Holly Davis has a rule: nothing is a good idea if it doesn't decrease effort.
It sounds obvious. But if you've spent any time in healthcare IT, you know how rare that kind of clarity actually is. Too often, "innovation" means more clicks, more documentation, more training, more steps between a nurse and the patient in front of them.
Holly is the Chief Nursing Officer at Bingham Memorial Hospital in Blackfoot, Idaho. She grew up on a ranch, became a nurse in 1995, and has spent nearly three decades in roles ranging from bedside care to quality leadership. In a recent episode of The CereCore Podcast, she sat down with Phil Sobol to talk about nursing burnout, technology adoption, and what actually makes a difference in rural healthcare.
Her perspective? Refreshingly blunt.
Most people think of nursing as physically demanding work. It is. But Holly points out that the emotional and mental toll is just as real, and often harder to address.
Nurses absorb stress from patients and families. They coordinate care across doctors, labs, imaging, PT, OT, case management, and insurance. They catch mistakes. They translate medical jargon. They're the ones in the room when things go sideways.
At Bingham, the response is practical. Air-moving mattresses reduce the physical strain of moving patients. Regular debriefing sessions help nurses process difficult cases. Resiliency training teaches skills that nursing school doesn't cover, like how not to take the job home with you every night.
And importantly, Holly's team creates roles for experienced nurses who want to stay in the field but need to step back from bedside intensity. Population health nurses, chronic care managers, transition care coordinators. These aren't consolation prizes. They're ways to keep valuable knowledge and experience in the system.
Holly's test for new technology is straightforward: does it reduce effort, or does it add complexity?
If it adds complexity, even a little, it's not sustainable. Stack enough "good ideas" on top of each other and eventually the workload becomes unbearable. She calls this the "good idea fairy" problem. Leaders get excited, nursing gets overwhelmed, and momentum collapses.
At Bingham, they're selective. This year, the big nursing goal was rolling out iPhone point-of-care medication scanning integrated with MEDITECH. Nurses scan meds at the bedside and document right there. No more running back and forth to workstations. Younger nurses took to it immediately. Older nurses appreciated the saved steps.
They're also piloting virtual nursing using iPads (not fancy in-wall AV systems, just iPads on stands). Virtual nurses handle discharge teaching and admission screening. Patients seem to like it. Nurses get a little breathing room. It's not perfect, but it's working.
And then there's AI documentation. Bingham is testing ambient AI with 10 providers on the ambulatory side. In one month, they generated over 3,000 notes. Physicians can focus on the conversation instead of typing. Documentation is more complete. Early feedback is strong.
But here's the part Holly emphasizes: they measured baseline performance first. Pre-assessment, then post-assessment. That data matters when you're trying to prove value to a board, convince a skeptical physician, or decide whether to expand the pilot.
In parallel, Holly has been working with CereCore on a dedicated optimization assessment of Bingham’s EHR environment. The outcome was a set of actionable insights into workflow pain points and opportunities for improvement – giving leadership a clear roadmap to prioritize changes that matter most to hospital operations as well avoid piling on “good ideas” that add burden instead of easing it.
One thing Holly wants boards and executives to really understand: nurses aren't task-doers. They're coordinators.
A nurse has to understand what the doctor ordered, how the order gets processed, what the insurance will cover, how lab and imaging fit in, what PT and OT need, and what the patient actually understands about all of it. It's holistic, complex work that requires constant decision-making.
That's why blanket policies like "you can only have this many nurses" or "you can only do it this way" are dangerous. You can't treat the control tower like a budget line item.
Holly also has a message for her fellow CNOs: get involved in informatics. Really involved. The EHR is the tool your nurses use all day, every day. If you're not paying attention to what's being built, what's being added, and what's being documented, you're missing something critical.
Survey your nursing teams. What do they hate to chart? What's not working? Shadow a nurse for a shift and watch how they actually use the system. The disconnect between leadership and bedside workflows is real, and it costs you in turnover, errors, and morale.
Holly's advice for CIOs is equally direct. Have a clear roadmap, but keep it short. One year, maybe. Technology is changing too fast to plan much further out.
Evaluate carefully before you buy. Understand the total cost, including all the add-on fees and relicensing that vendors love to bury in the fine print. Work with partners who actually understand rural healthcare constraints.
And remember: just because something is new and shiny doesn't mean it's the right fit. Build the business case. Measure the impact. Don't let the good idea fairy run wild.
Holly is curious. She's currently exploring agentic AI for her leadership team. She wants to know what an AI agent could do to reduce cognitive load around staffing models or year-end evaluations.
But curiosity without discipline is chaos. You can't pilot everything. You can't chase every trend. Focus matters.
This year, Bingham focused on iPhone scanning and nurse handoff tools. That was it. No sprawling initiative list. No feature creep. Just two things, done well, that actually helped.
Holly Davis isn't chasing perfection. She's chasing progress. Small, sustainable, meaningful progress that actually makes nurses' lives better.
Her approach works because it's grounded in reality. She knows her hospital is old. She knows budgets are tight. She knows her team is stretched. And she's not pretending otherwise.
But she also knows that with the right focus, the right discipline, and a relentless commitment to reducing effort rather than adding it, rural health systems can innovate without losing their soul.
That might be the real lesson here. Innovation isn't about doing more. It's about doing the right things, for the right reasons, in a way that actually helps the people doing the work.