Sam Huenergardt Named on List of Top 250 Most Influential Business Leaders in Kansas City

Sam Huenergardt, president and chief executive officer of AdventHealth Mid-America Region, was named on Ingram's Top 250 Influential Business Leaders in 2024.

This year, Ingram's Magazine, the leading business publication in Missouri and Kansas for 50 years, selected leaders and assessed them on how economic trends are affecting their respective sectors, their approach as leaders to staffing and retentions, how artificial intelligence in its current form is affecting their operations, the traits they look for in potential hires at the executive level, and what they see as priorities for setting a civic agenda in the greater Kansas City region.

“We experienced tremendous growth due in large part to hiring success and leaders who have maximized capacity in their areas,” says Huenergardt.

Huenergardt attributes AdventHealth’s growth to a new hospital being developed at AdventHealth Lenexa City Center (which is slated for completion in June 2025), the new AdventHealth Cancer Institute with leading-edge MRI-Guided Radiation Therapy technology found nowhere else in Kansas City, the AdventHealth Fertility Center, the expansion of the Birth Center at AdventHealth South Overland Park (which was named a Top General Hospital in 2023), and opening the AdventHealth Ottawa Health Park which expanded care in the Franklin County community.

Here are some additional insights provided by Huenergardt:

• ON LEADERS: “We are blessed with leaders who know their people, their service lines, and their medical communities better than anyone.”
• SECTOR OUTLOOK: “Red hot and will only get hotter. Healthcare is booming in Kansas City, and we are thrilled to be a part of it.”
• INSPIRATION SOURCE: “Knowing that people don’t know they need an incredible team in health care until they need us.”
• NEXT THING FOR KC: “To set our sights on being the safest and most welcoming metro in the country. That will spur a healthy environment for everyone.”
• EFFECTS OF AI: “Addressing clinician burnout is a top priority across all of health care. To combat this, we are piloting some new technology with our primary care providers, helping increase the amount of time providers spend with their patients and reducing the amount of time they are documenting.”

View the Top 250 Most Influential Business Leaders list here.