IMPULSE STRATEGIC SOLUTIONS

Why Healthcare IT Takes the Fall and How CIOs Can Fix It

Shawn Boorom — Mon, 08 Jun 2026 19:53:52 +0000

TL;DR

Healthcare IT is routinely blamed for crises it didn’t create because technology is excluded from strategic planning until something breaks.
CIOs can shift this dynamic by aligning IT to clinical and business outcomes, translating technical metrics into patient and revenue impact, and building shared accountability across departments.
The biggest mistake IT leaders make is absorbing blame silently by accepting full responsibility without surfacing the governance failures and fragmented ownership that caused the problem.
When IT does share responsibility, lead with facts: what happened, why it happened, and what changes. That’s how IT earns the credibility to be at the table before the next crisis.

In healthcare, technology is often excluded from early strategic decision-making. Major initiatives — acquisitions, EHR system expansions, vendor selections, new clinical service lines — frequently move forward without a full assessment of infrastructure readiness, integration complexity, or security risk. When downstream failures surface, IT is expected to remediate problems it did not help design.

Understanding why this pattern persists and what CIOs can do about it is what separates teams that are blamed from those that lead.

Why IT Ends Up Holding the Bag

When failures surface, think performance issues, outages, or breaches, healthcare IT is expected to fix problems it didn’t create. In many cases, the cost to remediate far exceeds the original implementation investment.

Consider a regional health system that quickly acquired several outpatient clinics. The transactions moved quickly, but infrastructure standards, network capacity, and identity management were never planned for. Within months, clinicians faced system slowdowns and access problems that disrupted patient flow. IT was held responsible for the instability even though the root cause was the absence of technical governance during the acquisition process. Once IT was brought into future acquisition planning earlier, performance at new clinics improved beyond expectations.

Organizations that avoid this pattern treat IT as a strategic partner, not a cost center, involve technology leadership in enterprise planning, and tie IT performance directly to business and clinical outcomes.

What CIOs Can Do to Counter This Dynamic

From both working in the hospital system to now being on the outside, here are three moves that change the equation.

1. Alignment Across Multiple Teams and Stakeholders

First, align technology initiatives explicitly to health system priorities — patient access, clinician efficiency, financial performance, and risk mitigation. When IT speaks the language of the business, it becomes harder to treat as a back-office function.

2. Translation From Tech Jargon to Real Business Impact (and Risk)

Second, translate technical metrics into business impact. Infrastructure reliability, cybersecurity posture, and system performance directly affect patient trust, brand reputation, and revenue. Patients notice when registration takes 45 minutes or when a breach makes the news, and they choose care elsewhere.

3. Set Expectations Around Roles and Ownership

Third, build shared ownership of outcomes. In effective models, IT and clinical or operational leaders jointly own results. IT manages infrastructure while service lines manage application performance. Accountability is distributed across the organization rather than concentrated inside IT.

The Biggest Mistake Healthcare IT Leaders Make When Defending Themselves

The most common misstep is accepting full responsibility for failures without surfacing the broader governance, vendor, and decision-making context. When IT frames issues as purely technical problems to be fixed, it unintentionally absorbs accountability that belongs to fragmented ownership and misaligned incentives across the enterprise.

When IT Does Share Responsibility: Lead with Facts, Not Defensiveness

The most effective response is discipline, not defensiveness. Lead with a fact-based assessment of what happened, why it happened, and which controls or decision points failed or were missing. That approach reinforces IT’s role as a trusted, accountable partner — one focused on continuous improvement, organizational resilience, and long-term performance.

Breaking the Cycle Starts With a Seat at the Table

IT doesn’t take the fall because it fails more than other departments. It takes the fall because it’s often the last one invited to the planning conversation. The CIOs who break this cycle aren’t just better communicators — they’re embedded in strategy before the decisions are made.

NMHS Improves Patient Access and Reduces Call Center Burden

Shawn Boorom — Thu, 30 Apr 2026 11:27:33 +0000

Fast Facts:
Customer Snapshot

Organization
North Mississippi Health Services (NMHS)

Industry:
Nonprofit, community health system

Headquarters
Tupelo, Mississippi (NMHS)

Scale

1,004-bed regional referral center
7,500+ employees
Serves more than 730,000 people across 24 counties in Mississippi, Alabama, and Tennessee

Technology Environment
Epic MyChart patient portal

Solution Implemented
Automated Patient Portal Support with IVR and intelligent call routing from Impulse Strategic Solutions.

