The 229 Podcast

September 2, 2026: Alan Gabriola (VP of Healthcare, CTG) sits down with Bill Russell. CEOs come home asking why the health system is not doing more with AI. The CIO already knows they can. The shop never finished the hard work underneath. 220 leaders told 229 where next year's money is going: access and revenue cycle. Alan's line for what actually wins: not the most AI. The operating model.
Guest: Alan Gabriola (CTG)
Key Points:
0:00 The winners don't have the most AI

0:06 Both sides of the table

3:13 You cannot sprinkle AI on a messy model

7:09 CTG

7:50 220 leaders: access and rev cycle

10:06 What stalls the work

12:52 Governance as differentiation

15:16 Why CTG

19:05 Speed to outcomes

21:06 Close

Donate: Alex's Lemonade Stand: Foundation for Childhood Cancer
Keep up to date on the latest in health IT:
https://thisweekhealth.com/news/

August 26, 2026: Lindsey Bengfort (Managing Director, Healthcare, NTT Data) sits down with Bill Russell. She buckets what she hears every week into three anxieties: financial, tech/AI, and security. Security used to get skipped in the room. Not now. If you do not have a point of view, you do not get invited. From there: 500 patches on one hospital-critical application, garage-level attackers with open models, and an onslaught of AI features inside the vendors you already own. Lindsey's picture: you keep stacking band-aids. You never stitch the wound. Closes on three places a health system can take cost out without taking it out of patients.
Guest: Lindsey Bengfort (NTT Data)
Key Points:
04:48 Three Anxieties

08:29 Security Is Table Stakes

09:44 500 Patches on One Hospital App

10:38 Garage Attacks

12:53 Band-Aids on a Cut

17:12 Three Ways to Take Cost Out

Bring color and joy to a child’s day: https://augustsartists.networkforgood.com/projects/166901-everyday-giving
Keep up to date on the latest in health IT:
https://thisweekhealth.com/news/

August 24, 2026: Bill Russell, Sarah Richardson, and Drex DeFord debrief Epic UGM from the week they were in the room. Last year was aspirational. This year has a roadmap, and the pace is blistering enough to consume an entire IT shop. Drex's read: a lot of CIOs have already conceded technical innovation to Epic. What is left is implementation, scale, and governance. Sarah's test: distinguish integration from dependency. The constraint is not whether Epic can ship. It is how much you can absorb, what it costs, and whether operations will own the work.
Key Points:
00:00 Epic can consume your entire IT shop

06:23 Conceding innovation to Epic

07:49 The pace is blistering

11:14 Rangers, Gold Star, and your career

19:45 The dollars are in operations

22:01 The CIO role is bifurcating

LinkedIn: 229Project
Donate: Alex’s Lemonade Stand: Foundation for Childhood Cancer

August 17, 2026: Bill Russell, Drex DeFord, and Sarah Richardson come off a road week and into Epic UGM. Ask a shop how many agents they have deployed. They might say 50. An audit turns up 76. Every frontier lab just said their model got out of the sandbox, and health systems are about to invite the same class of software inside the four walls. Pete Marks at Wake Med cut 20 applications, then the inventory went up. Bill's test is older than AI: an electrician wanted a 300-amp service because of square footage. Square footage uses zero amps. A CIO needs enough knowledge to catch a bad answer.
Key Points:
00:00 Welcome into the kingdom

05:54 Pete Marks cut 20. Then they went up.

08:08 Every frontier model got out of the lab

13:31 50 agents on paper, 76 on the audit

17:30 The electrician and the 300-amp lie

19:13 Enough knowledge to catch a bad answer

LinkedIn: 229Project
Donate: Alex’s Lemonade Stand: Foundation for Childhood Cancer

August 10, 2026: Bill Russell and Drex DeFord preview Epic UGM (Sarah is on a plane to Charlottesville). Bill opens with the reframe that sets the lens for the whole episode: don't mistake a single big announcement for the real pace of change — healthcare moves in months and years, not seconds. Then the preview itself: AI and Agent Factory framed around clinician experience, ambient documentation a year after the freeze, the Bridge/Epic interoperability standoff and the 3-year hedge, the entire state of Washington on Epic, pharmacy as Epic's next growth line, and the leadership exodus — including Bill's real odds on Judy Faulkner's succession at UGM.
Key Points:
0:00 Healthcare Doesn't Move in Seconds

5:23 Sponsor: Cloudticity

7:09 Epic vs the Federal Government

12:43 The 3-Year Hedge

20:32 Epic Leadership Exodus

22:48 Judy's Exit, on Bill's Terms

LinkedIn: 229Project
Donate: Alex’s Lemonade Stand: Foundation for Childhood Cancer