EP447: Why an "EHR Strategy" Isn't Enough, With Ashleigh Gunter

When a company wants to change clinician behavior or close a care gap and comes in asking for an "EHR strategy" — or, more often, an "Epic strategy" — as step one, that's a red flag. In this healthcare podcast, Ashleigh Gunter, president of Translucent Healthcare Consulting and a 30-year veteran of management consulting, joins Stacey Richter to explain why an Epic strategy is necessary but nowhere near sufficient for actually changing behavior inside a hospital or physician organization — and what real change management requires instead.

WHAT YOU'LL LEARN

✅ Why an "EHR strategy" (or "Epic strategy") is not the same as a change management strategy — it's necessary but not sufficient to actually change clinician behavior

✅ Ashleigh Gunter's five steps to effective change management: great leadership, creating a case for change, finding champions, overcommunicating, and measuring and celebrating progress

✅ Why "communication of change, in and of itself, isn't change management" — and what has to happen before communication can actually work

✅ Why frontline care delivery experience is too often left out of change management efforts, and what that costs an initiative

✅ How identifying and mobilizing "change champions" — people who have to change and can help others do the same — makes or breaks adoption inside a health system or health plan

WHY THIS MATTERS

The best tech tools, care models, and forward-thinking concepts don't matter if no one can be convinced to adopt them — and in a complicated, multilayered system like healthcare, it only takes one ounce of resistance to sabotage an entire effort. An EHR or Epic strategy can make the mechanics of change easier once people are already bought in, but it supplies no "why," and no case for change slithers spontaneously out of anyone's API. Real change management starts with leadership and a case for change grounded in what the people being asked to change actually care about — not with the software they'll eventually use.

=== LINKS ===

🔗 Show Notes with all mentioned links: Episode Page

✉️ Enjoy this podcast? Subscribe to the free weekly newsletter

🫙 Support the podcast with a small donation to the Tip Jar

🎤 Listen on Apple Podcasts

🎤 Listen on Spotify

📺 Subscribe to our YouTube channel

=== CONNECT WITH THE RHV TEAM ===

✭ LinkedIn ✭ Threads ✭ Bluesky ✭ X

00:00 Introduction.

09:22 How does change management go wrong in healthcare?

09:56 "Communication [of change] in and of itself isn't change management."

10:53 How does change management work on the provider organization side?

15:33 "You want to ensure you are educating the operational folks."

16:35 What is change management?

17:36 What does great leadership look like in change management?

18:55 "Leadership sets the tone."

19:04 What makes change management so hard?

19:31 "What's the company reason to make this change happen?"

20:51 What are change champions, and why do you need to create them when changing your benefit plan?

21:57 Crossing the Chasm by Geoffrey A. Moore.

23:21 Why is it important to overcommunicate change?

26:47 Why is it important to measure your successes and communicate those after a change?