Aparna Pujar: Every hospital leader claims AI is transforming care. But how do you actually tell what’s working from what’s just hype? Joe Avelino is the CEO of College Medical Center in Long Beach, California. It’s a behavioral health and acute care hospital that has intensive outpatient psychiatric care programs, including a psychiatric care for boomers and the elderly program. Joe is a CEO who’s been a nurse, a soldier, and a hospital executive, and he’s passionate about leadership.
Today we’re going to talk about his approach to evaluating AI and implementing tools, so you can adopt with confidence instead of guesswork and without losing sight of the resident. This is AI-Powered Caregiving by Zemplee, the podcast exploring how technology is reshaping how we care for older adults. I’m Aparna Pujar, the founder and CEO of Zemplee, and without further ado — welcome, Joe. Excited to have you here on our podcast.
Before we start, I would like to have you take a few minutes and tell us about yourself.
Joe Avelino: Thank you for that introduction, Aparna. My name is Joe Avelino. I’m the CEO of College Medical Center. Been here — wow — since its inception, October 9, 2013. Excited to have this interview and to talk about how we’ve incorporated, initiated, and come into execution with regard to our AI implementation here at College Medical Center. Look forward to the discussion, Aparna.
Aparna Pujar: Great, I’m excited to learn more about what you all are doing. So College Medical Center runs a dedicated geriatric psychiatric program — psychiatric care for the boomers and elderly. Before we get to AI, what does the current care gap look like for older adults with behavioral health needs? And what are you seeing out there in the marketplace?
Joe Avelino: Well, Aparna, resources are there, but there’s the challenge of a shortage of beds, and sometimes sitters to watch over older adults. There’s also the difficulty of managing dual diagnosis med-psych elderly patients with comorbidities and complexities. Not many facilities, like College Medical Center, are able to care for the highly acute psychiatric patients with additional comorbidities needing, for example, dialysis, wound care, diabetic care, a neurology consult, an orthopedic consult, just to name a few.
Aparna Pujar: Yeah, that is indeed the reality of caring for older adults. And as we know, every day ten thousand people are turning sixty-five and over. This problem is not only getting complicated, it has always been complex. So the combination of complex plus complicated throws a completely new set of dimensions into how you care for the elderly.
You’ve seen care delivery from different seats through your career. When you hear AI in caregiving, what instantly goes through your mind? What are you thinking about? Is that a good thing? Or do you think, oh my God, no, this is another trouble tech coming at me.
Joe Avelino: Thank you for that question, Aparna. Let me first preface that we are still in an exploratory phase of AI at College Medical Center. Our goal is to begin introducing AI capabilities over the next year, although broader adoption will likely occur in 2027 due to budget priorities. AI will undoubtedly become an increasingly important tool, helping us identify patients at risk, improve access to care, streamline administrative burdens, and support better clinical decision making.
Aparna Pujar: Great, thank you. Those are the areas where we’re seeing a lot of market adoption, especially in healthcare, with respect to AI and the value it is proposing it will deliver. What are you anticipating in terms of deliverable, measurable productivity gains? I know it’s still in the experimental phase, but do you have any early thoughts on your expectations? What is the one thing you want to see happen by using AI or AI-powered technology?
Joe Avelino: I can give you four examples, Aparna. First, Cerner AI. Our EMR is Cerner, and we are evaluating AI capabilities within it, such as AI-assisted clinical note generation to help reduce documentation burden for clinicians. That’s number one.
Number two, utilizing Microsoft Copilot. College is partnering with a company called Softchoice to implement Microsoft Copilot to improve employee productivity, collaboration, and administrative efficiency.
Third, we have what they call an AI-generated plan of correction, where we collaborate with a company in Northern California. One can upload your 2567 — which is the findings and recommendations from the California Department of Public Health, the licensing agency — and get a fully drafted plan of correction. Imagine that, in seconds. No more starting from scratch. With that immediate turnaround, the team will have more time to focus on fixing the recommendations rather than on writing and formatting.
And last but not least, cybersecurity. At College we are actively using AI from a cybersecurity standpoint. Through our security platform, AI continuously watches our network 24-7 for suspicious activity. Instead of only looking for known viruses, it can recognize unusual behavior, helping our IT team identify and stop potential cyber threats earlier. That provides an additional layer of protection to help keep our systems, patient information, and hospital operations secure.
