Welcome to Executive Edge, the video series that delivers sharp insights and real-world perspectives on the technology trends transforming today’s industries.
In this episode, we dive into the future of healthcare IT—and why moving beyond the EHR is essential for growth, retention, and improved care.
Joining the conversation are Scott Brooke, Chief Technology Officer and Senior IT Advisor at Hartman Executive Advisors, and Kim Speidel, Executive IT Advisor and former healthcare CIO. With decades of combined experience, they share how healthcare and human services organizations are modernizing their infrastructure to streamline operations, enhance the staff and patient experience, and create a stronger foundation for innovation.
Whether you’re leading digital transformation or reevaluating your tech investments, this episode offers practical guidance and lessons from the field.
[00:10] Amy Solomon: Welcome to this edition of Executive Edge: Modern Infrastructure for Modern Care—Moving Beyond the EHR, where we bring timely insights and sharp executive perspectives to the biggest challenges and opportunities facing today’s healthcare business leaders. My name is Amy Solomon and I’m the Vice President of Relationship Development with Hartman Executive Advisors. Today we will be discussing how modernizing IT infrastructure in the healthcare and human services sector means going far beyond the EHR or case management system. Leaders are investing in integrated platforms that enhance care, support growth, and improve the patient, resident, client, and staff experience.
Joining me today are two dynamic leaders from Hartman who bring practical, real-world insights into how healthcare and human services organizations are tackling these challenges. Hey, Scott. Hey, Kim. How’s everything?
[01:08] Scott Brooke: Can you hear me?
[01:09] Kim Speidel: Amy.
[01:19] Amy Solomon: Scott Brooke is a Senior IT Advisor and Chief Technology Officer. Scott works directly with healthcare and human services organizations to design and implement scalable, secure IT strategies that align with business priorities. His experience includes leading enterprise-wide transformations that integrate systems, elevate care delivery, and position organizations for long-term growth.
Also joining me today is Kim Speidel, an Executive IT Advisor and Chief Information Officer. Kim brings decades of operational and IT leadership from the healthcare industry with deep expertise in aligning clinical, financial, and technology teams. She helps organizations make strategic infrastructure decisions that not only support compliance, but also improve the resident, patient, and staff experience. I’m thrilled to have Scott and Kim with me today to share their insights. So let’s dive into our topic.
[02:27] Amy Solomon: So first question I’ll pose to Kim, but Scott, feel free to contribute. Kim, how are healthcare leaders aligning technology investments with broader goals like improving patient, resident, and client experience and supporting value-based care models?
[02:27] Kim Speidel: Yeah, so I work with a lot of executives that are streamlining systems. They’re looking to get the most value out of the systems they already have—looking for functions that may not be used or fully used, also looking for duplicative functions. So if there’s a couple systems that might do the same thing, consolidating to one system, working to consolidate their data as part of that, making efficiency for staff easier if they only have a couple of things to update, or integrating systems so that data flows from one system to the other and saves staff the time of entering data multiple times into different systems and different platforms.
They’re also interested in consolidating data and finding ways that they can consolidate their patient/client data so that they’re not asking their clients for the same information over and over again. We’ve all had that experience in the healthcare continuum where you’re asked for your insurance card for the fifteenth time at an organization that you thought was part of the organization you had already given that to. So looking for ways to make that more customer friendly and take advantage of the data we already have is really streamlining operations and processes and procedures.
[03:48] Amy Solomon: Perfect. Scott, would you like to add something to that?
[03:52] Scott Brooke: Yeah, we do see a lot of desire for bringing all of this content together. There’s pretty clear benefits, as Kim outlined, and I’m sure we’re going to get into a little more of what that looks like. The challenge is always in how do we get there. It’s important, but it can take a lot of work of course. But the benefits really can be realized if the right planning is done and the right amount of effort is put into getting us to that level of integration where we can see some of those real benefits for our clients, our own employees, our staff. You know, it’s a pretty major issue within the industry of staff retention and acquisition, and having a lot of those integration tools really drives towards that. And again, you just have to do a lot of good planning for it and make sure that you’re executing on it well.
