What “The Pitt” Gets Right About Healthcare – And Why That Should Worry Us

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We were latecomers to The Pitt, but once we started watching, we were hooked.

Friends and colleagues had been recommending it for months. What finally pushed us to start was hearing about an episode involving a cyberattack and system downtime – a storyline that immediately caught my attention as someone who has spent decades in healthcare IT. We decided to watch that episode first. I wasn’t even sure my husband would like the series, but one episode was all it took. We went back to the beginning and watched both seasons.

What unfolded episode after episode was far more than another hospital drama.

Yes, the show captures the intensity, compassion, exhaustion, humor, and emotional trauma of emergency medicine. But what makes The Pitt different is its willingness to expose the systemic failures surrounding healthcare delivery in this country – not through political speeches or simplistic villains, but through the lived experiences of clinicians, patients, and families. And through the strong moral compass of its lead characters.

The result is uncomfortable. And intentionally so.

If you ask people whether they have watched The Pitt, the reactions usually fall into three categories: I loved it, it was too intense and too close to home, or not yet. I understand the “too intense” response completely. As we worked our way through the series, it was rare that we wanted to watch more than one episode in a night.

Healthcare professionals I know have had especially strong reactions. A retired emergency physician who loved it told me, “I’ve seen most of it – just not all happening on one shift.” A former health system Chief Medical Officer loved it and commented on the range of social issues it addresses. So did lab professionals and physical therapists I encountered recently during my own healthcare experiences. One told me they deeply appreciated how accurately the show portrayed frontline staff.

That authenticity matters because the issues portrayed in The Pitt are not fictional exaggerations. They are daily realities.

The series tackles insurance barriers, homelessness, mental health crises, elder care, abortion rights, immigration enforcement, rural hospital closures, and mass shootings. It also confronts violence against healthcare workers, clinician burnout, emergency department overcrowding, staffing shortages, cybersecurity threats, budget cuts, residency pressures, addiction, and end-of-life decisions.

None of these problems exist in isolation. And that is exactly the point. Continue reading →

Fifty Years, Five Lessons: What Endures in Love and Life

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April is coming to a close next week. As I wrote in “Do you know your big rocks?”, April is a mixed month for me. My father died on April 23rd from Hodgkins Disease when I was a few days shy of my fourth birthday. Over the years, April has become a more joyous month. Both my daughters were married in April as I was.

On April 9th, my husband and I hit a major milestone in our relationship that only a small percentage of couples do – we celebrated our 50th wedding anniversary. Our story is an interesting one. When Tom first said let’s get married, I said, “No, people like us don’t make long term commitments”. I changed my mind later that day and a month later we got married in a judge’s office at the courthouse across the street from where I worked. I bought a dress I could wear both to work that morning and to get married that afternoon. Sound a bit like a workaholic??

My immediate family was with us as we exchanged our vows. We then headed to my mother and stepfather’s house for a small gathering and then to a nice local restaurant for dinner. Two days later, my husband and I got in our car and headed from Minneapolis to Tucson where his family lived. We had very little money back then. We slept in the car on the way there. I met his parents, brother and sister then for the first time. Tom overheard his parents saying the day after we arrived, “I thought he was marrying the other one” – meaning his college girlfriend whom they had met before.

Fast forward 50 years and we are still together having made and kept that long-term commitment to each other. We have two amazing daughters, two wonderful sons-in-laws, and four awesome grandchildren. They are all my big rocks. Continue reading →

The Front Door Test

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A virtual care experience that shows both the progress – and the gaps – in digital access

We talk a lot in healthcare about access. The shortage of primary care physicians continues to grow, while patients increasingly expect convenient, timely, and digital-first access to care. As a health IT leader, I know that technology can help close this gap. Recently, I found myself experiencing this challenge not as a CIO, but as a patient.

And like many patients, I started where people often do today: with an online search.

After about five days of persistent shoulder pain radiating down my right arm, I decided it was time to seek medical advice. An AI-driven search experience asked structured questions like a clinical intake. The information was thorough and well organized, but also a bit overwhelming. The recommendation was logical: given that I had rotator cuff surgery many years ago, I should contact my PCP or an orthopedic specialist.