Key Outcomes

Average support call time reduced from ~10 minutes to under 3 minutes
24/7 patient access to portal assistance
Reduced call center workload through automated resolution
Over 50% of issues resolved automatically through self-service automation

Challenge

North Mississippi Health Services relies heavily on its Epic MyChart patient portal to help patients manage appointments, view test results, request prescription refills, and communicate with care teams.

As portal usage increased, so did the number of support calls. Many patients contacted the help desk for routine issues such as password resets, login assistance, or navigating the portal.

At the same time, the legacy IVR system supporting automated services was approaching end-of-life, creating an urgent need to modernize the platform while maintaining uninterrupted support for patients.

“As patient portal adoption continues to grow, we knew we needed a scalable way to support patients without adding additional strain to our support teams.”

— Rachael Hill, MBA, RN, CDH-E, CHCIO, CPHIMS, Director of Clinical Systems Operations / CNIO

NMHS needed a solution that could provide round-the-clock support, automate common requests, and integrate seamlessly with Epic MyChart.

Solution

NMHS partnered with Impulse Strategic Solutions to deploy an automated patient portal support system powered by intelligent IVR technology.

The platform allows patients to quickly resolve common issues through automated self-service while still providing the option to connect with a live support agent when necessary.

Key capabilities include:

24/7 automated patient assistance
Intent recognition to understand caller requests
Integration with Epic MyChart
Intelligent routing to the appropriate department
Multilingual support for diverse patient populations

“Our goal was not just to replace legacy technology. We wanted to create a smarter, more scalable way for patients to access help when they need it.”

— Rachael Hill, MBA, RN, CDH-E, CHCIO, CPHIMS, Director of Clinical Systems Operations / CNIO

Impact

By automating routine portal support requests, NMHS significantly improved both patient access and operational efficiency.

Average support call times dropped from approximately 10 minutes to less than 3 minutes, allowing patients to resolve issues quickly while freeing staff to focus on more complex needs.

More than 50% of support requests are now resolved through automated self-service, reducing call center volume and lowering operational costs.

Patients can also access assistance 24 hours a day, including evenings and early mornings when support demand is often highest.

“Automation allows us to meet patients where they are. They can get help quickly and easily, while our staff can focus on the situations that truly require human support.”

— Rachael Hill, MBA, RN, CDH-E, CHCIO, CPHIMS, Director of Clinical Systems Operations / CNIO

Looking Ahead

By modernizing patient portal support, North Mississippi Health Services has built a scalable foundation for its expanding digital front door strategy. The automated platform allows the organization to support growing patient demand while continuing to improve access, efficiency, and the overall patient experience.

Rural Healthcare Technology Support | Impulse + Capsa

Scott Collins — Fri, 06 Mar 2026 09:00:00 +0000

Modernizing Rural Healthcare Requires More Than New Technology. It Requires Execution Capacity.

Impulse Strategic Solutions expands support for rural and community hospitals as states deploy Rural Health Transformation Program (RHTP) funding nationwide and announces strategic partnership with Capsa Healthcare.

Houston, TX — March 5, 2026 — Rural and community hospitals across the United States are entering a pivotal period of transformation. Through the federal Rural Health Transformation Program (RHTP), states are deploying multi-year investments to expand access, modernize infrastructure, strengthen workforce capacity, and stabilize care delivery in underserved communities. For many rural hospitals, the barrier is not strategy, it is most often execution capacity.

Impulse Strategic Solutions (Impulse), a healthcare-focused IT services firm, is expanding its national support for rural and community hospitals by extending internal IT capacity and taking ownership of the operational work required to modernize clinical environments in alignment with RHTP priorities.

RHTP initiatives focus on:

Expanding access points, including telehealth and community-based care
Modernizing health IT and clinical infrastructure
Strengthening cybersecurity and continuity of care
Improving care coordination and measurable outcomes

Hospitals that deploy efficiently and demonstrate impact early are better positioned for sustained RHTP funding. Yet many rural facilities operate with lean IT teams responsible for cybersecurity, electronic health record (EHR) uptime, device management, and infrastructure upgrades at the same time.

“When modernization accelerates, small teams feel it first,” said Scott Collins, CEO and co-founder, Impulse. “RHTP creates opportunity, but it also demands disciplined execution. Someone must validate infrastructure, deploy devices, manage lifecycles, and keep systems stable while change is underway. That is where we step in.”

