A New Year’s Resolution for Healthcare IT: Stop Adding Tools. Start Connecting Teams.
By Sarah Doss
January has a way of resetting priorities. New budgets. New initiatives. New technology roadmaps. But in healthcare, the reality is less inspiring: most organizations are heading into the new year with the same communication problems they had last year – just more tools layered on top.
Fax hasn’t disappeared. Phone tag is still a daily occurrence. Secure messaging lives in too many places. And when patients move outside the four walls, communication still breaks down.
New year. Same mess.
The Real Problem Isn’t a Lack of Technology
Healthcare doesn’t suffer from a shortage of communication tools. It suffers from fragmentation. Care teams are expected to coordinate across hospitals, physician practices, post-acute providers, and community organizations. Yet, they’re forced to do it through disconnected systems that don’t talk to each other.
The result is predictable:
Referrals stall or fall through entirely
Discharges are delayed
Critical context is lost between handoffs
Teams default to workarounds that increase risk and burnout
Adding another standalone tool doesn’t solve this. It just gives teams one more place to check and one more login to remember.
A Better Resolution for 2026: Make Communication Invisible
If healthcare organizations are serious about improving care coordination this year, the resolution shouldn’t be to “digitize communication.” That already happened. The resolution should be to make secure communication invisible, embedded directly into the workflows teams already use, without asking them to change how they work. That’s the philosophy behind careMESH CONNECT.
CONNECT enables secure, HIPAA-compliant communication across organizations without new credentials, inboxes, or platforms to manage. Care teams communicate from within their existing systems, while IT maintains governance, security, and control.
No training campaigns.
No behavior change mandates.
No “please check another system” emails.
Why This Matters Now
As health systems push harder on value-based care, network growth, and patient access, communication outside the enterprise isn’t optional—it’s foundational. CONNECT supports:
Faster, more reliable referrals
Safer transitions of care
Reduced dependency on fax and phone
Less friction for clinicians and coordinators
Most importantly, it removes one of the most significant sources of operational drag: disconnected communication that no one owns or trusts.
Measure Progress Differently This Year
In 2026, success shouldn’t be measured by how many tools are deployed. It should be measured by how few excuses care teams have for not connecting. When communication just works: securely, reliably, and in the background, patients move faster, teams collaborate better, and IT finally stops playing traffic cop.
That’s a New Year’s resolution worth keeping.
