Spotlight On: Abel Biri, CEO, AdventHealth Orlando

Key points:

• • AdventHealth Orlando is shifting toward value-based care while integrating AI to enhance quality and efficiency.
• • Major expansions and national rankings reinforce its role as a regional hub for complex care.
• • Workforce investment and smart technology adoption are central to long-term sustainability.

March 2026 — AdventHealth Orlando is both a regional safety net and a national destination for complex care. In his first year as CEO, Abel Biri has focused on strengthening that dual role by expanding advanced services, investing in technology, and growing access points across Central Florida. “My focus for this campus is to make Orlando the incubator for what is new and what is next,” said Biri in an interview with Invest:.

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How would you characterize the state of the healthcare industry, and how are you seeing those trends play out at AdventHealth Orlando?

Healthcare is in the middle of a fundamental shift from volume to value. Payers and employers view healthcare as one of their largest and fastest-growing expenses, so they are increasingly focused on ensuring they get real value for the lives they cover. For providers, that means building networks that offer the right access points and deliver high-quality care in the most efficient and cost-conscious way possible. That march toward value rather than volume is very much alive, and as an organization we are focused on doing our part to advance it.

At the same time, artificial intelligence is moving into many aspects of care. We are seeing AI-supported documentation that can generate visit notes in real time, and AI is increasingly embedded in diagnostic technologies that help us quickly analyze images and data in ways the human eye cannot. We view AI, on balance, as something that enhances our ability to provide quality care. There is a saying that resonates with me: AI is unlikely to replace a physician, but a physician who uses AI will replace a physician who doesn’t.

What recent achievements or milestones stand out as especially meaningful for AdventHealth Orlando?

From a high-level standpoint, our recognition by U.S. News & World Report as the No. 1 hospital in the state of Florida and one of the Top 20 hospitals in the country is a significant milestone. Breaking into the national Top 20 is a first in our organization’s history, and for many years we have also been ranked the No. 1 hospital in the Orlando metro area.

What matters most to me is what sits behind those rankings: We have broadened our depth, quality, access, and reputation in a way that now resonates locally, regionally and nationally. Being No. 1 in the state is a gift we get to share with our community because it reflects how hard our teams work to bring high-quality, sophisticated care close to home.

We have also made important advances in how and where we deliver care. We were designated as an ECMO CPR, or ECPR, resuscitation center, which allows us to provide highly specialized cardiac resuscitation earlier in a patient’s journey. Through collaboration with first responders and EMS partners, we can now cannulate patients at the emergency department level instead of waiting until they are in the operating room, and we have already seen lives saved as a result. That same mindset shows up in our growing transplant program and in highly specialized services that historically would have required patients to leave the community.

We are also expanding our physical footprint to keep pace with population growth. Lake County is one of the fastest-growing counties in Florida, and we are responding by opening AdventHealth Minneola and creating an additional access point in the Lake Nona area. On our main campus, we announced a  new tower that is on schedule to open in 2030. This expansion ensures families can access high-quality, whole-person care close to home, across a comprehensive range of specialties.  

Across Central Florida, our broader strategy is to position Orlando as the hub for the most complex 5% to 10% of cases while ensuring our other hospitals can handle the 90% to 95% of care that is more routine. That allows us to aggregate expensive resources and scarce expertise in one place, while surrounding communities can feel confident that world-class capabilities are only a short drive away.

How are you thinking about expanding services and improving access while managing rising costs and ongoing workforce pressures?

One of the enduring challenges in healthcare is that as products and services become more sophisticated, costs tend to rise rather than fall. On the acute-care side, one lever is length of stay. For example, Medicare’s diagnostic-related group methodology might assume a two-day stay for a routine admission; if that patient stays three days because care is not well coordinated, there is a cost to the payer and, ultimately, to the employer and community. Older technologies can also extend length of stay and slow recovery, adding to both direct medical costs and lost productivity.

We are very focused on care coordination so that patients receive the right care at the right time and are able to return home as soon as it is safe to do so. As much care as possible should be delivered in lower-cost outpatient settings, with hospitalization reserved for the situations that truly require it.

Technology can be a powerful ally in that effort. In a prior role, for example, we launched a robotic cardiac surgery program that repairs valves using small incisions rather than a full sternotomy. Clinically, the procedure still addresses the cardiac issue, but the impact on recovery is dramatic. Instead of a six-plus-day stay, patients can typically go home in two to three days, and their overall recovery may be measured in a couple of weeks instead of six to eight. That means far less time away from work and far less financial and emotional strain for families.

The interesting thing is that the procedure itself may not be cheaper on a line-item basis. Where we create value is in reducing the total cost of the episode of care and its ripple effects. If you think of the overall economic impact of an illness as $100, and through better coordination and technology we can reduce that to $80, then we have meaningfully contributed to bending the cost curve even if the individual intervention still costs $10. That is the mindset we are bringing to new services and innovations as we expand access.

Looking ahead three to five years, what is your outlook for the sector and what are your priorities for AdventHealth Orlando?

At the facility level, two priorities stand out for me: workforce and technology. On the workforce side, we are committed to being a strong employer and an attractive place to build a career. Recent “best place to work” recognitions reflect deliberate investments we have made in our team. We have a set of team member promises that we introduced around the time of the pandemic, and those commitments continue to guide how we support, develop and engage our people.

On the technology side, we need to think differently about how we embed AI into our work and even into how we design roles. Before we create a new position, we should be asking what portion of that role could be automated or augmented by AI so that we are hiring people to do the uniquely human parts of the job. The goal is not to replace people after the fact, but to thoughtfully design jobs that marry human expertise with these new capabilities.

There is understandable anxiety that AI will eliminate jobs, and some roles will certainly change. But I also see enormous potential for AI to create entirely new categories of work. Take imaging as an example. We have a vast archive of CT scans and other studies that have been read manually by radiologists. As AI becomes more sophisticated, we could direct it to review lung CTs and flag any nodules that the human eye might have missed, then reach out to those patients for follow-up. That could generate new clinical activity and support roles that simply would not exist otherwise.

For AdventHealth Orlando, the opportunity over the next three to five years is to harness those dynamics in a way that keeps patients at the center. We will continue investing in our people, in advanced facilities and in the technologies that help us deliver safer, more efficient and more personalized care. My focus for this campus is to make Orlando the incubator for what is new and what is next.

Want more? Read the Invest: Greater Orlando report.