That’s when I ran into a reality many patients are facing today. After having the same PCP for 25 years (with a brief interruption when I relocated for several years), my physician recently left the practice. That left me classified as a new patient, on a waiting list. No immediate access. No established relationship to lean on. Just the same access challenges we read about every day.

So, I decided to try my health system’s relatively new Virtual Care program. Continue reading →

Holding on to Hope: Women’s Leadership and the Work Still Ahead

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For the first time in more than a decade, I went two months without writing a blog.

That may not sound like much, but for someone who has been posting regularly since 2014 – often reflecting on leadership, health IT, and the advancement of women – it felt unusual. The truth is, I wasn’t sure what to say.

This has been a discouraging moment in our nation’s history.

And yet, it’s Women’s History Month. That feels exactly like the moment when reflection – and perhaps a bit of courage to speak honestly – matters most.

For years I’ve used March to reflect on the progress women have made and the work still ahead. This year, I find myself thinking about something different: how our history might look today if it already included our first woman president.

We had our chances.

I can’t help but wonder how our country might feel if women had reached the highest level of leadership. Would our national priorities look different? Would we see greater attention to economic security, healthcare access, environmental sustainability, or global cooperation?

Of course, no single leader determines the course of history. But representation matters. Leadership matters. And the absence of women at the very top of our political system remains striking.

Those of us who work in healthcare know something about leadership in challenging moments. The past several years have tested healthcare organizations and the people who lead them in unprecedented ways. One lesson stands out: progress rarely follows a straight line. It requires resilience, collaboration, and people willing to keep moving forward even when the path feels uncertain.

Hope can feel hard to hold onto in times like these. Continue reading →

Bearing Witness: When Conscience Requires More Than Silence

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I did not expect this to be the focus of my first blog post of 2026. But here we are. As I write, I am on my way home from a five-day visit to my family in Minneapolis. My hometown. The place where I grew up. The place where I met my husband, got married and had two children. While I moved away many years ago, my siblings, their adult children, and grandchildren all still live there.

Minneapolis is a progressive, diverse city. It is a proud, resilient community. I love going back to visit.

Tuesday night my brother and sister-in-law took my sister and I out to dinner at a restaurant near downtown that is owned and operated by a non-profit, North American Traditional Indigenous Food Systems. There were two signs behind the hostess desk that made it clear that federal agents may not stage immigration operations on the property.

On Wednesday, Minneapolis was rocked by the fatal shooting of Renee Nicole Good, a 37-year-old mother of three children, by an ICE agent. It happened a few miles from my sister’s downtown apartment and several blocks from where my husband and I once lived. I was both heartbroken and outraged as I watched the videos of this tragic event and read the assertions being perpetrated by the administration that this was domestic terrorism.

While I did not attend the vigil Wednesday night with thousands of others, my sister and I participated in the 4pm weekly standout at the intersection outside her downtown apartment building.  Signs re-used each week by the regulars are what you would expect – Resist, Wakeup, Save Democracy, No Kings – and yet the newest ones focused on getting ICE out of Minneapolis. 90% of the cars that passed honked in support of us. Continue reading →

On Connections and Caring: The Work That Outlasts Our Careers

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My LinkedIn feed was filled with CHIME Fall Forum recaps and pictures this past week. I refrained from posting a recap as I focused primarily on the one-on-one people connections. At the closing session we were asked to give one word that best described the week. Mine was “connections” – it turned out to be the top one in the resulting word cloud from all the attendees, along with several synonyms for connections. This is especially true after years of virtual meetings and knowing people only on zoom – the value of in-person time is immeasurable.

As the days went by at the fall forum, I realized that my primary role in professional circles these days is as a connector. I had many conversations involving career advice and made a lot of introductions for people. I heard how much this was appreciated by people I talked to along with their recognition that I do this for so many others in our industry.

I’m grateful to all those who mentored and helped me during my four decades in health IT management. So, my commitment to developing next generation leaders is something I take seriously.