Execution often becomes the bottleneck as rural and community hospitals simultaneously expand telehealth access, refresh aging workstation fleets, upgrade network and power capacity, coordinate IT improvements with facility retrofits, and prepare to document measurable outcomes tied to funding. These initiatives are necessary, but they place significant strain on limited internal resources

Without operational support, even well-funded programs can stall. Impulse manages the ground-level execution required to move modernization forward, including:

On-site infrastructure and power validation
Standardization and deployment of point of care devices
IT and facilities coordination during upgrades
Installation and go-live support
Ongoing fleet and lifecycle management
Transparent reporting for executive oversight and funding accountability

By owning the deployment and lifecycle work, Impulse expands the capacity of internal IT teams so they can focus on governance, security, and strategic priorities rather than being pulled into constant rollout logistics.

Many RHTP priorities depend on reliable endpoints and resilient infrastructure. Telehealth expansion, facility upgrades, and health IT modernization require more than equipment delivery. They require sustained operational alignment. From efficient device deployment. Standardization of fleets to reduce support complexity and reporting must support measurable performance tied to funding requirements. Modernization succeeds when systems are stable, staff are supported, and patient care continues uninterrupted.

Part of that execution model includes Impulse’s strategic partnership with Capsa Healthcare, a national provider of point-of-care computing solutions. Through this relationship, hospitals can align device platforms with turnkey deployment, field services, and ongoing fleet management.

“Capsa Healthcare is committed to supporting healthcare organizations as they modernize care delivery. Collaborating with partners like Impulse who understand the operational realities of rural hospitals helps ensure that technology deployments are smooth, sustainable, and aligned with patientcare priorities,” said Jerry Sirjord, Sr. Director of Sales at Capsa Healthcare.

The partnership supports RHTP-driven expansion by ensuring that equipment investments are matched with operational capacity. Capsa represents one component of Impulse’s broader, vendor-agnostic approach, designed to integrate with the community electronic health record environments and hybrid infrastructures common across rural systems.

Continuity of care depends on reliable endpoints, validated power, coordinated facility planning, and disciplined execution. When those elements are misaligned, internal IT teams absorb the strain.

“Our focus is straightforward,” added Collins. “Extend capacity, reduce operational drag, and ensure modernization strengthens rural healthcare rather than destabilizing it. We become embedded within the organization’s dynamics and provide both the IT expertise and the people power required to execute.”

As RHTP funding accelerates rural transformation nationwide, execution capacity will determine which initiatives scale successfully. Impulse, along with strategic partners such as Capsa, is positioned to help rural leaders turn modernization goals into stable, measurable progress.

About Impulse Strategic Solutions

Impulse Strategic Solutions is a healthcare-focused IT services firm providing field support, managed services, infrastructure modernization, and clinical endpoint lifecycle management. The company partners with hospitals and health systems nationwide to extend internal IT capacity and improve operational reliability. For more information, visit impulsestrategicsolutions.com.

About Capsa Healthcare

Capsa Healthcare is a global provider of innovative workflow solutions for healthcare delivery. With over 60 years of experience, Capsa designs and delivers technology-enabled products that improve efficiency, safety, and care outcomes. For more information, visit capsahealthcare.com.

Solving the Execution Gap in Tech Rollouts

Scott Collins — Fri, 27 Jun 2025 09:00:00 +0000

Most technology rollouts fail due to poor execution—not because of inadequate tools but because teams are overwhelmed by scope, time constraints, and a lack of structured support.

PACS Implementation: Consultant Expertise vs. Hospital Administrator & Navigating Modality Migration Challenges

Shawn Boorom — Tue, 24 Jun 2025 09:00:00 +0000

PACS migration isn’t just technical it’s clinical. Impulse delivers vendor-agnostic expertise to align teams, validate modalities, and protect diagnostics. We don’t just manage transitions we make sure your radiologists and patients stay confident.

Future of Care Spaces

Scott Collins — Wed, 05 Feb 2025 09:00:00 +0000

This paper explores the emerging trends in healthcare technology and data utilization, emphasizing the need for effective change management, patient-centric approaches, and collaborative partnerships. The sources highlight the growing importance of data-driven decision making in healthcare, extending beyond the implementation of individual technologies to focus on actionable insights that improve patient outcomes and enhance operational efficiency.

Are You a “Tech Hoarder”? Follow These 7 Tips for Technology Portfolio Management

Scott Collins — Fri, 15 Sep 2023 09:00:00 +0000

In today’s fast-paced world of tech, IT organizations are constantly adopting new systems and applications. But keeping up with the latest innovations can lead to a dangerous habit: Tech hoarding.

Much like stacks of unused items accumulate in the home of a compulsive hoarder, redundant applications and technologies can begin to pile up in an enterprise IT environment. Whether you’re retaining legacy apps that have been dormant for years or outdated enterprise software solutions that have already been replaced, tech-hoarding impacts system performance and drains your IT budgets.

