Start with the tools you have: An MGMA IT leader's advice for practice administrators

Every practice administrator eventually faces the same question: The current system has been in place for years, so is it time for something new?

Before calling vendors, Julia Rosen, senior vice president of information technology (IT) for the Medical Group Management Association (MGMA), suggested looking hard at the daily work of the practice.

"Don't start with the technologies," she said in an interview with Physicians Practice at MGMA's 2026 Annual Conference.

Rosen, a former chief information officer at Pera Healthcare, said leaders should first identify where a legacy system creates friction, such as slowing down the practice or making it harder for patients to get care. The answer to that question should guide the technology choice, she said.

Many independent practices are weighing these decisions without a large IT team or budget. Rosen said MGMA members are asking "what's the right balance between being modern and adopting technology, and being cautious," especially given compliance and privacy concerns in health care.

Her advice for practices short on money is to "start with the tools you have," including artificial intelligence (AI) features already built into the electronic medical record, and to avoid sorting through hundreds of products at once. Revenue cycle work, such as finding the root causes of claim denials, is a good first project, she said.

When it comes time to roll out a new tool, she recommends recruiting enthusiastic staff members to test it first and share what they learn.

"They want to hear from their peers about how they're using the technology and how it's becoming effective, not from technology people," Rosen said.

She also discussed cybersecurity, where she sees a growing operational burden. Software vendors are releasing updates more often to fix vulnerabilities, and practices are not always used to changing their routines at that pace. Because much of a practice's technology is vendor based, she said practices need to pay closer attention to what their own vendors are doing on cybersecurity.

In this video, she also explains how AI scribes are performing in primary care and other specialties, and why phishing training and ransomware tabletop exercises still matter.