healthsystemCIO – Strategies for Hospital IT Leaders

Hosted by Anthony Guerra | Veteran Healthcare IT Journalist

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1000

Latest episode

Nov 2026

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EN-US

About the show

Candid journalism and leadership insights for the modern Hospital CIO. healthsystemCIO is the definitive resource for Health System executives navigating Cybersecurity, AI Governance, and Digital Transformation. Hosted by Anthony Guerra, a veteran Healthcare IT Journalist.

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60 recent

November 9, 202646 min

Baptist Health Tech Leaders Say Joint Vendor Sessions End Finger-Pointing on Slow Clinician Logins

Jim Bilsky, SVP and CTO, and Ryan Hooley, VP of Enterprise Architecture and AI, at Baptist Health in Jacksonville, Fla., discuss how they brought Epic, Microsoft, IGEL, ControlUp and Imprivata into one room to speed up virtual desktop sign-in. They explain the log-level evidence their architects gathered, why physicians told the vendors what slow logins cost, and how sign-in fell from about 90 seconds to 10 to 15.

November 4, 202652 min

UPMC’s Carmody Says AI Must Prove Its ROI or Be Turned Off

Chris Carmody, senior vice president and CIO at UPMC, explains how the health system weighs AI solutions and agents against their return and is prepared to turn off those that fall short. Carmody discusses token costs, the policy and review group behind AI adoption, and the pilot of 1,000 physicians per vendor that chose Abridge over Nuance DAX, along with why UPMC keeps that ambient AI decision open.

November 3, 202641 min

Valleywise Health’s Hines Says Operators Must Own IT Decisions to Get Adoption and Outcomes

Stephanie Hines, senior vice president and CIO at Valleywise Health, discusses why the operators accountable for results should own technology decisions and their risk, with IT acting as steward of a central budget. Hines explains how a decision science framework lays out the cost, cyber risk and integration burden of point solutions, and how look-backs make IT's value visible without asking for credit.

November 3, 202642 min

WVU Medicine’s Forman Says Standard Data Definitions Must Come Before AI Scheduling Tools

Alex Forman, chief data officer at WVU Medicine, explains why the health system standardized how its hospitals build and measure OR block time before turning on Epic's AI-assisted scheduling tools. Forman discusses treating block utilization as a stewardship measure, keeping one version of the numbers when vendors bring their own analytics, and building data models for AI agents. Main-OR block utilization rose from about 60% to 67%.

November 2, 202655 min

Dana-Farber’s Lenane Says Data Quality Should Fit the Decision It Supports

Naomi Lenane, CIO and senior vice president of information services at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, discusses how much data quality a health system needs before acting on its data. Lenane explains why the answer depends on the decision, why data definitions and ownership come before cleanup, how related measures show whether a report deserves trust and what it takes for clinicians to trust AI output built on imperfect data.

November 2, 202637 min

Claiborne Memorial’s Costakis Says Rural Hospitals Must Find Their Own IT Funding

Angie Costakis, COO and CIO at Claiborne Memorial Medical Center, discusses how a 47-bed public hospital in rural Louisiana finds money for IT. Costakis explains why grant searches start from the hospital's needs list, where cybersecurity funding comes from in Louisiana, what the first round of Rural Health Transformation awards brought and how the hospital budgets to keep grant-funded systems running.

November 2, 202637 min

Corewell Health’s Joseph Says Value and Risk Should Set the Pace of AI Adoption

Jason Joseph, chief digital and transformation officer at Corewell Health, discusses who should set the pace of AI adoption and who is accountable when AI is wrong. Joseph explains why he treats value as the gas and risk as the brake, why most high-value use cases need automation that current safeguards cannot yet support, and why a reviewer’s attention fades as AI improves.

November 2, 202642 min

CHIME’s Branzell Says Hospital IT Leaders Must Rebuild Workflows to Capture Automation Gains

Russ Branzell, president and CEO of CHIME, explains why redesigning how care is delivered has become the central job of health system technology leaders. He describes chief digital leaders' estimates that 30% to 60% of hospital work could be automated, a physician practice rebuilt around ambient AI, and why economic strain and workforce shortages are pushing small and midsize hospitals to change radically or risk closing.

November 1, 202644 min

RWJBarnabas Health’s Adamson Says AI Governance Needs Value Gates Before Consumption Pricing Hits

Rob Adamson, EVP and chief information officer at RWJBarnabas Health, discusses how his organization is preparing for AI consumption pricing. He explains the 90-day value test a model must pass to keep its compute, why a volume model priced discharge summarization at about $312,000 a year, and how routing requests to the least sophisticated capable model and running workloads locally can hold AI costs down.

October 28, 202651 min

Ochsner’s Trainor Says ChatGPT Health Is Forcing a Patient AI Decision

Amy Trainor, RN, SVP and chief information officer at Ochsner Health, discusses why about 4,500 patients connecting their records to ChatGPT have put a near-term decision in front of the 47-hospital system: whether to expand Epic's Emmie assistant in MyChart. She also explains why knowledge management rises in priority once AI starts summarizing charts, and raises the sponsorship and consent questions she wants the industry to discuss.