Straight Outta Health IT

What happens when healthcare organizations stop working in silos and begin treating community partnerships as part of the care model? In this special episode of Straight Outta Health IT , Christopher Kunney joins healthcare leaders, innovators, entrepreneurs, and community advocates at the WellLink CONNECTNEO 2026 Conference in Cleveland. Together, they explore how collaboration, AI, data, and com...

Revenue cycle doesn’t just need more reporting; it needs smarter systems that can prevent problems before they happen. In this episode of Straight Outta Health IT , Jeff Hatfield, Co-Founder and CEO of Four Points Health, talks about how Agentic AI and intelligent automation are reshaping revenue cycle management for hospitals. He explains why denials, write-offs, payer complexity, and manual rewo...

What happens when healthcare innovation is shaped not only by technology, but by the real human experiences behind it? In this SOHIT HIMSS 2026 episode of Straight Outta Health IT, Christopher Kunney speaks with healthcare leaders, informatics experts, entrepreneurs, and innovators at the Texas HIMSS Regional Conference about how technology, AI, data, and human experience are transforming healthca...

What happens when healthcare leaders, innovators, and technology experts gather around a single mission: keeping patients at the center of every decision? At the Patient at the Center Symposium, hosted under the Straight Outta Health IT program, Christopher Kunney guided a series of conversations with healthcare leaders, innovators, and executives focused on redefining patient-centered care. The e...

AI is changing mental health care fast, but Dr. Fred Moss believes the real question is not whether technology can become human. It is whether humans can keep their humanity intact. In this episode of Straight Outta Health IT, Christopher Kunney speaks with Dr. Fred Moss, psychiatrist, mental health advocate, keynote speaker, podcaster, coach, and founder of the Welcome to Humanity movement. Drawi...

Healthcare doesn’t suffer from a lack of data; it suffers from a lack of connection between it. In this episode of Straight Out of Health IT, Philip Wickline, cofounder and CTO at Zus Health, talks about how fragmented patient data continues to limit care quality, increase costs, and create unnecessary risk across the healthcare system. He explains how deeply complex, specialized, and distributed...

What if the biggest risk to patient care isn’t clinical, but simply the inability to reach someone? In this episode of Straight Out of Health IT, Damon Covey, General Manager of Unified Communications & Collaboration at GoTo, discusses how fragmented communication systems are failing small- and mid-sized healthcare practices and impacting real patient outcomes. He explains that most practices...

Healthcare leaders are facing a growing crisis of burnout, with many mission-driven professionals feeling exhausted, disconnected, or even emotionally checked out while still in their roles. In this episode of Straight Out of Health IT, Bemene Piaro, MPH, ICF-credentialed transformational life coach and founder of The Wholeness Center, highlights that common solutions like wellness apps or resilie...

What if the biggest threat to patient safety is not a lack of technology, but the daily friction and noise we have normalized inside care teams? In this episode of Straight Outta Health IT, Angela “Angie” Cox, a nurse, social worker, healthcare administrator, and clinical technology strategist, explains why so many healthcare “solutions” fail in real-world settings. She shares her journey from gro...

Cybersecurity in healthcare is no longer just an IT issue. It is a leadership, operations, and trust issue that can disrupt care, expose sensitive data, and test whether an organization is truly prepared for a crisis. In this episode, Zach Lewis, CIO and CISO at the University of Health Sciences and Pharmacy in St. Louis, shares how AI is changing the cybersecurity landscape and reflects on the re...

The American healthcare system has extraordinary talent, advanced technology, and unmatched spending, yet it too often fails the very people it is meant to serve. In this episode of Straight Outta Health IT , Gil Bashe, Chair Global Health and Purpose at FINN Partners, bestselling author, healthcare strategist, and former combat medic, joins Christopher Kunney to discuss the urgent themes behind h...

AI could become the greatest equalizer in healthcare if we use it the right way. In this episode of Straight Out of Health IT, Dr. Harvey Castro, a physician, entrepreneur, and CEO of 8 free-standing ERs, a medical billing and physician staffing company, and a strategic advisor to ChatGPT and healthcare, discusses how artificial intelligence is poised to transform global healthcare access and deli...

Value-based care can improve outcomes and lower costs, but only when the incentives, workflows, and data all pull in the same direction. In this episode of Straight Outta Health IT, Dr. Shannon Decker, founder and CEO of VBC One, unpacks the good, the bad, and the ugly of value-based care and what it takes to succeed beyond the buzzwords. She explains why many organizations struggle when they jump...

