Your $10M EMR Is Making Doctors Cry (And Other Truths Nobody Wants to Hear)

So I sat down with Sulay Thompson this week, and she basically confirmed what we all know but are too polite to say out loud:

Your shiny new healthcare tech is probably trash.

Not because the engineering is bad. Not because you hired the wrong people. But because somewhere between the whiteboard session and the product launch, you forgot that actual humans have to use this thing.

The Part Where I Get Real With You

Sulay spent 20 years transforming chaos into clarity in healthcare operations. She's seen it all—the good, the bad, and the "why does this EMR require 47 clicks to document a blood pressure reading?"

Here's what she told me that hit different:

"We're humans first and employees second."

I know, I know. You're thinking "okay cool, but what about my Q4 targets?"

But hear me out.

Your Efficiency Strategy Is Burning People Out

We've spent two decades optimizing the hell out of healthcare. Faster! More efficient! Better KPIs!

Meanwhile, doctors are literally refusing to use the systems you built. Sulay told me about a physician who made her enter everything into the EMR manually because it took too much time away from actually, you know, talking to patients.

That's not a feature request. That's a funeral for your entire product strategy.

The EMR Dumpster Fire Nobody Wants to Admit

Remember when electronic medical records were going to revolutionize healthcare?

Now we have 10+ different EMR systems that don't talk to each other. Doctors spend 30 minutes per patient clicking through interfaces designed by people who've never worked a clinical shift. And everyone's asking about your EMR experience in job interviews like it's a personality test.

"Which of the 10 broken systems are you least traumatized by?"

Cool. Cool cool cool.

Here's The Thing About Engineering vs. Operations

Your engineers are brilliant. They really are. They've built something technically impressive that looks gorgeous in demos.

But then you hand it to a nurse at 2 AM during a code blue, and suddenly your "intuitive interface" feels like trying to defuse a bomb while someone reads you instructions in Klingon.

Sulay nailed it: Engineering speaks one language. Operations speaks another. And if you don't have someone translating between them, you're just burning money and goodwill.

She described getting a sandbox environment where she could test things from a clinician's perspective before rollout. Wild concept, right? Actually involving the humans who'll use the thing in the design process?

The Part Where I Tell You What To Do

Look, I'm not saying abandon your efficiency goals or throw out your roadmap.

I'm saying that humans drive the process, not the other way around.

Every relationship in your business—with customers, employees, stakeholders—needs to be designed with actual human beings in mind. Their bad days. Their competing priorities. The fact that they're trying to save lives while your app is demanding they update their password for the third time this month.

Start here:

1. Stop treating diversity of thought like a problem to solve. Different perspectives aren't slowing you down—they're the only thing preventing you from building another useless tool.
   

2. Get operations and engineering in the same room. Like, actually collaborating. Not just engineering presenting and operations nodding politely while planning their resignation letter.
   

3. Build for humans first, processes second. If your system requires a PhD to operate, congratulations—you've built a very expensive paperweight.
   

4. Test with real users in real conditions. Not your best-case scenario. Not your ideal workflow. The messy, chaotic, 2 AM reality of how healthcare actually works.
   

Why This Actually Matters

Here's the thing about building relationship-driven revenue growth in healthcare: when your tech actively prevents human connection, you're not just losing efficiency—you're literally costing lives.

Physicians burn out. Patient care suffers. Your customer advocacy programs become damage control operations. And your stakeholder engagement strategies turn into explaining why retention is tanking.

Sulay tripled patient activation volume in under eight months. She drove 35% efficiency improvements. She maintained 95%+ satisfaction rates.

Not by optimizing processes to death. By understanding that sustainable business expansion starts with treating people like people.

The Real Talk You Came Here For

If your company culture transformation strategy doesn't include actual humans in the transformation part, you're just rearranging deck chairs.

If your client success strategies prioritize revenue over relationships, you're building a house of cards in a windstorm.

And if your healthcare tech is making doctors cry, no amount of Series B funding is going to save you.

Watch this episode. Seriously. Sulay drops wisdom about balancing client advocacy with revenue growth, building high-retention relationships, and why proactive client relationship management isn't just consultant-speak—it's survival.

Because in an increasingly transactional business world, the companies that win are the ones that remember: it's not B2B. It's not B2C.

It's H2H. Human to human.

And if you can't handle that truth, healthcare tech probably isn't for you.

P.S. If your first thought reading this was "but our engineers worked really hard on this" instead of "oh god, we never actually talked to a nurse"—we should talk. Or at least, you should watch this episode before you burn through your next funding round building something nobody can use. Your call.

Karl Pontau hosts The Human Connection Podcast, where we talk about the stuff that actually matters in business: the humans running it. Because whether you're B2B or B2C, it's really H2H, human to human. Subscribe so you don't miss the next episode where we probably say something that'll make your HR department uncomfortable.