Consider this:

In a recent McKinsey survey, CIOs reported that up to 20% percent of the budget dedicated to new technology products is diverted to resolve issues related to legacy tech.
Collectively, companies lose an estimated $300 billion each year to “technical debt” – maintaining legacy systems or dealing with the ramifications of bad software.

Once the ongoing costs from old tech hit your balance sheet, then the questions arise: Where are the overlaps in functionality? Are we overstaffed? How much could we save by de-cluttering our technology closet?

If any of this sounds familiar, then it may be time to kick your tech-hoarding habit. To help you get started, here are 7 tips we’ve learned that can streamline your technology and application portfolios.

Start with an audit. The first step of technology portfolio management involves identifying and classifying all of your application and technology assets. For each application, this includes collecting information on the annual spending, contract termination dates, and term conditions. By conducting an initial audit, you’ll have a comprehensive view of your IT environment – enabling you to decide which resources should stay and what can be eliminated. Then, you can use the information you’ve gathered to set your decommission priorities.
Establish a data governance policy. When eliminating systems and applications, you’ll need to decide what should be done with all the legacy data. In our experience, establishing a governance policy early in the process is essential. Doing so will help you avoid any delays related to data retention and decommission.
Do your homework. Once you’ve identified an application or technology that can be replaced, retired, or consolidated, make sure you research all the ways it is currently being used. Understanding the work and data flow of an existing application will help you speed up its replacement or retirement while ensuring no details or use cases are overlooked.
Determine your legacy management solution. Find and implement the best legacy management solution to meet your unique needs. Do you need to select a supplemental product? Will your approach leverage best-of-breed, best-of-suite, or an all-in-one solution? Do you have the staff to support it? Ask yourself these questions to select the solution that’s right for you.
Communicate with stakeholders. Engaging business owners and other key stakeholders early in the process will help ease the transition when decommissioning systems. Do your best to get their buy-in. Communicate your expected timelines to help them make the necessary preparations. And meet often to manage expectations and address any concerns.
Capture the benefits. Decommissioning legacy systems will free up valuable resources for your team. Before you get started, decide how you will leverage these new-found savings to be more responsive to the needs of the business – like refocusing developer time on innovation or investing the cost savings into new technologies that align with your strategic goals.
Prevent future application creep. Once you’ve thinned out your technology and application portfolio, create new governance policies as a safeguard against future application creep. This will ensure you give up your tech-hoarding habits for good.

Know When to Call in an Expert

Just like facing the reality of an unhealthy habit, admitting you have a technology hoarding problem is the critical first step to overcoming it. But you don’t have to handle the cleanup alone. With the right partner, you can clear out the clutter of legacy tech and build an agile, future-ready IT environment focused on delivering real business value – fast.

At Impulse Strategic Solutions, we know that technology portfolio management is complex, tedious, and resource-intensive. That’s why we offer a team of experienced, senior IT leaders to help guide the way. To learn more about our methodology and experience with IT assessments and portfolio management, contact us today.

Change Management

Scott Collins — Thu, 22 Jun 2023 09:00:00 +0000

Changes in IT services are either proactive or reactive. Proactive changes focus mainly on offering new products or services. This adds value to your organization through cost-savings or more efficiency. Is your security breached and do you need to patch one of your servers in a hurry? Reactive changes mainly involve resolving errors like these.

When your division wants to implement a new technology that needs deployment across the entire organization. With Change Management, this process becomes smoother and more efficient. Why does this matter? Because every change you make to your infrastructure could lead to problems. And this in turn leads to your services being disrupted. It also leads to downtime of your systems, and reduced productivity of your service desk staff. In fact, poor change management could lead to lots of incidents, even major incidents.

Change Management safeguards your services against any of these unnecessary errors. And if an error does occur? Thanks to the software, you can easily trace all changes and pinpoint where things went wrong.

Benefits of IT Change Management

In addition to minimizing the impact of disruptions to your services, there are a number of benefit

Implement changes more quickly
Track the progress of changes to your IT infrastructure
Make your IT Change Management process more transparent, improving communication with stakeholders
Easily trace the roll-out of any changes if something goes wrong
Improve cost estimate for any proposed changes

What kind of changes are there?

In Change Management there are three distinct classes of change: standard changes, normal changes and emergency changes. Each class of changes is managed in a different way:

Standard changes. These are changes to a service or to the IT infrastructure. Here, the implementation process and the risks are known upfront. These changes are managed according to policies that an IT organization already has in place. An example of a standard change: installing a new printer, or software on a laptop.
Normal changes. These changes have to go through a change process before they can be approved and implemented. If they are high-risk, a change advisory board* decides whether they will be implemented. A normal change could be moving a new development project into production or adding a new server.
Emergency changes. These are changes that must be performed as soon as possible. An example of an emergency change: having to fix a security breach that requires a patch to a large number of workstations.

