Sarah Ginnetti Helps UConn Health Face a Pivotal Moment

Sarah Ginnetti’s in a challenging position, there’s no way around it. The chief revenue cycle officer and vice president of clinical revenue at UConn Health, Connecticut’s only academic medical center, is facing what any healthcare institution would call a pivotal moment.

The academic medical center is addressing a roughly $62 million budget gap tied to state funding cuts. In the exact same moment, UConn Health is pursuing a growth strategy that includes acquiring assets related to a health system in bankruptcy and forming joint ventures with several independent Connecticut hospitals, expanding its footprint while stabilizing local access to care.

It’s not a pivotal moment. It’s moments. But Ginnetti is confident that getting through this moment will be a major win for all the residents of Connecticut. She’s already made a convincing case for why all of this is going to work out in the groundwork she’s laid since coming to the healthcare provider.

Filling the Gaps and Finding Alignment

Since coming to UConn Health, Ginnetti has led the charge to enhance existing revenue cycle capabilities through optimization of the Epic platform, particularly in areas where automation was possible. 

In similar fashion, she performed a gap analysis to identify where in-house expertise was either lacking or where the business had outgrown the existing resource footprint. She stood up needed vendor augmentation for specialty revenue cycle and AR functions through several new business partner relationships.

As the organization grew, it became clear that the revenue cycle needed to evolve from a partially siloed division to a consolidated leadership model. Through a restructuring plan in 2025, functions like payer contracting and negotiations and revenue integrity were reassigned to Ginnetti’s team.

This unification created one cohesive umbrella responsible for the full continuum from patient access and prior authorizations, coding, charge capture, rate alignment, billing, denials, accounts receivable management and collections. It also gave Ginnetti a wider purview with which to effect change and tackle what have become her biggest challenges to date.

“I don’t think anyone would envy finding out within sixty days of the new fiscal year that the budget is getting cut by $62 million,” Ginnetti says. “It may seem an odd time to acquire another hospital, but it really comes down to committing to who we want to be as a healthcare organization.”

Focusing on What Matters Most

The tension of the moment between deficit mitigation and growth has, in the executive’s view, placed a new premium on discipline across the organization. Leaders have had to double down on how they prioritize initiatives and allocate scarce resources.

And in terms of the planned growth and expansion of her health system, Ginnetti says it’s been crucial to get deliberate about delegation.

“One of the biggest lessons is how critical it is to be crystal clear on who is doing what,” Ginnetti says. “When you’re trying to stand up a ‘tent’ this quickly with an interim management office and internal teams, you can’t afford ambiguity, so I’ve learned to keep asking, task by task, ‘what is the next step and who owns it?’ until there’s no gray area left.”

The leader’s thirty years of experience in healthcare, including thirteen years in her last role at a small community hospital, has turned out to be one of the best preparations for the push and pull of the current moment. Granted, Ginnetti didn’t face down what may seem like a paradoxical one-two challenge in her last role, but she did do a lot.

The work may not have been as complicated, but the smaller scale of the previous organization meant that Ginnetti had to wear multiple hats—and just kept putting on more. She had to learn how all the disparate pieces of a healthcare organization fit together and act as the thread to bring them together in many cases.

Regardless of the role or challenge, there has been a constant for the finance leader.

“I have always been fortunate enough to have a career that includes such strong team members around me,” Ginnetti says. “Whenever I’m faced with a difficult situation, I go into coaching mode and remember that I am surrounded by people who aren’t just great at what they do, they’re great people.”

Ginnetti says she looks for skills in her team that can be leveraged in new and unique ways. How can she use someone’s unique experience today?

Unplugging, Always Learning, and Looking Out for Connecticut

In terms of her leadership, Ginnetti has also learned that burning the candle at both ends isn’t going to benefit anyone in the long run. She’s very intentional about spending time with her family, being outdoors, and engaging in activities that will keep her feeling renewed in tough moments. That includes paddleboarding, hiking, and skiing.

“One of the biggest lessons is how critical it is to be crystal clear on who is doing what.”

Sarah Ginnetti

For others hoping to grow into leadership roles like Ginnetti—and even current leaders in their own right—Ginnetti advises to try and remember that learning should never stop. If you think getting to the C-suite means you suddenly stop learning, you’re not going to be effective.

And despite the challenge of the moment, it should be noted that Ginnetti is very optimistic about the future, and not in a way where you feel like she’s trying to sell herself on the idea.

“Ultimately, this momentary hardship is going to bring healthcare back to being locally managed, and I think that is a positive thing for the residents of the state of Connecticut,” Ginnetti says. “I feel like we’re on the right path, and I believe we can continue to create something great for all of us here.”

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