By Dan Schubert, CEO & Co-Founder, Revuud
By 2026, most healthcare IT leaders will not be blocked by technology.
They will be blocked by how they source, deploy, and manage talent.
Healthcare organizations already have powerful platforms at their disposal. Cloud infrastructure is mature. AI is no longer experimental. EHR and ERP ecosystems are more capable than ever.
And yet, transformation still feels slower and harder than it should.
Projects slip. Costs creep up. Teams feel stretched thin.
Not because the technology is wrong.
Because the talent model supporting it has not kept pace.
Over the last decade, healthcare systems have invested heavily in digital transformation. EHR optimization. Infrastructure modernization. Cybersecurity. Revenue cycle improvement.
On paper, many IT environments look strong.
In reality, execution remains fragile.
The missing link is not vision or budget. It is access to the right expertise at the right moment and the ability to reuse that expertise over time instead of starting from zero with every initiative.
CIOs, CTOs, and IT leaders feel this daily:
The technology stack gets strategic attention.
The talent model quietly absorbs the risk.
“Healthcare doesn’t have a technology problem. It has a talent deployment problem. Until we fix how expertise is accessed and reused, even the best platforms will underdeliver.” — Dan Schubert
Healthcare IT transformation in 2026 is limited less by technology and more by how quickly organizations can access, reuse, and manage specialized talent.
Most healthcare systems already have capable platforms in place, including EHRs, cloud infrastructure, and analytics tools. What slows progress is execution: long hiring cycles, repeated onboarding, reliance on staffing firms, and the inability to reuse trusted consultants across initiatives.
Organizations that modernize their talent model by building an internal bench of healthcare-experienced IT professionals, engaging them directly, and reusing proven expertise consistently start projects faster, complete more initiatives on time, and reduce IT labor costs by 20–30% compared to traditional staffing models.
In 2026, healthcare IT outcomes depend less on what tools you buy and more on how effectively you deploy the people who make those tools work.
Staffing agencies played an important role in the past.
They helped organizations move quickly when internal capacity was limited and projects were episodic.
But in 2026, that model increasingly works against healthcare IT teams.
Each engagement starts from scratch.
Knowledge walks out the door at the end of a contract.
Rates rise without long-term accountability.
Every new project comes with delays, re-onboarding, and avoidable friction.
This does not make staffing firms bad actors. It makes them misaligned with how healthcare IT actually operates today.
Transformation is no longer a series of one-off projects. It is continuous.
Talent must be reusable, trusted, and directly accessible, not disposable.
When CFOs step back and analyze IT labor spend across multi-year initiatives, a pattern often emerges.
A meaningful portion of spend is not driving innovation.
It is funding inefficiency.
The real cost is not just hourly rates.
It is the constant reset:
Across large programs, this compounds quickly. Healthcare systems quietly spend millions of dollars restarting the same work.
“What we see across healthcare systems is millions of dollars quietly lost to talent inefficiency. Not because leaders are careless, but because the model they’re using was never designed for today’s pace of change.” — Dan Schubert
As margins tighten, CFOs are asking a sharper question: Why are we paying a premium for talent models that slow us down?
Forward-looking healthcare organizations are changing the question they ask.
Instead of: How fast can a recruiter fill this role?
They are asking: How do we build a reliable bench of expertise we can engage directly, quickly, and repeatedly?
That shift marks the move from staffing as a transaction to talent as a strategic capability.
This is where Revuud fits in.
Revuud is an AI-enabled talent management platform built specifically for healthcare IT teams.
It allows organizations to:
Instead of restarting every project, health systems compound momentum.
This approach reflects a broader shift in how organizations think about digital transformation, a shift recently highlighted in a Forbes article on modern transformation strategies. The takeaway is simple: technology alone does not create advantage. Execution does.
“The organizations that move fastest aren’t the ones hiring the most consultants. They’re the ones building continuity and trust with the talent they already know works.” — Eric Utzinger
When talent is treated as a long-term asset instead of a short-term expense, the economics change quickly.
Healthcare organizations consistently see:
The value is not just lower cost.
It is time recovered, risk reduced, and throughput increased.
Teams stop reacting to talent shortages and start planning around known capability.
As healthcare leaders plan for the year ahead, the most important question is not which platform to buy next.
It is this:
Do we have a talent model that allows our technology investments to actually deliver value?
Because in healthcare IT, progress rarely hinges on tools alone.
It hinges on people… how quickly you can engage them, how effectively they integrate, and whether you can bring them back when it matters most.
Technology will continue to evolve. AI will become more embedded. Platforms will grow more powerful.
But the organizations that pull ahead in 2026 will understand one thing clearly:
Your talent model determines how much value you extract from every dollar of technology spend.
Those that modernize it will move faster, spend smarter, and execute with confidence.
Those that do not will keep wondering why their tech stack is not delivering the results it promised.
Healthcare organizations don’t need more tools. They need a better way to access, manage, and reuse the expertise that makes those tools work.
Revuud gives healthcare IT leaders:
If your organization is planning major initiatives in 2026, the question is not whether you need talent.
It’s whether your current model is helping — or holding you back.
Healthcare organizations that build and maintain an internal bench of trusted IT contractors see measurable improvements across execution, cost, and speed.
Key benefits include:
Rather than restarting with each project, healthcare IT teams compound knowledge and momentum over time.
Most healthcare organizations already have capable technology. What limits outcomes is execution. Without timely access to the right expertise, even the best platforms fail to deliver their full value.
Staffing agencies can fill short-term gaps, but they are not built for continuous transformation. They introduce repeated onboarding, limited continuity, and higher long-term costs.
An AI-enabled talent platform uses data to match organizations with the right professionals based on skills, healthcare experience, availability, and performance history. It prioritizes precision and reuse over one-time placements.
Cost savings come from eliminating inefficiency. Faster ramp-up, better fit, reuse of trusted talent, and improved visibility into labor spend all contribute to lower total cost over time.
Roles tied to transformation and optimization benefit the most, including EHR and ERP specialists, cloud engineers, cybersecurity professionals, and revenue cycle experts.
Revuud is not a staffing firm. It is a talent management platform that gives healthcare organizations direct access to vetted IT professionals and tools to manage those relationships over time.
No. Mid-sized healthcare organizations often benefit even faster because they cannot afford prolonged hiring cycles or wasted spend.
Leaders should focus on speed to expertise, reuse of trusted talent, visibility into IT labor costs, and whether their talent model supports continuous transformation.