[05:06] Amy Solomon: Thank you both. Appreciate that. Scott, what impact are integrated platforms having on improving the staff experience? I know you just mentioned a little bit about that.
[05:16] Scott Brooke: Mm-hmm. Yeah. There’s a bunch of different areas where we can look at that. Staff, you’ll find when you ask them, are getting frustrated. I think we probably know some of those. There are others that most likely go quietly on, you know, behind the curtain and you’re not really sure that—or it’s hard to understand when some of the staff is having challenges with some of these systems.
Anytime we can make it easier for the staff to get their work done and to participate in other parts of the experience working at organizations like HR, it definitely drives that better retention, better feelings about the organization. We’re able to attract additional talent. Like I said before, in this industry, it’s very difficult to bring people over and keep them. But if they don’t have to mess around with a lot of the common HR tasks, if it’s just made easy for them, if the systems that we integrate allow them to work with their constituents that they’re helping much more easily, it just makes for a better experience. And word gets around, and people will know that if you come over to our organization, you’re going to want to stay. You’re going to appreciate the time that you spend with the organization much better. And a lot of that is driven not just through communication with the staff and talking to them about what their needs are, but then actually implementing this integration so that they can feel what that benefit of the integration looks like.
[07:11] Amy Solomon: Kim, would you like to add anything to that?
[07:13] Kim Speidel: Yeah, I think one of the things that I like to focus on is the onboarding experience. As we work really hard to get these new employees and get them onboarded, anything we can do to make that process smooth—make it, I don’t want to say exactly an enjoyable experience, but make it so that there isn’t a lot of friction there. And when you come and you fill out one piece of paperwork, if you have a badge and you have everything that’s connected and now you can go do what you need to do instead of waiting till day four to get something to be able to get your job done. I think that also does a lot to really increase productivity and make people want to be part of the organization.
[07:58] Amy Solomon: Yeah, I like that a lot. I think you drive home a good point. It’s productivity. It’s making someone’s job easier so that it’s enjoyable for them to work at the organization. So given that as executives scale for growth and modernize, how should their IT leaders balance innovation with security and compliance? You want to start with that one, Kim, and then we’ll toss it over to you, Scott?
[08:20] Kim Speidel: Sure, sure. For me and the leaders I work with, it’s a lot about risk management. So what is our tolerance to risk? What are our goals? There’s a regulatory component a lot of times, especially in healthcare. So there’s some things we have to do. But managing those three things like a triangle and then determining your priorities from there can make it a little more like you’re in control, as opposed to just being beholden to regulations and things like that.
[08:52] Amy Solomon: Scott?
[08:53] Scott Brooke: Yeah. I think we of course need to focus on a lot of the regulations that Kim was just speaking about—that’s core to our business. If we’re not focusing on that, then we don’t have a business. And once we get past that and we’re looking at ways that we can integrate that so that we’re having that comprehensive view of security or that user experience, staff experience, constituent experience, all in service of making sure we’re aligned with the regulatory requirements. That then opens up all the possibilities of innovating and making it more exciting to take advantage of other opportunities.
For staff, we’ve already talked about some of those opportunities that we can get to, to make their experience a lot better with their organization. But the same goes for all of our constituents. No matter what setting we’re in, we have people we’re serving in this business. And if we’re able to get to that level of success in compliance with regulatory requirements and still drive a lot of those integrations, then we can get started talking about innovation opportunities, which can really drive that growth that you’re talking about, Amy. And understand how do we then go beyond just making sure that we have happy staff and happy constituents into, okay, now how do we do that growth?
You can’t really get to that if you haven’t solved all the other lower-level challenges first. It doesn’t make a lot of sense to go chasing shiny objects, right? There’s a lot of desire to do that. But if we go after the shiny objects without having that solid base across all these integrated systems, the shiny objects probably aren’t going to succeed. They will if we’ve created that strong base and then everybody’s bought into, okay, now let’s learn how to leverage this into more effective constituent relationships, more effective staff—all of that.
