Flourish with Sarah Richardson

November 3, 2025: What are healthcare IT leaders really concerned about? Fresh from three 229 Project summits across the country, Bill Russell, Sarah Richardson, and Drex DeFord pull back the curtain on the most pressing conversations happening right now. From simplifying AI governance with a two-track vendor approach to rethinking hiring strategies for an agent-driven future, this episode capture...

October 30, 2025: After 25 years leading transformational change in healthcare IT, Erik Howell , VP and Head of Technology at Callen-Lorde Community Health Center , made an unconventional decision that most leaders only dream about: he took a sabbatical. Following major EHR implementations, enterprise PMO leadership, and scaling a Silicon Valley AI startup's delivery team, Erik stepped away to tra...

October 27, 2025: Bill, Drex, and Sarah discuss the realities of implementing AI agents across organizations. The group tackles uncomfortable questions about workforce displacement, the critical thinking skills being lost to automation, and the massive energy demands threatening AI sustainability. From simplifying complex systems to understanding what innovation really means under constraint, This...

October 21, 2025: Martha Lawrence , CEO and Co-Founder of AccendoWave , reveals a stunning gap in healthcare: pain is the number one reason patients seek care, yet no system actually measures it. After observing 300 ER intakes, she discovered the chaos of subjective pain reporting—some rating their pain a "10" while calmly chatting, others ashamed to rate too high. Her solution uses brainwave tech...

Multi-factor authentication isn't the bulletproof security measure it once was. Preston Duren , VP of Threat Services at Fortified Health Security , explores how cybercriminals are outsmarting traditional MFA through sophisticated phishing tactics and MFA bombing. The conversation shifts to the debate over platform consolidation—does fewer mean safer, or are we creating attractive single points of...

October 16, 2025: Rebekah Panepinto , Enterprise Account Executive at Artisan Studios , has built a powerhouse career in healthcare IT sales by embracing Amazon's leadership principles and proving that grit isn't just a buzzword. From navigating the complexities of healthcare transformation to driving innovation in retail with brands like Shutterfly and Chick-fil-A, Rebekah brings fearless energy...

October 13, 2025: H ealthcare IT leaders are exhausted, CIO positions remain unfilled for months, and the pressure keeps mounting. In this candid conversation, Laura O'Toole , CEO and Founder of SureTest , explores why traditional CIO roles are transforming faster than organizations can define them. They discuss the widening gap between leadership expectations and operational reality, the critical...

October 9, 2025: Join Sarah Richardson live from SOAR 2025 in Boulder, Colorado, as she sits down with remarkable women in healthcare IT and their allies for candid conversations about leadership transformation. Hear personal stories about climbing literal mountaintops in Italy, learning from their children's courage, and standing firm when asked to compromise their values. These authentic voices...

October 6, 2025: New research reveals an expected 18% reduction in hiring over the next two years, but this isn't about downsizing—it's about strategic reallocation. Bill Willis , CTO of IDMWORKS , joins to discuss these new breaking statistics. With 62% of organizations prioritizing AI skills over traditional development experience, the industry faces a critical choice between reducing headcount...

October 2, 2025: What if the only way to truly fix healthcare IT is to burn it all down and start over? Join me for a provocative conversation with transformation powerhouse Cheryl Dilley , who's spent 25 years leading enterprise-wide change across healthcare and high tech. We dive into why healthcare's technical debt has reached a breaking point, what Netflix can teach us about disrupting an enti...

 September 29, 2025: In this episode of Newsday, Drex is joined by Russell Teague of Fortified Health Security for a candid look at the storm brewing in healthcare IT. From the promises and pitfalls of AI to the growing sophistication of cyber threats, they explore how health systems are balancing innovation with risk. The conversation dives into financial pressures, shifting reimbursement mo...

September 26, 2025: George Pappas , CEO of Intraprise Health by Health Catalyst , joins This Week Health for the News. Together, they unpack the Salesforce breaches that turned cybersecurity companies into victims and the explosion of personal injury lawyers now chasing data breach cases. With class action lawsuits up fivefold and cyber insurance policies being voided for non-compliance, they expl...

September 25, 2025: When healthcare executive Kim Garrett left corporate America to launch Northern Skye Consulting, she discovered something unexpected: "Growth doesn't happen in the easy times. It happens when you don't know where that next step is, but you press on." In this candid conversation, Kim reveals why the initial leap wasn't the scariest part of her journey, how her Scottish grandfath...

