Healthcare organizations are under constant pressure to modernize. New platforms, new regulations, new care models, new expectations from patients and clinicians alike. Yet despite massive investment, many digital transformation efforts stall or underdeliver.
The reason is rarely technology.
Eric C. Gardner has spent more than two decades leading large-scale healthcare transformation across federal programs, enterprise health systems, and value-based care networks. From the US Military Health System to Optum, WellMed, Flagship Health, and Leidos QTC, he has worked at the intersection of operations, technology, and trust.
“Transformation isn’t about technology,” Gardner says. “It’s about trust.”
That trust must exist not only with patients, but with clinicians, staff, payers, regulators, and the communities health systems serve. Without it, even the best tools struggle to deliver value.
Start With Strategy, Not Software
One of the most common mistakes Gardner sees is organizations chasing technology trends before defining what success actually looks like. Digital tools are selected without clear alignment to clinical workflows, operational priorities, or financial objectives.
At WellMed, Gardner helped reduce more than $50 million in technical debt by rationalizing the technology stack around explicit operational targets. The focus was not modernization for its own sake, but measurable outcomes: reducing documentation burden, improving access, and enabling virtual care at scale.
“When strategy is clear, technology decisions become much easier,” Gardner explains. “You stop accumulating tools and start building capability.”
This approach creates discipline. It limits sprawl, reduces risk, and ensures digital investments directly support care delivery rather than complicate it.
Redesign the Experience, Not Just the Process
Efficiency is often positioned as the goal of digital transformation. Gardner argues that it is necessary, but insufficient. Sustainable transformation improves human outcomes alongside operational metrics.
At Flagship Health, digital redesign focused equally on provider and patient experience. By aligning tools to how people actually work and receive care, the organization doubled patient volume while improving Net Promoter Score from 11% to 87%.
Key enablers included user-friendly platforms, ambient AI that reduced documentation time, and real-time feedback loops that allowed teams to adapt quickly.
“Clinicians getting hours back every week is not a soft benefit,” Gardner says. “It changes morale, retention, and quality of care.”
When experience improves, adoption follows. And when adoption follows, performance improves.
Build Capacity Before Capability
Many digital programs fail not because the technology does not work, but because organizations underestimate the effort required to bring people along.
“Your people drive transformation, not platforms,” Gardner says. “If you don’t invest in training, trust, and operational readiness, the tools won’t matter.”
At Leidos QTC, Gardner helped scale a program delivering more than 600,000 exams annually. Rather than starting with new systems, the team first modernized internal operations, optimized staffing models, and embedded performance metrics at every stage of delivery.
Only once the organization had the capacity to absorb change did new capabilities scale effectively. The result was speed with stability, rather than growth followed by rework.
Leadership Is the Differentiator
Digital transformation in healthcare is not a technology initiative. It is a leadership imperative.
“Technology will keep changing,” Gardner concludes. “What matters is whether your organization is ready to change with it.”
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