optional—is directly usable by a staffing or workforce-technology sponsor. This is the right alternative when a vendor's story runs through clinical capacity and retention rather than the revenue cycle.

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AI-assisted summary of public posts. Audience demographics are not available. Engagement appears only where we checked recent posts. Method: https://b2binfluencer.marketing/methodology/