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CEO | International Speaker | Advocate for Human-Centered Innovation in Healthcare &…
Articles by April
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Make your experiences work for you.
Make your experiences work for you.
Most people who ask me to talk about growth are interested in how my role helped fuel hypergrowth in a multi-billion…
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Platform Disruption in the Time of COVID-19
Platform Disruption in the Time of COVID-19
Last week, I had the privilege of attending the SIA Healthcare Staffing Summit and participated as a panelist in the…
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April Hansen shared thisToday is officially “Dolly Day” (a little 9-2-5 to celebrate the one and only 🙌🙌) and it has me thinking back to a special night last week 💕. Alison Curfman, MD, MBA and I had the unique experience of being part of the very first event at the SongTeller Hotel during its soft opening. The evening honored amazing women healthcare leaders, and an all-female gathering felt like exactly the right way to open the hotel’s event space 👏 Women who spend their days caring for others, leading through change, and making a difference in healthcare all together, celebrating one another in a space inspired by Dolly. It was joyful, meaningful, and one I won’t forget. A special memory to carry into Dolly Day. 💛
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April Hansen shared thisThe physician enterprise of the future will not be built by defending the systems of the past. At the Hallmark Workforce Innovation Summit, we dug into physician supply, patient demand and the economic realities reshaping healthcare, with a particular focus on the friction embedded in the locum tenens process. My biggest takeaway is that healthcare doesn’t have only a physician shortage. We have an operating-model problem. Too much capacity is lost to disconnected systems, repetitive processes, slow credentialing, misaligned incentives and workforce decisions made in silos. The silver lining, though, is much of that friction is human-made, which means it can be redesigned 🙌 As leaders in this industry, our job is not simply to help organizations navigate the existing system. We should be the ones challenging its assumptions, removing its constraints and designing what comes next 💡 The future physician enterprise will treat permanent recruitment, internal resources, technology and flexible talent as one connected capacity system, not separate solutions activated only when something breaks. The status quo will not solve the access challenge. We have to be willing to build beyond it. Thank you to Hallmark: Healthcare's Workforce Operating System and to Bharat Sundaram and team for bringing together leaders prepared to have that conversation!April Hansen shared thisThis afternoon's sessions at the Hallmark Workforce Innovation Summit brought this morning's themes into sharper focus. Two general sessions tackled the supply side head-on: one on provider workforce strategy as patient demand climbs and the projected provider shortage approaches 140,000 by 2036, and another making the case that access, not individual productivity, is the real constraint on growth. The breakouts brought it down to execution. On the Flexible Workforce track, health system leaders discussed what it takes to build workforce flexibility at scale, including float pool design and the different paths organizations take toward centralized workforce management. On the Physician Enterprise side, the discussion turned to compensation strategy: how to design, implement, and manage models that support team-based care, and how to benchmark compensation and wRVUs appropriately as market data becomes more variable and challenging. Across every session, one question kept surfacing: what does it take to manage the workforce as a single, connected system rather than a series of disconnected decisions? Let us know what you think in the comments. David Kruse, Amy Strauss, Kyllan Cody, FACHE, Gregory Morgan, Alicia Boggs, Alissa Zimmerman, Nicole Roberson, MHA, CCWP, Jie Li, Tim Cagney, Tyler French, Jon S., Kandis Porter, MSPM, MBA, PMI-PMOCP, PMP, Megan Seiple, April Hansen, James Tekippe, John Buffa Photo credit: Kim Leeson
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April Hansen shared thisIt saddens to announce that H.I.G. Capital has decided it would like its team member back 😆 This week marks James Parkerson’s last week with Barton Associates and the end of a year in which he became far more than our H.I.G. Chief of Staff. He was my right hand, my truth-teller, my steady hand in a genuinely dynamic year, and often the person quietly making sure the wings stayed on while we were building the plane 🤣 James filled gaps across multiple finance roles, helped launch an entirely new incentive compensation plan, helped devise a more robust financial reporting and budgeting process, and led what I can only describe as the best “margin autopsy” I have ever seen. He could move seamlessly from a board-level strategic question to the operational weeds, and somehow make both better 🙌 For a first-time PE-backed CEO, this program was an incredible gift. I gained an insider who could help me better understand how H.I.G. thinks, what great looks like, and how to translate between the investor lens and the operating reality. And James gained something too: a front-row seat to how a company actually operates including messy decisions, imperfect information, competing priorities, and all the people-y things one could want to experience first-hand 😅 We will consider the operating scar tissue our gift back to H.I.G. 