In the healthcare industry, digital transformation gets plenty of airtime. Healthcare leaders present it to boards, announce initiatives to staff, and allocate budgets to new technologies generously. Yet, months pass, and the organization barely moves. Eric C. Gardner has built his career around studying that gap, the space between big ambitions and real progress.
With a background spanning the military health system, value-based care models, and enterprise healthcare, Gardner has led transformation in highly complex, regulated environments. He quickly learned that technology is only part of the equation. “It’s really about trust, building that trust with the workforce so that we can work through adopting the technologies into their workflows,” Gardner explained. Without that simple foundation, even the best systems are bound to fail.
Why Most Transformation Efforts Feel Invisible
Leaders often expect overnight results. They’ll replace a major system and look for immediate validation that the investment paid off. But Gardner knows that it doesn’t work like that. Real change rarely arrives on schedule, or all at once. “It’s a gradual, iterative process where you’re walking through those transitions department by department or function by function,” he notes.
The main issue is that gradual change doesn’t really look like change at all from the top. Teams are constantly adjusting their workflows. Clinicians are getting used to new tools. Efficiency improves incrementally. But unless you’re swapping out the entire EHR, which is chaos on its own, those improvements tend to happen quietly, often in the background.
Organizations that get this right are doing things differently. They focus on simplifying processes, rather than complicating them. They create an environment where people feel safe telling the truth about what’s working and what isn’t. They bring clinicians, tech teams, and leaders together to communicate and stay aligned.
“You’ve got to be very concise in simplifying the complexity of things,” Gardner emphasizes. When everyone understands what’s happening and why it matters, they stop resisting and start leaning in. At the end of the day, it’s not about employing technology for technology’s sake; it’s about better patient care, a healthier work-life balance, and eliminating “pajama time” clinicians spend catching up on documentation at home.
When Results Show Up Immediately
Not all change takes years, though. Gardner refers to ambient computing as proof of instant, measurable impact. Clinicians walk in, let the patient know that their visit will be recorded, and their focus is directly on the patient instead of staring at an EHR screen.
“I’ve seen really measurable results in implementing ambient technology in my primary care spaces as well as specialty services,” Gardner emphasizes. “The satisfaction rates go way up, the retention rates go way up, and patient satisfaction goes up as well because the patient is feeling heard, the provider’s facing the patient and taking care of them versus worrying about the EHR.”
Building Zero Distance Between Data and Decisions
Gardner has watched it quietly transform operations for years, especially in billing, coding, and claims automation. The newer models around large language models and generative AI face regulatory hurdles, but “AI doesn’t worry about those hurdles, it’ll scale over them.”
Human involvement, however, remains critical. Healthcare systems are incorporating AI models in controlled environments, using internal data instead of searching the web, and making sure diverse data sets are used so minority groups receive quality information. “You’ve got to have a human in the loop always on these technologies to make sure that it’s giving us the right answers,” Gardner insists.
Gardner’s vision on creating “zero distance”, zero distance to patients, data, and to frontline teams making decisions in real time. EHRs weren’t built for speed; they were built for billing and documentation. Gardner has helped build bolt-on solutions that predict the next best actions and make sure patients get all required services without having to figure it out themselves.
Change Management as Competitive Advantage
The right way to implement technology hinges on one thing: change management. “It’s ultimately the hardest part of transformation in any organization. It’s also a competitive advantage,” Gardner explains.
While the formula is hardly complicated, it does require discipline and communication. “In every meeting, every email, every interaction with your staff, you’ve got to have the senior leaders, the mid-level leaders all saying the same thing,” Gardner stresses. When everyone knows the vision, transformation becomes tangible.
Gardner also notes the importance of culture. “Your culture is your multiplier or it’s a constraint. If your culture for transforming isn’t there. It’s not going to happen or it’s going to be a very difficult road to hoe,” he says.
Beyond Projects to Enduring Programs
In his final words, Gardner distills years of experience into a simple truth: “Digital transformation is not just a project, but an enduring program to enable enterprise stability.”
After spending over 2 decades in the Air Force, first as a medic, then as a healthcare administrator, and several years of experience leading transformation in civilian healthcare, Gardner is optimistic about what lies ahead. He believes that the US healthcare system will change drastically for the better in the next 5 to 10 years.
The workforce is brilliant, and the technology is ready. What’s required now are leaders who understand that it’s not about merely implementing systems. It’s about unlocking the potential humans hold through clarity, trust, and relentless focus on what actually improves healthcare.
The future of healthcare is bright. See it in action with Eric C. Gardner on LinkedIn.
