Michael Charlton, President & CEO, AtlantiCare

As a leading healthcare organization in southeastern New Jersey, AtlantiCare is focused on delivering high-quality care while building the foundation for long-term community health. In a recent conversation with Invest:, Michael Charlton, president and CEO of AtlantiCare, discussed the impact of Vision 2030, their aggressive, six-year transformation strategy, the organization’s use of transformative technologies like Oracle, and its commitment to improving outcomes by meeting the full spectrum of patient and community needs.

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What sets AtlantiCare Health System from its competitors?

AtlantiCare is a 125-year-old institution with approximately 6,500 caregivers in its system. We are the regional leader in healthcare in southeastern New Jersey. We have two hospital campuses, offer a level two trauma center, a free-standing emergency department, four health parks, a comprehensive Cancer Care Institute, over 110 ambulatory sites with a full complement of specialty and subspecialty services, and so much more to support our region.

Our competitive strength comes from both the expert medical care teams and the strategic partnerships we’ve built to raise the standard of care in our region. That includes our clinical affiliation with Cleveland Clinic Cancer Institute and our neurosciences partnership with Global Neurosciences Institute, a world-class leader in a wide range of neurological and neurosurgical conditions.

Our understanding of this region is personal. We live here and are continuously improving to serve this community for generations to come.

How would you describe the current state of the healthcare sector in the region?

Healthcare in southeastern New Jersey is especially complicated because of the socioeconomic challenges facing many of our communities. The traditional healthcare model was designed to manage care inside the four walls of a hospital. That is no longer enough, nor is it acceptable, because the real drivers of health are taking shape outside those walls, in the neighborhoods, schools, and places people live.

Vision 2030 is AtlantiCare’s six-year strategic plan to meet that reality head-on. It’s designed to redefine how care is delivered by addressing the full spectrum of what shapes health: reducing food insecurity, supporting unsheltered individuals, investing in affordable housing, expanding education and workforce pathways, and using technology to close care gaps before they become crises.

What will be the long-term impact of the Vision 2030 initiative?

The organization did a great job anticipating what the future of the region will look like, not just in terms of healthcare but across the broader needs of the community. We asked what southeastern New Jersey would need to thrive, looking beyond the clinical setting. That’s how Vision 2030 was developed.

Vision 2030 is supported by four pillars: Accelerating Transformation, Serving Community, Workforce Excellence, and Growing Market Share. But the driving force behind this vision is AtlantiCare taking full ownership of its position as an anchor institution in the region and recognizing the opportunity we have to lead meaningful change.

We are already seeing the positive impact of our partnership with Oracle. As their first-named innovation partner, we are redefining how care is delivered, coordinated, and supported across the organization. Through AI-driven clinical tools and integrated platforms, we are reducing the administrative burden on caregivers, streamlining operations, and giving our providers more time at the bedside. This work is already reshaping how our teams function every day.

How is AtlantiCare helping meet the local challenges of the community it serves?

Healthcare accounts for about 25% of a person’s overall health status. The other aspects driving health for people are socioeconomic and educational components. AtlantiCare is focused on the social determinants of health in our community, taking into consideration factors such as housing, food deserts, economic stability, and safety and cleanliness, to name a few.

For many years, the community has been a hospitality-focused economy with the casino industry. As that evolves, we see healthcare and healthcare education as the foundation for the region’s future, creating lasting benefits for community well-being for generations to come.

What, if any, changes in regulations are impacting the healthcare sector at large?

People often come to us at their most vulnerable. Regardless of what happens in the regulatory environment, we have a responsibility to deliver care that is consistent, compassionate, and effective. That responsibility doesn’t change with policy.

We spend a lot of time and resources on required regulations that do not necessarily drive patient health or outcomes. The current administration has said that it is working to reduce regulations, particularly in the healthcare space, which will bring significant relief to healthcare organizations nationwide.

Healthcare providers are not price makers; we are price takers. Most of the pricing that we face is dictated to us, which comes with many challenges. The bottom line is, regardless of regulatory changes and turbulence, we still have to deliver the best care every single day.

How is AtlantiCare leveraging current and emerging technologies?

We approach technology from a patient’s point of view. We focus on understanding the patients’ expectations around quality, safety, and the level of care we are delivering, and how we are showing up to support their needs. Once we understand the experience that our patients are looking for, then we work backwards to determine which technologies will help us deliver care in the way patients need and deserve.

Our partnership with Oracle is central to how we are transforming care at AtlantiCare. Together, we are building a unified platform that reduces administrative burden, unlocks more real-time data, and gives providers more time at the bedside. Over the next 27 months, we will complete the infrastructure needed to support this work across our organization. At the end of that period, our expectation is that we will be one of the leading healthcare systems in the world leveraging this type of technology.

Our goal is to humanize care, and Oracle is helping us get there. This transformation will ultimately reach every team member and change how we operate, collaborate, and care, all with the patient at the center.

What are the top priorities in the coming years?

We are focused on delivering the highest level of clinical excellence directly to the communities we serve every day. That is why we exist. Vision 2030 is designed to transform healthcare at its foundation, and that means we must stop partially solving problems and start solving them completely.

And that begins with addressing the social determinants of health that shape long-term outcomes, including food access, housing, education, and career opportunities. These are areas where healthcare organizations traditionally have not been involved, but they are critical to AtlantiCare’s mission and impact in the region. It also means investing in technology that frees our caregivers to spend more time with patients by relieving the administrative burdens on providers and streamlining operations for our team members.

We are extending that same level of purpose and intent to our clinical partnerships and affiliations. Our affiliation with Cleveland Clinic Cancer Institute and the partnership with Global Neurosciences Institute delivers world-class care to our region in oncology and neurosciences.

At the end of the day, the best care is local care because when patients can stay connected to their families, their support systems, and their community, outcomes improve, and that is what we are here to deliver.