The 3 Questions This Healthcare CIO Asks Before the Demo Even Starts with Samir Deshpande

Most health plans manage the invisible backbone of healthcare, provider data, across disconnected systems, spreadsheets, and vendors that don't talk to each other. One bad record cascades downstream into claims, payments, and patients who can't find a doctor. So why do so many plans still try to build their own fix?Sam Deshpande spent 17 years at Capital One in risk and credit, then ran risk, technology, and information at Humana as chief risk officer and later CIO. That makes him the rare leader who has sat on both sides of every buy-vs-build, business-vs-IT fight. In this episode he gives Nick and Mitch a clear rule for what to build, what to buy, and why provider data is the textbook case for buying: complicated, universal, and ruinous to get wrong.Highlights:Why he calls the business-IT divide "two separate nations," and how good leaders close the borderThe three questions he asks about any product before the demo mattersHis rule of thumb: if it's complicated and everyone uses it, buy itWhy "transformational" is overused, and the only two things that earn the wordHow he'd fix provider data from a clean slate as a health plan CEO: decide, declare, designWhere AI genuinely moves provider data, and where teams are kidding themselvesThe $60 shovel story that reframed how he buys AI toolsNew episodes of Provider Data Dorks every week. Subscribe on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple. Hosted by Nick Helfrich and Mitch Gorodokin.