Newsday: The AI Staffing Dilemma - The Productivity Paradox with This Week Health
December 1, 2025: As AI tools rapidly transform healthcare IT workflows, leaders face an unexpected challenge: what happens when your team becomes dramatically more productive? Bill Russell, Drex DeFord, and Sarah Richardson explore the productivity paradox hitting healthcare organizations—when AI enables staff to accomplish in hours what once took weeks, do you need fewer people or different approaches? From closing open positions to managing "cozy" employees who've mastered automation, they debate real strategies for navigating this shift. Whether you're a process-driven leader or innovation-focused builder, this discussion reveals how AI is forcing healthcare IT to rethink staffing, workflow waste, and organizational culture before it's too late.Key Points:02:56 AI in the Workplace: Efficiency and Challenges17:15 Leadership Styles and AI Integration20:33 Approaching the AI Wave26:23 Balancing Leadership Styles32:11 End-of-Year Reflections and PredictionsX: This Week HealthLinkedIn: This Week HealthDonate: Alex’s Lemonade Stand: Foundation for Childhood Cancer
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The 229 Podcast: Technology Is Not a Strategy - the Problem-First Approach with Shane Thielman
November 27, 2025: Shane Thielman, Corporate SVP and CIO at Scripps Health, shares how a compliance auditor switched their primary care physician after reviewing ambient documentation—a surprising indicator of AI's real clinical impact. In this conversation, Shane reveals the seven-year journey to get 40% of appointments online, the command center approach that reduced admission wait times by 25%, and why Scripps runs quarterly clinical continuity exercises after their 2021 cyber event. He challenges the notion that technology is a strategy, instead demonstrating how Scripps attacks problems first with a disciplined approach to prioritization. Shane also discusses their internal ChatGPT "sharing economy" and why most AI features go undiscovered without intentional workflow integration.Key Points:04:17 City Tour Dinner Insights09:37 Operationalizing a Command Center11:23 Epic UGM Implementation22:51 Leveraging AI for Improved Patient Care30:35 Shared Governance and AI IntegrationX: This Week HealthLinkedIn: This Week HealthDonate: Alex’s Lemonade Stand: Foundation for Childhood Cancer
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Newsday: Merger Madness and Why Hospitals are Moving Back to On-Prem Data with Dave Dyell
November 24, 2025: Healthcare organizations are drowning in applications they can't even inventory, especially after mergers and acquisitions. But the real shock comes when they try to access archived data years later. Dave Dyell, Managing Partner at Innovative Consulting Group, reveals why cloud storage fees are forcing health systems to rethink their entire archiving strategy, particularly for medical imaging. With AI initiatives on the horizon, the way you archive data today determines whether you can afford to use it tomorrow. Learn why strategic planning for data archiving isn't optional anymore—it's the difference between controlling costs and watching them spiral out of control.Key Points:03:12 Archiving and Data Management09:30 On-Prem vs Cloud Storage18:33 Future Strategies and ConclusionX: This Week HealthLinkedIn: This Week HealthDonate: Alex’s Lemonade Stand: Foundation for Childhood Cancer
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Newsday: Doing More with Less and Budgeting Wake-Up Calls with Bill Willis
November 21, 2025: What if your organization could reclaim millions of dollars just by rethinking processes you already have in place? Bill Willis, CTO of IDMWORKS, discusses the hidden costs plaguing healthcare IT, from runaway cloud storage bills to the shocking economics of password resets. Discover why identity management isn't just a security issue but a massive financial opportunity, how HR-IT integration is transforming onboarding from a week-long wait to day-one productivity, and why the cybersecurity crisis isn't really about technology at all. With real-world examples showing $2.5M to $5M in annual savings, this episode delivers the business case healthcare leaders need to drive change in 2026.Key Points:01:06 Boston City Tour Highlights02:36 Discussion on AI and Cloud Costs10:05 Cybersecurity and Identity Management19:12 Operational Efficiency and Cost SavingsX: This Week HealthLinkedIn: This Week HealthDonate: Alex’s Lemonade Stand: Foundation for Childhood Cancer
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The 229 Podcast: Journey From First Ever EMR and Enabling Proactive Care with Deborah Muro
November 20, 2025: Deborah Muro, CIO of El Camino Health, shares her vision for transforming healthcare from reactive to predictive through intelligent use of AI and sensor technology. With 30 AI use cases already deployed across Epic and other platforms, El Camino is pioneering applications from radiology incidental findings to employee sentiment analysis. Deborah discusses the challenges of integrating AI agents into clinical workflows, starting with call centers before expanding to the revenue cycle. She also reveals El Camino's remarkable healthcare IT history as the first U.S. organization to implement an EMR in 1971, partnering with Lockheed Martin to develop what eventually became Allscripts, before their recent Epic transformation.Key Points:03:36 El Camino Journey10:21 AI and Automation in Healthcare16:51 Nursing and Technology Integration19:34 Future of Predictive HealthcareX: This Week HealthLinkedIn: This Week HealthDonate: Alex’s Lemonade Stand: Foundation for Childhood Cancer
Some conversations are too important to stay in the room. The 229 Podcast, hosted by Bill Russell, continues the dynamic discussions from our community events, bringing together healthcare leaders who are actively transforming the industry.
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