😏 James, you were my rock during one of the most consequential years of my career. Barton is better because of you, and I am better because of you. I am incredibly proud to see you return to H.I.G. with a very well-earned promotion to Vice President, even if I remain deeply annoyed that they are taking you back 😉 Congratulations, James. Go crush it. And remember - Katie Kuhl will forever support her Bills far more than your Chiefs ;)
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April Hansen posted thisI officially completed my MIT AI program. 🎓🤖 And I’m pretty proud of this one 🤓🤓 When I started this program, I wasn’t trying to become a data scientist or learn how to build models (or even pretend to do those things lol). I wanted to become a better CEO for what I believe will be one of the most significant transformations of work in our lifetime. My goal was simple…If I’m going to ask an organization to embrace AI, rethink how work gets done, and lead through that much change, I need to understand it myself 🧐 What I’ve learned over the past several months has only strengthened something I believed going in: AI strategy isn’t really about AI. It’s about business strategy. Data. Process. Leadership. Governance. Trust. And, maybe most importantly, people 🙌 The organizations that win won’t be the ones that simply deploy the most AI. They’ll be the ones that figure out how to combine the speed, intelligence, and scale of AI with the judgment, creativity, empathy, and accountability of humans. That idea has already changed the way I lead, the questions I ask, and the way we’re thinking about the future of work. And while I may have officially finished the program, I have a feeling the education is just getting started. AI is moving way too fast for any of us to declare ourselves “done” learning. Grateful for the experience, proud to have completed it, and incredibly energized about what comes next. (And also happy to have my nights and weekends back for at least a little bit;) MIT …. check. ✅ Now back to building. 🚀
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April Hansen posted thisRecently, one of our recruiters found an outstanding physician for an urgent client need in less than 24 hours. Now, you’d think the next step would be scheduling an interview, right? Instead, we were asked to spend days packaging the submission 🤔 Multiple evaluations, license documentation that didn’t apply to the specific scenario, altering the CV to remove logos and then using PDF software to merge disparate sheets with the CV 🫣 Multiple administrative requirements before the hiring manager could even decide if they wanted to speak with the physician 😫 It made me stop and ask a simple question. When did we start optimizing healthcare hiring for paperwork instead of patients? Finding exceptional clinicians is hard. Getting them interested is hard. Matching them to the right organization is hard. Those are the problems worth solving. Every additional layer of administrative friction slows down hiring, increases the chance of losing great candidates, frustrates recruiters, and most importantly, delays patient care. The future of healthcare staffing isn’t about processing more paperwork faster. It’s about creating more certainty. Can this position realistically be filled? What’s the right market rate? How deep is the available talent pool? How quickly can we get qualified clinicians in front of decision-makers? How do we simplify the experience for everyone involved? Curious what others are seeing? Where do you see the biggest sources of unnecessary friction in healthcare hiring today? I’d love to hear examples from providers, clinicians, recruiters, and healthcare leaders alike. We are the ones who can change the system!
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April Hansen shared thisA few years ago, when I started leaning into building my speaking brand, I met Bharat Gothwal 🤩🤩 What stood out immediately wasn’t just the quality of the work. It was how different his approach was. There are a lot of firms that can make things look good. Far fewer that think about how things actually work 🤓 Fast forward to today, and bringing Bharat and the SalientScapes Viscrafters team into Barton Associates across branding, design, and development has been one of those decisions that quietly compounds 🚀 They don’t operate like an external vendor. They show up like owners. They push on usability, not just aesthetics. They think in systems, not one-off deliverables. They help us move faster without breaking things that matter. In a world where brand, digital experience, and execution are increasingly intertwined, having a partner that understands all three is a real advantage 💪 Grateful for the partnership and excited about what we’re continuing to build together!