Aparna Pujar: Yeah, I think those are great examples of where AI can make significant impact, especially in giving time back to your team and your staff so they can do the job they’re supposed to do, which is caring for your residents or patients, and delivering the higher level of care needed for — as you mentioned, in your case — the population that has higher comorbidities.
So our next question is about efficiency, and that seems to be the overarching value proposition of AI. But efficiency and dignity can pull in opposite directions. A faster process isn’t always a more humane one. How do you personally evaluate whether a tool is actually improving the resident’s experience versus just improving a KPI or a metric?
Joe Avelino: An example for College Medical Center is scheduling appointments with our detox patients — alcohol, benzodiazepine, or opiate addiction — where we utilize what we call GRACE AI to prioritize availability so patients don’t have to wait in the emergency department, and also to ensure the patient has bed capacity if admitted.
College also utilizes TigerConnect, which is a secure, HIPAA-compliant clinical communication and collaboration platform used by healthcare organizations to enable text messaging, voice and video calls, and automated workflow alerts. Through TigerConnect, our medical staff office is able to distribute the new online physician on-call schedule for our residents. These AI capabilities automate schedule creation, identify coverage gaps faster, and make it easier to fill open shifts for our providers to manage the residents.
Aparna Pujar: Wow, that is an impressive list of tools. I’m sure our audience is going to be very excited to hear about all of them — for the audience out there who are looking for examples of what to start, how to start, and where to start, this is a great list of starter tools in AI. Pretty essential, but also pretty harmless in terms of kicking off and running your own experiments with AI.
So rolling out new AI tools has its own kind of adversity inside an organization, especially when it comes to bringing your team along in terms of adoption and implementation — especially the clinical staff. There’s skepticism, we’ve also heard fear of workflow disruption, fear of replacement. So how do you as a leader lead your team through this? And what about your leadership style has helped you address some of these concerns that your team might have?
Joe Avelino: As a leader, you show the direction, and trust people with the how, and then let performance happen. Why do so many leaders believe they have to carry everything themselves? Leadership becomes exhausting when every decision, every solution, and every outcome depends on one person. People do their best work when they understand where they’re going and why it matters.
Once that direction is clear, they need trust more than instructions. The role of a leader in implementing AI is to create clarity, remove obstacles, and build an environment where people can contribute with confidence.
When people feel trusted, they stop waiting for permission. They take ownership, they grow. And the strongest teams are built through clarity, trust, and shared purpose.
Aparna Pujar: I think you hit all the right points there, especially with respect to building trust and providing clarity to your team. So important in today’s day and age, when we’re getting exposed to so many different aspects of AI and the technology itself.
So let’s take a small deviation here. I recently heard your podcast on Becker’s as well. In your Becker’s Leadership Unscripted interview, you mentioned that you used your military experience to learn about discipline, but healthcare taught you flexibility and collaboration. As AI enters healthcare, how do you see this working for you and your team? And what is something you want to share with other leaders and practitioners out there who are possibly contemplating this, or maybe in the same situation you are?
Joe Avelino: Let us never confuse technology with humanity. Artificial intelligence can analyze data, recognize patterns, but it cannot replace the healing power of a compassionate physician, a reassuring nurse, a dedicated social worker, or a sitter who simply sits quietly with someone during their darkest moment.
Think about this. Our patients may not always remember their diagnosis or the medication we prescribe, but they will remember how we made them feel — whether they were treated with dignity, respect, and compassion. As we embrace innovation, let us ensure that technology enhances the human connection rather than replaces it.
Aparna Pujar: Thank you for that. I think that’s a very helpful piece of advice. Being on this side of the ecosystem, where Zemplee is a technology vendor, we’re consciously striving to ensure that when we work with our customers — people like you — we are paying attention to the humane aspect of the care. And I feel like healthcare is possibly the one industry that is actually going to define what it’s like to blend AI with the humane aspect of everything related to AI.
As AI is disrupting every aspect of our life, how do you still keep that humaneness embedded into everything that we do, not just for ourselves but for our societies? In your career you must have evaluated hundreds of technologies. What are a couple of things that you look for in a technology or a vendor?
