Sarah Matlin, Senior Vice President and Chief Strategy Officer at Memorial Health

In this episode of the Becker's Healthcare Podcast, Kelly Gooch interviews Sarah Matlin, Senior Vice President and Chief Strategy Officer at Memorial Health, about her transition from management consulting and private advisory work into a leadership role within a regional health system. Matlin shares her journey into healthcare, sparked by the passage of the Affordable Care Act, and her decision to join Memorial Health due to its dynamic new leadership under CEO Mandy Eaton, whose HR background she finds uniquely valuable in driving organizational transformation. She emphasizes the importance of human-centered strategy, alignment across complex stakeholder ecosystems—including Memorial Health, Springfield Clinic, and Southern Illinois University—and the massive digital transformation underway to unify seven disparate electronic medical records onto a single Epic platform by 2027. Matlin highlights that the foundation of Memorial’s strategy is both patient-centeredness and workforce empowerment, with a focus on simplifying care coordination and creating tools that make the right clinical decisions easy for providers. Looking ahead, she stresses that successful health systems will be those that practice disciplined resource allocation, are willing to say no to non-core initiatives, and maintain long-term vision amid financial uncertainty, particularly around Medicaid funding changes.