At this point in my career, providing coaching services, volunteering as a mentor in multiple programs, informal mentoring, giving career advice, sharing information and intel about current job openings, making introductions, and a lot of listening is what I enjoy doing and am willing to give time to. I probably get 1-2 requests a week and always make time to schedule a short call.

I also had a few conversations with CHIME staff, board members, foundation firms, and colleagues about how LCHIME (lifetime CHIME) members can continue to contribute once they no longer work full-time for a provider organization. Continue reading →

Leading Through Disruption: What Travel, Technology, and Teamwork Remind Me

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Because leading well — and living fully — means not staying silent.

Since my last blog post in early September, I’ve travelled internationally, reconnected with a group of health IT colleagues that spanned a 30-year period of working together, moderated an AI panel at a local NEHIMSS conference, and participated in the largest peaceful protest in American history.

All these experiences are worth briefly reflecting on.

My international travel included a week in Prague on a Road Scholar Independent Art and Architecture tour with four other women as part of a 19-person group. It was a wonderful trip on many levels – art, architecture, music and history – with friends and interesting new people we got to know. On an independent afternoon, my good friend and I booked a local tour – “WWII in Prague and Operation Anthropoid Tour”. She wanted to go to Terezin, a concentration camp about an hour from Prague that I had been to on a previous tour 10 years ago. But we mistakenly booked the wrong tour and ended up doing a Prague walking tour instead – it was filled with history from the period before and during WWII. Like other times I’ve been in Europe in recent years, it’s clear that Europeans understand Fascism at a level many Americans don’t or are unwilling to.

On our way back from Prague, that friend and I met our husbands in Iceland for 5 days of touring on our own. While it was a wonderful time in a beautiful country, it was a great lesson in accepting what is not in our control. In this case, the weather! It was grey, rainy and windy for much of the week with no opportunities at night to see the Northern Lights. My advice for Iceland travelers – pack layers and waterproof clothes/shoes/boots (we did) and be flexible. The weather can change dramatically in an hour. And don’t hold your breath that you’ll see the Northern Lights.

Reconnecting with IT colleagues from the Partners HealthCare days (now called Mass General Brigham) was a poignant reminder of how a talented, committed group of people can make a significant difference. For those of you who don’t know John Glaser, just know that he led transformative changes in health IT starting back in the 1990s as we rolled out leading edge systems focused on improving patient safety and much more. I still consider him a mentor who has greatly influenced me as a leader, and he is a legend in our health IT industry. I’m honored to say I was part of that work at Partners as the CIO at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in the early 2000s.

Fast forward to 2025 and it’s all about AI. Last week, I moderated a panel titled “Challenges and Considerations for Implementing AI Within the Enterprise” at the HIMSS New England Chapter Digital Health Conference – “Survival Guide for the Disruption TsunamAI in Healthcare”. We covered governance, clinical integration and validation, strategic choices of build vs buy vs partner, measuring success and ROI, and the human aspects. The final question for the panelists was if you had to give one piece of advice to leaders preparing for AI in the next 2-3 years, what would it be? Their advice was short and to the point:

    • Use it / learn it.
    • Go slow / Don’t be afraid of it.
    • Have a strategy / Iterate often / Find a partner.
    • Keep up with what end-users are using.

With AI in mind, I’ll pivot to the last point – separating fact from fiction and recognizing real images rather than AI generated ones is something we all must keep in mind. We are bombarded daily with the most divisive, nasty politics I’ve ever seen on social media and in the news.

Know your values and stick to them. Engage in civil conversations and disagreements with others. And as my sign at Saturday’s peaceful protest said, “The Power of the People is Greater than the People in Power”. I’m an optimist!

Insights for Leading Through Uncertainty

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Is it writer’s block or being discouraged by the state of our country that is getting in the way of my writing these days? I admit that I struggle with what to write that my loyal readers would relate to and be willing to read. One of the people I’m currently coaching noted this week that it’s been a while since I wrote a blog post and she missed seeing something from me. Maybe others are thinking the same, or not.

After some thought, I decided to do what many on social media do, amplify! There is so much great content from others to share.

