Remarkable Leadership: Mark Sevco, President, Allegheny Health Network

• By:  Bill Toland
• Posted:  January 27, 2026
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Since joining Allegheny Health Network as its president and top executive officer in early 2025, Mark Sevco has learned a lot about the organization, its people, and its culture.

The thing that impressed him most?

“The perseverance and grit of this organization is truly admirable,” Sevco says. Like many hospital networks, AHN experienced significant operational disruptions throughout the COVID era, while AHN’s predecessor organizations experienced their own well-documented tribulations over the years — many of which Sevco was familiar with, given that he’s spent nearly the entirety of his three-decade health care career in Pittsburgh.

But today, AHN is growing, having recently announced the pending acquisition of Heritage Valley Health System, which serves communities west of Pittsburgh. It’s also in the black, having recorded three straight positive quarters through Sept. 30.

“Reflecting on the history of the organization, there had been a lot of setbacks,” Sevco says. “But we’re pivoting to a comeback, with a lot of enthusiasm, and a vision for the future.”

In this Remarkable Leadership video and the Q&A below (edited for clarity and length), Sevco discusses the near-term opportunities he sees for AHN, what it takes to be an “employer of choice,” and the life-altering moment that propelled him into a career in health care.

Mark Sevco video interview takeaways

• The pending Heritage Valley affiliation: AHN’s growth mindset means enhanced online access, organic in-house growth, and — when the opportunity is right and the partner makes sense — affiliations and acquisitions.
• The changes he has seen in the western Pennsylvania market: Over the last three decades, systems continue to consolidate, as do physician practices; post-COVID digital platforms have made telemedicine a reality for millions.
• His leadership style: What’s recognized is repeated, which is why Sevco makes a point to communicate successes, build trust with team members, and be visible to stakeholders in every clinical institute and at every AHN hospital.

Getting up to speed

Bill Toland: When you are new to an organization, how do you get up to speed quickly?

Mark Sevco: It has really been exciting. We've been receiving a lot of input from so many leaders — physicians, community leaders, our staff — and really getting their input. What's working? What needs to change? What does success look like? And it really has sharpened us as it relates to galvanizing around being the best place to work and practice.

Bill Toland: A great place to work and practice — what does that mean to you?

Mark Sevco: Being the employer of choice means creating a great culture — creating meaning in people’s work, autonomy, and growth opportunities.

Our team members crave opportunities to grow personally and professionally, to have career ladders throughout the organization. When you are able to do those things, it will correlate to exceptional care and outstanding quality.

Bill Toland: Speaking of growth, you talk a lot about AHN having a “growth mindset.” Was that the driving force behind the pending Heritage Valley Health System acquisition?

Mark Sevco: To me, the growth mindset is taking care of more patients. So first, we look at it organically — what can we do at AHN to enhance access, to have quicker turnarounds to see our doctors and clinicians, to answer our phones more quickly, to schedule more appointments online. Sometimes that’s under the hood, and sometimes it means building out capacity, like we are doing with our new emergency department at AHN Allegheny General Hospital.

But we are super-excited about the definitive agreement that we just announced with Heritage Valley, pending regulatory approval in 2026. It’s an exceptional organization, with hospitals in Beaver and Sewickley and a medical staff that's geographically dispersed all around the western corridor of Allegheny County and throughout Beaver County.

A changing workforce

Bill Toland: Does taking care of more patients mean recruiting more caregivers?

Mark Sevco: There are national workforce shortages, so we are competing nationally for the best and brightest primary care physicians, specialists and subspecialists. We’re going to really pick up our game and develop recruitment plans for all areas of need.

We also need to free up, and lean on, our advanced practice practitioners, and to do all we can to be a destination of choice for nursing assistants.

A big part of our selling point is the AHN-Highmark Health story, and the value of working for a stable, diversified, integrated payer-provider.

Bill Toland: What role does technology play in being an employer of choice?

Mark Sevco: A significant one. Look at our partnership with Abridge, a nationally recognized artificial intelligence company that has developed a product around intelligence and clinical listening.

We will be using that technology to record a conversation between a clinician and a patient, then develop a very thorough note that documents the visit in real time, so the physician or clinician doesn’t have to. A clinician still has to review and confirm the accuracy of the records, but 99% of the work is already done.

That frees up an hour a day for each physician, and some evening time too, so that they don’t have to worry so much about what they're putting into the computer.

Our strategic cooperative agreement with Abridge will also help them to develop the next level of real-time authorization products.

So we're really excited to work with them on their frontier products, which will enhance quality and access here at AHN, and improve the experience for our clinicians.

Bill Toland: What is your elevator pitch for working at AHN? What is our differentiator?

Mark Sevco: The differentiator here is that AHN and Highmark Health are really, truly integrated, in a way that I have never seen. From our Living Health clinical model, to our clinically integrated network, our value-based strategy is really maturing.

“Attitude drives your altitude”

Bill Toland: How did you end up in health care?

Mark Sevco: When I was a teenager, my father, who was a blue-collar electrician, was tragically killed in an accident. Being in the emergency department with my family to see how nurses and physicians were bridging life and death with compassion really drew me to health care. The servant leadership that I saw was something that I wanted to be a part of — to be the best leader I can, to help others, to give back, and to pay it forward.

Bill Toland: Tell us about the South Sixth Street Playground in Lebanon, Pa.

Mark Sevco: When my father passed away, I spent a lot of time at the playground, playing basketball in the town where I grew up. From my perspective, it kept me off the streets, and I was around great kids, mentors and coaches.

Thirty years later, the playground was dilapidated and had closed. So I reached out and raised funds to build a brand-new playground with two state-of-the-art basketball courts with lighting and security. I run a summer camp for kids there, every summer, and we continue to raise money to put back into this.

Bill Toland: So beyond your day job, you’re still working to improve the health of the community.

Mark Sevco: You can’t fix the health care industry all at once — it’s really hard. Just like you can’t fix a neighborhood overnight. But if you keep at it, you can make things better, one playground, one house, one kid at a time.