Merging into New Jersey: How Saad Ehtisham has found his fit at Atlantic Health

He had only been on the job a few days when he learned his first big lesson about New
Jersey.

Saad Ehtisham, the new CEO of Atlantic Health, was trying to pull out onto Main Street
in Madison from his temporary housing during the early morning rush. He pulled up to
the stop light and was stunned by what happened next.

“I was just waiting my turn and someone stopped … and waived me in,” he said, adding
the pause himself. “I was like, this would have never happened in Florida. ‘No way.’ Or
in Texas. ‘Heck no.’”

Really, in any of the multitude of states Ehtisham has worked (add North Carolina,
Tennessee, Kansas and New Mexico) or went to school (Texas and Michigan), he said.
For Ehtisham, it was an incredible revelation about the state. And very similar to what
he has found at Atlantic Health, since taking over as its leader last summer.

“I couldn’t have dreamed of a better culture,” he said. “The hardest thing for a CEO
coming in from outside is, ‘What type of culture am I inheriting?’

“I’m inheriting a world-class culture that’s built on decades of ‘Best Places to Work’ lists.
You can’t make that up overnight.”

Then there’s this: As good as the culture is, Ehtisham says the quality of care may be
even better.
***

If the merge in Madison was his first lesson in New Jersey manners, Atlantic Health’s
culture was his first lesson in what it means to lead here.

Ehtisham said he walked into the role fully aware of the risks of being an outsider
dropped into a high‑performing system. Culture is the one thing you can’t fake, and the
one thing you can’t repair quickly if you inherit it in bad shape. At Atlantic, he found the
opposite.

“What I’ve walked into is a culture that people have spent a decade and a half building,”
he said. “You see it in the Fortune ‘Best Places to Work’ recognition, but you really feel it in the way people treat each other in the halls and at the bedside. That’s not
something a new CEO gets to claim as his own — my job is to protect it and elevate it.”

Ehtisham is just as emphatic about the clinical side. The awards and rankings are nice,
he said, but the real measure is how consistently Atlantic Health’s teams deliver for
patients — in community hospitals, in ambulatory sites, in the middle of the night in an
ICU.

“The culture is phenomenal,” he said. “But the quality of care? I’d put it up against
anyone.”

That mix — a deeply embedded team culture and a high clinical bar — is one reason
he’s not rushing to put his own stamp on everything. Instead, he talks about
stewardship: understanding what he’s inherited, and then asking where the system
needs to go next as care moves closer to where people live and expectations for access
keep rising.

***

Part of what makes his perspective unusual is where he started.

Ehtisham didn’t come up the traditional MBA‑consultant route. He started in health care
at the bottom of the pay scale, as a phlebotomist making $4.78 an hour in 1990 —
“drawing blood and learning the business from the lab up,” as he puts it. From there, he
chose to go to nursing school, eventually working in an open‑heart ICU before moving
into management.

Those years shape how he sees the organization today.

“I’ve done nights, weekends, holidays,” he said. “I know what it’s like when you’re
short‑staffed and running behind, when equipment doesn’t show up, when
documentation takes you away from the patient,” he said. “When I walk a unit now, I can
just look around and see how the day is really going.”

His break into leadership came earlier than anyone expected. In his early 20s, he
applied for a house supervisor job that technically required seven to ten years of
experience. He got it anyway — and discovered he had a knack for seeing patterns,
anticipating problems and running a unit under pressure.

That experience, he said, still informs how he reads a situation and how he thinks about
giving people chances before their résumé says they’re “ready.”

“When I’m sitting in the CEO chair, I’m still thinking like somebody who’s been on the
floor. The question is always: Does this make it easier for the team to care for patients,
or harder?”

It also colors his view of technology and analytics. He’s blunt that most systems,
including his own, are “data rich but information poor” — and that any tech they bring in
has to start with a clear clinical or operational problem, not a press release. (See full
story here.)

***

If his clinical background explains how he leads inside the walls, his geography explains
how he thinks about the map.

Ehtisham has worked in or around systems in Florida, Texas, North Carolina,
Tennessee, Kansas and New Mexico, and studied in Texas and Michigan. He’s seen
sprawling academic centers, fast‑growing Sun Belt markets and everything in between.
New Jersey, he said, is different.

That’s where one of his favorite phrases comes in: “Windshield time.”

“We don’t measure this in miles; we measure it in windshield time,” he said. “How long
are you actually in the car? How many lights, how much traffic, what does it feel like
when you’re trying to get to an appointment on your lunch break or after a shift?”

It’s part of why Ehtisham bristles at “growth for growth’s sake.”

“Growth for the sake of growth is not my mantra,” he said. “I don’t grow that way.”

Instead, he talks about shifting from inpatient to ambulatory, building health centers
closer to where people live and work, and being strategic about sites so patients spend
less time traveling and more time getting care.

That same mindset shows up in how he talks about competition. Asked about other
large systems, he doesn’t hesitate to say many are “chasing” Atlantic on culture — but
he quickly pivots to a “New Jersey first” frame.

“I want the country to know that health care in New Jersey is, bar none, among the best
in the country,” he said.

Elevating all the systems, Ehtisham argues, helps the state attract businesses and
talent — and ultimately benefits patients who don’t care who owns the building, only
whether they can get in and be treated well.

The formula, as he describes it, is simple: Compete hard on quality, safety and
experience; collaborate on anything that makes New Jersey healthier and more
attractive.

***

When Ehtisham took the job, he and his family could have tried to make a quick, clean
move — pick a house, move everyone north and figure it out on the fly. Instead, he
chose something messier: Living here alone at first, on weekdays and many weekends,
while his family stayed behind for six months.

Those extra days and nights in New Jersey were by design, Ehtisham said. He used
them to drive, to get lost on local roads, to try diners and burger joints he found on
Instagram, to learn the state the way his patients and employees live it — by traffic
patterns and food runs.

“I deliberately stayed on weekends before my family arrived,” he said. “I wanted people
to see I’m here. I was sending a message that I am establishing myself here. This is
going to be home.”

Which brings it back to that morning in Madison, when Ehtisham saw a stranger make
space in the lane.

It was, on the surface, a tiny thing: a few seconds of courtesy at a crowded intersection.
But for a new CEO who has lived and worked in markets where people assume New
Jersey is all aggression and sharp elbows, it felt like a preview of something else — a
state that’s crowded but still finds ways to make room and a health system big enough
to matter but close enough to feel personal.