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April Hansen shared this#Juneteenth is a celebration of freedom, but it’s also a reminder that progress is measured not by what exists on paper, but by what people can actually access. As I reflected on the significance of this day, I found myself thinking about healthcare. Across the country, millions of patients still face barriers to care because of provider shortages, particularly in rural communities, safety-net clinics, and underserved populations. The gap between access promised and access delivered remains very real. Healthcare access is more than an operational challenge. It’s a health equity issue. And while provider shortages won’t be solved overnight, every effort to connect patients with care helps move us closer to the system we aspire to build. This is the work and mission of every team member at Barton Associates and Wellhart. Wishing everyone a meaningful Juneteenth as we reflect on both how far we’ve come and the work that remains ahead. https://lnkd.in/eGdiH8sJJuneteenth, Healthcare Access, and Why Provider Shortages Are a Health Equity IssueJuneteenth, Healthcare Access, and Why Provider Shortages Are a Health Equity Issue
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April Hansen shared thisYesterday’s CEO development project: Learning what an Obsidian vault is 🫣 Today’s CEO development moment: Waking up to my first AI-generated executive morning briefing and inbox digest from Claude CoWork 🤩 I have to say, it was wildly satisfying 🤠 Over the last few days since I received my enterprise license (my IT team may regret this lol!), I’ve been setting up my AI operating system piece by piece: Obsidian vaults. CLAUDE.md files. Global instructions. Voice principles. Brand principles. Scheduled daily tasks. It may sound very “futuristic.” But it also involved me asking extremely basic questions like, “Where do I click to make a new vault?” (Thanks to ChatGPT for the assist here lol!) Spoiler alert!! *Both things can be true* That is probably my favorite part of this whole AI-first CEO journey. The work can be advanced and humble at the same time (curiosity anyone?!?) Yes, I am thinking deeply about agentic workflows, executive productivity, AI-enabled operating cadence, and how leaders create leverage in a faster-moving world. Also yes, I am still learning the difference between a folder, a vault, and a markdown file 😂 But this morning gave me a glimpse of where this is going. AI is not just a tool sitting off to the side of the work. It can become part of the rhythm of leadership: what I see, what I prioritize, what I respond to, what I delegate, and what I learn from. That is the shift I am most excited about. The future is not just “use AI.” The future is: design the way you work around it. #Cowork #Curiosity #Leadership
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April Hansen shared thisFirst day working out of our West Palm Beach office this week… and somehow it feels like a bigger life moment than just a change of scenery. ☀️😎 For the first time in over 10 years, I’m living and working in the same place for more than a quick stopover. No hotel room. No late-night airport runs. No unpacking for 48 hours just to repack again. This month (only for a month, but I’ll take it!), I actually get to “come home” after work…to my family….(don’t get me wrong, I love my Marriott family and Delta Sky Club family too - but this just hits different 😂). Turns out the commute from the office to your kiddo laughing in the pool is undefeated. ❤️ Also, shoutout to the Barton West Palm office for making me feel welcomed:)🌴😂
April Hansen commented on a post
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Congratulations, Julie! Thank you SO much for everything you have contributed to marketing in the last year (I know we already feel your loss lol!😆). Cheers to watching you soar in this next adventure!
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April Hansen liked thisApril Hansen liked thisI’m excited to share that I’m Leveling Up my career with Barton Associates as a Recruiting Assistant! A huge thank you to @BartonCareers for providing an amazing experience throughout my onboarding journey. I can’t wait to make an impact with our providers within the healthcare industry! (Barton Associates | Wellhart )
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April Hansen liked thisApril Hansen liked thisIntroducing SIA’s inaugural Healthcare Staffing 100. SIA is proud to recognize 100 of the most influential executives advancing healthcare staffing and workforce solutions. The Healthcare Staffing 100 will celebrate senior and executive leaders making an impact across nurse staffing, physician staffing, allied healthcare, international healthcare mobility staffing and healthcare MSPs. These industry leaders will be announced and recognized at Healthcare Staffing Summit, November 9–11 in Arlington, TX. Join the healthcare staffing community as we celebrate the inaugural Healthcare Staffing 100 and explore the trends, challenges and opportunities shaping the industry. 🏆 Healthcare Staffing 100. 100 leaders advancing a stronger, healthier tomorrow. Register now for Healthcare Staffing Summit >> https://lnkd.in/e6F6GAyY #HCStaffSummit #HealthcareStaffing #HealthcareStaffingSummit #Staffing #WorkforceSolutions
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April Hansen liked thisApril Hansen liked thisHealthEquity Summit 2026 was absolutely incredible. I’ve been to countless summits over the years, none like this. I’m grateful to our amazing clients, partners, and teammates who took time away from their families to connect, learn, and tackle healthcare affordability together. These past few days at the spectacular Hotel del Coronado have been special. The evenings have been unforgettable. Thank you to everyone who made #HQYSummit remarkable. #HealthEquity #CoronadoIsland
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April Hansen liked thisApril Hansen liked thisThis week, one-third of Locumsmart spent a couple days together for C3 – Company, Culture & Connection! So many laughs, meaningful conversations, impromptu brainstorming sessions, opportunities to give back to the community, and most importantly, time spent strengthening relationships beyond our computer screens. Being fully remote makes moments like these even more valuable. There’s nothing quite like connecting in person, sharing ideas, celebrating our people, and continuing to build the culture that makes our company so special. Grateful to be part of a company that truly invests in its people and recognizes that great relationships are at the heart of great teams!