[11:23] Amy Solomon: And so what you’re saying from what I’ve heard both of you say is that having that strong base, that foundation is really around a solid infrastructure to then build upon that and having things integrated so that you can continue to scale for growth. Is that a correct assumption that I’m hearing?
[11:41] Scott Brooke: Yeah, I think so. I think if you don’t take care of all of that infrastructure—the base—and get all of the integrations well sorted out with that to begin with, then you’re chasing other challenges within the organization. Maybe you can’t focus on the innovative things because you’re still having to fix staff engagement, staff happiness, constituent engagement, whatever aspect you’re looking at for that.
[12:20] Kim Speidel: And Amy, I would add security—it’s everyone’s job. I talk a lot to clients that we serve and to staff about the human firewall, right? We need our staff and employees to be aware of the role they play in security and how they can help. And it’s not just a technical challenge or an IT challenge, but the staff and people play a role. They can help us detect when something’s going on. They’re the first line that usually sees something if there’s an odd email or something like that. And so I like to make sure that people understand that it’s everybody’s role to help us as well and how they can help and report things.
[12:58] Amy Solomon: Excellent point. So final question, Scott, I’ll start with you. What business outcomes have you seen tied directly to infrastructure modernization?
[13:20] Scott Brooke: There are several specific to infrastructure modernization. I would say we’ve seen a lot of improvements in both staff and constituent experience when it comes to interfacing with the systems that they’re using on a daily basis. That can be the EHRs that we’re talking about, but it can also be other engagement platforms. We have our constituents being different for the different types of health and human services organizations, but we all still serve that same kind of need.
So if we’re building a modern infrastructure or modernizing the infrastructure and it enables our constituents to get to their care records or get to booking services, understanding what’s available to them, that they can take advantage of more services that we offer—all of those things. If we’re building out that infrastructure so it’s easier for those constituents to get to that information and really take advantage of it, that’s a direct business benefit to the type of scaling that we were talking about before.
[14:43] Amy Solomon: Thank you. Kim, what would you like to add to that?
[14:46] Kim Speidel: Yeah, I think what I see a lot too is being able to have one source of truth. So we don’t have systems where the same data is in there. We have one data source, and we recognize one system as being the owner of certain pieces of data. And that helps us as we look at things from an organizational view to know what are the data sources that we trust for various pieces of information. So when we start looking at key performance indicators and things like that, we know what those systems are and where to draw that information from.
[15:26] Amy Solomon: Fantastic. Any closing thoughts?
[15:35] Scott Brooke: I think the one thing I want to make sure we’re all thinking about is—we’ve talked a lot about building out this base. I mentioned shiny objects. It’s easy to get distracted by the shiny objects because you can see the potential for all of the benefits that you can get out of those shiny objects. And that may be true. That may be something that is available to us. But we still have to have that strong base first. We have to focus on making sure that we’re getting as much integration across different platforms and we’re modernizing our infrastructure to get us to that place where we can really take advantage of the exciting opportunities that new things bring.
[16:30] Kim Speidel: Yeah, I think that’s a good point, Scott. And I think the thing I would add to that is we have clients that have gotten to that point today. It’s not a place where you can’t get to. So there are clients that have gotten there today and are doing some interesting things with AI and various things like that that are really streamlining staff operations and making things more efficient. So it’s not this mountain to climb that you can’t get to the top of. You can get there with some dedicated work and perseverance.
[17:02] Amy Solomon: Well, I really appreciate all the information and the insight that both of you shared today. Thank you so much for joining me for the Executive Edge and for providing your expertise around modernizing infrastructure, the impact that it can have for modern care, and as we move beyond just your singular EHR. Again, thank you so much for your time and I hope you both have a wonderful day and stay cool.
[17:32] Kim Speidel: Thanks, Amy.
[17:32] Scott Brooke: Thanks, Amy. Good talking to you.
