If you’re fortunate enough to work in healthcare and IT, every year presents a significant mix of big challenges and even bigger opportunities.  2025 is no exception.  One of HIT’s paradigms for approaching challenges is to focus on people, process, and technology – technology being the easiest of the three.

To be successful, planning must be attentive to some elements from the past and many of those from the present.  Each year there are prognosticators who focus on what will happen with technology.  Perhaps the greatest of the challenges today is our workforce, so, I choose to focus on people again this year.

Fortunately, the stigma of mental health is diminishing thanks to many celebrities brave enough to share their personal stories.  It’s more important now than ever given the divisiveness and angry rhetoric associated with the recent election and other distressing world events.  Let’s not hope but act aggressively in 2025 to help and heal ourselves, family, friends, community, nation, and the world.

Healthcare is a people industry.  We need to remind ourselves and our coworkers that mercy and compassion, not anger, define our profession and us as professionals.  Model mercy and compassion in our personal and professional lives.  One way to do that is through genuine listening in pursuit of true understanding – easy to say, difficult to do.  Encourage others to express themselves.   For everyone’s sake, lower your defenses.  As you create a list of resolutions for the new year, please add to it active and courageous listening, building trust, and treating everyone with kindness, mercy, and compassion.

So, let’s start our list for a better, brighter 2025 based on a similar list from 2024.  Each of the following is an opportunity.

1. Treat yourself, all your stakeholders, and everyone else you meet with kindness, mercy, and compassion. If you don’t pay attention to yourself, your ability to help others will be diminished.  Airlines remind passengers that in case of emergency, put on your own mask before helping others put theirs on.
   
   Be merciful and compassionate to patients, families, employers, employees, payers, vendors, and strangers.  Forgive yourself and others who may stumble or request assistance.  Remember that you and everyone you meet has lost someone or something of value over the last 5 years – a family member, friend, business associate, or job.  Help them.  Learn about Ring Theory – A Practical Tool for Dealing with Trauma and Crises.
   
   When you ask how someone is doing, don’t let “Fine” get in the way of the truth.  Ask questions to get at the truth but don’t let your desire to help violate their privacy.  Model that behavior by thinking about both the positives and negatives in your life and, when appropriate, sharing your feelings with your friends and family.  It’s often a gift to them when you ask them to help you when you need it.
   
   Let’s not forget the impact on younger generations.  I’ve witnessed the stresses on my own children and grandchildren.  Like adults, children of all ages are susceptible to depression and anxiety – they catch it from their parents, the media, their teachers, and friends.
   
   Unfortunately, we’re not always equipped to understand, express, or address our feelings.  There is no doubt, regardless of your position on issues, that the events of the past year were and will be for some time a source of stress.  Please pay special attention to the children who are still or may become stressed, depressed, or anxious due to conflicting messages from their parents, friends, social media, and other media sources.
   
   Summon the strength and humility to seek professional help, when necessary, to modify your own behaviors so you can support others in need.  Therapy can help all of us cope more effectively.  It can provide tools that will help us all weather difficult situations.  In the digital world, human elements are essential.
2. Collaborate enthusiastically. Be proactive.  Radical collaboration is the key to our shared success.  Seek to help others – don’t wait for them to ask.  Pursue opportunities to work together.  The lesson is clear – the more collaborative we are, the faster we will get to success.  That’s true in all aspects of our life – personal and professional.  Collaboration often creates understanding and empathy that makes the world a better place.  The African proverb says it well, “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.”
3. Pay attention to DEI. The process of exploring all the facts of DEI will reveal truths that are sometimes difficult but necessary to accept.  Understanding is the first benefit.  Other benefits include but are not limited to improved patient outcome and satisfaction, reduced health disparities, employee satisfaction and productivity, community engagement, and innovation and creativity.
4. Redouble your efforts to secure your IT environment. Our patients and providers have entrusted us to protect their data. Let’s ensure we’re doing everything possible to guard that sacred trust. Make sure that you lead the efforts to enhance or create a culture of security and privacy.  Safeguard your digital foundations by treating cybersecurity like any other essential utility.
5. Continue to evolve the IT organization – Embrace Digital Services (DS). Digital HIT is table stakes now.  Use existing governance structures to manage demand or create multidisciplinary teams to set priorities.  One of my favorite phrases is “We can do anything.  We can’t do everything.”  Ensure your efforts to digitally enable your organization are aligned with at least one of the objectives of the Quintuple Aim.
6. Be open to new partnerships. There are far more nontraditional players in the health and public health sector than ever before.  Create synergies.  Try to move a few of your key vendors to partner status which will require commitment and work by both parties.  Work with your payers.  Goals which may appear to be parallel often converge.
7. Challenge the status quo, respectfully. If you’re exploring outside innovations, remember pragmatism, practicality, and sustainability.  Deploy solutions quickly and adjust rapidly with sensitivity to the power dynamic in relationships.
8. Embrace AI and ML, cautiously. Do so with a healthy mix of optimism, skepticism, and realism.  There are tons of valuable resources.  Investigate thoroughly.  Be deliberate but do so with enthusiasm.  The potential for good and bad is substantial; hence, the suggestion to approach potential solutions with caution.  Combine your generative AI efforts and human expertise to improve care consistency and the patient and family experience.
9. Address the increasingly important issue of Health Literacy. If you cannot understand healthcare and all the supporting activities, your chances of success as a patient or family member are limited. My blog “Digital Health – Health Literacy Matters” addresses the complex nature of health literacy.  Visit the AHIMA Foundation website to see how “Health literacy impacts health equity”.
10. Address frustration and unhappiness with EHRs and other IT products and services. Improve the UI and reduce documentation requirements. Some of the burnout stems from poorly designed programs and processes.  Measure user satisfaction regularly and adjust the environment to address issues associated with technology.  Amy Manaker, MD, a StarBridge advisor points out in a blog that “EHR engagement and ownership are keys to clinician success”.
11. Do a self-assessment. Use the new year as an opportunity to inventory both your personal and professional life. Create a Life List (not a bucket list) of what to do with a fresh restart.  We can all be our better selves.  You may expect the best from others but it’s more important to demand the best of yourself.  Invest in yourself.  Learn, teach, work, play, sleep, laugh, cry, talk, listen – exercise your mind and body.  Sometimes the most selfless thing you can do is to focus on your own well-being.  Become your best self, and if you fall short occasionally be as compassionate and forgiving of yourself as you are of others.  Commit to a regular review of your life-work balance.  Adjust as necessary.  A better you makes a better us.  A better us provides better care.

Here’s a list of excellent blogs written by Sue Schade, my StarBridge Advisors partner, who offers sage advice on life-work balance:

• Time to stop and smell the roses
• Take time to reboot
• Renewal, big rocks, and the elusive work life balance
• Managing priorities and maintaining balance

Hurrah for 2024!  Let’s make the best of these opportunities in 2025 to improve health and care in our communities, our nation, and our world.