Terri LeFort took over as CEO of Pivot Point Consulting this summer, bringing nearly 30 years of clinical, consulting and executive experience to a role shaped by the firm's recent merger with Innovative Consulting Group. Her appointment arrives as health systems face mounting workforce shortages, financial strain and clinical pressures. LeFort argues that the path forward requires connecting technology investments across the enterprise, getting clinicians more involved in decisions and concentrating scarce resources on initiatives that create measurable capacity and improve care.
The gap between IT plans and clinical reality
LeFort began her career as a pediatric emergency room nurse before moving into hospital administration and healthcare IT. That clinical foundation shaped how she evaluates technology. "A system that introduces one extra step may appear insignificant in a project plan, but that step becomes meaningful when a nurse repeats it dozens of times during a demanding shift," she said. When technology is difficult to use, clinicians spend more energy navigating systems and less time caring for patients.
She said healthcare IT leaders sometimes assess technology primarily through functionality, implementation schedules and technical performance. Those measures matter but do not fully capture user experience. Leaders also need to understand how technology changes clinical judgment, communication, cognitive workload and the flow of care. A technically successful implementation can still create frustration or risk if it does not reflect the realities of the clinical environment.
LeFort emphasized that clinician involvement must continue beyond requirements gathering and go-live. She also said leadership carries the obligation to make that participation possible by protecting time, covering clinical shifts and showing clinicians afterward that their input changed a decision.
Where health systems should concentrate resources
LeFort said health systems are not short of technology - they are short of people, money and time. CIOs should begin with the organization's most pressing clinical, operational, workforce and financial constraints. They should identify where people are spending time on avoidable manual work, where patients are waiting, where fragmented information delays decisions and where current systems are failing to deliver their intended value.
For many organizations, the greatest opportunity lies in improving what they already have. Workflow redesign, application rationalization, better integration, stronger governance, targeted automation and more effective training may deliver greater value than another major purchase. Resources should concentrate on initiatives with clear measures: reduced administrative work, improved throughput, faster access to care, lower operating costs or greater clinician satisfaction.
"Organizations lose return when they acquire technology in response to market excitement without defining the problem first," she said. Endless pilots, overlapping applications, excessive customization and projects that underestimate change management consume scarce resources. Every investment should have an accountable owner, a defined baseline, a realistic adoption plan and a small set of measurable outcomes.
Making AI create capacity instead of complexity
The organizations seeing meaningful results from AI begin with a specific problem and a clear understanding of the workflow surrounding it. They establish baseline measures before implementation and evaluate whether the technology produces a sustained improvement. They also put strategy and governance in place early, bringing together clinical, operational, technology, security, legal, compliance and financial leaders.
LeFort said CIOs should inventory current and proposed uses of AI, including tools that may already be entering the organization through existing applications or individual departments. "The pace of change here is not every six months - it's daily," she said. Leaders should prioritize a limited number of high-value use cases, test them in real workflows and involve the people whose work will change. For CIOs building these capabilities, structured AI IT Strategy Training can help develop the governance and evaluation frameworks LeFort describes.
Data quality, interoperability, cybersecurity, transparency and workforce education also need attention. Human judgment remains essential, particularly in clinical settings where context and consequences matter.
The inflection point ahead
LeFort said the biggest change coming to health system IT is not any single technology. "This industry is at an inflection point, and I don't use that phrase lightly," she said. The transformations most organizations have been running as separate programs are no longer separable. A decision made in one now constrains what is possible in the others, and the sequencing that worked when they were independent projects no longer holds.
AI will also become embedded throughout existing workflows, applications and infrastructure, making oversight more complicated because leaders may not always recognize where AI is operating or how it influences decisions. CIOs should prepare for continuous monitoring, clearer accountability, stronger data governance and regular evaluation of performance, bias, security and clinical impact.
Internationally, some health systems are implementing EHRs, cloud capabilities, integration and AI in parallel rather than following the more sequential path seen in the United States. That creates opportunities to leapfrog legacy approaches. The future health IT workforce will need fewer narrowly defined project roles and more people who understand workflow, data, governance, change management and measurable value across the enterprise.
Why this matters for healthcare management
LeFort's framework gives healthcare executives a practical filter for technology decisions under resource constraints. The core test she proposes is direct: if leaders cannot explain how an initiative creates capacity or improves care, they should reconsider its priority. For IT executives and VPs responsible for execution, programs like AI IT Executive Leadership Courses offer structured approaches to building the governance models and workforce capabilities LeFort identifies as essential. The organizations that succeed, she said, will be the ones that are nimble and can manage change - a statement she believes has never been truer than it is right now.
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