10 things … about Saad Ehtisham

Atlantic Health CEO Saad Ehtisham has a unique backstory.

For starters, he’s well-traveled. He came to New Jersey after stops in numerous states
around the country, including North Carolina, Florida, Tennessee, Kansas and New
Mexico. This, after going to school in Texas for his undergrad and Michigan for his
graduate work.

Ehtisham also is well versed in all aspects of health care — a career path he stumbled
into as he turned a part-time job as a Phlebotomist into a nursing degree into health
care management.

And those aren’t even the most interesting things about how he is, he how works and
what he believes (see traditional profile here).

Here are 10 things we learned about Ehtisham from a recent conversation.

10. He’s a clinician first, an ICU nurse who never forgot the bedside

Ehtisham didn’t come up in the traditional MBA/consultant route. He started as a
phlebotomist making $4.78 an hour, then chose nursing over medical school, eventually
working in an open-heart ICU before moving into leadership.

He talks about how that shapes how he sees the organization: He understands staffing,
workflow and burnout from the inside. When he says he can just look at a unit and see
what’s going on, it’s rooted in years of literally being on the floor.

9. He broke into leadership early by ignoring the rules

One key inflection point in his career came when he applied for a house supervisor job
that required seven to ten years of experience — and he was in his early 20s. He got
the job anyway.

Ehtisham calls that role his first foray into management and the moment he realized he
could see patterns, anticipate problems and run a unit. It also shows his willingness to
push against formal requirements for any position or initiative.

8. He sees Atlantic’s culture as its defining characteristic

Ehtisham is almost evangelical about culture. He calls what he inherited at Atlantic
Health a world-class culture built over a decade and a half that has landed the system
on Fortune’s 100 Best Places to Work lists in all industries.

He insists team-member experience is the prerequisite to world-class patient
experience and refers to culture as his secret sauce. What’s interesting is that he’s
explicit: This was built before him — his job is to protect and elevate it, not pretend that
he created it.

7. He’s fiercely competitive — but only in ways that lift everyone up

Ehtisham is clear-eyed about competition, but he refuses to define it the usual way.
When he talks about other major New Jersey systems, he doesn’t posture about
beating them on size or assets — instead, he keeps coming back to a “New Jersey-first”
mindset. In his view, the real win is when the entire state’s healthcare rises: better
outcomes, stronger reputation, and a clearer reason for employers and families to plant
roots here.

His formula is simple: A) Compete hard on quality, safety and experience; B)
Collaborate on anything that makes New Jersey healthier and more attractive and C)
Treat other systems less like enemies and more like peers who keep you sharp.

6. He’s growth-minded, but allergic to “growth for growth’s sake”

Ehtisham flatly says, “Growth for the sake of growth is not my mantra. I don’t grow that way.”

Instead, he talks about shifting from inpatient to ambulatory, building health centers
closer to where people live, and measuring reality the Jersey way — in windshield time
rather than miles.

5. He’s deeply skeptical of “headline tech”

Ehtisham is very clear about what he doesn’t want: Tech projects adopted just because
they sound good. He warns about “a solution that’s seeking a problem” and how that
creates chaos, distraction and drift from an organization’s core purpose. (link to sider
here)

His line is that he first identifies the problem, then looks for the technology that actually
solves it. If it doesn’t make clinicians’ lives easier or improve care, the “nice headline”
isn’t enough.

4. He thinks most systems — including his — are “data rich but information poor”

One of Ehtisham’s sharpest critiques of the sector is this: “Most health care systems,
contrary to what they think they are, are actually data rich but information poor.”

That line underpins his push for a new data architecture on top of Epic that turns raw
data into actionable insight. For Saad, the win is clinicians getting the right information at the right time and place so they can move faster for patients — not just building
dashboards for their own sake.

3. He sees AI as inevitable — but only if it actually helps

Ehtisham’s take on AI is both practical and provocative. He calls it “multivariate
regression analysis” that’s been around since the 1960s. And while he says it will never
replace clinicians’ cognitive ability, he insists clinicians who refuse to use AI will be left
behind.

He’s focused on uses like ambient listening to reduce documentation burdens and
agentic AI to make scheduling and access less painful. And he’s pushing further, into
using AI to predict operational needs, not just clinical risk, with the goal of better
outcomes, lower cost and less friction for both patients and staff.

2. He loves football and food — and uses both to think about strategy

Ehtisham’s eyes light up when he talks about sports, especially football. He still winces
recalling the Baylor–Michigan State Cotton Bowl collapse, where his alma mater
(Baylor) blew a 21‑point halftime lead. For him, that game isn’t just a painful memory —
it’s a leadership parable. He uses it as a metaphor for what happens when
organizations take the foot off the pedal, shift into a defensive mindset and focus on
“just trying to maintain” instead of pushing forward with intention.

As for food, he said he hasn’t had a bad meal yet in the state. He raves about the sheer
variety — especially from local diners and mom-and-pop shops – and says their road to
success should be studied. If you want to get a meeting with Ehtisham, you be’d wise to
start with a meal.

1. He’s the “salmon” swimming upstream — and he’s all-in on New Jersey

Ehtisham jokes that his career path runs opposite of the usual life arc: Most people go
from Jersey to Florida. He went from Florida to Charlotte to New Jersey. He calls
himself “the salmon that’s going backwards” — and sees that as a sign he’s not afraid to
do the unconventional thing.

Ehtisham talks about deliberately staying on weekends before his family arrived,
sending a message that he was establishing himself here. “This is going to be home,”
he said.