I had a conversation with a local medical provider this morning and after we talked I was more sure than ever that if you're a community bank or a regional bank, the community or communities you serve need your help. Please.

As 2017 draws to an end, most medical providers are facing two challenges - an influx of procedures from those that have met their deductibles for the year and the dreaded dip in procedures at the start of 2018 as deductibles reset. While the end of year increase can have a positive impact on the revenue cycle, the scheduling and logistics for the unpredictable number of patients is difficult to manage. All of the adjustments for the high volume will then have to swing drastically the other direction at the start of the year. Not only are more and more patients burdened with high-deductible plans, but the coverage of these plans is expected to decrease while the cost continues to rise. A recent article from HealthiPass outlines the budget difficulties of patients and the impact to the medical provider's revenue cycle.

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The other night I received a phone call that pointed out an approach that companies commonly take when talking to their customers that I don't understand. My trial period of XM radio was about to expire, so I was contacted to renew my subscription. I answered the phone and was pleasantly surprised when it was a person, for a minute, then he proceeded to read a script about how awesome their product is and what a deal it would be to renew the subscription. I told him I wasn't interested, which prompted him to read another, very similar, script. Again I told him I wasn't interested and that was the end of the call.

Banking has never been synonymous with innovation and change. Banks have long made their mark as being safe, trusted pillars of the community. However, a recent market review by Onovative has found something interesting. While customers still want their bank to be safe and trusted, it appears that the most successful banks are willing to step out of their comfort zone and into innovative new products.

Full disclosure, breakfast meetings are my favorite. Something about sitting down to comfort food in a day that has not yet been tarnished that causes me to go into breakfast meetings with an off-the-charts positivity. All of this is to say, I was probably particularly receptive to new concepts when Jessica Toney, Product Manager here at Epic River, and I sat down with Todd Gentry, the Director of Software Development for D+H, at a cool little breakfast joint in Portland.

It has been 15 years since the Agile Manifesto was authored and most organizations that develop software now proclaim that they are "agile." The word "agile" is an adjective meaning able to move quickly and easily. What organization wouldn't want to be labeled as "agile" based on the definition? There are many agile methodologies to choose from: Scrum, Kanban, XTreme, Lean etc. The problem is that many organizations lose sight of the basic definition of the word "agile" and focus on the artifacts and ceremonies of their selected agile methodology instead of focusing on supporting the 12 principles behind the Agile Manifesto.

As the executive sponsor of our InfoSec team, I was sitting in on a webcast about the depth and breadth of cloud security. The presentation included a tremendous amount of information and best practices about tightening the security around a hosted offering. There was information about policies and employee habits to go along with all the settings and configurations. All great stuff for a provider of software to businesses, but it was when he said, "compile the infrastructure" that I snapped to attention. I had heard the phrase "infrastructure as code" and dismissed it like I dismiss the use of "cloud" to describe a million different things.

According to an Accenture report, only six percent of the directors overseeing the world’s biggest banks have any technology experience. As someone who spends the bulk of his day explaining technology to bankers, obviously my opinion is every bank should have at least some technology experience on a board of directors. I'm intimately familiar with how slowly the banking industry changes, but this seems like more of an oversight than a slow moving trend. A Harvard Business Review article on the same topic noted that the decision to add a technology expert to your board hinges on two factors:

Epic River, a leading provider of software, data, and process consulting for hospital and financial institutions, today announced that it has signed an agreement to become a co-title sponsor of Team MONARX, an expedition adventure racing team.