The 229 Podcast

March 25, 2026: What happens when a health system is juggling over 100 active IT projects with a workforce that can never be 100% allocated to any single one? Joe Longo, SVP and CDIO at Parkland Health, and Eric Utzinger, Co-Founder and Chief Client Officer at Revuud, join Bill Russell to expose the hidden dysfunction inside traditional healthcare IT staffing — and what a transparent, direct-access platform model is doing to fix it. If your hiring managers are still waiting weeks for a resume that three other firms already sent you, this one is worth your time.

Key Points:

• 01:14 Traditional Staffing Pain Points

• 07:26 What’s Broken for Agencies

• 13:00 How Revuud Works

• 19:33 Transparent Pricing and Hiring

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March 23, 2026: Bill Russell, Drex DeFord, and Sarah Richardson are back with a packed Newsday covering three big conversations: the AI security crisis no one is talking loudly enough about, what HIMSS 2026 actually delivered for healthcare leaders, and the real question facing every CIO and CMIO right now: Is your time worth attending two major conferences each spring? 

Key Points:

• 01:03 AI Chatbot Security
• 04:25 MIT AI Strategy Class
• 06:55 HIMSS Takeaways and Trends
• 10:40 Conference Value and Wrap Up

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March 20, 2026: Healthcare leaders have been talking about the “smart hospital room” for years. Now it is starting to become real. In this live conversation from the floor of HIMSS 2026, Bill Russell speaks with Adam McMullin, CEO of AvaSure, about how virtual care platforms are evolving beyond patient monitoring into a foundation for the hospital room of the future.

With deployments across more than 1,200 hospitals, AvaSure built its footprint through virtual safety monitoring, helping health systems reduce fall risks while dramatically lowering costs. Now that same infrastructure is expanding into physician access, computer vision, and AI driven patient monitoring that could detect deterioration hours before a patient crashes.

Adam shares how health systems are rethinking the hospital room as a connected care platform. Virtual nursing, family engagement, Epic integrations, and emerging capabilities like contactless vital monitoring are all becoming part of the same environment. The result is not simply new technology. It is a shift toward safer rooms, better staffing models, and new ways to extend care from the hospital into the home.

For health system leaders navigating workforce shortages and rising costs, the question is no longer whether virtual care will scale. The real question is how quickly the hospital room itself will transform.

Key Points:

• The Evolution of Virtual Safety Monitoring

• Building the Smart Hospital Room

• Computer Vision and Early Patient Intervention

March 19, 2026: What does it take to open an 850-bed, 2-million-square-foot hospital? Thomas Bentley, Chief Information and Digital Transformation Officer at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center, joins Bill Russell to pull back the curtain on one of healthcare's most complex technology challenges. From over 100 delivery robots to virtual nursing cameras and a fully integrated RFID-enabled nurse call system, Bentley breaks down what went right and what kept him up at night. A candid conversation every health system CIO needs to hear.

Key Points:

• 01:31 Opening the New Tower
• 06:31 Future Proofing and Network
• 10:38 Safety Systems and Closing Advice

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March 18, 2026: Most health systems treat EHR migrations as a checkbox, finish the project, move on. James Hammer, COO of Harmony Healthcare IT, says that mindset is costing organizations their most valuable future asset. With 19 years of experience and 715+ unique source applications migrated or archived, James reveals why legacy data is no longer just a compliance burden; it's an emerging source of AI fuel. From ambulatory practices to the nation's largest IDNs, Harmony is helping healthcare leaders rethink data not as a sunk cost, but as a strategic foundation for research, analytics, and AI. Don't let your past data become a missed opportunity.

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Key Points:

• 02:18 Migration vs Archiving Strategy

• 05:49 Decommissioning Without Friction

• 08:43 Data as an Asset 

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March 17, 2026: Blake Sallé, Chief Revenue Officer at Proofpoint, joins us live from the HIMSS conference floor to break down why agentic AI may be healthcare's next great security vulnerability. With 91% of breaches still entering through email and AI systems proving just as susceptible to manipulation as humans, Blake makes the case for why healthcare organizations need to rethink their entire security architecture, starting well before threats reach the inbox. 

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Key Points:

• 00:20 Proofpoint Beyond Email

• 02:35 Why AI Is Gullible

• 03:40 Email Threats Kill Left

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March 16: What are healthcare leaders really talking about at HIMSS? Bill Russell sits down with Sarah Richardson and Drex DeFord to share insights from the executive and cybersecurity forums—and the hallway conversations in between. AI dominates the discussion, but not just in clinical care. The hosts highlight the overlooked opportunities in operational workflows, patient outreach, and administrative efficiency. They also confront uncomfortable realities around workforce displacement, escalating infrastructure costs, and whether large technology vendors can maintain their value as AI lowers the barrier to building solutions internally. For CIOs, the challenge is clear: manage today’s operations while preparing for an AI-driven future that’s evolving faster than any roadmap.

Key Points

• AI Arms Race in Cybersecurity
• Where AI Delivers the Fastest ROI
• Workforce Disruption and Leadership Responsibility
• Vendor Pricing Pressure and Infrastructure Costs
• The Future of Build vs Buy in Healthcare IT

March 12, 2026: Joseph Evans, CMIO for Sentara Healthcare, joins Bill Russell fresh off the VIVE event to unpack what's really happening on the front lines of healthcare AI adoption. From Epic's expanding generative AI catalog to the flood of point solutions promising to solve everything from length of stay to clinical summarization, Joseph shares how Sentara is staying disciplined, evaluating problems first. He also raises a provocative concern that's keeping him up at night: it's not AI hallucinations we should fear most, it's what the models are quietly leaving out.

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Key Points:

• 01:32 Vive Event Takeaways

• 06:33 Trust and Governance

• 10:53 Evaluating New AI Vendors

• 15:02 Patient AI and Access

• 21:42 Personal AI Wins and Wrap

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March 11, 2026: What if you could reclaim thousands of hours of IT staff time, without cutting corners on quality? Chris Paravate, CDIO at Northeast Georgia Health System, joins Phillip Furukawa, CRO at SureTest, to reveal how they achieved a 98% reduction in manual testing time across their Epic environment. From 161 regression incidents down to 45, the numbers tell a compelling story. Discover how testing automation is reshaping Epic upgrade cycles, freeing up nearly 10 FTEs worth of capacity, and unlocking a faster path to quarterly updates and meaningful clinical innovation.

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Key Points:

• 03:08 Epic Upgrades and Testing Pain

• 04:47 Why Automation Matters

• 07:20 SureTest Implementation Playbook

• 12:00 Results Time and FTE Savings

• 17:48 CIO Advice and Wrap Up

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March 9, 2026: What happens when well-meaning clinicians use AI tools that no one approved? Bill Russell and Drex Ford are joined by Dr. Holly Urban, Vice President of Business Development at Wolters Kluwer, to unpack a revealing new survey on shadow AI in healthcare. From radiologists sharing PHI over Dropbox to tumor board transcripts sent to unauthorized recipients, the risks are real and growing. With 57% of staff aware of unsanctioned AI use, the question isn't whether shadow AI exists in your health system. It's what you're going to do about it.

Key Points:

01:28 Shadow AI is everywhere (and why it’s familiar)

11:18 Governance in the AI era

18:41 Patients, liability, and the road ahead

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