After digging into the latest findings from our 2025 symplr Compass Survey, I’m more convinced than ever that our reflex to “fight fires” is keeping us stuck, and it’s time we try something different.
If you look back over the last four years of survey data, you’ll notice the same issues keep showing up: financial pressures, clinician burnout, mounting cybersecurity risks. The needle isn’t moving the way any of us want. This year, over 400 healthcare leaders echoed one thing loud and clear: we’re trapped in a perpetual cycle of crisis management that blocks real change.
Here’s a stat that’s hard to ignore: clinicians are now losing 88 minutes a day to administrative tasks, up from 83 minutes just last year. That’s nearly 15 hours per week, per clinician, wasted. More “solutions” have somehow made the problem worse.
We don’t need more tech; we need tech that works together
I talk with clinicians and IT teams every single week, and I hear the same message: they aren’t asking for more technology, they want technology that actually works together. Piecemeal solutions, bolted together over years, aren’t cutting it. We need to move toward integrated platforms that tie together workforce management, provider data, safety, and communications. When thoughtfully applied, technology has the power to automate routine processes, flag small issues before they snowball, and, most importantly, free up clinicians to do what only they can do: deliver safe, high-quality care.
That’s the real promise of a healthcare operations platform. It’s about reducing complexity, creating workflows that are truly connected, and ensuring every step, from credentialing to workforce management to rounding, actively supports great patient outcomes without piling on administrative burden.
Shadow IT: a symptom of frustration
Our survey found that 86% of IT leaders are dealing with shadow IT, up from 74% just three years ago. When departments can’t get what they need, they buy their own tools. It’s rarely malicious; it’s pure frustration and a desire for speed. But this creates massive cybersecurity headaches and a patchwork of tools that don’t share data, bog down clinicians, and drive up costs.
The root problem? Clinicians feel left out. And they aren’t wrong: 85% want greater say in software purchasing, compared to just 51% in 2022. Technology is now everyone’s business, not just IT’s, because it directly impacts care. It’s time to give clinicians not just a seat at the table, but true partnership in decision-making.
Bringing clinicians in from the start
Here’s what gives me hope: 76% of IT leaders now agree clinicians need more influence when it comes to software. The days of designing and deploying things to clinical teams are over. When I served as CIO of a health system in Texas, the biggest steps forward happened when we brought frontline staff into the process early, forming agile working groups that blended clinical, operational, and IT perspectives. Not just for big, urgent projects, but as a routine part of how we worked.
COVID taught us that health systems can move with incredible speed and unity. Tiger teams formed overnight, workflows were reinvented in days, and decisions happened in hours. We need to keep that sense of shared urgency and collaboration, not just in a crisis, but in our everyday approach. By building more nimble systems by design and making cross-team communication and shared accountability the default, we can finally move beyond crisis culture.
The practical promise of AI, if we’re ready
Our Compass Survey shows that leaders are drawn to practical, non-clinical advancements, like workflow agents for scheduling, supply chain optimization, and compliance anomaly detection. These are areas where AI can help right now, but only once the underlying workflows and data are solid.
I’ve seen how AI can offload tedious tasks and even strengthen security, but I’d caution this: don’t just pile AI on top of broken processes. First, evaluate workflows and make improvements. Then, let AI amplify the benefits. With clean data and well-designed workflows, AI becomes a real force-multiplier.
Platform consolidation is mission-critical
The most promising finding from the survey was that 75% of leaders now want to consolidate onto an enterprise healthcare operations platform. Frankly, we’re all weighed down by too many point solutions: 40% of IT leaders said they’re managing at least 150 different systems, and half haven’t run a portfolio audit in the past year.
It’s time for that to change. Choosing platforms over disconnected tools means more than simplifying vendor management. It means creating the connected, reliable workflows clinicians desperately need: fewer manual entries, faster access to information, and most importantly, time returned to focus on care.
Action steps: leading the way forward
So, where do we go from here? Here’s a short action plan I hope inspires you to lead transformation in your own organization:
- Make alignment a habit: Set up regular meetings, not just fire drills, where clinical, IT, and ops teams share data, set priorities, and solve problems together.
- Audit relentlessly: If you haven’t reviewed your software portfolio lately, start now. Redundant, outdated, or poorly integrated tools waste resources and slow us down.
- Demand integration: Lean toward vendors who bring multiple capabilities into a single platform, reducing fragmentation and boosting efficiency.
- Be strategic about AI: Focus on operational applications first, while you build the data and workflow foundation for broader use.
- Measure what matters: Judge success not by system uptime, but by how much administrative burden you’ve taken off clinicians’ plates.
Let’s turn crisis into progress
We have a choice. We can keep reacting, patching, and firefighting, or we can lead with intention, building a future where platforms, not piecemeal products, get us to better outcomes.
If we take the lessons of speed and teamwork we learned during COVID and combine them with a commitment to agile, connected technology, there’s no limit to what we can accomplish. Let’s move beyond “crisis culture” and deliver on the promise of truly integrated, efficient, and patient-focused care.