September 22: Today on Newsday Sarah and Drex speak with Jacob Hansen , Chief Product and Technology Officer at AvaSure , about virtual care, AI, and more from the news. Jacob highlights the company's focus on inpatient care, virtual observation, and AI solutions. They address the rising expectation for tangible ROI from EHR AI projects, the importance of pilot studies, and the role of virtual car...

September 19, 2025: Rich Waller , President and CEO of WellStack , tackles a startling healthcare reality: nearly 100% of organizations say data analytics is mission-critical, yet less than 20% actually trust their data foundation. What's driving this widening gap, and how is AI making the problem worse? Rich reveals how healthcare leaders can escape analysis paralysis and move from fragmented sys...

September 16, 2025: What happens when brilliant women walk out and toxic ones stay? Amber Tichenor , PhD, organizational psychologist, speaker, and author of "Behind Frenemy Lines," exposes the hidden reality of female rivalry plaguing healthcare workplaces. From high-stakes environments at NASA and IBM to today's nursing units, Amber reveals how she uncovered this phenomenon through research, onl...

September 15, 2025: Patients now walk into doctors' offices armed with AI-generated diagnoses and treatment plans—but what happens when ChatGPT becomes your primary care physician? Ryan Bengtson , CEO and Board member at Panda Health , joins the This Week Health team to dive into this shifting dynamic while confronting an imminent government shutdown that threatens to pull the rug out from under t...

September 12, 2025: When a Kentucky hospital's IT challenges sparked a solution that now prevents problems before they happen, what could that mean for the future of healthcare operations? Vik Patel , COO of Tido , reveals how his team reduced issue diagnosis time from over an hour to just 60 seconds—but is this level of automation creating anxiety among experienced interface engineers, or is it t...

September 11, 2025: What happens when an 11-year-old defines AI better than most executives? Meet Harper Schmidt, who calls AI "hollow - the absence of life, but also an idea maker." In this groundbreaking episode of Flourish Sound Bytes, healthcare tech entrepreneur Kristen Schmidt and her daughter Harper reveal why we're dangerously unprepared for AI's impact on the next generation. This mother-...

September 8, 2025: Ed Gaudet, CEO and Founder of Censinet , joins the This Week Health team for the news. When SalesLoft's Drift chatbot breach exposes over 700 companies through a single API vulnerability, it raises an unsettling question: are we witnessing a preview of something much larger? The security experts shift seats and play the role of the hackers, answering where they would attack firs...

September 4, 2025: In this inaugural episode of Flourish Sound Bytes, Sarah Richardson sits down with Tyler Barhydt , a seasoned technology executive who led a remarkable cloud transformation journey. Tyler shares how his organization, Envision Healthcare , went from 11 data centers to nearly zero, the unexpected benefits of the Broadcom/VMware situation, and why he believes every cloud migration...

September 3, 2025: Mitch Duff , Founder & Managing Member at EHC Consulting , reveals how his team tackles one of healthcare's most critical challenges: modernizing legacy IT infrastructure. Drawing from a decade of experience moving Epic EHR systems to the cloud, Mitch explores whether healthcare organizations are truly ready for the digital transformation they desperately need. As ransomware...

January 31: Today on TownHall, Bill talks about the decision to consolidate channels and move the TownHall show to the Conference channel. You can subscribe to the Conference channel here: https://thisweekhealth.com/this-week-health-conference/

January 26: Today on TownHall Jake Lancaster , Chief Medical Information Officer at Baptist Memorial Health Care talks with Mark Zhang , Associate CMIO at Brigham and Women's Hospital and Medical Director at Brigham Digital Innovation Hub about the emerging technology extended reality. In this episode they discuss how Mark came to found the American Medical Extended Reality Association (AMXRA) . H...

January 24: Today on TownHall Reid Stephan , VP and CIO at St. Lukes talks with Ray Lowe , SVP & CIO at AltaMed about FQHCs and how AltaMed has utilized technology to increase access to care. As a former rocket scientist, does Ray see Healthcare IT as harder or easier than rocket science? What are FQHCs and why are they important? How is Ray using technology to deliver on the quadruple aim and...