Caregiving for Alzheimer’s isn’t just hard; it’s isolating, invisible, and full of grief that never gets a clean ending. In this episode, Dr. Caron Leid, counselor, educator, author, and caregiver advocate, discusses how her mother’s early Alzheimer’s diagnosis and later aphasia changed everything and how the system largely left her to figure it out alone. She names the ambiguous grief of losing a...

Strategic credibility is what turns a strong health tech product into a clear yes for buyers, investors, and health systems. In this episode, Sabrina Runbeck, a healthcare media strategist, explores why innovative founders often remain invisible and how to become an obvious choice in a crowded market. She explains how many leaders mistake credentials for credibility, getting stuck in a “hyper-achi...

AI in healthcare has moved past the hype, and leaders are now demanding real value, accountability, and global perspective. In this episode of Straight Out of Health IT, Jeffery Heenan-Jalil, CEO of hunterAI, talks about the global evolution of AI analytics in healthcare and what it takes to move from experimentation to real impact. Drawing on more than 30 years of experience leading analytics and...

Dementia is both a growing national crisis and a profound health equity issue, with African Americans facing nearly double the risk of Alzheimer’s disease compared to white Americans. In this episode of Straight Out of Health IT, Chuck Brown, founder of Expose Dementia, shares how his personal journey caring for his aunt with dementia led him to confront his own lack of awareness and ultimately to...

Rare diseases like renal medullary carcinoma demand earlier awareness, stronger advocacy, and faster specialist-driven care because delays can be deadly. In this episode, Tanisha Washington, the mother of Jelani Washington and a family advocate, shares her son’s sudden diagnosis and passing from renal medullary carcinoma (RMC), a rare and highly aggressive kidney cancer strongly linked to sickle c...

AI is revolutionizing healthcare, but it’s also giving cybercriminals unprecedented speed, scale, and precision. In this episode of Straight Out of Health IT, Ali Pabrai, Chief Executive Officer at ecfirst, explores how artificial intelligence is revolutionizing cybersecurity risk management in healthcare. While AI is accelerating innovation in diagnostics, workflows, and operations, it is also ex...

Healthcare startups don’t fail because their tech isn’t cool, they fail because they don’t understand how healthcare actually buys, governs, and deploys change.  In this episode, Sohail Azeem, principal consultant at South Star Consulting, discusses his path from Texas Children’s Hospital operations and NICU leadership to COO/CEO roles, then into entrepreneurship supporting telehealth, remote pati...

AI, interoperability, and real-world readiness are converging to define the next era of healthcare IT.  In this episode, Shaman Akhtar, Mike Costa, and Tom Stafford break down the challenges and opportunities shaping healthcare IT, as well as the growing need for true downtime resilience. Shaman Akhtar, senior leader at ELLKAY, discusses how interoperability remains a “data plumbing” problem, warn...

What if the key to curing today’s most complex diseases has been hiding in plain sight inside electronic health records all along? In this episode of Straight Out of Health IT, Vish Srivastava, CEO of Century Health, explores how artificial intelligence can unlock the vast potential of real-world healthcare data that has long been trapped inside electronic health records. He explains why tradition...

Brilliant digital health ideas die every day, not because of technology, but because founders ignore the legal and regulatory realities of healthcare. In this episode, Dr. Stephanie D. Barnes, Senior Counsel at Nixon Law Group, discusses how digital health entrepreneurs can navigate the complex intersection of law, regulation, and innovation without jeopardizing their company's growth before it sc...

The mother needs care too, not just the baby. In this episode, Brittany Starobin, founder of Haven Postnatal Retreat, discusses how her own battle with postpartum depression, including suicidal thoughts, led her to create a space that prioritizes mothers’ recovery during the “fourth trimester.” She explores the U.S. maternal health crisis, particularly its disproportionate impact on Black and Brow...

Family caregivers are the unsung heroes holding America’s healthcare system together. In this episode, Dr. Barry Jacobs, a clinical psychologist, family therapist, and author of The AARP Caregiver Answer Book, discusses the emotional, financial, and logistical realities faced by family caregivers, who often serve as the silent backbone of elder care in the U.S.  Dr. Jacobs shares his deeply person...