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April Hansen liked thisApril Hansen liked thisA fractional COO is not a consultant. Period. They are producers, operators and doers. The difference is execution and authority. What they decide without you, what they decide with you, and what stays yours alone. Most founders never get that conversation before they hire. Here's what I ask of every founder I work with:I own how the plan gets executed. You own what the plan is. What the COO decides alone: the meeting cadence, how work gets sequenced, process and system design, and day-to-day resource calls inside the agreed plan. And, the thing that is often missed is the follow-up. What we decide together: leadership hires and exits, budget shifts, comp changes, and any change to the plan itself. You get a recommendation, not a surprise. What stays with you: the vision, fundraising, the board, and the final say on direction. Be honest. How many decisions landed on your desk this week that someone else should have owned? That's the real cost of limping along without a COO. Not the missed goals. The fact that you find out in month three, when it shows up in the numbers, instead of week three, when it's still cheap to fix. A fractional COO doesn't hand you a strategy deck and leave. They stay. They run the weekly meeting. They follow up when something slips. The value isn't any single meeting. It's that the meetings and the follow-up reliably happen. I wrote a full breakdown of the role: the five core responsibilities, what a typical week looks like, how the job changes by company stage, and where it overlaps with your CFO, CMO, and CHRO. For the full article: https://lnkd.in/eaT-3cDS Alex Milshteyn Maartje van Krieken Bryan Baker Michael Kerris Kit Lisle Brea Page Andrew Bielat Michele Friedman Ian Bongaardt Sougata Dasgupta Rachel J. Christopher DiCenso Alisa Reznik Derek Borror, MBA Dan Obermeier
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April Hansen liked thisApril Hansen liked this🍂 First day of fall + apparently I have a mascot now. I jumped on the “give my personality a mascot” trend this week, and ChatGPT decided I needed a red panda named Roxy. Her description? Cute. Capable. Questioning the process. Which… fair. 😂 But it also feels oddly appropriate for the first day of fall, because this time of year always makes me a little reflective. We tend to notice the big changes like new roles, major projects, big milestones. But most growth doesn’t happen that way. It happens somewhere in the middle of the chaos. It’s the new responsibility you weren’t expecting. The project that forces you to learn something completely new. The conversation that changes how you think. The moment you realize something that would have overwhelmed you a year ago is just another Tuesday now. And sometimes it takes a change of season to actually stop long enough to notice how much you’ve changed, too. There’s still plenty of 2026 left, and plenty I want to accomplish before we close it out. But today feels like a good day to appreciate the growth that’s already happened along the way. So here’s to fall, reflection, and apparently doing it all with a red panda sidekick who supports strategy, snacks, and shenanigans. 🍁😂
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April Hansen liked thisApril Hansen liked this🎵 “I’ve Been Everywhere, Man” 🎵 As my travel and speaking season comes to a close, I’m reflecting on the past several months with deep gratitude. I’ve had the honor of taking my daughter, still in utero 🤰 , across the country with me: Chicago for American Organization for Nursing Leadership (AONL), Tennessee for the Tennessee Hospital Association conference, Pennsylvania for the The Hospital and Healthsystem Association of Pennsylvania conference, Williamsburg for Qualivis Roundtable, Connecticut for the The Connecticut Association of Healthcare Executives (CTAHE), San Diego for Aya Healthcare Ideas Conference, and finally Portland, Oregon, to speak about Workforce AI at the Northwest Organization of Nurse Leaders (NWONL) Fall Conference. Now, at 32 weeks and counting, I’m preparing for a completely new adventure. Ending this season in Portland was especially meaningful. Portland is where my career, and my dream of transforming nurse scheduling and staffing with AI, began nearly 20 years ago. I was thrilled to reconnect with so many colleagues and professional friends Anne Chan Joe Seeberger Cindi M. Warburton, and to participate in NWONL, a professional organization that provided me with tremendous growth and opportunity when I was a member and served on the board from 2012 to 2019. Thank you, Portland, for a beautiful homecoming after 20 years of learning, advocating, and pushing to change the practice of nurse staffing. I can’t wait to see what the next 20 years bring. 🎶 #NurseLeadership #HealthcareInnovation #WorkforceAI #NurseStaffing #AyaHealthcare
Experience & Education
Honors & Awards
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Global Power 150 Women in Staffing
Staffing Industry Analysts
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Global Power 150 - Women in Staffing
Staffing Industry Analyst
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40 under 40
Staffing Industry Analyst
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Wisconsin Nurse Leader of the Year
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Becker’s List of Rising Healthcare Stars
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VIP in Innovation Award
AMN Healthcare
Organizations
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Wisconsin Organization of Nurse Executives
Board of Directors
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CastleBranch and TekMountain
Clinical Director and Innovation Mentor
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Wisconsin Nurses Association
Public Policy Committee Member
- Present
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