Q&A Archives - HIT Leaders and News

SYNERGEN Health’s Sunil Konda Explores AI’s True Role in Revenue Cycle Strategy

Jason Free — Tue, 15 Jul 2025 10:17:27 +0000

Sunil Konda, Chief Product Officer at SYNERGEN Health, brings grounded clarity to this evolving landscape. With more than 16 years of experience spanning product strategy, population health, interoperability, and analytics, Konda has emerged as one of the sector’s most practically minded RCM voices. In this exclusive Q&A with HIT Leaders & News, he offers a measured, metrics-driven perspective on how automation should be implemented, what it should accomplish, and where its limits reside.

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George Pappas Explains What AI Means for Cybersecurity Leadership

Jason Free — Fri, 11 Jul 2025 11:04:54 +0000

The convergence of generative artificial intelligence and healthcare cybersecurity has created a threat environment that many health systems are structurally unprepared to confront. In this week’s interview, George Pappas, CEO of Intraprise Health, a Health Catalyst company, outlines the stark realities of AI-powered attacks, and what health leaders must do to meet the moment.

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Burnout to Breakthrough: How Elemeno Health Redefines Frontline Training

Jason Free — Tue, 01 Jul 2025 18:38:45 +0000

In the Q&A below, Dr. Arup Roy-Burman, Chief Strategy and Medical Officer at Elemeno, outlines how this shift is transforming not only patient safety and staff satisfaction but also the infrastructure of clinical education itself. He offers firsthand metrics from hospitals such as UCSF Medical Center, Children’s Hospital New Orleans, and NorthBay Health, while explaining why traditional LMS tools are no longer sufficient in today’s high-acuity, high-turnover environments.

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Kent Dicks on Making Virtual Care Invisible and Building Infrastructure for Predictive, Equitable Health Delivery

Jason Free — Tue, 24 Jun 2025 11:09:13 +0000

As healthcare systems grapple with staffing shortages, financial pressure, and widening access disparities, virtual care is infrastructure. Yet for many organizations, the promise of remote care has been undermined by fragmented platforms, clinician burnout, and inconsistent patient engagement. Kent E. Dicks, CEO of Life365, believes the next era of digital health will be defined not by more apps or devices, but by seamless, invisible systems that fit into clinicians’ workflows and patients’ lives without disruption.

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Michael Dalton on Rebuilding Population Health Through Digital Access

Jason Free — Thu, 19 Jun 2025 11:01:02 +0000

Dalton leads a virtual-first care company created by and for health systems, forged through a unique partnership between the Medical University of South Carolina and The MetroHealth System. His view of virtual care is grounded in systems thinking, not digital experimentation. Dalton brings deep expertise in health policy, federal financing, and digital care operations, having helped secure more than $1.3 billion in funding for underserved communities and led digital care design during the pandemic.

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Jim Younkin Explains What Responsible AI in Healthcare Really Requires

Jason Free — Wed, 18 Jun 2025 11:51:29 +0000

AI is moving fast, but governance is moving slow. That tension is at the heart of this week’s conversation with Jim Younkin, MBA, senior director at Audacious Inquiry, a PointClickCare company. Younkin brings nearly three decades of experience in health IT strategy and federal programs, and today he is one of the few voices speaking plainly about what responsible AI should mean in practice, not just theory.

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Inside Mike Esworthy’s Playbook for Tackling Complex Claims

Jason Free — Tue, 17 Jun 2025 10:42:06 +0000

In today’s healthcare revenue cycle, standard claims are no longer the real challenge. The true margin drain hides in the outliers such as complex claims tied to Veterans Affairs, workers’ compensation, TRICARE, and other non-routine payers that fall outside the 80/20 efficiency rule. These edge cases are consuming disproportionate time, staff, and resources while driving up denials and delaying reimbursement. As payer rules grow more fragmented and labor shortages persist, health systems are under pressure to do more with less, and do it with precision.

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Why Patient Identity Is Healthcare’s New Infrastructure

Jason Free — Fri, 30 May 2025 14:55:33 +0000

In an era when healthcare leaders are investing billions in EHR consolidation, digital front doors, and consumer engagement platforms, one foundational problem continues to erode performance across the board: the inability to accurately identify patients across systems. Despite having more data than ever, many organizations remain "data rich and insights poor," trapped in silos that fragment care, undermine analytics, and fuel costly errors. Nick Orser, General Manager of Healthcare at Verato, breaks down why identity resolution is now central to clinical quality, patient experience, and even cybersecurity, and how healthcare organizations can reframe identity not as an IT concern, but as critical infrastructure.

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Consolidate with Care: Panda Health CEO Ryan Bengtson on Rationalizing Tech Without Losing Clinical Trust

Jason Free — Wed, 21 May 2025 12:22:01 +0000

Health systems are under intensifying pressure to reduce costs, streamline technology, and still deliver on innovation. For many CIOs and digital health leaders, this means confronting a tangled web of overlapping tools, sunk costs, and vendor fatigue, without losing the support of clinicians or derailing care delivery. In this exclusive HIT Leaders & News Q&A, Ryan Bengtson, CEO of Panda Health, shares grounded strategies for rationalizing the tech stack, managing tech debt, and preserving long-term digital health ROI. With insights spanning procurement, cybersecurity, and clinician change adoption, Bengtson draws on decades of experience to explain how health systems can cut wisely, consolidate meaningfully, and stay agile for the future.

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From Bottlenecks to Breakthroughs: MDClone’s John Elliott on Unlocking the Full Value of Healthcare Data

Jason Free — Wed, 21 May 2025 12:14:52 +0000

In today’s health systems, the data is vast—but access remains scarce. Despite billions spent on digital infrastructure, many frontline clinicians, administrators, and researchers still face barriers when trying to turn data into actionable insight. In this exclusive Q&A with HIT Leaders & News, John Elliott, Vice President of Sales and Growth at MDClone, unpacks the structural bottlenecks holding healthcare back and explains how self-service analytics, AI readiness, and synthetic data are reshaping the path toward a truly data-driven culture. Whether you’re a hospital executive, health IT leader, or innovation strategist, Elliott’s insights offer a roadmap for making data not just available, but transformational.

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