Joe Avelino: Number one is the collaboration. Technology can only take you so far, and there’s the humane aspect when you have efficiencies. I was just dealing with an AI company a few hours ago, looking at our process for submitting our claims with the Department of Mental Health — and the possibility of eliminating positions.
And as a leader, because of the AI efficiency process, how do you manage it so that as you improve the technology, you’re probably going to eliminate positions you no longer need, and be able to treat that transition over to AI — and obviously, in some situations you would have to let go of employees — and treat it with a bit of grace, and a bit of dignity and pride in the organization. So I’m looking for a partner that has that human component as well, and is not just thinking about technology efficiency and AI.
Aparna Pujar: If you had one message for aging services leaders who are AI curious but resource constrained, what would that be?
Joe Avelino: I would come at it with, be open-minded. Sometimes, even me, coming from an older generation — it took time for me to come to acceptance. But take time to listen. Take time to listen. What is it Stephen Covey once said? Seek first to understand, then to be understood.
And change is always a challenge. The only thing that’s constant is change. But take that opportunity to be open-minded with AI.
Aparna Pujar: That is a valuable message, isn’t it? We all have to remember that change is constant and always evolving, so an open mind is always a great strategy in all aspects of life, whether it’s work or personal life. And last but not least — if you could wave a magic wand and change one thing about aging in America, what would that be, and why?
Joe Avelino: If I had a magic wand, I would change America’s perception of aging. Aging should not be viewed as the beginning of a decline, but as a stage of life deserving of dignity, purpose, and continued opportunity. As we embrace innovations like AI, we should use them to enhance, not replace, the human connection. AI has an important role to play.
AI can help us identify health risks earlier, coordinate care more effectively, and give clinicians more time to spend with patients. However, we must never allow technology to replace human compassion. The true measure of our healthcare system isn’t how long people live, but how well we help them live — with independence, empathy, and respect.
Aparna Pujar: That is indeed a very valid point. I think what we all want to see is a change in society’s relationship with aging. Right now in the world — in another twenty-five years, one in every five people will be above the age of sixty-five. So I think it’s important that we start looking at that very seriously and understanding how we create a society and an ecosystem where people of all ages thrive and have a great life.
So we’re coming to the end of our podcast session here. As the last part, we often do this fun thing where we ask our guests to recommend something that they’re reading — whether it’s in health or any other area, or about AI and technology — or anything they’re watching that they would want to recommend to our audience.
Joe Avelino: Aparna, I’m more into reading about leadership and personal development. One book I would highly recommend is Simon Sinek’s The Infinite Game. A quick summary of what Sinek indicates: finite games have fixed rules, known players, and a clear endpoint where a winner is declared — for example, football, basketball, or even chess. With an infinite mindset, what Simon Sinek is indicating in The Infinite Game is that your focus is on growth, innovation, and sustaining the game, rather than the mindset of crushing your competition.
Aparna Pujar: I’m a big fan of Simon Sinek, and I love this book. And nowhere is this philosophy of the infinite game more applicable than in healthcare — given the complex nature of the industry, the different kinds of people involved. Having that mindset to even understand what healthcare is all about is fantastic. That paradigm applied to healthcare is such a match. It’s been a guiding force for me as well. So thank you for recommending that.
With that, we come to the end of the programme. Joe, any last thoughts or words of wisdom that you want to share with our audience?
Joe Avelino: Just some closing comments. Technology may help us work smarter, but compassion is what helps us heal. As we embrace artificial intelligence, let’s never lose sight of the human intelligence — our empathy, kindness, and presence — that our residents need most. AI should never replace the human touch. It should simply give us more opportunities to provide it.
In the end, our greatest innovation will never be the technology we adopt. It will always be the humanity we preserve.
Aparna Pujar: That is very well said, and thank you for that. Our audience — and I especially — completely appreciate that word of wisdom that you shared. We hope that everybody listening to the podcast, and who will be listening to this down the line, will keep that as the primary takeaway of this conversation. Thank you, Joe. It was a pleasure having you, and all the best with everything that you do. I wish you all the best with all the technology implementations you’re working on.
And hopefully we’ll come back together in a few months to learn more about what your experience has been and the progress you’ve made. On behalf of me and Zemplee, I wish you all the best, and thank you again.
Joe Avelino: Thank you for the opportunity, Aparna.
