2026 Premier Conference - REGISTRATION IS OPEN!
INNOVATE • INTEGRATE • MOTIVATE
October 22–23, 2026
Embassy Suites UK Coldstream
Lexington, KY
Registration is officially open for the 2026 KMGMA Premier Conference, a two‑day event designed to empower healthcare leaders with forward‑thinking strategies, practical tools, and meaningful professional connections. Join healthcare leaders from across Kentucky on October 22–23 for two high‑impact days of forward‑thinking education, dynamic speakers, and powerful networking.
This year’s conference brings together medical practice executives, administrators, and industry partners for high‑impact education and collaborative learning. Attendees will experience dynamic keynote sessions, expert‑led breakouts, and opportunities to engage with peers who are driving innovation across Kentucky’s healthcare landscape.
The 2026 theme — Innovate. Integrate. Motivate. — reflects our commitment to supporting leaders as they navigate change, strengthen operational excellence, and inspire high‑performing teams.
We encourage early registration, as space is limited and demand is expected to be high.
Join us and be part of the momentum shaping the future of medical practice management.
8.5 ACPME credits are available!
SPONSORSHIP OPPORTUNITIES
Interested in exhibiting at our Premier Conference? We have lots of opportunities for you to connect with our attendees!
Speaker Bios
Vitale Buford Hardin - Keynote
Vitale Buford Hardin, CEO of Vitale & Company, is a trusted expert in leadership and organizational development. With more than 20 years of corporate leadership experience, Vitale specializes in helping leaders overcome perfectionism, build trust, and lead with clarity and confidence. A nationally recognized speaker and author of Addicted to Perfect, Vitale’s work focuses on transforming the way leaders show up — personally and professionally — to create cultures rooted in trust and accountability.
She’s made it her mission to help leaders overcome perfectionism and build high-trust environments where authenticity, resilience, and effective communication thrive.
Vitale’s journey is deeply personal—her own battles with perfectionism and addiction have driven her to conduct three university research studies, become a published author, nationally recognized speaker, and certified executive coach. She offers a unique understanding of leadership challenges with powerful, actionable strategies.
Nandith Nandakumar - NovaPulse
Nandith Nandakumar is a seasoned technology executive, entrepreneur, and the Co-Founder of NovaPulse. With a deep background in scaling complex data systems, enterprise cloud architecture, and strategic business growth—including an MBA from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business—Nandith brings a unique, tech-forward perspective to healthcare innovation.
NovaPulse was founded to solve the pervasive administrative and operational friction that distracts providers from patient care. Drawing directly from the firsthand clinical experiences of his wife and co-founding partners—all practicing physicians—Nandith co-founded NovaPulse to bridge the gap between complex healthcare workflows and modern technology. By streamlining inefficient systems, NovaPulse eliminates the administrative bottlenecks that drive physician burnout and optimize practice management.
Bradley Gray, DO, FAAFP - St. Elizabeth Physicians
James Haynes, J.D. - Associate Director, MGMA Government Affairs
Prior to joining MGMA, James Haynes was the Federal Policy Director for the nonprofit organization Veterans Education Success where he worked to support student veterans in higher education. Previously, James held the roles of Federal Policy Manager, Legal Advisor, and Law Fellow within the organization.
James received his J.D. from Georgetown University Law Center and is licensed to practice law in Virginia. During law school, James worked as a judicial intern for the Honorable Robin Meriweather on the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, as well as for the Honorable Wanda Keyes Heard on the Circuit Court of Baltimore City. Additionally, he gained experience as a legal intern at the United States Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia Homicide Division.
Prior to attending law school, James graduated cum laude with a bachelor’s degree in finance from Virginia Tech University.
Dhruv Kalaskar - Co-Founder Diagna Healthcare Technologies, Inc.
Dhruv is co-founder of Diagna, a company that builds AI tools for the workflow automation of independent specialty practices - inbound fax triage, referral intake, patient coordination, etc. An engineering graduate, he previously built and scaled operations-heavy technology products before turning to healthcare administration. With his co-founder, he spent four months conducting more than 250 in-person visits to US specialty practices, sitting with front-desk staff, referral coordinators, and practice administrators to document how paper actually moves through a clinic.
That fieldwork shaped Diagna’s products, which are now in daily use at allergy, sleep, oncology, pulmonology, and orthopedic practices. He works hands-on with practice managers through implementation, and speaks about healthcare operations from both an operator’s and technologist’s point of view.
Cody Hunt - Director of Health Policy, Kentucky Medical Association
Cody Hunt is the Director of Health Policy at the Kentucky Medical Association. Cody has been with KMA since December 2021, working in the advocacy department, conducting policy research, and helping to advance the organization’s health policy initiatives in Frankfort and DC.
Prior to coming to KMA, Cody served as the health policy staff lead in the Office of the Speaker, Kentucky House of Representatives
Workshop Descriptions
KEYNOTE -
The Leadership Shift: Redefining Success Beyond Perfection
Vitale Buford Hardin, CSP
Healthcare leaders make decisions under constant pressure. While high standards are essential, perfectionism can quietly undermine confidence, decision-making, resilience, and leadership effectiveness. Through insights from three university research studies on perfectionism in the workplace, leadership expert Vitale Buford Hardin, CSP, explores how perfectionism shows up in leaders, teams, and organizational culture—and why it is often mistaken for excellence. Participants will learn to recognize common patterns such as people-pleasing, fear of failure, procrastination, and self-criticism, while gaining practical strategies to turn down the volume on perfectionism without lowering the bar. This session is designed to help leaders strengthen self-trust, navigate challenges with greater clarity, and lead with confidence. Attendees will leave with tools to build resilience, foster healthier team dynamics, and create sustainable success without sacrificing performance.
Designing the Frictionless Practice: Deploying Human-Centric AS for Smarter Clinical Workflow
Nandith Nandakumar - Co-Founder, NovaPulse
Amid rising administrative demands, the clinic phone line remains a notorious operational blind spot and a primary driver of staff burnout. In this dynamic, 30-minute session, the Co-Founder of NovaPulse and the VP of Specialty Practices & Practice Operations at MedCenter Health present a real-world case study on transforming clinical workflows using human-centric AI. Moving past industry hype, the speakers will detail how converting traditional clinic voicemails into an AI-powered "visual voicemail" dashboard brought unprecedented visibility to daily call volumes and triage patterns. Attendees will discover how replacing manual phone queues with intelligent, text-based categorization slashes administrative friction, allowing staff to batch-process requests efficiently while improving response times. Through the lens of this live deployment, healthcare leaders will gain an actionable blueprint for using operational telemetry to eliminate bottlenecks, optimize staff utilization, and drastically elevate patient satisfaction.
The Front-Office Bottleneck: What 250 Practice Visits Taught Us
Dhruv Kalaskar - Co-Founder, Diagna Healthcare Technologies, Inc.
Most independent specialty practices still run intake on fax machines and manual data entry. Referrals arrive as unstructured documents, staff re-key them into the EHR, and patients wait days to be scheduled - or leak to another practice. Drawing on more than 250 in-person visits to US specialty practices, this session maps where intake actually breaks down: fax triage, referral extraction, insurance verification, and scheduling handoffs, and what each costs in staff hours. Attendees will get a simple method for measuring their own referral turnaround time and fax handling load, a candid look at what document-processing AI can and cannot do today, and the operational, HIPAA, and change-management questions to ask any vendor before signing. Examples from few practices that illustrate both measurable wins and honest failure modes. Attendees leave with a one-page workflow audit they can run next week.