Who to amplify was not a hard decision. My colleague at StarBridge Advisors, David Muntz, has been writing most of our View from the Bridge blog posts for some time now. He wrote two very insightful and grounding posts in recent months that have helped me have a more positive perspective in these troubling times. Given the reactions these blogs have generated from readers, they appear to have been valuable overall to many others as well.

As the titles suggest, he shares lessons from healthcare and his experience as a leader that we can all use during these challenging times.

Living and Leading in Chaotic and Uncertain Times

From Healing Hands to Healing Hearts: What the Nation Can Learn from Healthcare

I highly recommend you find time to read them both and share widely with your own network.

Care at Home Isn’t New – But Scaling It Is the Real Breakthrough

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When you look back at healthcare delivery over the decades, care at home is not new. Home Care (VNA) has been around for over a century, and gained significant traction with the expansion of Medicare in the 1960’s. By the 1980’s, VNA was considered part of the “continuum of care” for most large healthcare systems.

Johns Hopkins University began development of the first Hospital at Home program in the U.S. in the 1990s. But it wasn’t until the early 2010s that I started hearing the term “hospital at home”. It was a vision that our Chief Medical Officer at a Midwestern academic health system started promoting internally.

CMS formalized the Acute Hospital Care at Home (AHCaH) waiver program during COVID as part of their response to the capacity crisis. As of late 2022, CMS had approved over 250 hospitals.

In early 2023, my daughter who is a Nurse Practitioner told me there was an opening for the Director of Advanced Practice Providers (NP/PA) for Home Hospital at her health system – Mass General Brigham. She had been the Chief Nurse Practitioner on a growing Orthopedic/Spine Surgery inpatient service at one of their community hospitals for over 11 years at that point. I was quick to encourage her to apply, telling her that it represented the future and was a great opportunity.

Fast forward to today and that program is one of the largest in the country and is operating at scale.

But why do so many hospital at home programs fail or struggle to scale? The complexities and challenges are significant yet the benefits for hospitals, patients and their families are tangible.

You can learn more in our StarBridge Advisors blog, “The Rise of Care at Home: Healthcare’s Most Important Shift is Already Underway” by John Campbell.  I’ve known John since the early 2000s when we were colleagues as CIOs within the Mass General Brigham (MGB) health system. His experience and insights are invaluable to anyone navigating care at home programs whether from an operational, clinical or technological perspective. John brings deep expertise in home-based care models, digital transformation, and care delivery innovation. At MGB he led technology strategy for Healthcare at Home and Post-Acute Care – translating vision into scalable, patient-centered programs.

I will be joining John and David Muntz this Wednesday August 6th from 3-4 PM ET for a ProNexus Advisory sponsored Real Talk live event titled: “Care at Home: Healthcare’s Next Frontier is Already Here”. You can register here.

It should be a lively and enlightening conversation!

Why I Keep Showing Up: Coaching, Mentoring, and Developing Future Leaders

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With graduation season behind us, the end of June is a great time to talk about developing the next generation of health IT leaders.

I’ve been a volunteer mentor to 7 students and early careerists over the past several months through two different programs – the New England HIMSS Chapter and RIBBA. I’m happy to say that five of them have gotten jobs in a very tough job market. Part of our work together included refining resumes, preparing for interviews, answering their questions on salary negotiation, and helping them get in front of the right people at the companies where they applied. Some of my mentees were international students who faced unique concerns given the new administration.

I currently have several coaching engagements in process and have coached many more health IT leaders over the past 10 years. Progress and growth come in many different forms depending on one’s leadership development and career goals. Two of my coachees have recently been named to the Becker’s list of “100 Women to Know in Health IT 2025.” And in recent years, another coachee was recognized with the “HIMSS Most Influential Women in Health IT Award” along with five other women. As we worked together, some of their goals were to increase their networks and broaden their involvement in our industry. These recognitions affirmed their progress towards these goals.

Most weeks my schedule also includes at least 1-2 calls with colleagues who are in transition between jobs or considering make a change – they are looking for some perspective and advice as well as insight on open positions. Continue reading →