Hallmark Health Care Solutions has built an artificial intelligence-enabled platform to give health systems visibility and control over employee costs, capabilities, and incentives.
Health care labor costs in the United States exceed $900 billion annually, and the American Hospital Association reports that labor costs now exceed $1 trillion annually. Labor costs, including wages, benefits, and premium contract staffing, consistently account for 50% to 60% of total health system operating budgets.
But investing in the workforce remains a “black box,” said Bharat Sundaram, CEO of Hallmark Healthcare Solutions. Decision-making remains fragmented across departments, systems, and budgets. Staffing, scheduling, compensation, and contingent talent management are often managed independently, without leaders having clear visibility into how decisions in one area impact overall company performance.
“There is a lack of visibility into data intelligence and limited automation to manage that $900 billion. These systems of record do a great job, but they were not built to address this. EHRs (electronic health record systems) record clinical care, ERPs record resources, HRAs and scheduling systems record employee activities and attributes,” Sundaram told Fierce Healthcare.
“Traditional health IT systems were not designed to coordinate decision-making at the enterprise level. As financial pressures intensify and shortages persist, health systems need a way to manage their workforce as an interconnected ecosystem rather than a collection of individual programs,” he said.
“We thought there was a real opportunity to build a new layer of the healthcare IT stack that not only sits alongside these systems of record, but also brings data from other systems of record on top and provides visibility and control of costs, capacity and incentives across the workforce,” said Sundaram, who joined Hallmark a year ago as CEO after spending nine years at Vizient, including many years as president and chief operating officer.
Hallmark, a 10-year-old technology company focused on workforce solutions, this week announced an AI-enabled platform called Employee Operating System. The platform surfaces actionable data and drives automation of key processes across employee resources and compensation.
The company says the result is a more tailored approach that helps leaders improve financial performance, drive engagement and support better patient care.
Hallmark Health Care Solutions AI Workforce Operations Platform Screenshot
Hallmark Health Care Solutions Employee Operating System (Hallmark Health Care Solutions)
“It’s hard to fix something you can’t see and control,” Sundaram said. “Typically, labor costs have been managed in silos, so doctors, nurses, non-clinical and full-time float pools are taking labor contracts on another level. We saw an opportunity here where this workforce operating system could provide that kind of visibility and control across the workforce.”
But Hallmark’s platform not only builds on existing systems of record, but, as Sundaram explained, it “brings something to Potluck.”
“We provide unique data in terms of market rates and what’s happening with physician contracts, so we’re not only leveraging that data, but also bringing our own first-party data into this employee operating system,” he said. “So what’s going on in the market in terms of pricing? What are the staff preferences in terms of when they want to come to work? What about physician productivity in terms of RVUs? What are the provider terms and conditions? All of these exist in different silos or don’t exist at all. We have Epic, Workday, UKG We aggregate all of our information together, both in systems of record such as , and our own information, providing connectivity and visibility that doesn’t currently exist.”
Hallmark currently works with more than 50 health systems and medical groups, including Massachusetts General Brigham and Trinity Health, and the company manages more than $10 billion in physician compensation annually. The company’s platform enables the recruitment of over 25,000 clinicians and supports over 100,000 users daily.
Health systems that partner with Hallmark have seen significant measurable results, including a 15% to 25% reduction in temporary labor costs and an average 25% reduction in overtime costs. Health systems using AI-enabled platforms have also reported an 80% reduction in coverage errors.
“By using our solution, a $1 billion health system could see a $20 million to $25 million profit improvement,” said Sundaram. He pointed to some measurable results that the health system has reported to date. One health system reduced provider charges by 20%, and a 90-hospital health system reduced provider spending by more than 50%. Norton Healthcare reduced the administrative burden of managing physician compensation by 30%.
“When people are adopting the entire platform, there are real material benefits that we can drive, and we are aligning that to $25 million for every $1 billion in revenue,” Sundaram said.
“Hallmark has been a great partner for us, always able to pivot when we needed to pivot, and always helping us devise solutions to make it easier and more transparent,” Tracie Martin, vice president of provider compensation and contracts at CHRISTUS Health, said in a statement. “I think the biggest differentiator between Hallmark and other vendors right now is partnerships.”
For health systems and medical organizations, costs are increasing significantly at a rate faster than inflation. Demand for healthcare continues to increase due to an aging population, while clinician shortages exacerbate patient access issues. According to Hallmark executives, the organization needs a modern approach to managing employee operations.
“Working with the Hallmark team has increased visibility, standardization, and efficiency in agent requests, procurement, onboarding, and general management,” said Tyler French, assistant vice president at UC Health. “This was previously fragmented across systems, but doing so has increased compliance and reduced redundant work.”
Hallmark customers use various components and modules of the AI platform, Sundaram noted. According to the company, Hallmark combines an AI-enabled platform with a team of healthcare professionals and workforce experts to help organizations align stakeholders, simplify operational complexity, and achieve measurable outcomes.
“When healthcare systems make decisions about technology, they measure things on kind of two axes: ROI and the benefits they get, and ease of lift. We’re aiming for high ROI and ease of adoption. We give people a low-friction entry point into the various modules of the operating system and the services that support them. We then expand to the rest of the functionality over time as we prove success.”Sundaram says Mr.
Sundaram emphasized that the use of AI in workforce management is not about reducing headcount, but rather automating employee resourcing and managing operations more efficiently to reduce the administrative burden on department leaders.
“The health care industry has a fundamental workforce shortage problem, and we don’t have enough staff to meet the increased demand. The focus is on how we can grow and serve our patients effectively, knowing that we are constrained from a staff perspective. This is about helping health systems scale, even though we have shortage issues that we have to deal with,” he said.
Going forward, Hallmark plans to expand its library of AI agents to use AI to proactively recommend next actions and help health systems manage their workforce strategies.
