Anna Tonseth, MHA

Anna is a data-driven change leader who has built her career around a simple philosophy: It’s better to fall in love with the problem than with the solution. Before reaching for AI, automation or new tools, Anna asks what is making work harder for employees, where patients experience friction, and which processes consume clinical time without adding value.

Her experience across business analytics, operations and transformation gives Anna a rare ability to connect data, frontline realities and change management. That perspective has shaped her work on patient self-scheduling, self-registration, remote MRI scanning and AI-enabled implant clearance.

With remote scanning, Anna helped advance a model that expands access to scarce MRI expertise and talent while building the education and safety structure needed to ensure clinical teams are heard. By July 2026, Shields had performed more than 4,400 scans remotely across six sites and 11 scanners.

On implant clearance, she worked with clinical, operational and technology teams, and external partners to apply AI to a real MRI safety challenge, helping retrieve manufacturer guidance and standardize review. The broader centralized clearance model increased the share of implants handled by the Shields MRI safety team from about 22% to more than 50%.

Drawing on her Six Sigma Green Belt training, Anna measures every meaningful change against patient satisfaction, access, efficiency and operational outcomes, giving the data a seat at the table while listening closely to employees. Her focus is not simply on introducing new solutions, but on ensuring they solve the right problem, deliver measurable results and ensure they can be successfully adopted.