Want to experience how change management tools work in practice? Let Impulse Strategic Solutions help map out a strategy and implement those changes.

What does the IT Change Management process look like?

Thanks to best practices, all changes to your IT infrastructure are assessed, approved, implemented and reviewed in a controlled way. To do so, there are several steps which include:

Formally change request
Reviewing any requested changes
Approving any requested changes
Creating a detailed project plan for changes
Reviewing and refining the plan. This is done by a team of stakeholders.
Planning or scheduling the implementation of changes
Testing the change
Assessing and reporting on the results of the change

Redwood Technologies can help your organization identify areas for improvement in addition to implementing the changes necessary to maximize your system adoption and ROI. For more information on Change Management and how it could benefit your business, get in touch with Impulse Strategic Solutions today or click here to learn more.

Managed IT Support

Scott Collins — Wed, 21 Jun 2023 14:07:00 +0000

Over the last several years, the Internet has changed the way companies do business. This change has made it easier than ever before to store data, find new customers and promote your company. However, because of this growing need on IT infrastructure, it’s important to have a dedicated team in place to assist with any problems.

For supporting your IT initiatives, a company would seemingly have two options to consider; either hire an in-house team to manage the IT side of the business or outsource.

What Is Managed IT Support?

An internal IT team can be extremely expensive to integrate into your business. If you don’t have the time, money or resources to set-up a full scale in-house IT support team, your best option would be to outsource.

By doing so, you will end up with experienced and qualified experts at a reduced cost. You can call on this expertise when your IT infrastructure is hit by a problem.

Redwood Technologies is one fine example of a professional IT support business. Their team of IT experts are on hand 24/7 to tackle any issues you’re experiencing and if it can’t be dealt with remotely, a technician will visit your business’ premises.

It can be difficult to choose the right support if you’ve little experience in the industry. Also, you may not know whether you actually need to outsource your IT support. With Managed IT Support you’ll be able to work closely with a knowledgeable company who will get an understanding of your IT infrastructure and provide tailor-made assistance.

You Will Likely Require IT Support If:

You are trying to grow your business and your current IT support is unable to handle the demand.
You have an IT support system in place, but you are not satisfied with the response.
Your IT systems are continually failing and you’re seeing too much downtime.
The current system isn’t aligned with your business goals and you’ve not a clear strategy in place.
You’re always worrying about the prospect of using up your allotted hours and risk extra charges.

The Benefits of Managed IT Support

Each business requires a unique operation to ensure the correct IT support is in place. This should be in line to meet your business needs and support ideally on hand 24/7 as realistically, you could suffer downtime throughout the day or night.

Reasons To Outsource Your IT Support:

Better strategies: By reaching out and allowing an external team to manage your IT, you’ll be able to free up time and effectively work on other areas of the company. This could be on aspects such as strategic developments, sales or even new business initiatives.

Save money: An internal IT support team can be expensive. This is one of the key reasons to consider outsourcing as you’ll have an expert IT team at your fingertips without needing to spend a great deal.

Increased reliability: Managing your IT infrastructure would have built up knowledge through years of experience and tackling a range of problems. You can put your trust in this team to resolve any technical issues your IT has and count on them 24/7.

Grow your business: Growing your business is always exciting, but there’s plenty to factor into the equation when taking the next steps forward. By outsourcing your IT support you’ll be able to remove much of the hassle an in-house team would have trying to manage the growing demand.

All in one place: An IT support team will be able to tailor-make their service to your business, so you can ensure all aspects of your IT infrastructure are dealt with cost effectively and efficiently. One team can manage all areas.

Manage the risk element: With your IT infrastructure, there’s always the risk of a fault occurring and your network experiencing downtime. As such, your business could lose money for the whole time period. An external support team will be able to update your system as and when there are technological advances, lowering the risk of an issue presenting itself.

Access to field experts: By outsourcing support, you’ll gain the knowledge and assistance of experts in the field, so your trust is always rightly placed. No matter the problem that develops, you can be sure your dedicated team will respond in a timely manner and have you back up and running in no time at all.

With the right Managed IT Support you can take advantage of all the benefits listed above.

For more information on Managed IT Support and how it could benefit your business get in touch with Impulse Strategic Solutions today or learn more about our Managed IT Services.